The preceding chapters offer detailed descriptions, explicit causal explanations, and a unifying theory that accounts for the creation and recreation of the American political order from 1700 to 1870. A comparative historical analysis of the conditions and decisions comprising three constitutional changes in the national rule of apportionment was the means employed for confronting and understanding the violent and consensual origins of this order in 1776, its peaceful transformation in 1787, and its ultimate breakdown and reconstruction after 1861. The first apportionment rule change studied began in the wake of the Declaration of Independence and culminated in 1781 with the formalization of the equal state apportionment rule in the Articles of Confederation.