THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

Part II: Why Build a New Government?

From Revolution to Constitution

America had won its independence.

Now it had to survive it.

That distinction matters.

Winning the Revolutionary War did not automatically create a functioning country. It did not solve America's debts. It did not settle disputes between states. It did not create a reliable national revenue system. It did not determine how commerce between states should work. It did not guarantee national security.

And it certainly did not settle the argument over government power.

The generation that had fought against British authority now faced an uncomfortable question:

What happens when government does not have enough power?

That question would help lead Americans back to Philadelphia in 1787.

But there was another question waiting for them:

If we give a new national government more power, what prevents that government from eventually becoming the very kind of distant authority we fought a revolution against?

There was no simple answer.

That was the problem.

And that is where the next chapter of the Great Experiment begins.

The Revolution Had Changed the Question

Before independence, Americans had spent years arguing that British power had been exercised improperly.

Taxation without representation became one of the great rallying cries of the Revolution.

Colonists challenged Parliament's authority.

They defended representative government.

They protested restrictions and taxes.

They argued over the rights of individuals and the authority of government.

Eventually, thirteen colonies declared themselves independent states.

The experience left a powerful lesson:

Government power could threaten liberty.

So when Americans created their first national framework, they were understandably cautious about creating another powerful central authority.

The result was the Articles of Confederation.

And the title itself tells us something.

This was a confederation.

The states remained extraordinarily important.

The national government was deliberately limited.

Congress existed, but there was no separate national executive comparable to the presidency that would later be created.

There was no federal judiciary resembling the system established under the Constitution.

And Congress did not possess the broad financial and commercial powers it would later receive.

After fighting a government they believed possessed too much authority, Americans initially created one that possessed comparatively little.

It made sense.

Until it didn't.

Thirteen States, One Union—Sort Of

The Articles described the relationship among the states as a “firm league of friendship.”

But each state retained its sovereignty, freedom, independence, and powers not expressly delegated to the United States.

Congress could deal with important national matters.

It could conduct diplomacy.

It could make treaties.

It could deal with war and peace.

It could request troops and money from the states.

But requesting something and possessing the authority to obtain it are very different things.

Congress did not have the power to directly tax individuals.

Instead, the national government depended substantially upon the states to provide money.

That created a fundamental problem.

A government can have responsibilities without possessing the power necessary to fulfill them.

The United States had debts.

It had obligations.

It had soldiers who had served during the Revolution.

It had diplomatic responsibilities.

It had national interests.

But its government lacked a dependable source of national revenue.

To Americans worried about centralized power, that weakness could look like protection.

To Americans worried about whether the Union could survive, it increasingly looked dangerous.

The Tax Problem

Taxes had helped ignite the Revolution.

Now taxes became one of the central problems of independence.

That sounds contradictory until we separate two different questions:

Should government be able to tax?

and

Who should have the authority to tax, under what rules, and with what representation?

The revolutionary objection had not simply been that money should never be collected for public purposes.

The dispute involved political authority and representation.

Under the Articles, Congress could determine that money was needed, but it depended upon the states to provide much of that revenue.

The states did not always comply fully or promptly.

The national government therefore struggled to meet its obligations.

Men such as Alexander Hamilton saw this as a structural failure.

If the United States was going to function as a nation, Hamilton believed its national government needed an independent ability to raise revenue.

Others could look at the same proposal and see danger.

If Congress could reach directly into the lives and property of citizens through taxation, how powerful might the national government eventually become?

The issue was not simply:

Taxes or no taxes?

It was:

Who has the power to tax—and who controls the people exercising that power?

That question would become central to the Constitution.

The Commerce Problem

Money was not the only difficulty.

Commerce created another.

Today it is easy to think of the United States as one enormous national marketplace.

That was not the reality of the 1780s.

The states had significant authority over their own commercial policies.

States could impose duties and restrictions affecting trade.

Neighboring states could pursue conflicting economic policies.

Foreign nations could exploit divisions among the states.

The Confederation Congress lacked the authority later given to Congress to regulate commerce among the states and with foreign nations.

To nationalists such as Madison and Hamilton, this was another example of the Union's weakness.

If thirteen states were economically connected but operated under conflicting policies, how could the country develop coherent national commerce?

But again, granting national authority created the opposite concern.

How much control over economic activity should be transferred away from the states?

That tension—national coordination versus local authority—would become one of the defining arguments of the Convention.

The Debt Problem

The Revolution had been expensive.

Independence arrived with debt.

The national government owed money domestically and abroad.

States carried debts of their own.

The young country's financial reputation mattered because governments, merchants, and lenders needed to know whether American promises meant anything.

Could the United States pay what it owed?

Could Congress reliably raise revenue?

Would foreign creditors trust the new country?

Would Americans themselves trust its obligations?

These were not abstract financial questions.

They went directly to whether the United States could operate as a credible nation.

Hamilton would later make public credit a central part of his economic program.

But even before that later debate, the Confederation's financial weakness was helping drive calls for reform.

The States Had Interests of Their Own

The Revolution had united the states against Britain.

Independence removed that common enemy.

Now differences among the states became increasingly visible.

Large states and small states had different concerns.

Commercial states and agricultural states could have different priorities.

Northern and Southern states had different economic structures and increasingly profound differences surrounding slavery.

States competed over trade.

They argued over boundaries and western lands.

They pursued policies that sometimes affected their neighbors.

This exposed a fundamental question:

Were the United States primarily thirteen sovereign states cooperating when necessary—or were they becoming one nation with a government capable of acting for the whole?

Different Americans answered that question differently.

The Constitution would not completely choose one side.

Instead, it would create a system containing both.

Shays' Rebellion

Then came an event that intensified concerns about whether American governments could maintain order.

In 1786 and 1787, an armed uprising took place in Massachusetts.

Many of the participants were farmers facing economic hardship, debt, taxation, and court actions.

The uprising became known as Shays' Rebellion, after Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran who became one of its leaders.

The grievances behind the rebellion were real.

So was the alarm it created.

For some prominent Americans, the uprising demonstrated the fragility of the existing political order.

Washington was deeply disturbed by reports of unrest.

Others interpreted the episode differently and cautioned against treating rebellion itself as proof that liberty had gone too far.

Thomas Jefferson, writing from France, famously took a much less alarmed view of periodic rebellion.

Here again, the founding generation did not speak with one voice.

One person could look at Massachusetts and see evidence that government lacked sufficient strength.

Another could see popular resistance as something that sometimes accompanied liberty.

The same event could produce different political lessons.

And those different lessons would follow Americans into the debate over a new Constitution.

Annapolis: A Meeting That Led to Another Meeting

Before Philadelphia came Annapolis.

In 1786, delegates from several states gathered in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss problems involving trade and commerce.

Attendance was limited.

Rather than attempt a comprehensive solution, the delegates called for another convention.

That meeting would take place in Philadelphia the following year.

The stated purpose was to address defects in the federal system.

But once the delegates assembled, the project became far more ambitious.

They would not merely repair the Articles.

They would create an entirely new constitutional framework.

That decision alone was consequential.

And not everyone would approve.

Philadelphia

The Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in 1787.

George Washington was chosen to preside.

James Madison arrived unusually prepared, having studied historical examples of republics and confederacies.

Alexander Hamilton wanted a powerful national government.

Delegates from large and small states arrived with different interests.

Some men who would become important opponents of the proposed Constitution were absent.

Patrick Henry had declined to attend.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were overseas.

Rhode Island sent no delegation at all.

Even among those who attended, agreement was far from guaranteed.

The delegates were not simply answering:

What should the new government look like?

First they had to answer something even more basic:

What exactly were they creating?

The Virginia Plan

One of the first major proposals came from Virginia.

The Virginia Plan called for a substantially stronger national government.

It proposed a national legislature with representation connected to population or financial contribution, along with separate executive and judicial institutions.

For large states, population-based representation made intuitive sense.

More people meant more representatives.

But imagine the proposal from the perspective of a small state.

If political influence followed population, what prevented Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other populous states from dominating national decisions?

To the smaller states, the question was not merely mathematical.

It concerned their future political power.

They had entered the Confederation as states with equal votes in Congress.

Were they now being asked to surrender that equality?

The New Jersey Plan

William Paterson of New Jersey presented an alternative.

The New Jersey Plan would preserve the principle of equal state representation while strengthening aspects of the national government.

This reflected a fundamentally different understanding of the Union.

Large-state delegates could argue that government should represent people proportionally.

Small-state delegates could answer that the Union was also a union of states, and those states had political standing of their own.

Both ideas would eventually survive.

But first, the disagreement nearly tore the Convention apart.

Who Does Congress Represent?

This question may sound technical.

It wasn't.

Representation is power.

If representation is based entirely on population, larger states possess greater influence.

If every state receives an equal vote, citizens in smaller states effectively receive greater representation per person.

The delegates had to reconcile two competing principles:

Equality of citizens

and

Equality of states.

Roger Sherman and others helped advance the compromise that eventually produced the basic structure of Congress we know today.

The House of Representatives would be based on population.

The Senate would give each state equal representation.

Two chambers.

Two principles.

Neither side received everything it originally wanted.

The solution did not eliminate the disagreement.

It placed both sides of the disagreement inside the government itself.

That pattern appears again and again in the Constitution.

Who Should Execute the Laws?

The delegates also confronted another sensitive problem.

If Congress made laws, who would carry them out?

Americans had recently rebelled against a monarchy.

The word executive therefore carried understandable concerns.

A weak executive might leave government unable to act.

A powerful executive might begin to resemble the concentrated authority Americans feared.

Should there be one executive or several?

How should that person be selected?

How long should the term last?

Could the executive be removed?

Could the executive veto legislation?

What role should the executive play in military affairs and appointments?

Eventually the Convention created a single President.

But presidential authority was surrounded by other institutions.

Congress would possess legislative powers.

The President could veto legislation, but Congress could override a veto.

The Senate would participate in treaties and important appointments.

Congress would control appropriations.

Impeachment and removal mechanisms would exist.

Again, the solution was not simply:

Give someone power.

It was:

Give someone power while giving others power to restrain it.

What About the Courts?

The same problem appeared with the judiciary.

A national government would need national law.

National law would require courts capable of interpreting and applying it.

But judges themselves exercise power.

How could courts remain independent enough to apply the law without simply becoming another political branch?

The Constitution established a Supreme Court and authorized Congress to establish lower federal courts.

Federal judges would receive protections intended to preserve judicial independence.

The judiciary would become another part of the constitutional structure.

The three branches would possess different responsibilities.

Legislative.

Executive.

Judicial.

Power would exist.

But it would not all reside in the same place.

Slavery Entered the Convention

The Convention's compromises cannot be discussed honestly without slavery.

Slavery was deeply embedded in the economy and society of several states.

And it created disputes over political power.

If representation in the House depended upon population, should enslaved people be counted?

Enslaved people had no political rights and could not vote.

Yet states where slavery was widespread wanted them counted when determining representation.

The resulting three-fifths compromise counted three-fifths of the enslaved population for purposes of representation and direct taxation.

The Convention also addressed the international slave trade, preventing Congress from prohibiting its importation before 1808.

And the Constitution included a provision concerning people held to service or labor who escaped into another state.

These compromises helped hold the Convention and the Union together.

They did so while preserving slavery.

The contradiction was profound.

A Constitution created in the name of republican self-government existed alongside a system in which human beings were legally held as property.

The Convention did not resolve that contradiction.

It passed it forward.

Future generations would pay an enormous price for that failure.

The National Government Gets the Power to Tax

One of the most important differences between the Articles and the Constitution involved money.

The new Congress would possess the power to levy taxes.

That was a major change.

The government would no longer depend entirely upon requests to the states for national revenue.

Hamilton strongly defended this authority.

His reasoning was straightforward:

If the national government was responsible for national defense, debt, administration, and other national obligations, it needed the means to pay for them.

But opponents saw the other side.

A government capable of taxing individuals possessed a direct relationship with citizens that the Confederation government largely had not possessed.

That meant greater national capacity.

It also meant greater national power.

Both were true.

Congress Gets the Power to Regulate Commerce

The Constitution also gave Congress authority over commerce with foreign nations, among the states, and with Indian tribes.

Again, this addressed a real weakness of the Confederation.

The country could now develop national rules governing interstate and foreign commerce.

But the provision also created a question that would echo throughout American history:

How far does the national commerce power extend?

The Convention created the authority.

Later generations would argue over its boundaries.

The Constitution did not end that conversation.

It began it.

Roads, Post Offices, and a Growing Nation

The Constitution also gave Congress authority to establish post offices and post roads.

That may sound modest today.

It was not insignificant.

A republic spread across a large territory needed communication.

Information had to travel.

Government correspondence had to travel.

Newspapers had to travel.

Commerce had to travel.

People had to remain connected across enormous distances.

As the country grew, questions about roads, canals, transportation, and other internal improvements would become increasingly important.

And once again Americans would confront the same underlying question:

Which improvements were national responsibilities, and which belonged to the states?

That argument would become particularly important after the founding generation put the new government into operation.

We will return to it later in this series.

The Necessary and Proper Clause

Then came a small collection of words that would become enormously important.

After listing Congress's powers, the Constitution authorized Congress to make laws necessary and proper for carrying those powers into execution.

What did that mean?

How broadly should it be interpreted?

Hamilton would later argue that the national government possessed implied powers necessary to carry out its constitutional responsibilities.

Jefferson would resist that broader interpretation.

Their famous disagreement over the national bank would force the young country to confront a question the Constitution could not answer automatically:

When the Constitution grants government a power, how much flexibility does government have in deciding how to exercise it?

The ink was barely dry before Americans began disagreeing about what the document meant.

Federal Law Would Be Supreme

The Constitution also declared that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties would be the supreme law of the land.

That was another substantial departure from the Confederation.

A national government could not function effectively if states could simply disregard legitimate national law whenever they wished.

But to opponents of the Constitution, supremacy reinforced fears that the states were surrendering too much authority.

Once again:

The provision solving one problem created another concern.

That pattern is essential to understanding the Constitution.

Almost every increase in governmental capacity raised a corresponding question about governmental power.

Then Came the Biggest Question

The delegates could write a Constitution.

They could sign it.

But they could not simply impose it upon the country.

The Constitution provided that it would take effect among the ratifying states once conventions in nine states approved it.

And now the debate escaped the closed doors of Philadelphia.

Americans began arguing publicly over the proposed government.

The question was no longer simply what the delegates thought.

The country had to decide.

The Federalist Argument

Supporters of the Constitution became known as Federalists.

Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay produced the most famous defense of the proposed system in the essays collectively known as The Federalist Papers.

Their argument was not that government power was harmless.

Their argument was that liberty also required government capable of performing necessary functions.

The Confederation had revealed weaknesses.

The country needed revenue.

It needed security.

It needed the ability to govern commerce.

It needed laws that could actually operate.

It needed a national structure capable of representing a union larger than any individual state.

Madison also argued that a large republic could help manage factions by multiplying the number of competing interests, making it harder for one faction to dominate the entire society.

Federalists therefore asked Americans to trust a stronger national framework—but one divided internally and constrained constitutionally.

The Anti-Federalist Argument

The opponents were not convinced.

Anti-Federalists worried that the proposed national government was too distant from ordinary citizens.

They worried about broad federal taxing power.

They worried about the federal judiciary.

They worried about the Necessary and Proper Clause.

They worried about the Supremacy Clause.

They worried that the states would gradually lose authority.

They worried about standing armies and concentrated executive power.

And many objected to the absence of an explicit bill of rights.

Their argument deserves to be understood on its own terms.

They had just participated in a revolution against a powerful government.

Now they were being asked to approve a national government with significantly more authority than the Confederation Congress had ever possessed.

Their question was not irrational:

What happens if the solution to weak government eventually becomes powerful government?

Two Fears

At the heart of the ratification debate were two fears.

One side feared:

A government too weak to protect the country, regulate national affairs, meet its obligations, and preserve the Union.

The other feared:

A government powerful enough to gradually overwhelm the states and threaten individual liberty.

Neither concern simply disappeared when the Constitution was ratified.

Instead, both became part of American political life.

That is important.

The Constitution was not merely a victory for people who wanted stronger government.

Nor did the addition of the Bill of Rights mean that opponents of national power had defeated the Constitution.

The eventual system incorporated ideas arising from both concerns.

A stronger national government.

Enumerated powers.

Separate branches.

State governments.

Representation.

Regular elections.

Checks and balances.

Constitutional limits.

And explicit protections for individual rights.

America's new framework emerged from the tension between power and liberty.

The Bill of Rights

The absence of a bill of rights became one of the most powerful arguments against ratification.

Why create a new national government without explicitly protecting freedoms such as speech, religion, press, assembly, and other rights?

Some Federalists initially argued that the Constitution's limited and enumerated powers made such a list unnecessary—and potentially problematic.

Anti-Federalists were unconvinced.

The demand persisted.

During the ratification process, states proposed amendments.

Madison eventually introduced amendments in the First Congress.

Twelve were sent to the states.

Ten were ratified in 1791.

They became the Bill of Rights.

Here again, disagreement mattered.

People who opposed or criticized the original Constitution helped shape what the Constitution became.

That is worth remembering.

Opposition did not necessarily weaken the American experiment.

Sometimes it changed it.

A New Kind of Government

The Constitution that emerged was difficult to place into a simple category.

It was not a monarchy.

It was not a pure democracy in which citizens voted directly on every national decision.

It was not the loose confederation that existed under the Articles.

And it did not eliminate the states.

Instead, Americans created a federal republic.

The national government possessed powers of its own.

The states retained substantial authority of their own.

The people elected representatives.

Different institutions represented people in different ways.

Government power was divided horizontally among branches and vertically between national and state governments.

It was complicated.

That was partly intentional.

The system was being constructed for a country whose people and states did not always want the same things.

The Constitution Was Not the End of the Argument

The Constitution was ratified.

George Washington became the first President.

Congress assembled.

The federal courts began taking shape.

The new government started operating.

And almost immediately, the disagreements returned.

How should the Constitution be interpreted?

How should the Revolutionary War debt be handled?

Should the federal government establish a national bank?

Should America encourage manufacturing or remain primarily agricultural?

What should happen when state interests conflict with national economic policy?

How should property be understood?

What role should government play in economic development?

What did liberty require from government?

And what did liberty require government to leave alone?

These questions would divide some of the same men who had helped create the new system.

Hamilton and Jefferson would become the most famous representatives of competing economic visions.

Madison's positions would evolve.

Washington would attempt to govern amid increasingly organized political disagreement.

The country had created a Constitution.

Now Americans had to determine what living under it actually meant.

They Had Solved One Problem by Creating New Questions

That may sound like failure.

It wasn't necessarily.

The Articles had exposed serious weaknesses.

The Constitution gave the national government greater capacity.

But greater capacity meant Americans now had to determine how that power should be used.

And that would require something the Constitution could never provide by itself:

judgment.

Words on parchment could establish powers and limitations.

They could establish institutions.

They could establish procedures.

But they could not decide every future argument.

People would have to do that.

Different people.

With different interests.

Different philosophies.

Different ideas about liberty.

Different ideas about government.

And different visions for America's future.

The Great Experiment had moved from theory into practice.

What They Had Built

By the end of this extraordinary period, Americans had moved through three enormous stages.

They had declared:

Government receives its legitimate authority from the governed.

They had discovered:

Liberty alone does not eliminate the need for effective government.

And they had attempted to build:

A government powerful enough to function, divided enough to restrain itself, and representative enough to remain accountable to the people.

Whether they had succeeded was not something anyone in 1789 could know.

The answer would depend on what happened next.

Because now came another argument.

Not simply:

How much power should government have?

But:

What should government do with that power?

And nowhere would that disagreement become clearer than in America's economic future.

Property.

Land.

Agriculture.

Manufacturing.

Commerce.

Banking.

Debt.

Opportunity.

Economic independence.

Hamilton had a vision.

Jefferson had another.

Madison had his own concerns.

Other Americans had theirs.

And behind their disagreements was a question that reached all the way back to the Revolution:

What does it actually mean for a person to be free?

That is where we go next.

NEXT — PART III

PROPERTY, LIBERTY, AND THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

What Does Independence Mean?

The Revolution had given Americans political independence.

But the founding generation also thought deeply—and disagreed deeply—about property, land, work, agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, banking, wealth, debt, and economic independence.

Hamilton envisioned one future.

Jefferson imagined another.

Madison recognized that differences in property would inevitably create different interests and factions.

And millions of Americans—including enslaved people, women, Native peoples, laborers, tenant farmers, and people without substantial property—experienced the promises and limitations of the new system very differently.

Part III takes us inside one of the founding generation's most important questions:

What relationship exists between property, economic independence, and liberty?

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT CONTINUES.

The People. The Voice. The Future.

Politics 1776