America's First Government Was Improvised, Not Designed
A diplomatic meeting became a ruler, while states tested constitutions that were meant to be changed.
Joys of Compounding · America at 250: The Ideas of 1776 - [Joys of Compounding, EP. 39]The United States did not start with a government. It started with a meeting.
The word congress once meant simply a meeting, not a legislature, says historian Frank Cogliano. Earlier gatherings like the Albany Congress of 1754 were closer to diplomatic talks than to a parliament that could pass laws. The Continental Congress began the same way, as a successor to those talks.
Then war forced it to govern. As royal authority collapsed, Cogliano says, some institution had to act, and the Continental Congress and local committees gradually assumed power. The colonies never entered a state of nature with no government at all. To supporters, that was necessity, but to opponents of independence, it looked like illegal authority seized without permission.
What followed was improvisation, not a plan. Historian Patrick Griffin notes that Congress was not a sovereign body at first but became quasi-sovereign "because there was a vacuum of power." With fighting underway, provisional groups created to handle urgent problems stepped into the gap. Fear of anarchy, more than anything else, drove them to keep order.
Up and down the coast, each former colony improvised differently. Pennsylvania adopted in 1776 what would now look like a very liberal constitution, with a plural executive, or several people sharing the governor's job, and elections every year because voters feared strong executive power. It did not work. Maryland chose a much more conservative constitution. The national Articles of Confederation were drafted in 1776 but were not formally adopted until 1781.
The founders did not expect these designs to last 250 years, Cogliano says. They made them amendable because they expected change. At first the states acted less like one nation and more, Griffin says, like an early European Union.
Questions people ask
Why were Americans in the 1770s so afraid of a strong executive?
Largely experience. Colonists had chafed under a king and his appointed royal governors, who could veto laws, dissolve assemblies, and command troops. After declaring independence, many states deliberately weakened governors and strengthened legislatures to prevent that kind of one-man rule from returning.
What replaced Pennsylvania's plural executive?
Pennsylvania scrapped the experiment in 1790. The new state constitution replaced the plural executive and its council with a single governor elected for three years, along with a stronger judiciary and a second legislative chamber. It was part of a broader move toward stronger executives that also shaped the federal Constitution of 1787.
Why did the Articles of Confederation take until 1781 to be adopted?
Ratification required every state to agree, and Maryland refused for years. The holdout was control of western lands claimed by larger states, especially Virginia. Once Virginia promised to cede its claims to Congress, Maryland signed, and the Articles took effect in March 1781.