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The Confederation Congress later endorsed this convention "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation". Although the states' representatives to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were only authorized to amend the Articles, delegates held secret, closed-door sessions and wrote a new constitution.
Between 1781 and 1789, the United States was governed by a unicameral Congress, the Congress of the Confederation, which operated under authority granted to it by the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution. The 11th Article authorized Congress to admit new states to the Union provided nine states consented.
On February 21, 1787, the Confederation Congress called a convention of state delegates in Philadelphia to propose revisions to the Articles. [41] Unlike earlier attempts, the convention was not meant for new laws or piecemeal alterations, but for the "sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation."
The Engagements Clause of the United States Constitution (Article VI, Clause 1) says that debts and other obligations of the federal government that were incurred during the years when the Articles of Confederation served as the constitution of the United States continue to be valid after the Articles were superseded by the new Constitution.
The term "critical period" thus implicitly accepts the Federalist critique of the Articles of Confederation. Other historians have used an alternative term, the "Confederation Period", to describe U.S. history between 1781 and 1789. [127] Historians such as Forrest McDonald have argued that the 1780s were a time of economic and political chaos.
By [the Articles of Confederation], the Union was solemnly declared to "be perpetual." And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained "to form a more perfect Union." It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words.
During the 1780s, as the problems of the Articles of Confederation became apparent, two schools of thought emerged. One was the Federalist party, which wanted a strong general government that could unite all of the independent states to protect America from invasion from other countries and from people and groups inside the country who might protest or rebel.
Based on preliminary articles with the British negotiators made on November 30, 1782, and approved by the "Congress of the Confederation" on April 15, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was further signed on September 3, 1783, and ratified by the Confederation Congress then sitting at the Maryland State House in Annapolis on January 14