November 15 · This Day in America
Sixteen months of argument, in a Congress fled from Philadelphia to a small Pennsylvania town with the British at its back, finally produce a written frame of government: the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. It is the first time the thirteen states agree, on paper, to be one thing. The instinct of the document is fear — fear of a strong center, of kings rebuilt by other names — so it gives the new Congress almost no power: no money to tax, no court to settle quarrels. It will take four more years for all the states to ratify, and only a few more to discover it cannot hold a country together. But it is the rough draft of a republic. Every weakness here is a lesson the framers will carry, hard-learned, into a hotter room in Philadelphia ten summers later.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1864
Leaving Atlanta's military works in flames behind him, General William T. Sherman abandons his own supply lines and turns 60,000 men east into Georgia with no way back. For five weeks they live off the land and tear up the Confederacy's capacity to fight. It is total war, deliberate and harsh. On December 21 he takes Savannah and wires it to Lincoln as a Christmas gift. The war's end is now visible.
Source: www.battlefields.org