The American Republic

Excerpt: ... for in throwing off the British authority there was no other organization through which they could act. The States, or people of the States, severally sent their delegates to the Congress of the United States, and these delegates adopted the rule of voting in Congress by States, a rule that might be revived without detriment to national unity. Nothing was more natural, then, than that Congress, composed of delegates elected or appointed by States, should draw up articles of confederation rather than articles of union, in order, if for no other reason, to conciliate the smaller States, and to prevent their jealousy of the larger States such as Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Moreover, the Articles of Confederation were drawn up and adopted during the transition from colonial dependence to national independence. Independence was declared in 1776, but it was not a fact till 1782, when the preliminary treaty acknowledging it was signed at Paris. Till then the United States were not an independent nation; they were only a people struggling to become an independent nation. Prior to that preliminary treaty, neither the Union nor the States severally were sovereign. The articles were agreed on in Congress in 1777, but they were not ratified by all the States till May, 1781, and in 1782 the movement was commenced in the Legislature of New York for their amendment. Till the organization under the constitution ordained by the people of the United States in 1787, and which went into operation in 1789, the United States had in reality only a provisional government, and it was not till then that the national government was definitively organized, and the line of demarcation between the General Government and the particular State governments was fixed. The Confederation was an acknowledged failure, and was rejected by the American people, precisely because it was not in harmony with the unwritten or Providential constitution of the nation; and it was...