At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the feds had no power to do ANYTHING without the general support of a majority of the people. The US had just finished with the Revolution, the people were armed, and they had military experience
Consider this scenario: you are a bureaucrat tasked with enforcing an unpopular law. You have a paper on your desk telling you to arrest Joe Shmoe. You know that Joe is armed, all his neighbors are armed, they're trained to operate together as a military unit, and they don't like you. If you were the bureaucrat, how likely would you be to "lose" that order into your wastebasket?
The unique thing about American life was that power and authority flowed from the bottom up, rather than the top down. Local law-enforcement was done by sheriffs who were elected by the locals, rather than being appointed by a provincial governor who was appointed by the King. There were lots of local authority figures who could serve as rallying points for insurrection. This is slowly being chipped away as local authorities grow increasingly dependent on federal funds, and thus become puppets of federal authorities
The Congress begged the Governor of PA to intervene. He refused. Congress swore to get its' own domain, it's own army to protect itself.
Things calmed when Robert Morris wrote promisory notes to the soldiers. Hamilton amazingly orchestrated their payment before expiration, so Morris didn't have to make good personally.
I hate to deny your notions of virtue in 1784, but it just ain't so. It was all a big, happy accident that came of the right people and the right principles at the right time.
The other crucial beginning to the nation was George Washington's dream of a canal along the Potomac River to bring the bounties of the Ohio Valley eastward, and vice versa. He forced upon the VA legislature, largely against its will, the Potomac Corporation (more or less this name) that joined Maryland and Virginia in a joint venture... the first act of interstate commerce in the land.