CONFEDERATION

Just as it took time and painful political experimentation for the colonists to break with Great Britain and embrace independence, so, too, it took time for Americans to think of themselves as (in Alexander Hamilton's words in The Federalist No. 85) "a nation without a national government" -- something he decried as "an awful spectacle" -- and take steps to remedy that defect. Again, as with independence, there were no guarantees undergirding this process of national …

…to interpret it as part of their constitutional duties. Finally, because of fatigue and the impatient conviction, as Roger Sherman put it, that such a provision would be "unnecessary," the proposed Constitution lacked a bill of rights. As the delegates wended their way home from Philadelphia, many of them read over the full text of the proposed Constitution with care and attention for the first time. Would this document be adopted? What would happen now?