The surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis and his entire army to the United States at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, stunned the world. The thirteen-foundling United States had won their impossible revolution. They could not know that their victory was but a shifting from a war with musket and cannon to one with tariffs and border disputes. With the country sinking into bankruptcy, the leaders in the thirteen states agreed: Come together, or America is doomed. May, 1787, fifty-five desperate men met in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. For more than four months they sweated in a sealed room and harangued and debated and compromised. The Constitution they produced established a government like none since the dawn of time, and changed the world forever. A More Perfect Union tells the story of that government's creation.