Toward the end of the 18th century, Americans struggled with a question of potential world-historical significance: could the people of a large and diverse nation govern themselves?

The prospects were not especially bright. No one else had ever succeeded in creating such a government. The 13 states managed to cooperate in their struggle for independence from Great Britain, but just barely. It took the states four years to create their first national government, ratifying the Articles of Confederation in 1781, but within six years the Articles had come to be seen as so flawed, by so many important figures, that a convention was called to revise them. The convention decided the Articles were unworkable and proposed to replace them with a new national document, a constitution – in effect, proposing to overthrow one government and create another on a new basis. The new constitution was sent to the states for ratification in September 1787. It was ratified, but only after a difficult struggle – the critical state of New York ratified it by only three votes (Maier 2011).