If you lived in those times, you wouldn’t call yourself an American; you would call yourself a New Yorker, or a Virginian. Each state also had its own money, so trade in the states was very difficult. To trade with someone from a different state, you would have to find a way to get some money from that state; that was not as easy as it sounded. When Congress would ask the, in reality, sovereign states for money, the states wouldn’t give the money to Congress. They never had to in the first place. Would you? Along with that, the states quarreled. The country was a mess. One of the biggest problems was that there was only one branch of government, which only had a small portion of the power. The states had the rest. Plus, there was also no separation of power. Still another problem was that all the 13 states had to agree on changes to the Articles.
On May 25, 1787, a group of men gathered together to form a new outline for the government: the Constitution of the United States. The final draft for the Constitution was signed by 39 delegates on September 17, 1787. And on June 21, 1788, the Constitution was ratified by all 13 states. However, not until March 4, 1789 was it put into practice.
Without our Constitution, our entire country would be completely different from what we see today.
