Money questions — debts, taxes, and tariffs — dominated the postwar political agenda. Americans who had served the Confederation as military officers, officials, and diplomats viewed these issues from a national perspective and advocated a stronger central government. George Washington, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams wanted Congress to control foreign and interstate commerce and tariff policy. However, lawmakers in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania — states with strong commercial traditions — insisted on controlling their own tariffs, both to protect their artisans from low-cost imports and to assist their merchants. Most southern states opposed tariffs because planters wanted to import British textiles and ironware at the lowest possible prices.

Nonetheless, some southern leaders became nationalists because their state legislatures had cut taxes and refused to redeem state war bonds. Such policies, lamented wealthy bondholder Charles Lee of Virginia, led taxpayers to believe they would “never be compelled to pay” the public debt. Creditors also condemned state laws that “stayed” (delayed) the payment of mortgages and other private debts. “While men are madly accumulating enormous debts, their legislators are making provisions for their nonpayment,” complained a South Carolina merchant. To undercut the democratic majorities in the state legislatures, creditors joined the movement for a stronger central government.

Spurred on by Shays’s Rebellion, nationalists in Congress secured a resolution calling for a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. Only an “efficient plan from the Convention,” a fellow nationalist wrote to James Madison, “can prevent anarchy first & civil convulsions afterwards.”