The Declaration of Independence was provided by a committee of five, designated by the Second Continental Congress, in 1776 to declare the colonies as free from Great Britain. From that time the Second Continental Congress remained in session throughout the American Revolution to serve as the governing authority for the colonies. They voted a "president" who served a one-year term; the first was of course John Hancock, of Declaration of Independence fame. One week after the Declaration of Independence was approved, a committee of 13 was designated, under the chairmanship of John Dickinson, to write Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union to direct the ultimate governance of the federation of 13 small "states." This took about a year, but ratification by all thirteen states would consume much of the time of the Revolution. The final holdout, Maryland, did not approve until 1781, but by about 1779, the document had become the assumed "law of the land."

Congress requested a Constitutional Convention in 1787 to amend the Articles of Confederation, as there were felt to be glaring oversights in the document, including the ability to employ taxation to sustain a federal government, as well as uniform currency. When Maryland nearly went to war against Virginia over disputes along the Chesapeake, the problems of the Articles of Confederation simply became untenable. The United States Constitution was written over the summer of 1787, and received 9-state ratification by 1788. In September, 1788, it was officially declared as the replacement for the Articles of Confederation and the first elections were held in early 1789. The Articles had called for a yearly "president" but the men who filled that role are a veritable hodge-podge of political figures of varying prominence, who wielded no significant authority over the individual states.