Describe the colonies before and after the Revolutionary War?

The colonies before the war were in a state of rebellion. In Massachusetts, there had been an uprising in 1775 (similar in some ways to the Occupy Movement of recent years). Colonists occupied sites of government—especially court houses—until local officials agreed to resign.
There were calls for independence and, in some cases, class revolution. Most of the (later) founders met frequently to discuss possible action: calls for local autonomy, such as the Galloway Plan, versus calls for complete independence. Thomas Paine's Common Sense was enormously popular, which made arguments for both independence and class revolution. By contrast, in many of the Southern states, slave owners called for independence to protect slavery from the growing abolitionist sentiment in England.
After independence, the new nation was in a fairly chaotic state. In Pennsylvania, the public tried going without a state government for a year (an experiment in early anarchism). Then they tried making it illegal to collect debt, an experiment in wealth redistribution—or early socialism. In New Jersey, women received the right to vote and held it for 12 years until it was overturned.
In Massachusetts, Shay's Rebellion broke out. It was a minor uprising wherein farmers blocked the state from seizing their homes by occupying the courts. Many wealthy elites in Massachusetts were concerned with the initial lack of interference on the part of the sheriffs and militia to break up the rebellion; the French Revolution made many wealthy Americans fear something similar would happen in the US. In order to prevent class revolution, the Constitution was written and passed with very little input from the average American. No Americans ever voted on it except in Rhode Island, where it was defeated initially.