[Bells ringing] Voice: The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different, there was so great a variety of religions, they were composed of so many different nations, their customs, manners, and habits had so little resemblance, their intercourse had been so rare, and their knowledge of each other so imperfect that to unite them in the same principles of theory and the same system of action, was certainly a very difficult enterprise.

John Adams.

♪ Narrator: After fleeing Philadelphia, the Continental Congress reconvened in a small county courthouse in York, Pennsylvania.

The delegates had taken just 27 days of discussion the previous year to declare American independence, but it would take them 526 days to fashion the Articles of Confederation.

They were meant in part to demonstrate to France that the thirteen former colonies could act effectively together, but the result was not a government.

Woman: They needed to have a way to pay for wars; they needed to run wars.

They needed to possess Native lands; they needed to redistribute those lands.

But the Articles had so much political compromise that it wasn't a functional centralized government.

Narrator: By design, the Articles of Confederation were weak and constrained.

Each state remained a more or less independent republic jealously guarding its own sovereignty and freedom.

Congress had no power to tax, which meant it couldn't pay the soldiers in the Continental Army.

And before the Articles could even become operative, they needed to be ratified by all the states.

That would take another 39 months.

♪