=Diplomacy and the French Alliance.=--Hart, _American History Told by Contemporaries_, Vol. II, pp. 574-590. Fiske, Vol. II, pp. 1-24. Callender, _Economic History of the United States_, pp. 159-168; Elson, pp. 275-280. =Biographical Studies.=--Washington, Franklin, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson--emphasizing the peculiar services of each. =The Tories.=--Hart, _Contemporaries_, Vol. II, pp. 470-480. =Valley Forge.=--Fiske, Vol. II, pp. 25-49. =The Battles of the Revolution.=--Elson, pp. 235-317. =An English View of the Revolution.=--Green, _Short History of England_, Chap. X, Sect. 2. =English Opinion and the Revolution.=--Trevelyan, _The American Revolution_, Vol. III (or Part 2, Vol. II), Chaps. XXIV-XXVII. PART III. THE UNION AND NATIONAL POLITICS CHAPTER VII THE FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION THE PROMISE AND THE DIFFICULTIES OF AMERICA The rise of a young republic composed of thirteen states, each governed by officials popularly elected under constitutions drafted by "the plain people," was the most significant feature of the eighteenth century. The majority of the patriots whose labors and sacrifices had made this possible naturally looked upon their work and pronounced it good. Those Americans, however, who peered beneath the surface of things, saw that the Declaration of Independence, even if splendidly phrased, and paper constitutions, drawn by finest enthusiasm "uninstructed by experience," could not alone make the republic great and prosperous or even free. All around them they saw chaos in finance and in industry and perils for the immediate future.