That alliance was of the loosest possible character, marked in every detail of its terms by a jealousy almost phenomenal. The first agreement of the colonies to act together for the common defense was as loose as the hurrah of a mob bound together only by a temporary purpose in common. It was not until the Revolutionary war was well advanced that even the articles of confederation were agreed upon, and they were about the flimsiest, most inadequate and most inefficient bond of union that ever served to ally states for a common purpose. Those articles of confederation set out with a formal and emphatic reservation to each state of its absolute, individual sovereignty and independence—that being at the time the one thing which each of the revolted states cherished with the most sleepless jealousy. They left to each of the states the unrestricted right to do as it pleased in all matters of sovereign concern.
The avowed purpose of the confederation was to create a national government but the articles of confederation distinctly denied to the central power every right and function necessary to governmental activity and independence. The so-called general government could not levy any tax, enforce any impost, or in any other way provide for the raising of money, the payment of national debts, the organization of armies, the enforcement of treaties or even the uniform validity of statutory enactments.
Even in the act of creating a central power for the sake of the common safety, the several states were so jealous of their separate independence that they resolutely refused to give to their general government any power whatever to control the individual states or the people thereof, even to the meager extent of enforcing the national agreements with other powers.
The Congress—there being no executive possessed of any power—was authorized to call upon the several states for contributions of men and money for the common defense. But it was a case parallel with Owen Glendower's ability to "call spirits from the vasty deep." The question remained "will they come?" And that question each state decided for itself.
If we would at all understand the history of our country we must bear in mind this intense, this resolute, this utterly uncompromising insistence of the several states at the beginning upon their separate sovereignty.
It was in this spirit that independence was achieved and the independence thus won was not the independence of a federated republic, but that of thirteen individual and widely separated states, no one of which owed any sort of allegiance to any other or to all the others combined; no one of which was ready upon any consideration to yield one jot or tittle of its independent sovereignty to the will of any other or of all the others.
The states, indeed, were as jealous of trespass by each other as of trespass by Great Britain herself.
We are accustomed to think of them as closely united commonwealths, engaged in a long and painful struggle for the independence of the American Federal Republic. They were nothing of the kind. They were separate and diversely interested states each fighting for its own emancipation from a foreign yoke. They were allied in a common cause, but their alliance had no bond more obligatory upon themselves than is that which unites a mass meeting whose constituent members are possessed temporarily of a common purpose.
When the states had achieved their independence, they undertook to live together in the loosely formed union thus provided. They quickly found it impossible to do so. Not only was their central government powerless to fulfil its obligations to other countries, or to pay its debts at home, or to enforce its authority, or to levy and collect taxes, or to provide securely and properly for the maintenance of an army, a navy, a postal service or anything else of a national character or to do with certainty and authority any other of the things which a nation that expects respect may and must do, but it could not in any effective way regulate trade either with foreign countries or between the states. Each state had the reserved right to interfere with the transit of goods across its borders in ways that threatened presently to render trade among the states impossible.
It was in view of these distressing conditions that the statesmen of Virginia appealed to those of the other states for a conference looking to the devising of a better way, "a more perfect Union." The conference thus called at Annapolis was attended by representatives from only five of the states. But it led to the calling of that Philadelphia Convention which, under Washington's presidency, and with the united wisdom of the most sagacious statesman in all the commonwealths, framed the Federal Constitution.