Ideas from the Constitution’s Cutting Room Floor

What if America had chosen some of the other options on offer?

J. B. Stearns’ painting of the Constitutional Convention (public domain)

The leaders of the American Revolution took a massive gamble when they rebelled against the most powerful empire in the world and established a new type of government. Tens of thousands of people had died to make their dream a reality. And, just a few years after the war ended, it wasn’t working.

The Articles of Confederation, drafted or signed by many of the “founding fathers,” were dead in the water from the moment the war ended. The first central government of the United States was designed by its drafters to be both weak and inflexible. The government couldn’t regulate commerce, establish a foreign policy, or levy taxes. In fact, it struggled to pass any laws at all. Amending the broken charter required unanimity among the states, which meant that it was basically impossible.

The economy of the new nation quickly fell into disarray as the government could not raise taxes or manage trade to pay back the debts it had incurred during the Revolution. On top of this, Massachusetts farmers rose up in rebellion against their state’s attempts to raise taxes; the federal government turned out to be too weak to put down the uprising.