ANDREW W. YOUNG JOSEPH STORY It was a "critical period of American history" in which the fundamental or organic law of the United States, the Federal Constitution, was formulated. That instrument has not only commanded the reverence of American patriots--statesmen and people--during a century and more; it has engaged the attentive study and aroused the respect and admiration of foreign students and critics of political institutions. "After all deductions," says Bryce, it "ranks above every other written constitution, for the intrinsic excellence of its scheme, its adaptation to the circumstances of the people, the simplicity, brevity, and precision of its language, its judicious mixture of definiteness in principle with elasticity in details." The story of this Constitution is as plain and simple as any in American annals; yet its real features have sometimes been missed even by friendly commentators. It is a mistake to say, with Gladstone, that "it is the greatest work ever struck off at any one time by the mind and purpose of man," for the true record of its making shows how deliberate and difficult the process was. Equally misleading is the judgment of so profound a master in legal history as Sir Henry Sumner Maine, when he says that the "Constitution of the United States is a modified version of the British Constitution which was in existence between 1760 and 1787." A juster view is held by the critical scholars of America, a view which indeed should be deducible, without need of special scholarship, from the recorded history of the Constitutional period. "The real source of the Constitution," says a living American historian, "is the experience of Americans. They had established and developed admirable little commonwealths in the colonies; since the beginning of the Revolution they had had experience of State governments organized on a different basis from the colonial; and, finally, they had carried on two successive national governments, with which they had been profoundly discontented. The general outline of the new Constitution seems to be English; it was really colonial." From the year 1775 there was a federal union in which each colony regulated its internal affairs by its own constitution, while the general affairs of the union were controlled by the Continental Congress. This mode was substantially continued after the colonies (1776-1779) became States, with new State constitutions. It was not finally superseded until the Articles of Confederation, adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777, had been ratified by all the separate colonies or States. Under the articles a new government went into effect March 1, 1781.