Outline: The Crisis of the 1780s
I.
At the end of the war, the residents of the United States suffered a series of unanticipated problems.
A. Without a stronger national or central government, Americans discovered that they had little leverage in
dealing with Europeans.
1. The limitations proved burdensome for merchants.
2. There was no unified diplomatic power for Americans abroad.
3. Lacking protection from an effective navy, American ships often fell victim to pirates.
B. Congress could not retire the war debt because the Articles of Confederation denied it the power to tax
individuals or states.
II.
Tension in Massachusetts over the state’s debt led to a crisis.
A. Daniel Shays led a rebellion of western Massachusetts farmers refusing to pay taxes, thereby presenting a
threat to the state’s government.
1. The national or central government had no authority to intervene.
2. Critics of America in Europe saw that development as proof of inherent weaknesses in any republican
form of government.
III.
By 1786, such problems became so pronounced that many believed the time had come to revise the Articles of
Confederation.
A. At a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, representatives from some individual states hoped to revise the Article’s
Commercial clauses.
B. They soon realized that revising the Articles would be impossible for the moment; thus they agreed to meet in
1787 in Philadelphia.
IV.
Congress passed legislation to control movement into the Northwest Territory.
A. Land Ordinances of 1784 and 1785 had set aside lands in the old Northwest Territory for possible future
settlements and imposed a surveyed grid on the landscape to facilitate future development.
B. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 became the most important statute of its kind.
1. It specified political rights for the settlers of the new territory.
2. Congress authorized the ordinance because its members believed that population growth would
continue, and thus, there would be a continued demand for westward expansion.
3. The ordinance established a procedure whereby territories could be organized and eventually become
states.
4. The ordinance prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory.
V.
Though commonly deemed a failure, the government created by the Articles of Confederation must be understood
in its own context.
A. Written during the war, at a time when no one could have predicted that the rebellion would succeed, the
Articles proved inadequate for the challenges of the postwar period.
B. Those in Congress faced an almost impossible task of trying to get thirteen sovereign states to agree on policies
For the good of all.
C. Some modern-day textbooks do not even include the document, a reflection of the later dominance of the U.S.
Constitution and many Americans’ inability to see how Revolutionary Era ideas evolved over time.