Stewart - The Civil War: The Untold Soldier Stories of the American Civil War: United States, American Heroes, Slavery, Abraham Lincoln

Before the Civil War most US citizens, when asked if they considered themselves American would likely say yes with a caveat they were New Yorkers, Vermonters, South Carolinians, Georgians, etc, first.

The first uniting documents of the United States of American were the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the Articles of Confederation in 1781, which described the American government from 1777-1789.

The Declaration mentions nothing about a new nation. The documents conclusion asserts that ...by Authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united colonies are, and by right ought to be, Free and Independent States...

The Articles of Confederation, while forming the basic structure of a federal government, left that government without real teeth, and devolved to the states virtual self-government, except in the case of war, alliances and certain federal expenditures. One of the biggest problems that developed under the Articles was that each state was able to govern its own trade. This was specifically the raising of duties and tariffs to protect its own markets, which severely hampered economic growth in the country as a whole. The issue of slavery was not a part of the Articles in any way or for that matter; it was not included in the Declaration either.

In the years after the end of the American Revolution in 1781, it became increasingly clear that the Articles of Confederation were more of a hindrance than a help. By 1786, representatives from a number of states had drafted a request to Congress, asking for a constitutional convention to be held as soon as possible in order to more tightly bind the states together and solve the many economic problems that thrived under the Articles.

The Constitutional Convention met from late May to mid- September of 1787 in Philadelphia. Delegates from all thirteen states came to Pennsylvania to represent the interests of their states within a proposed federal union. Considering the problems that needed to be addressed it was no small miracle that the members of the Convention were able to announce the construction of a Constitution of the United States in just four and a half months.

The Constitution provided for a stronger federal government, described the construction and duties of that government the relationship of the federal and state governments and the basic rights of American citizens. One of the main reasons that the document passed so rapidly was that the delegates almost completely ignored the issue of slavery; except for the now infamous method of counting slaves for the purpose of state representation in that adult slaves were to be counted as three fifths of a person.

Though some members of the Convention were strongly against slavery and attempted to address it, they were silenced by the majority, even those against what was later termed the South's peculiar institution. It is easy to condemn the Founders for not addressing the problem of slavery when constructing the Constitution, and while every sane individual of the 21 st century would agree that slavery was and is wrong, at the time it was rightly believed that that there would likely have been no Constitution, and hence, no nation.