Miranda was elected to the Congress and began agitating for independence, gathered around him a group of similarly-minded individuals, who formed an association, modeled on the Jacobin Club, to pressure the Congress. Independence was formally declared on 5 July 1811.[2] The Congress established a Confederation called the American Confederation of Venezuela in its Declaration of Independence, referred variously as States of Venezuela (in its opening sentence) and afterwards United States of Venezuela, and American Confederation of Venezuela in the Constitution, crafted mostly by lawyer Juan Germán Roscio, that it ratified on 21 December 1811. The Constitution created a strong bicameral legislature and, as also happened in neighboring New Granada, the Congress kept the weak executive consisting of a triumvirate.[3] This government was not in force for long, since the provinces (referred to as states in the Constitution) did not fully implement it.[4] The provinces also wrote their own constitutions, a right which the Congress recognized.