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The Articles of Confederation were proposed as the plan of the government of the United States by the Continental Congress in 1777 and they were ratified by the states in 1781. The most distinctive aspect of the Articles was their jealous protection of state power. The national government created by the Articles was largely powerless. By the mid-1780s, many prominent Americans had concluded that the central government had proved incapable of settling disputes between states. A few, including Alexander Hamilton of New York and James Madison of Virginia, began agitating for a reform of the Articles.
In 1786, a convention of the states held at Annapolis called on the state legislatures of all states to send delegates to Philadelphia on the second Monday of May,1787. The purpose of the Philadelphia convention was to consider "the situation of the United States" and to "devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union." In effect, the Philadelphia convention was expected to revise and improve the Articles of Confederation.
What happened, however, was something quite different. The roughly fifty-five delegates to the convention in Philadelphia almost immediately decided to completely scrap the Articles of Confederation and begin fresh. By the end of the summer, the convention delegates had composed a new plan of government which we now call the Constitution of the United States of America.
One proposal made by Madison early in the convention was that the new Constitution include provisions that would allow for it to be amended at a later date. The Articles of Confederation had contained no such provision. Madison held that the delegates could not expect that their work would be perfect. He argued,
"The
plan now to be formed will certainly be defective, as the Confederation
has been found on trial to be. Amendments therefore will be necessary,
and it will be better to provide for them, in an easy, regular and Constitutional
way than to trust to chance and violence."
Alexander
Hamilton, in contrast, thought that it was ridiculous to exclude Congress,
since Congress was in the best position to notice what changes were necessary.
Congress, he argued, would be "most sensible to the necessity of amendments."
The convention decided to accept both proposals, allowing for two thirds of both houses of Congress to propose an amendment and also allowing for two thirds of the states to request that Congress call an amendment convention.
Simply getting an amendment proposed, however, is not enough to change the Constitution. In order to become part of the Constitution, a proposed amendment must be ratified by three quarters of the states. Amendments can either be ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters the states or by special conventions in three-quarters of the states. Congress specifies which ratification method is to be used when an amendment is proposed.
In summary, the framers of the Constitution decided to make ratification
of the Constitution a two stage process. The first stage, Proposal, requires
either a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress or a majority vote
of a Convention called in response to a request made to Congress on the
part of two-thirds of the state legislatures. The second stage, Ratification,
requires either the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures
or approval of special ratification conventions held in three-quarters
of the states.
