Do Now:
Grab today’s Agenda – 1:11 – from your Out Box
and a sheet from below the box.
Read the worksheet and answer the questions
that follow.
Case Studies
#1
Settling the National Debt
What was the Cause?
What was the Effect?
Whose interests were
pitted against each
other?
Was the national
government able to
solve the problem
effectively? Why or
why not?
#2
Pirates of North Africa
#3
Soldiers in Time of Peace
#4
Western Lands
The Articles of Confederation
• A Government
• The Articles of Confederation
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
A Government
State Constitutions
• In May 1776, the Continental Congress advised states that had not already done so to discard
institutions based on ties to Britain and to establish governments grounded on their own authority.
• Ten new or revised state constitutions were produced in 1776 alone.
• Between 1776 and 1787 all 13 states produced at least one new constitution.
• Basics:
• Most of the new state constitutions retained the basic structure of a legislature with an upper and a lower
house and an executive branch headed by a governor, although the distribution of power within and among
the institutions shifted dramatically.
• In all of the constitutions of 1776, most power was lodged in the lower house of the legislature. The upper
house and the governor, suggesting the monarchical and aristocratic elements of the old regime, were reduced
in influence. Governors frequently lost the veto power, appointment power, and control over the budget.
• Popular involvement was usually assured through an expanded suffrage and through annual, or at most
biannual, elections.
• The new state constitutions were careful to expand and make more explicit the protection of individual rights
and liberties traditionally enjoyed by white men, including trial by jury, free speech, and assembly, and
protections against unreasonable searches and standing armies in peace. These rights and others like them
were widely seen as part of the fundamental law that controlled and limited the power of government over
society and citizen.
A Government
A National Government
• During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress created the Articles
of Confederation as a format for a united government.
• The Articles were written in 1777 and ratified by all 13 colonies by March 1,
1781. It was written by the Second Continental Congress.
• The Articles were influenced by the Iroquois Confederacy, a league of
independent Iroquois tribes that united to create a common defense against
their Huron enemies. The Iroquois Confederacy was so successful that it
lasted more than 200 years.
• The 13 colonies needed to unite to create a common defense against Great
Britain. It established a “league of friendship and perpetual union” among
the states.”
The Articles of Confederation
Article 1
• Name of the union of states is designated
as “The United States of America.”
Article 2
• Each state is guaranteed its sovereignty,
freedom, and independence, and retains
every right not delegated to the United
States.
• Any power not given to the Confederate
Congress stays with the states.
Article 3
• The states agree to enter a firm “league of
friendship” for
•
•
•
•
Common defense
Security of liberties
General welfare
To help each other out
Article 4
• Citizens can freely move from one state to
another and are to be treated fairly, in all
states (except “paupers, vagabonds, and
fugitives”).
• Extradition too.
Article 5
• Each state must send 2 to 7 delegates to
the Continental Congress.
• Each state gets one vote.
• Delegates cannot serve more than 3 out of
any 6 years.
The Articles of Confederation
Article 6
Article 9
• States cannot
• Powers of the central government
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•
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Conduct foreign policy
Declare war
Accept foreign gifts or titles
Grant titles of nobility
Form smaller states
Tax or interfere with treaties
Maintain standing army or navy during peace-time
Be without a well-regulated militia with all necessary supplies
Article 7
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•
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•
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Determine war and peace
Exchange ambassadors
Treaties and alliances
Deciding what to do with captured land and water
Grant permission to privateers
Appoint courts to try pirates
Establish courts for all cases of capture
Set weights and measures
Serve as final court for disputes between states
• State legislatures are responsible for raising army and naming
positions below colonel.
Article 10
Article 8
Article 11
• The United States of America will pay its bills and wars with money
raised by the states, based on property.
• Canada can be admitted as a state if it wants.
• Quorum is 9 states
Article 12
• Central government accepts war debts incurred by Congress.
Article 13
• Amendments to the Articles can only be made all 13 state
legislatures.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Northwest Ordinance
• 1787
• Encouraged development of the
area that eventually became the
states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana,
Michigan, and Wisconsin.
• The Northwest Ordinance
• established a method for new state
creation
• outlawed slavery in the territory
• set aside land for education.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Problems
• The Articles of Confederation linked the 13 states together to deal
with common problems, but in practice, they did little more than
provide a legal basis for the limited authority that the Continental
Congress was already exercising.
• The national government …
•
•
•
•
•
Had no power to enforce legislation upon the states or individuals
Had no courts
Had no power to levy taxes (could only request from the states)
Had no power to regulate interstate commerce
Had no power to conscript an army (could only request from states)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Problems (continued)
• Each state had a single vote regardless of population.
• A vote from nine states was required to approve bills dealing with war, treaties,
coinage, finances, or the military. Often, not even nine states would show up!
• Amendments to the Articles required unanimous ratification.
• The limited authority the Articles granted the central government caused a variety
of problems for the emerging nation.
• The inability to levy taxes led to funding shortages when the states refused the central
government’s request for additional funds.
• The money problems led the government to sell off land to raise capital and to print devalued
currency.
• The central government’s inability to regulate commerce resulted in economic rivalries
between the states, which were manifested in disputes over currency and protective tariffs.
• The absence of executive authority also left the government powerless to deal with economic
disputes and territorial conflicts, which led to civil unrest.
Case Studies
#1
Settling the National Debt
What was the Cause?
What was the Effect?
Whose interests were
pitted against each
other?
Was the national
government able to
solve the problem
effectively? Why or
why not?
#2
Pirates of North Africa
#3
Soldiers in Time of Peace
#4
Western Lands
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Shays’ Rebellion
• 1786, Massachusetts
• The conservative administration of Massachusetts
Governor James Bowdoin had increased taxes on
land. This bore heavily on the small farmers of
central and western Massachusetts who
frequently found their farms seized for back taxes.
• To make matters worse, Governor Bowdoin
insisted the taxes be paid in hard currency, rather
than paper.
• Many of the farmers had served in the
Continental Army and fought in the Revolution.
However, they had not yet been paid by the
Congress.
• After the state legislature refused to provide relief
to debt-stricken farmers, an armed mob stopped
foreclosures by forcibly preventing the courts
from holding sessions.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Shays’ Rebellion (continued)
• Under the leadership of Daniel Shays, a
farmer and former army captain, a group
of nearly 1,200 disgruntled farmers
marched to the federal arsenal at
Springfield.
• By February 1787, troops of the state
militia, paid with $20,000 in private
money raised mostly among the
merchants and tradesmen of Boston, put
the rebels to flight in a series of
skirmishes.
• Although the uprising – known as Shays’
Rebellion – was quickly quashed, the
Massachusetts legislature did approve
some of the rebels’ demands for debt
relief in its next session.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Shays’ Rebellion (continued)
• Several aspects of the Shaysite controversy remained profoundly worrisome
to conservatives throughout the country even after order had been restored.
• First, they knew from Aristotle and Montesquieu that domestic instability, pitting the
rich against the poor, had been the classic pattern of failure in popular regimes
throughout history.
• Second, that this should happen in Massachusetts suggested that even the best
constitution, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, was unable to produce peace
and stability.
• News of the “rebellion” spread quickly. The rebellion, along with the national
government’s inability to draft an army, provides ample evidence of the
weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. Federal constitutional reform
seemed the only remaining possibility.
Conclusion
• State constitutions, written immediately after the Declaration of
Independence, established within states the long standing idea of the Rights
of Englishmen.
• The Articles of Confederation was a plan of government, written during war,
to unite the colonies for a war.
• However, its weaknesses were evident after the war. The Articles lacked a
central government strong enough to be effective.
• Shays’ Rebellion provided further evidence that there needed to be a
constitutional change on a national level.