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9
After the treaty was signed the states began their attempt to make the Articles of Confederation work as the governing body of the United States. The army and the navy were both largely disbanded because they feared the presence of a standing army and the weakness of the articles prevented them from paying for it. The central government lacked the ability to tax so to raise money they needed to request money from the states and they were unwilling or even unable to pay. Most of the states had accumulated some amount of war debt and after the war some of them struggled to pay of what they had accrued during the war some people called for Congress to assume these debts but the southern states who had been able to pay theirs off argued against it since they didn’t want to be subsidizing the northern states. The states also argued over navigational rights and were divided about economic policies which lead to a struggling economy because France, Britain, and Spain had enacted policies that kept Americans out of their colonial ports. Manufactures struggled to produce now that British goods were once again available in the United States. The currency was over printed and with inflation became worthless. Attempts to try and fix the issues in congress ran into the problem that it had to be unanimous to pass and the states could not agree on almost anything evidenced when Thomas Jefferson’s clause in the Land Ordnance of 1784 included a clause that would prevent slavery from being present in new western states by 1800, the clause was almost struck but enough state delegations were divided that it failed to receive the votes to be struck from the ordinance though it would be surpassed in 1787 by the Northwest Ordinance they would be some of the few success of the Confederation Congress. The dysfunction started calls for a national convention to fix the articles though that convention eventually morphed into the constitutional convention. This would create a stronger central with more to it than just congress though it would be a struggle to agree to what it would say and what powers would go to which government.
The Constitutional convention was full of a lot of the same divides that had plagued the articles but they all had come with the knowledge that they needed a stronger central government. James Madison was one of the first delegates to arrive and he spent the time waiting coming up with the plan that would be the basis for the eventual constitution. The Virginia plan gave a heavy weight to states with a larger population since they would have given a higher number of representatives to those states that would then chose representatives for another house of the legislature. This was seen by small states as a threat to them so they proposed a plan where all the states had equal representation. Neither side was happy with the others proposal and eventually a compromise was reached where one house was elected by state legislatures which would all have the same number of representatives and another house which would be directly elected by the people. The executive position was trouble for them to decide, some wanted a group of three executives, some wanted a single executive chosen by state governors, and some wanted an executive that served one 7 year term. Compromising from all choices it was eventually decided that it would be a single executive serving a 4 year term that could seek reelection and would hold the authority to appoint a number of positions in government. As the convention dragged on the delegates grew weary they drafted a committee of detail that gave a rough outline but the committee went beyond what they were supposed to do and added enumerated powers to what the federal government would have as opposed to what states would have. After some debate over that it was sent to a committee of style for the final polishing where they inserted a Bill of Rights which the delegation from Canada was especially in favor of. Finally they came to the end and had drafted the Constitution which some refused to sign, others had left earlier and never returned, and sent off to the states for ratification. Ratification would be slowly achieved, Rhode Island would not ratify until 1790, but in 1788 it had received a majority of states and George Washington would be elected the first president.