President of the United States States which is not decided by popular vote. Nine vice presidents became president by virtue of a president's intra-term death or resignation. Donald Trump of New York is the 45th and current president. He assumed office on January 20, 2017. During the American Revolution in 1776, the Thirteen Colonies, acting through the Second Continental Congress, declared political independence from Great Britain. The new states were independent of each other as nation states and recognized the necessity of closely coordinating their efforts against the British. Congress desired to avoid anything that remotely resembled a monarchy and negotiated the Articles of Confederation
United States Declaration of Independence minority in Parliament warned that the government was driving the colonists toward independence. Thomas Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense" was published in January 1776, just as it became clear in the colonies that the king was not inclined to act as a conciliator. Paine had only recently arrived in the colonies from England, and he argued in favor of colonial independence, advocating republicanism as an alternative to monarchy and hereditary rule. "Common Sense" made a persuasive and impassioned case for independence, which had not yet been given serious intellectual consideration in the American colonies. Paine connected independence with Protestant beliefs as