When the all the delegates in 1787 gathered in Philadelphia, they came to change the Articles of Confederation. Four visible weaknesses of the articles made it impossible for Congress to execute its constitutional duties. These were analyzed in numbers 15-22 of The Federalist, the political essays in which Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay argued the case for the U.S. Constitution of 1787. The first weakness was that Congress could legislate only for states, not for individuals; because of this it could not enforce legislation. Second, Congress had no power to tax. Instead, it was to assess its expenses and divide those among the states on the basis of the value of land. States were then to tax their own citizens to raise the money for these expenses and turn the proceeds over to Congress. They could not be forced to do so, and in practice they rarely met their obligations. Third, Congress lacked the power to control commerce. Finally, the fourth weakness ensured the demise of the Confederation by making it too difficult to correct the first three. Amendments could have corrected any of the weaknesses, but amendments required approval by all 13 state legislatures. None of the several amendments that were proposed met that requirement. Spearheaded by James Madison, who thought the Articles of Confederation to be woefully inadequate, delegates from the 13 colonies decided to draft a new governing document. On Tuesday morning, May 29, Edmund Randolph proposed the Virginia Plan. The proposed government had three branches--legislative, executive, and judicial--each branch structured to check the other. Highly centralized, the government would have veto power over laws enacted by state legislatures. The plan, Randolph confessed, "meant a strong consolidated union in which the idea of states should be nearly annihilated." This plan was not taken lightly by those opposed to a strong national governm...
