[Footnote 6:  Critical Period, p. 93.]

[Sidenote:  Decline of the Continental Congress.] At first the powers of the Congress were vague.  They were what are called “implied war powers;” that is to say, the Congress had a war with Great Britain on its hands, and must be supposed to have power to do whatever was necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion.  At first, too, when it had only begun to issue paper money, there was a momentary feeling of prosperity.  Military success added to its appearance of strength, and the reputation of the Congress reached its high water mark early in 1778, after the capture of Burgoyne’s army and the making of the alliance with France.  After that time, with the weary prolonging of the war, the increase of the public debt, and the collapse of the paper currency, its reputation steadily declined.  There was also much work to be done in reorganizing the state governments, and this kept at home in the state legislatures many of the ablest men who would otherwise have been sent to the Congress.  Thus in point of intellectual capacity the latter body was distinctly inferior in 1783 to what it had been when first assembled nine years earlier.

[Sidenote:  Anarchical tendencies.] The arrival of peace did not help the Congress, but made matters worse.  When the absolute necessity of presenting a united front to the common enemy was removed, the weakness of the union was shown in many ways that were alarming.  The sentiment of union was weak.  In spite of the community in language and institutions, which was so favourable to union, the people of the several states had many local prejudices which tended to destroy the union in its infancy.  A man was quicker to remember that he was a New Yorker or a Massachusetts man than that he was an American and a citizen of the United States.  Neighbouring states levied custom-house duties against one another, or refused to admit into their markets each other’s produce, or had quarrels about boundaries which went to the verge of war.  Things grew worse every year until by the autumn of 1786, when the Congress was quite bankrupt and most of the states nearly so, when threats of secession were heard both in New England and in the South, when there were riots in several states and Massachusetts was engaged in suppressing armed rebellion, when people in Europe were beginning to ask whether we were more likely to be seized upon by France or reconquered piecemeal by Great Britain, it came to be thought necessary to make some kind of a change.

[Sidenote:  The Federal Convention (1787).]