Online Course: The Great American Mulligan

Three years after colonial farmers engaged with British army regulars at Concord and Lexington and two years after the thirteen American colonies had declared their independency from Britain, the colonies came together to adopt Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Well, “perpetual” it wasn’t. In this course, we will explore the origins of the Articles of Confederation, what went wrong, and how it was “fixed.” Economic, social, and political realities quickly exposed structural weaknesses of the Perpetual Union and almost led to a breakup into smaller confederacies, civil war, or worse. Like an errant golf shot, in the late 1780s America found itself lost in the woods. Having examined what went wrong, we will then turn our attention to the Constitutional Convention and how, under a veil of absolute secrecy, representatives of the thirteen young States came together to form a “more perfect Union.” That Union has survived for over 200 years...with one major change two years after its ratification and only 17 further amendments thereafter. And we will explore some odd provisions of the Constitution that grew out of unique experiences our founding fathers (and mothers) had as colonists and citizens of newly forged States and a failed Union.