It’s Not Enough to Write a Constitution

After the American Revolution, the United States were anything but united. Operating under the Articles of Confederation, the 13 separate states often behaved more as if they were thirteen independent nations than a single nation. Some of the delegates who gathered at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia worked to bind the states together, while others sought to maintain the autonomy of the separate states. The drafting of the Constitution did not resolve this conflict, which continued even more intensely during the Ratification process.