What if America’s founding wasn’t inevitable? Long before the Articles of Confederation, colonial Americans spent over a century struggling to unite—and mostly failing spectacularly.
Discover the forgotten stories of America’s “rough drafts”: the New England Confederacy’s bold 1643 experiment, the authoritarian disaster of the Dominion of New England, William Penn’s visionary continental congress proposal, and Benjamin Franklin’s ahead-of-its-time Albany Plan. Each attempt crashed against the rocks of regional jealousies, cultural clashes, and economic chaos.
These weren’t just boring political experiments; they were high-stakes gambles involving real people grappling with questions that still echo today: How do you balance local autonomy with collective strength? Can diverse communities truly unite?
Join Liz Covart, a Ph.D. historian and creator of the award-winning Ben Franklin’s World podcast, for a journey through America’s messiest political moments, where failure taught the lessons that eventually made success possible. The path to union was anything but straight.



