“The American Republic” would have been a more likely contender, I think, because “Republic of America” would imply aspirations to included the entire continent which, at the time, I don’t think the founding fathers necessarily had. The was the classical precedent of the Roman Republic, the existing precedent of the Dutch Republic, and a few short years later came the French Republic, followed by the Batavian Republic, the Helvetic Republic, the Italian Republic, etc.
As a rule of thumb, the form “Republic of X” was mostly associated with city-states - Republic of Venice, Republic of Genoa - which had no claim to national identity and no aspirations to embrace an entire nation. National republics, when they arrived on the scene, mostly adopted a name in the form of “X Republic”.
“United Colonies”, but that name could/would remind people of the British roots, and just as “America”.
It was a tumultuous and confusing time. The united colonies hadn’t settled on a united government let alone an official name for their soon-to-be nation so the “media”, town square-pedias, tarvern gossips, and pulpit proclamations were free to chose their personal favorite. United Colonies, united States, United States, Virginians, New Yorkers, etc. seem to have been popular.
Some British newspapers of that time referred to the 13 still individual colonies as the United Colonies, as the Provincials, and as America.
News of American independence reached London the second week of August via the Mercury packet ship, which sailed with important correspondence from General William Howe to Lord George Germain, dated July 7 and 8, at Staten Island. The London Gazette, the official Crown organ, first broke the news in its Saturday, August 10 edition. A 16-word, 106-character, Twitter-esque extract from a Howe letter read: “I am informed that the Congress have declared the United Colonies free and independent States.”
…On Wednesday, the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser printed “Copies of the Declarations of War by the Provincials are now in Town and are said to be couched in the strongest terms.”
*After first arriving in London on August 10, one of the first official British newspaper reports about the Declaration of Independence was published in the August 10 to 13, 1776, London Chronicle. While the full printing of the Declaration appeared four days later in the August 17 issue of the Chronicle, the August 13 issue features on page three a brief, but hugely significant and historically important breaking news announcement:
“Advice is received that the Congress resolved upon independence the 4th of July; and, it is said, have declared war against Great Britain in form.”
With this, many people of England learned for the first time that America had officially declared itself independent.*
Actually, Simply calling it the United States would have been sufficient. Were there other states at that time that were excluded by adding “of America” to the name? (other than in the continental US)
Thanks for the replies, it’s easy these days to forget how…independent? the individual states were compared to today.
Were there any proposals for one or two of the states to break off and form their own countries? Or different groups of states banding together in more confederacies, rather than the one (briefly two, in the late unpleasantness)?
The colonies may have been independent, but there was a growing awareness of “America” as a nation, with its own culture, mythology and values, separate from Great Britain. It’s part of what gave us the balls to revolt in the first place.
So I think you have to look earlier in our history to find a time when the name of our nation was still up in the air. By the time of the revolution, “America” was pretty entrenched, even if most people still thought of themselves as “Virginians” or “Pennsylvanians” first.
Not all of the British colonies on the continent were involved in the Revolutionary War; the Province of Quebec was invited to join the festivities, but decided to pass on the opportunity. Further unpleasantness then ensued. However, Quebec was really sui generis among the British possessions in 1775; it had only been under British rule for a little over a decade at that time, and had a different language, cultural heritage, and legal system.
The Continental Congress spent a lot of time discussing each issue because A) they wanted to get it right and B) they didn’t agree with the other States about their visions for the future of 'merica.
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, on their own volition, jumped the gun and was the 1st State to declare independence.
Rhode Island Independence Day is a state holiday in the state of Rhode Island in the United States on May 4 each year. It commemorates the state’s independence from Great Britain on May 4, 1776.
There was always that worry. New England and the South had some significant disagreements stemming from a host of factors (religious, economic, etc), some of which persist to this day. The mid-Atlantic states were another kettle of fish.
But all realized a single confederacy was necessary to achieve independence. They all realized that they had to present themselves as a single confederacy for Spain, France, Holland, and other foreign powers to recognize their legitimacy and independence from the UK.
Otherwise, they kind of were their own countries. That’s how a lot of people thought of each state. The notion of the confederacy of states was a convenience for dealing with foreign powers and for a peaceful/effective way of dealing with the occasional disagreement between states.
It didn’t take long to realize a somewhat stronger central federal government was necessary, necessitating the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with our current Constitution. And it was nearly a century before the question of the primacy of the federal over the states was settled decisively, though our states still have fairly broad powers compared to states in other countries but less power than fully independent nations acting largely in concert (like the EU).
One example of how each state was more or less a separate independent nation was currency. Each state had its own currency, leading to differences in exchange rates and the other problems with multiple currencies. The Constitution settled this by forming a single common currency region, sort of how the Euro zone nations settled on a single common currency.
A well-written book that illustrates just how independent and ornery the colonies were is Bunker Hill, by Nathaniel Philbrick, which discusses the lead-up to the war in some detail. It also talks about many of the lesser-remembered figures of the time; had things gone differently, our first President could likely have been named Warren instead of Washington.
Was there any sense of ‘united we stand, divided we fall’? That if they went it alone European colonial powers would be able to pick them off one by one, or divide them against each other? They had just fought a war with colonial overlords, wondering if that’s a factor in why “United” got in there.
Certainly. Leave it to Ben Franklin, the great printer and propagandist - almost twenty years before Lexington and Concord: Join, or Die - Wikipedia
And George Washington wrote in 1783, the same year that Great Britain acknowledged American independence, “[T]he United States came into existence as a nation, and if their citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own…it is in their choice, and depends upon their conduct, whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptible and miserable as a nation…[it would be an] ill-fated moment for relaxing the powers of the Union, annihilating the cement of the confederation, and exposing us to become the sport of European politics, which may play one state against another to prevent their growing importance, and to serve their own interested purposes… It is only in our united character…that our independence is acknowledged, that our power can be regarded, and our credit supported among foreign nations.”
