While listening to recent news reports about the challenges of bringing Democracy to North Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I'm curious: how smoothly did the transition go for the average citizen of the new United States of America, when moving away from the rule of the King of England? How much resistance, and pursuits of alternative governmental approaches was there in post Revolutionary War America?
The colonies had been largely self governing for a long time. In an age when travel across the Atlantic took two months, having the king rule the colonies directly didn't make much sense at first. Almost every colony governed itself in some form or another. The systems varied from colony to colony, with some colonies allowing for more people to vote than others depending on their property requirements. One of the most hated acts before the Revolution was the Massachusetts Government Act, which essentially took away Massachusetts' self elected government. The colonists were already used to "democracy" in some form by 1789.