AP Success - AP US History: Weaknesses Of The Articles Of Confederation

I feel exceedingly obliged to you for the communications in your letters... anxious to know the issue of the movements of the forces that were assembling, the one to support, the other to oppose the constitutional rights of Massachusetts... If government shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws; fresh maneuvers will be displayed by the insurgents— anarchy & confusion must prevail... The legality of this Convention I do not mean to discuss... That powers are wanting, none can deny... That which takes the shortest course to obtain them, will, under present circumstances, be found best... My opinion of the energetic wants of the federal government are well known... I am strongly inclined to believe that it would not be found the most efficacious channel for the recommendation, more especially the alterations, to flow... The System on which you seem disposed to build a national government is certainly more energetic... than the present one; which, from experience, we find is not only slow—debilitated—and liable to be thwarted by every breath, but is defective in that secrecy, which for the accomplishment of many of the most important national purposes, is indispensably necessary...