"An earlier version of this essay was published as "A More Perfect Union: The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution," in The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, eds. Edward G. Gray and Jane Kamensky (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 388-406. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press (http://global.oup.com/academic)"

Max M. Edling is a member of the History Department of King's College London and a historian of the American founding and the early federal government. He is the author of A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State and A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State 1783-1867.