Ron Carter
The Americans had stunned the world by winning their independence from the mightiest military power on earth and creating a startling new constitution that vested ultimate power in the common man. No one had anticipated that, by the 1790s, the giants of the world — England, France, Spain, and Russia — would again be caught up in war, with the United States trapped in the middle. British Canada to the north, hostile American Indians
...The surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis and his entire army to the United States at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, stunned the world. The thirteen-foundling United States had won their impossible revolution. They could not know that their victory was but a shifting from a war with musket and cannon to one with tariffs and border disputes. With the country sinking into bankruptcy, the leaders in the thirteen states agreed:
...October 19, 1781: The great guns at Yorktown fell silent, British General Cornwallis surrendered, and England conceded the war. For one euphoric moment a shout of jubilation rolled forth in America - and then harsh reality gripped the country. America was thirteen separate countries, each with its own money, political organization, culture, and history. Congress was essentially powerless. Border tariffs sprang up between states, with cannons to
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