The Constitution of 1787: Settlement or Thermidor?

After independence, the Articles of Confederation created a weak central government with no power to tax. Economic troubles and Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786–87 alarmed many leaders, who met in Philadelphia in 1787 and wrote a new Constitution creating a stronger federal government with separated powers and checks and balances. Ratification provoked fierce debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and the Bill of Rights followed in 1791. Historians interpret 1787 differently.

Some, echoing Brinton, see it as a conservative reaction that reined in popular state legislatures, a kind of mild 'Thermidor'. Others see it as the fulfillment of revolutionary principles of popular sovereignty and limited government. Compared with France, where several constitutions failed within a decade, the American settlement was unusually stable, helped by a shared political culture and the absence of foreign invasion.