It was not easy to create a sense of national life.

The union was only a league of friendship.

States which for a century or more had barely acknowledged their dependence upon Great Britain, were chary about coming under the control of a new centralizing authority at Philadelphia.

The new States were sovereign and some of them went so far as to send envoys of their own to negotiate with foreign powers in Europe.

When it was urged that Congress should have the power to raise taxes in the States, there were patriots who asked sternly what the war was about if it was not to vindicate the principle that the people of a State alone should have power of taxation over themselves.