A Failed Nation - On an Equal Footing

American Political History · Sep 8, 2026 · 27m

The Confederation has failed at nearly everything — paying its debts, defending its frontier, commanding the world’s respect. This is the episode about the one enormous thing it got right. In 1785, a lone surveyor named Thomas Hutchins began driving the grid across the Ohio wilderness — the checkerboard of townships and sections still visible under every Midwestern field, with one square in each reserved, from the start, for a school. And in July of 1787, even as the Constitutional Convention sat in Philadelphia drafting its replacement, the dying Confederation Congress passed the Northwest…