Creating a Government
 1776
Independence declared
 Next
5 years no constitutional basis
for congress.
 The
resulting plan
 Articles of Confederation


Articles defined union as loose confederation of
states
“a firm league of friendship“
no national executive (that is, no president)
 no national judiciary


two to seven delegates from each state
selected annually by the state legislatures
 prohibited from serving more than three years out of
any six.


number of delegates not critical, since each state
delegation cast a single vote.
 Plan
 no
individual state could be railroaded by
the other twelve in fundamental
constitutional matters.
 what

this requirement really did was
hamstring the government.
 Any
single state could—and did—hold
the rest of the country hostage to its
demands.
widespread
agreement on
key government powers:
pursuing
war and peace,
conducting foreign relations,
regulating trade
running a postal service
 On
the delicate question of taxes
 needed
to finance the war
 Articles
provided ingenious but
ultimately troublesome solution
 Each state to contribute in
proportion to the property value of
state's land.
 no
mechanism to compel states to
contribute their fair share.
Key dispute
involved the
problem of land
claims west of the
existing states
 Who owned the
land, who
protected it, who
governed it?

 1780s,
over 100,000 Americans moved
west of Appalachian Mountains
 another 100,000 moving to newly
opened land in
 northern
Vermont
 western New York and Pennsylvania
 as well as Kentucky, Georgia, and
beyond.
1781 James Madison and Thomas Jefferson
ceded Virginia's huge land claim
 Articles at last unanimously approved.
 The western lands issue demonstrated that
powerful interests divided the thirteen new
states
 Unity inspired by fighting the war against
Britain


papered over sizable cracks in the new confederation.
In first decade of independence
 states were sovereign and all-powerful.
 May 1776, the congress recommended that
all states draw up constitutions based on
 “the authority of the people.”
 By 1778, ten states had done so, and three
more

 Connecticut,
Massachusetts, and Rhode
Island

had adopted and updated their original
colonial charters.
No fanfare greeted inauguration of the new
government.
 Lack of a quorum often hampered day-today activities.
 Articles required representation from seven
states to conduct business



Minimum two men from each state's delegation.
But some days, fewer than fourteen men in
total showed up.

Many devote their energies to state governments







especially when congress seemed deadlocked or,
worse, irrelevant.
To address difficulties of inefficient congress
Executive departments of
War
Finance
Foreign affairs
created in 1781 to handle administrative
functions.

Political writers 1770s embraced the concept
of republicanism


For some, republicanism invoked a way of
thinking about who leaders should be:


As underpinning of the new governments.
autonomous, virtuous citizens who placed civic values
above private interests.
For others, it suggested

direct democracy, with nothing standing in the way of
the will of the people.

Republics could succeed only in relatively small units.


Distant government could easily become tyrannical; that was the
lesson of the 1760s.
If representative displeased his constituents

out of office in a matter of months.
James Madison's unsuccessful attempt to win
reelection to the Virginia assembly in 1777
offers example
 Sure he had lost because he had failed to
campaign in the traditional style

 abundant
liquor and glad-handing
 Shy and retiring, Madison was not capable of
running for election in this manner.

His increasingly significant political posts from
1778 to 1787

all came as a result of appointment

When the Continental Congress called for state
constitutions based on
 “the

authority of the people”
when the Virginia bill of rights granted
 “all
men" certain rights
who was meant by “the people"?
 One limit was defined by property.
 “Every poor man has a life, a personal
liberty, and a right to his earnings; and is
in danger of being injured by government
in a variety of ways.”




Another exclusion from voting—women—was so
ingrained that few stopped to question it.
Yet the logic of allowing propertied females to vote
did occur to Abigail Adams wrote to her husband,
John, in 1782,
“Even in the freest countrys our property is subject
to the controul and disposal of our partners, to
whom the Laws have given a sovereign Authority.
Deprived of a voice in Legislation, obliged to
submit to those Laws which are imposed upon us,
is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to the
publick Welfare?"
Restrictions on political participation did not
mean that property less people enjoyed no civil
rights and liberties
 various state bills of rights applied to all
individuals who had, as the Virginia bill so
carefully phrased it,

 “enter[ed]
into a state of society.”
No matter how poor, a free person was entitled
to life, liberty, property, and freedom of
conscience.
 Unfree people, however, were another matter.


In 1780, seven Massachusetts
freemen


Refused to pay taxes for three
years



Including mariner brothers Paul and
John Cuffe
on the grounds that they could not
vote and so were not represented.
Cuffe brothers went to jail for tax
evasion
Petition to state legislature
extended suffrage to taxpaying
free blacks in 1783
 “Slaves,
not being
constituent
members of our
society, could
never pretend to
any benefit from
such a maxim.”
 VA
legislator

3,000 - 4,000 African-Americans shipped out of Savannah and
Charleston, destined for freedom.




Adding northern blacks evacuated from New York City in 1783
probable total of emancipated blacks who left the United States
was between 8,000 and 10,000.
Some went to Canada, some to England, and some to Sierra Leon
Many hundreds took refuge with the Seminole and Creek Indians

becoming permanent members of their communities in Spanish Florida and
western Georgia.
Independence - Treaty of Paris (1783)
British recognize United States
independence
 Mississippi as Western boundary of United
States
 Access to Grand Banks
 Prewar debts still valid
 Congress must urge states to restore
confiscated loyalist property


After the Revolution concluded in 1783
 With
treaty of Paris
 Remember treaty of Paris also ended 7 years
war
Confederation government turned to its
three main and interrelated areas of
concern
 paying down the large war debt
 making formal peace with the Indians
 dealing with western settlement.

 Seven
years of war produced a chaotic
economy
 Confederation and the individual states
had run up huge war debts
 financed by printing paper money and
borrowing from private sources.
 $400 to $500 million in paper currency
had been injected into the economy


chart shows the declining
monthly value of two
emissions of paper dollars
from January 1777 to October
1781 as stipulated by the
government of Massachusetts.
From early in 1777 to April
1780, the paper dollar
dropped to a fortieth of its
value, requiring $4,000 paper
dollars to equal the buying
power of $100 in gold or
silver.
To augment the
government's revenue
 Morris first proposed a
5 percent impost

 an
import tax
Since the Articles of
Confederation did not
authorize taxation
 amendment needed

Robert Morris


Unanimous agreement proved impossible.
Rhode Island and New York




preferred to keep their money and simply
refused to agree to a national impost
next idea creation of the Bank of North America
Private bank - special relationship with
confederation


whose bustling ports provided ample state revenue
holding the government's hard money (gold and
silver coins) as well as private deposits
providing it with short-term loans.
 Bank's
contribution to economic stability
came in the form of banknotes, pieces of
paper inscribed with a dollar value
 backed
by hard money in the bank's vaults
and thus would not depreciate.
 Congress
voted to approve the bank in
1781. Bank had limited success curing
economic woes

issued very little currency
 Charter
allowed to expire in 1786.
Native Americans
Since Indians had not been party to the
Treaty of Paris of 1783
 confederation government needed to
formalize a treaty with them to
 conclude hostilities and secure land
cessions
 October 1784 at Fort Stanwix, on the
upper reaches of the Mohawk River




U.S. commissioners opened
proceedings at Fort Stanwix
with the Seneca chief
Cornplanter and Captain
Aaron Hill, a Mohawk
leader.
Six hundred Indians from
the six tribes attended the
meeting.
U.S. commissioners came
with a security detail of one
hundred New Jersey
militiamen.
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When the tribal leaders balked
one of the commissioners
sternly replied,
“You are mistaken in
supposing that, having been
excluded from the treaty
between the United States
and the King of England,
you are become a free and
independent nation and
may make what terms you
please.
It is not so. You are a
subdued people.”
Congress turned to the
Ohio Valley to make
good on the promise of
western expansion.
 Delegate Thomas
Jefferson, charged with
drafting policy
 The congress adopted
parts of Jefferson's plan
in the Ordinance of
1784


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the rectangular grid, the ten
states, and the guarantee of
self-government and
eventual statehood.
What the congress found
too radical was the
proposal to give away the
land


the national domain was the
confederation's only source
of independent wealth.
The slavery prohibition
also failed, by a vote of
seven to six states.
Ordinance of 1784

1787 - third land act
 Northwest
Ordinance
set forth a three-stage process by which
settled territories would advance to
statehood
 First, the congress would appoint officials
for a sparsely populated territory who
would adopt a legal code and appoint local
magistrates to administer justice.


When free male population of voting age



reached 5,000, the territory could elect its own
legislature and send a nonvoting delegate to the
congress.
When the population of voting citizens reached
60,000


and landowning status (fifty acres)
they could write a state constitution and apply for
full admission to the Union.
At all three territorial stages, the inhabitants
were subject to taxation to support the Union, in
the same manner as were the original states.

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Northwest Ordinance of 1787
perhaps the most important legislation passed by
the confederation government.
Ensured that the new United States


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recently released from colonial dependency,
would not itself become a colonial power-at
least not with respect to white citizens.
Allowed for successful and orderly expansion of
the United States across the continent in the
next century
But that was still to come
 Without an impost amendment and with
public land sales projected but not yet
realized
 confederation turned to the states in the
1780s to contribute revenue voluntarily.
 Struggling with their own war debts, most
state legislatures were reluctant to tax their
constituents too heavily.

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Several states issued debt “stays”
Delaying due date on debts
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Massachusetts had a fiscally conservative legislature
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dominated by the coastal commercial centers.
For 4 years, legislature passed tough tax laws that
called for payment in hard money, not cheap paper
Farmers in the western two-thirds of the state found
it increasingly difficult to comply

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Massachusetts didn’t go that way
repeatedly petitioned against what they called oppressive
taxation.
Led to Shays Rebellion 1786-7

1785 A two state meeting
between

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Virginia and Maryland
To agree use of Potomac river
Was seen as a model
Susquehanna
 Delaware


1786 convention called by
Virginia and Maryland in
Annapolis
Pennsylvania
 New York
 New Jersey

 Annapolis
convention
 Alexander Hamilton
 Individual conventions
not suitable
 Needed a national
convention
 Sent request to
cofederation congress
 Philadelphia
 confederation
approved meeting Feb 20
1787
 “to
devise such further provisions
as should appear necessary to
render the constitution of the
federal government adequate to
the exigencies of the union”
Henry Knox





Asked by confederation
congress to investigate
disturbances in Western
Mass.
Wildly exaggerated
“amounts to a pretty
formidable rebellion”
They threatened
“to overturn, not only
the forms, but the
principles of the present
constitutions”




New York lawyer John Jay wrote to George
Washington
“Our affairs seem to lead to some crisis, some
revolution—something I cannot foresee or
conjecture. I am uneasy and apprehensive;
more so than during the war.”
Benjamin Franklin, in his eighties, shrewdly
observed that in 1776, Americans had feared
“an excess of power in the rulers" but now the
problem was perhaps “a defect of obedience" in
the subjects.

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March 28, 1787
Washington agrees to
attend the Philadelphia
constitution
Arrives in Philadelphia
on May 13, 1787
One day before
convention was due to
meet
Gave convention the
weight it needed

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
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
James Madison arrived in
Philadelphia on May 3
Went to first day of
convention on May 14th
No quorum
Madison frets but,
the days before the
convention will finally open
on May 25th become in
many ways some of the
most important days of the
convention
 Madison
is part of a new guard
 Born 1751 his formative years were
in the revolution
 Not in the problems before it
 Saw him self as a Virginian yes
 But
also as an American

John Marshall


Born 1755
Volunteer

Signed up 1775

Survived Valley forge

I was confirmed in
the habit of
considering
America as my
country and
congress as my
government
 Only
3 had attended stamp act congress
 Only 9 had signed declaration
 22 had served in army
 3 on Washington's staff
 Majority came from top 5% of wealth
pyramid of America
 Most were unknown to most people
 Certainly many unknown to state
politics
Fifty-five men who assembled at
Philadelphia in May 1787 were generally
those who had already concluded there were
weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation
 Few attended who were opposed to revising
the Articles
 Patrick Henry, author of the Virginia
Resolves in 1765 and more recently state
governor, refused to go, saying he “smelled a
rat.”
 Rhode Island refused to send delegates

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As noted Convention failed to start on May 14
Bigger news in Pennsylvania Herald
“a young cox-comb who had made to free with the bottle”
Staggered to a young
“lady of delicate dress and shape”
Took hold of her hand, and, peeping under the large hat
covering her face exclaimed that he
“Did not like her so well before as behind, but
notwithstanding he would be glad of the favour of a kiss”
Young woman replied
“With all my heart, Sir, if you will do me the favour to kiss the
part you like best!”
As noted Madison had arrived early
 Initially frustrated at lack of attendees
 He turned things around
 Had a series of meetings with Pennsylvania
delegates


And fellow Virginia delegates
Most if not all were “nationalist”
 They worked out a plan for the convention
 Became known as the Virginia Plan



May 25th Convention gets under way
May 29th Edward Randolph




Governor of Virginia
Presents Virginia Plan
Will be attacked and changed but
Directs the discussion
Virginia Plan

Fifteen-point plan for a complete restructuring of the
government


total repudiation of the principle of a confederation of
states.
plan set out a three-branch government composed of
two-chamber legislature
 powerful executive
 Powerful judiciary


practically eliminated the voices of the smaller states
by pegging representation in both houses of the
congress to population.