The people were no longer colonists; they were Americans. Some colonists who did not want independence, and who fought with the British army against their colonial neighbors, escaped to Britain or Canada.
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other important colonial leaders wrote the Constitution of the United States of American in 1787. The Constitution is the government document that said that the new government was a democracy, a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people .” George Washington became the first president, and John Adams was his vice-president.