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In July 1775, Benjamin Franklin introduced a formal plan for uniting the colonies - “The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.” He read it to the Second Continental Congress nearly a year before the Declaration of Independence and the first drafts of what became our first constitution, the Articles of Confederation.
Living under the largest government in history is not the “land of the free,” and it’s not even close. But how did things get like this? Here are the top-5 reasons - the primary drivers of the monster state today.
The first attempt in history to include anti-slavery, free-soil provisions into a national constitutional instrument was written by Thomas Jefferson. Most historians teach us about the slave-owning of Jefferson - which is important history, but they ignore this fact, and fact that his text of 1784 was copied almost verbatim as Section 1 of the 13th Amendment.
From a four-step plan to undermine and defeat federal programs in 1788, to a duty to interpose in 1798 - and nullification as a natural right in 1834 - James Madison saw the states and people as essential checks on federal power.
"Treason against the sovereignty of the people" is how St. George Tucker described usurpation - or theft - of power by government. But this view was nothing new - the founders and old revolutionaries had long understood usurpation to be an act of tyranny, even including it in the Declaration of Independence.