THE BRITISH DRAFTED WRITTEN AGREEMENTS with each of their colonies in America. Called charters, these documents specified that the king ruled the colonies and appointed local governors to represent him. Colonists elected legislatures from the ranks of men who owned property, and these legislatures set the salary of the governors, as an attempt to balance the power between the two.
One famous group of pilgrims was an exception to the charter rule. The passengers on the Mayflower failed to land in Virginia as planned. They landed instead on the coast of what is now Massachusetts, which was outside the boundaries of the Virginia colony. As a result, their Mayflower Compact claimed they’d rule themselves.
The longer colonists put down roots in America, the more attractive the idea of self-rule became. The colonists were also influenced by philosophers of the age, especially by the work of the seventeenth-century Englishman John Locke.
Locke argued that people have three natural rights: to life, to liberty, and to own property. The government’s job is to protect these rights. Citizens give a leader the authority to rule. If the government fails to protect the natural rights of the citizens, they have the right to overthrow the ruler.
As the colonists became disenchanted with British rule, they came together to form the Continental Congress. Through that body, they coordinated their resistance to England. Congress functioned as the national government during the war, balancing states’ competing interests and negotiating with foreign governments. The states’ representatives in Congress drafted the nation’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, which had certain limits that hamstrung the nation before the Constitution replaced it.