Copies Sent to the States
- When
- Late November 1777
- Where
- Origin of the ratification copies
In late November 1777, unsigned copies of the approved Articles were sent to the states for ratification, with a November 17 cover letter signed by Laurens and Thomson.
The Articles of Confederation were submitted to the states for ratification in late November 1777. On November 28, the copies sent to the states were unsigned, and the cover letter, dated November 17, bore only the signatures of Henry Laurens and Charles Thomson, the President and Secretary to the Congress. Ratification would take nearly three and a half years, with the Articles coming into force on March 1, 1781, after all thirteen states had ratified.
Sources
- Articles of Confederation Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-30
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.