The Northwest Territory Creating Indiana

After the official public reading of the Declaration of Independence, the new country needed a constitution.  In his memoirs, Thomas Jefferson stated: “On Friday July 12. the Committee appointed to draw the articles of confederation reported them, and on the 22d. the house resolved themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the 30th. & 31st of that month & 1st. of the ensuing, those articles were debated.”[1]  Thomas Jefferson, as the Virginia representative, continued to play an active role with the debates about the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union”.  The Library of Congress has his personal notes and printed copies of the documents.[2]  As an Anti-Federalist, he preferred smaller central government with a strong state government but realized that the federal government was inefficient: “The fundamental defect of the Confederation was that Congress was not authorized to act immediately on the people, & by it's own officers. Their power was only requisitory, and these requisitions were addressed to the several legislatures, to be by them carried into execution,

without other coercion than the moral principle of duty.”[3]  “The new country perceived the incompetence of the first compact, instead of leaving it's correction to insurrection and civil war, agreed with one voice to elect deputies to a general convention, who should peaceably meet and agree on such a constitution as "would ensure peace, justice, liberty, the common defence & general welfare."[4]  The Constitutional Convention met on May 25th, 1787, behind closed doors to create a new constitution.  Thomas Jefferson was in Paris serving as an American foreign minister therefore he did not play a direct role but received correspondence about the new constitution as well as voiced his concerns.