The Crisis of the 1780s

Abstract

This chapter describes the crisis that led to the calling of the convention that created the federal Constitution in 1787. Although the Articles of Confederation that united the thirteen states lacked the powers to tax and regulate trade, the country was not doing too badly economically or demographically. But the state legislatures were abusing the great power that had been granted to them in the revolutionary state constitutions and tending to ran amuck. The multiplicity, mutability, and injustice of state legislation, especially with the printing of paper money, led reformers to use the weakness of the Confederation as a cover to scrap the Articles and to create an entirely new and powerful central government.