Revolutions are difficult, but building a strong nation is even harder. In 1781 we faced one of the toughest problems there can be in designing a government. How do you provide freedom for each person and still have a government powerful enough to accomplish things? At first, the government was just too weak. In 1783, the Congress got chased out of Philadelphia by its own army because it hadn't paid their salaries. It had no money and no power to collect taxes .

After their bad experience with kings and Parliament, Americans were afraid of a strong congress and a strong president. So they had gone to the other extreme. The Articles of Confederation , the country's first constitution, didn't give Congress the power to do much of anything. There was no president except the president of the Congress. And he couldn't do much either.

James Madison, among others, was worried. He wrote, "If some very strong props are not applied, the present system will tumble to the ground."

More than anyone else, it was James Madison who got the convention organized. He became known as "the father of the Constitution." Madison was small and soft-voiced; someone once described him as "no bigger than a half piece of soap." But he had one of the finest minds in the entire country—and everyone knew it. The delegate from Georgia, William Leigh Pierce, wrote, "[W]hat is ... remarkable is that every person seems to acknowledge his greatness. Mr. Madison always comes forward the best informed man of any point in debate ."