Independence left American Anglicans in an impossible position. They had no bishops of their own, having always depended on the Bishop of London, and an English consecration required an oath of allegiance to a crown they had just fought a war against. Without a bishop there could be no ordinations, and without ordinations the church would die out within a generation.
Samuel Seabury, elected by the clergy of Connecticut, went to London, could not obtain what he needed, and went north instead. The Scottish Episcopal Church, itself disestablished and legally penalised, had bishops who owed the House of Hanover nothing, and three of them consecrated Seabury at Aberdeen in 1784. In return he undertook to commend the Scottish form of the eucharistic prayer to his church, and the American prayer of consecration accordingly follows a Scottish rather than an English pattern, including an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit. A church born of an English establishment carries a Scottish liturgy because of a political impossibility in 1784.
The constitution adopted in 1789 built a governing structure that had no English model either. General Convention meets in two houses, one of bishops and one of clerical and lay deputies, and both must concur. Laity vote on doctrine, liturgy and canons from the beginning, and dioceses elect their own bishops. The result is a church with Anglican orders and a convention polity that owes as much to the young republic as to Canterbury.