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JAMES MADISON - ✔✔The Articles of Confederation established the
United States as an association of sovereign states with a weak central
government. This arrangement was met with disapproval, and was most
unsuccessful after the war. Congress had no power to tax, and was unable
to pay debts from the Revolution, which concerned Madison and other
nationalists, such as Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who feared
national bankruptcy and disunion. The historian Gordon S. Wood has noted
that many leaders, including Madison and Washington, feared more that
the revolution had not fixed the social problems that had triggered it and
that the excesses ascribed to the King were being seen in the state
legislatures. Shays' Rebellion is often cited as the event that forced the
issue; Wood argues that many at the time saw it as only the most extreme
example of democratic excess.
As Madison wrote, "a crisis had arrived which was to decide whether the
American experiment was to be a blessing to the world, or to blast for ever
the hopes which the republican cause had inspired." Partly at Madison's
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,initiative, a national convention was called in 1787. Madison was pivotal in
persuading Washington to attend the convention—he knew how
instrumental the general would be to the adoption of a constitution. Years
earlier Madison had pored over crates of books that Jefferson sent him
from France on various forms of government. The historian Douglas Adair
called Madison's work "probably the most fruitful piece of scholarly
research ever carried out by an American." Many have argued that this
study helped prepare him for the convention.[citation needed] As a quorum
was being reached for the convention to begin, the 36 year old-Madison
wrote what became known as the Virginia Plan, and the work of the
convention quickly became to amend the Virginia Plan and to fill in
Declaration of Independence - ✔✔The Declaration of Independence is the
statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the
thirteen American colonies,[2] then at war with Great Britain, regarded
themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer
a part of the British Empire. Instead they formed a new nation—the United
States of America. John Adams was a leader in pushing for independence,
which was unanimously approved on July 2. A committee of five had
already drafted the formal declaration, to be ready when Congress voted
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, on independence. The term "Declaration of Independence" is not used in
the document itself.
Adams persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose
the original draft of the document,[3] which Congress would edit to produce
the final version. The Declaration was ultimately a formal explanation of
why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great
Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary
War. The national birthday, Independence Day, is celebrated on July 4,
although Adams wanted July 2.
After ratifying the text on July 4, Congress issued the Declaration of
Independence in several forms.
Introduction
Asserts as a matter of Natural Law the ability of a people to assume
political independence; acknowledges that the grounds for such
independence must be reasonable, and therefore explicable, and ought to
be explained.
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