Slavery was abolished and the Union saved by the defeat of the Secessionists; but for a time the fortunes of the Union were more desperate than they had been at any time since the Declaration of Independence.
Hamilton was the real founder of the Republican party, as Jefferson was of the Democrats.

Both these men were prominent in the making of the American Constitution in 1787, and Jefferson was the responsible author of the Declaration of Independence.

But Franklin and Paine made large contributions to the democratic independence of America.
THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809) Edmund Randolph, the first Attorney-General of the United States, was on Washington's staff at the beginning of the War, and he ascribed independence in the first place to George III., but next to "Thomas Paine, an Englishman by birth."[75] Paine's later controversies with theological opponents have obscured his very considerable services to American Independence, to political democracy in England, and to constitutional government in the French Revolution; and as mankind is generally, and naturally, more interested in religion than in politics, Paine is remembered rather as an "infidel"-- though he was a strong theist--than as a gifted writer on behalf of democracy and a political reformer of original powers.
Paine--who came of a Suffolk Quaker family--reached America in 1774, on the very threshold of the war.

His Quaker principles made him attack negro slavery on his arrival, and he endeavoured, without success, to get an anti-slavery clause inserted in the "Declaration of Independence." He served in the American ranks during the war, and was the friend of Washington, who recognised the value of his writings.

For Paine's "Common Sense" pamphlet and his publication, "The Crisis," had enormous circulation, and were of the greatest value in keeping the spirit of independence alive in the dark years of the war.