The Revolutionary War was a war for independence but also for self-government. Americans engaged in writing new constitutions for their states and the nation at the very same moments as they mobilized for war, fought a regular marital conflict against Great Britain, and managed all sorts of irregular violence. This lecture suggests that the experience of war and violence, and the desire to bring order of revolutionary chaos, informed Americans as they wrote constitutions as much as, if not more than, abstract political philosophy or historical experience.