efined; and during those seven years it
exercised some of the highest functions of sovereignty which are
possible to any governing body. It declared the independence of the
United States; it contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with
France; it raised and organized a Continental army; it borrowed large
sums of money, and pledged what the lenders understood to be the
national credit for their repayment; it issued an inconvertible paper
currency, granted letters of marque, and built a navy. All this it did
in the exercise of what in later times would have been called "implied
war powers," and its authority rested upon the general acquiescence in
the purposes for which it acted and in the measures which it adopted.
Under such circumstances its functions were very inefficiently
performed. But the articles of confederation, which in 1781 defined its
powers, served at the same time to limit them; so that for the remaining
eight years of its existence the Continental Congress grew weaker and
weaker, until it was swept away to make room for a more efficient
government.

[Sidenote: The articles of confederation.]

John Dickinson is supposed to have been the principal author of the
articles of confederation; but as the work of the committee was done in
secret and has never been reported, the point cannot be determined. In
November, 1777, Congress sent the articles to the several state
legislatures, with a circular letter recommending them as containing the
only plan of union at all likely to be adopted. In the course of the
next fifteen months the articles were ratified by all the states except
Maryland, which refused to sign until the states laying claim to the
northwestern lands, and especially Virginia, should surrender their
claims to the confederation. We shall by and by see, when we come to
explain this point in detail, that from this action of Maryland there
flowed beneficent consequences that were little dreamed of. It was first
in the great chain of events which led directly to the formation of the
Federal Union. Having carried her point, Maryland ratified the articles
on the first day of March, 1781; and thus in the last and most brilliant
period of the war, while Greene was leading Cornwallis on his fatal
chase across North Carolina, the confederation proposed at the time of
the Declaration of Independence was finally consummated.

According to the language of the articles, the states entered into a
firm le