The Articles of Confederation Crisis
America in the 1780s was falling apart at the seams. Just a few years after the Revolutionary War, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington feared their young country was on the brink of collapse. The Articles of Confederation, essentially a loose “league of friendship” between independent states, couldn’t handle basic tasks like collecting taxes or managing trade disputes.
Picture trying to run a business where every partner could veto any decision and refuse to pay their share of expenses. That’s exactly what the founders were dealing with. By 1786, defects in the post-Revolutionary War Articles of Confederation were apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce. The nation desperately needed something stronger, but nobody knew if they could pull it off.
A Secret Summer in Philadelphia
The Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in May of 1787. The delegates shuttered the windows of the State House and swore secrecy so they could speak freely. What was supposed to be a simple tune-up of the Articles turned into something far more radical. By mid-June, these men had decided to throw out the old government entirely and start from scratch.
The debates were fierce and sometimes bitter. One of the fiercest arguments was over congressional representation—should it be based on population or divided equally among the states? The framers compromised by giving each state one representative for every 30,000 people in the House of Representatives and two representatives in the Senate. Even slavery became a contentious issue that nearly derailed everything. On September 17, 1787, 38 delegates signed the Constitution. George Reed signed for John Dickinson of Delaware, who was absent, bringing the total number of signatures to 39.
The Ratification Gamble
Signing the Constitution was just the beginning of an even bigger challenge. The founders set the terms for ratifying the Constitution. They bypassed the state legislatures, reasoning that their members would be reluctant to give up power to a national government. Instead, they called for special ratifying conventions in each state. Ratification by 9 of the 13 states enacted the new government…