'Government Totally Annihilated': How Americans Governed Themselves as British Rule Crumbled America in the mid-1770s was a jumble of spontaneous formations amid the ruins of an empire. In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here. "For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War, and to a longer period in se...