This surrender gave the Americans the opportunity to build their own system of government without subjugation by the British. American leaders began to implement their values in a new government. These values included developing a "republic premised on the sovereignty of the collective people, rather than on a monarch and his parliament, meant to protect and promote the liberty, property, and social mobility of white men." "They wrote their first Constitution known as The Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation proved a miserable failure. The federal government's inability to tax restricted the United States' ability to function. This inability to tax paralyzed the federal government and consequently, the United States could not pay its debts. In order for the federal government to pay its debts, they needed to request funds from the states, which rarely obliged. This resulted in many Americans promoting a Constitution that strengthened the United States federal government.
Supporters of a new constitution that strengthened the federal government included American leaders James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton. They believed the nation required a stronger federal government to succeed. While these leaders believed in the benefits of a stronger central government, they realized its limitations. In his 1788 essay "The Federalist, No. LI, delegate to the Constitutional Convention and former delegate to the Congress of the Confederation from Virginia James Madison argued the importance of establishing a system of checks and balances among the U.S. government's different branches. Madison explicated that maintaining autonomy and preventing dependence between the government's three different branches promoted checks and balances when he wrote, "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
