From the Articles to the Constitution

Why the Articles failed

The Articles of Confederation were designed by people afraid of central power, and they succeeded at that goal too well. Congress could not tax, could not regulate trade, and had no executive or judiciary. Amendment required unanimity.

Its one lasting achievement was the Northwest Ordinance (1787), which set an orderly process for new territories to become equal states — and banned slavery in the Northwest Territory.

Shays' Rebellion (1786–87) — indebted Massachusetts farmers taking up arms — convinced many elites that the government could not maintain order. It supplied the political urgency for the Philadelphia Convention.

The compromises

• Great Compromise — a bicameral legislature: representation by population in the House, equal by state in the Senate.
• Three-Fifths Compromise — enslaved people counted as three-fifths of a person for representation and taxation, increasing Southern power in Congress without granting any rights.
• Slave trade clause — Congress barred from ending the international slave trade until 1808.

The Constitution never uses the word "slavery", but it protects the institution in three places. That silence was itself a negotiated choice.

Federalists and Anti-Federalists

Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, Jay — The Federalist Papers) argued a large republic was safer, because many competing factions would prevent any one from dominating.

Anti-Federalists feared a distant government would become tyrannical and demanded protection for individual rights. They lost the ratification fight but won the Bill of Rights.