From 1781 to 1789 the United States operated as a “firm league of friendship” with a national government deliberately designed to be weak. This episode explores the Articles of Confederation, why the founders built a government with almost no power, and how its failures paved the way for the U.S. Constitution.

We examine the one-state, one-vote Congress that could not levy taxes or draft an army, the starving Continental Army, worthless continental currency and humiliation abroad. We also look at the Confederation’s greatest achievements, the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, before following Shays’ Rebellion and the Philadelphia Convention that replaced the Articles.

• Why Thomas Paine argued foreign powers would not aid mere rebels
• Henry Knox and the officers’ toast to “a hoop to the barrel”
• How Maryland’s holdout forced states to surrender their western land claims
• The Northwest Ordinance’s ban on slavery in the territory
• Whether the nine-state ratification rule was legal, and Madison’s defense in Federalist No. 40