Looking beyond the grievances that led to war, and the actual war itself, this dictionary particularly brings into focus the subsequent period of trial and error, when success was far from certain and failure could never be ruled out. It was the period that runs roughly from 1763 to 1789 in which the thirteen states and those that followed were actually welded into the United States of America. Authoritative information about this period is presented through a chronology of events and a comprehensive introduction followed by several hundred detailed entries on important persons, places, events, institutions and other topics