American unity progressed in 1777:a flag was adopted in June . The coordination of military efforts against Britain and the supply of the Continental Army drove the Americans to unite. Borrowing and debt repayment also required increased federal centralization:the War of Independence brought the former colonies together.
On November 15, 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress. This constitutional text organized the thirteen States into a Confederation. It proclaimed the existence of the United States while leaving their sovereignty to the federated states. It imposed mutual armed aid, an elected congress to represent the country in international relations. He adjudicated disputes between states. Subsequently, the United States acquired an embassy, a public treasury, a bank. Titles of nobility were abolished and the first departments (ministries) were set up. The Articles of Confederation did not come into force until they had been ratified by the states, that is, in March 1781. But for its fiscal resources, Congress depended largely on the goodwill of the states. Nothing was provided for Congress to assert its authority over the States, so great was the belief in public virtue.
Of the 2.5 million inhabitants of the colonies, only a small percentage volunteered to fight against the English. The States refused to provide supplies and clothing for the troops of the Continental Army. The soldiers suffered from hunger and lack of clothing.
The elaboration of the Articles of Confederation raised opposition between the supporters of a relatively strong central state and the partisans of a significant autonomy of federated and sovereign states. The former were first called “nationalists” and then “federalists”. The debates also focused on the distribution of the tax burden, the way of voting and the expansion towards the West.
The confederal period (1781-1789)
From 1781 sat a new Congress, replacing the Second Continental Congress. However, the members of the new assembly hardly changed. The areas of competence of Congress were then limited:positions, weights and measures, currency, citizenship. A currency was founded in 1785, the dollar, to replace the British pounds but especially the various foreign monetary units which then circulated in North America91, mainly the famous piece of eight reais in silver from the Spanish Empire. The issuance of paper money continued after the war.
Western expansion
The territories located west of the Appalachians, assigned to the United States by the Treaty of Paris, were the subject of rivalries between the States. In 1784, in order to put an end to a confused and threatening situation for the unity of the young nation, Thomas Jefferson proposed that they be divided into ten districts, each of which would become a State of the Union as soon as they had reached a certain demographic weight. In 1785, Congress put the public domain up for sale, divided into municipalities (townships). The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 organized the territories and prohibited slavery there. Congress enshrines the equality of children in matters of inheritance
Military and social unrest
The period following the Treaty of Paris was marked by economic slump and social unrest. In 1783, the Newburgh Conspiracy revealed tensions in the army and underscored the urgency of institutional reform. In June 1783, a group of mutineers from a regiment from Pennsylvania invaded Congress in Philadelphia and threatened some delegates, who were forced to flee and sit temporarily in Princeton. In 1786-1787, in an economic climate troubled by inflation, rising property taxes and devaluing the currency, indebted Massachusetts farmers and craftsmen formed a militia led by Daniel Shays who threatened the courts. Massachusetts asked Congress for help. But most states refused to mobilize the resources needed to suppress the revolt out of individual selfishness. Shays' revolt was finally crushed in January 1787 but it created a feeling of fear among the elites towards the people. It was imitated in Virginia where courts were also ransacked and their archives burned by rioters to remove all traces of debt. James Madison expressed his fear of seeing a "despotic" regime established under the leadership of a new "Cromwell". George Washington wrote to James Monroe that the judgment of the British on the young nation could come true:“Leave them to themselves and their institutions will go to ruin”. Shays' revolt also served as a catalyst for Federalists to demand institutional reform.
The Founding Fathers realized that they had been too optimistic about human nature and that public virtue was a Utopia. Alexander Hamilton was commissioned to think about a new project taking into account a more realistic definition of human nature. His founding reflection marked the shift to a more pragmatic way of thinking:“Men love power […] Give all the power to the many and the few will be oppressed; give all power to the few and the many will be oppressed”. The troubles were so great that some believe that the monarchy should be restored in America. But the founding fathers did not want to give up after all the sacrifices made to the ideal of freedom embodied by the Republic. They wanted to found a new regime that should offer "a republican remedy for the most common ills of republican rule"
The Constitution
The Convention of Annapolis, meeting from September 11 to 14, 1786 at the request of Virginia, drew up an acknowledgment of the failure of the Articles of Confederation for the organization of commercial exchanges between the States. It provided for a new assembly for 1787. The Philadelphia Convention met between May and September 1787 to draft the American Constitution. The 55 delegates discussed slavery, the balance between powers and the political weight of the federated states. The draft constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, and signed by 39 representatives out of 55 and ratified by 3/4 of the States on June 21, 1788. The text organized the new institutions of a republican and federal State in which the powers were separated and balanced (checks and balances). It was the first time in history that federalism was applied in such a vast country1:the federated states retained their political, legal, economic, social and fiscal powers while admitting the superiority of federal law. Its originality lies in the combination of the Republic and democracy as well as a presidential system that had never been imagined until now. By the formula of the preamble “We the people” (We the People), the constitution also ratified the birth of a nation.
If the text of the constitution was the result of a compromise, it was criticized by the anti-federalists, because it abandoned the principle of unanimity of the States; also, three representatives refused to sign the constitution during the Philadelphia convention. North Carolina refused to ratify the constitution on August 1, 1788 because it did not include a Bill of Rights (it finally ratified it on 11/21/1789). Maryland Attorney General Luther Martin, representing his state at the Philadelphia convention, refused to sign the 1787 constitution because it did not explicitly condemn slavery. Rhode Island was the last state to barely ratify the constitution in 1790 (after rejecting it by referendum in 1788), by 34 delegates in favor and 32 against.
The constitution was scheduled to come into force upon ratification by 3/4 of the states, which was done in 1788.