In January 1787, America’s top diplomat, John Jay, asked George Washington, its leading citizen, “Shall we have a King?” Neither Jay nor Washington were optimistic about the fate of the American republic under the Articles of Confederation, given its decentralized structure and feeble powers. After winning the war for independence against Great Britain, the United States appeared incapable of governing themselves as one people as the new nation lurched from one crisis to the next. Jay observed to Washington, “It is not easy for those to think and feel as Sovereigns who have always been accustomed to think and feel as Subjects.”

Yet, the nation would eventually figure out how to make republican self-government work. They did so by replacing the ineffective Articles of Confederation with a new Constitution that simultaneously avoided anarchy and monarchy by empowering the central government in some areas and limiting it in others.