The United States has had two national constitutions. The first, the Articles of Confederation, was drafted during the Revolutionary War by states wary of any central power after their experience with Britain. Within a few years it proved too weak to pay the nation's debts or hold the states together, and in 1787 delegates met to revise it, producing an entirely new framework instead.
This guide traces that transition, focusing on how each design shaped the government and linking to entries on the institutions and principles that came out of it. Fuller narrative history of the founding era is available on briefhistory.us.
Article VII required ratification by conventions in nine states. Federalists, including Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in the Federalist Papers, defended the plan, while Anti-Federalists warned it would overwhelm the states and lacked a bill of rights. Delaware ratified first in December 1787, and New Hampshire became the ninth state on June 21, 1788. Several states ratified only with recommended amendments, leading the First Congress to propose what became the Bill of Rights in 1791.
From May to September 1787, delegates from twelve states, all but Rhode Island, met in Philadelphia and decided to write a new constitution. The Virginia Plan proposed representation by population, the New Jersey Plan equal votes for each state, and the Connecticut Compromise blended the two, with a House based on population and a Senate with two members per state. The three-fifths clause counted enslaved people for representation and taxes, a compromise between free and slave states, and the Electoral College emerged as a way to choose the President without direct election or selection by Congress.
The First Congress convened in New York in 1789, and George Washington was inaugurated as President on April 30. Congress quickly created the Departments of State, War, and the Treasury, and the office of Attorney General, and the Judiciary Act of 1789 built the federal court system. North Carolina joined in November 1789 and Rhode Island in May 1790, completing the union of the original thirteen states under the new Constitution.
The Continental Congress adopted the Articles in 1777, and they took effect on March 1, 1781, when Maryland became the last state to ratify. They created a firm league of friendship among states that kept their sovereignty. Congress had one chamber in which each state cast a single vote, major decisions required nine of thirteen states, and amendments required all thirteen. There was no separate executive or national judiciary, and Congress could request money from the states but not compel them to pay.
The new Constitution, signed by 39 delegates on September 17, 1787, created a national government that acts directly on individuals rather than only through the states. It gave Congress enumerated powers to tax, borrow, regulate commerce, and raise armies, created an independent executive and a federal judiciary, made federal law supreme over conflicting state law, and divided power among the branches with checks on each.
The Articles achieved real successes, including the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which organized western territory for future statehood and barred slavery there. But Congress could not pay war debts, states taxed one another's goods, and foreign powers took advantage of a divided nation. Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787, an armed uprising of indebted farmers, alarmed leaders, and after a sparsely attended meeting at Annapolis in 1786, Congress endorsed a convention to revise the Articles.
Read the result in the Constitution, article by article, see what was added in the Bill of Rights, amendment by amendment, or explore the system it created in federalism explained.