Articles of Confederation Timeline (1775 - 1791)

This war between Continental colonists and the British for independence starts with Lexington and Concord's battles, in April of 1775, and ends with the Treaty of Paris, signed in September of 1783.

The Declaration of Independence was, in accordance with its name, the final proclamation of independence from the British rule and also gave multiple reasons why they were separating for the common people.

This is the date when the Continental Congress adopted the Articles for themselves, though it wasn't official yet.

The entire span of the time when the Confederation government was (officially) in power.

This is when all 13 states had finally ratified the Articles of Confederation, making everything official, even though Congress had kind of already been doing everything and this was just formally saying the system they had been using.

An uprising of farmers in Massachusetts angry because of high taxes and debt that lasted around a year, eventually being easily stopped by the state militiamen. This highlighted some of the government's disabilities and showed a lot of people in power that change was needed.

First suggested by Alexander Hamilton, this was a gigantic meeting of delegates from every state to debate and create a completely new government system from the Articles, resulting in the Constitution being written and signed. The Constitution had a completely different approach to governing, giving power to the national government over the states rather than states over national.

This was a collection of 85 essays written to defend the Constitution and repel/argue with the Anti-Federalists attacking the Constitution. 51 were written by Alexander Hamilton, 29 by James Madison, and 5 by John Jay.

This was the date when 9 out of the 13 states had ratified the Constitution and the Confederation Congress officially put the Constitutional government in power, meeting for the last time and resigning power.

This was the very first time the Constitutional Congress convened in Federal Hall in New York.