The Demand for a National government

The Demand for a National government
The men who wrote the Articles of Confederation created a federal government wherein the state governments retained sovereign power and the central government was their creature. They had done this in spite of the determined opposition of those members of the colonial ruling classes who had chosen independence but who wanted along with it a centralized government with independent power and coercive authority. These men chose independence but they did not surrender the ideals of government they expressed during the debates from 1774 onward. All college admissions essay are composed by great writers for free!
Their experience with revolutionary enthusiasms and more democratic forms of state government confirmed them in the fears they had expressed before the Declaration of Independence. Hence, their desire for a "national" government was intensified rather than diminished, and they showed no more intention of accepting the Articles of Confederation as a permanent constitution than they did of accepting the more democratic constitutions adopted by some of the states. Edward Rutledge expressed their attitude early in the war when he wrote to John Jay in the fall of 1776 urging Jay to provide for a strong executive in the proposed constitution for New York, for he said, "a pure democracy may possibly do, when patriotism is the ruling passion; but when the state abounds with rascals, as is the case with many at this day, you must suppress a little of that popular spirit."