Reacting to the Past: The Constitutional Convention of 1787: Constructing the American Republic

The Articles of Confederation created a weak national government.  Individual states have all the power, and each state's political leaders are selfish.  They need resources to solve their state's problems, but some problems are bigger than any one state (defending the nation from foreign attack, for example), and no one is willing to budge.  How do you build a new government that gets self-interested people together and working for the good of the nation? As a delegate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it's YOUR job to figure this out.  You represent your interests, and you represent your constituents' interests.  However, there are dozens of you --all of your interests, and all of your constituents' interests, are different.  It's not easy to get a bunch of "egoists" on the same page to solve big problems, especially when people can't even agree on which problems are worth solving.  Can you figure it out?