THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE ADOPTION OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, IN 1781, TO THE PEACE OF 1783.
CHAPTER I.
1781-1783.
Requisitions.—Claims of the Army.—Newburgh Addresses.—Peace proclaimed.—The Army Disbanded.
The interval of time which extends from the adoption of the Articles of Confederation to the initiatory steps for the formation of the Constitution, must, for our purpose, be divided into two periods; that which preceded and that which followed the peace of 1783; in both of which the defects of the Confederation were rapidly developed, and in both of which efforts were made to supply those defects, by an enlargement of the powers of Congress. Our attention, however, will be confined, in the present Book, to the first of these periods.
Congress assembled, under the Confederation, on the 2d of March, 1781, and the Treaty of Peace, which put an end to the war and admitted the independence of the United States, was definitively signed on the 3d of September, 1783, and was ratified and proclaimed by Congress on the 14th of January, 1784.