What did the constitutional convention begin as??
he Constitutional Convention of 1787 produced the most enduring written Constitution ever created by human hands. Though the United States existed prior to the ratification of the Constitution, it was a nation held together by the tenuous threads of the Articles of Confederation, a sometimes contentious, and often ineffectual national government. The men who were at Philadelphia that hot summer hammered out a document that was the result of dozens of compromises and shaped by the failures of the Unites States under the Articles as well as the failures of all well-known European governments of the time. The primary source for this document is Decision in Philadelphia, by Christopher and James Collier (available for purchase on the Recommended Reading Page). Many other sources were used to flesh out the page, not the least of which is Madison’s Notes on the Convention. Source material on the Convention abounds, and any serious student of the Constitution should refer to the various sourc
