Download ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
Did the Articles of Confederation
provide an effective national
constitution?
Viewpoint: Yes. The Articles of Confederation provided an effective framework of government by resolving the postwar financial crisis, establishing
the basic policies for westward expansion, and creating a permanent federal bureaucracy to carry on the affairs of state when Congress was not in
session.
Viewpoint: No. The Articles of Confederation provided for a central government that was too weak to confront and resolve the postwar financial, commercial, and diplomatic emergencies facing the young nation.
The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781 as the first national constitution of the United States, reflected American fears of consolidated
authority and the potential for corruption resulting from their experiences
under a strong centralized British government that regulated commerce,
imposed taxes, raised a standing army in peacetime, quartered troops in private buildings, and abrogated colonial charters and jury trials. Motivated by
such fears, the Framers of the Articles ignored the issue of ultimate sovereignty—a major bone of contention in the Anglo-American dispute—and,
instead, divided the major powers of government between the union and the
states. They also believed—perhaps naively—that the exigencies of war and
public virtue would encourage the states to abide by Congressional measures. Thus, the Articles allowed each state to retain its "sovereignty, freedom
and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right" not expressly delegated to the U.S. Congress. The only prerogatives entrusted to Congress
included the "sole and exclusive right and power" to regulate foreign affairs,
initiate war, declare peace, fix weights and measures, regulate Indian affairs,
establish a post office, send and receive ambassadors, coin money, and
mediate boundary disputes between the states. As extensive as these powers may appear, the new U.S. Congress lacked the critical ability to raise
troops, levy taxes, or even regulate trade. To fund operations during wartime,
it could only lay assessments on the states, hoping they would comply. The
Articles also made no provision for an executive branch or a system of courts
to force obedience to national laws. Consequently, the union was little more
than "a firm league of friendship" among thirteen independent states under an
emasculated federal government.
Although Congress lacked the ability to resolve important fiscal, political,
and diplomatic problems confronting the nation, the question still remains:
Could the United States have nonetheless survived under the Articles of Confederation? Contemporaries were divided on this question. Some of the elite
feared that Shays's Rebellion (1786-1787) was a portent of even greater lawlessness unless the central government was given sufficient power to impose
order. Urban artisans wanted a stronger national government with the authority to exact tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing. Likewise, wealthy merchants and shipowners wanted a national government powerful enough to
secure trading privileges, while land speculators and settlers desired a gov-
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eminent capable of removing threats to westward expansion posed by Native Americans, the Spanish, and the British.
Many other Americans were content with the Confederation government. Farmers and merchants living in the Middle and Southern states, for instance, were enjoying either high tobacco
prices or increasing food exports to Europe, thus enabling them to begin climbing out of the postwar
depression and to pay off their war debts. Additionally, many small, subsistence-level farmers living
in relative isolation were unconcerned with protective tariffs, trading privileges, or national politics,
for that matter.
This division between Americans over the circumstances of the nation during the 1780s reflects
contentions among historians in assessing the viability of the Articles of Confederation. Some scholars point out that the Articles carried the nation through a protracted, pernicious, and successful war
against a powerful nation; secured a vast territory; laid down the basic policies for an orderly westward expansion; and created a bureaucracy that carried on the day-to-day work of the central government. In short, the United States during the Confederation period was a prosperous society with
a populace in high spirits and a federal charter that enabled the nation to begin recovering from the
dislocations of war.
However, other historians have taken a more critical view of the Articles, blaming them for crippling Congress's ability to confront national economic, political, and diplomatic problems during the
critical period of the 1780s. They highlight that Congress had difficulty getting a quorum necessary
to conduct business; had no permanent source of revenue; lacked the power to resolve the national
financial crisis; and failed to satisfy foreign creditors or to maintain a military force capable of defending Western territories from foreign threats. In brief, these critics conclude, the federal government
was a threat to the general welfare of the nation and a laughingstock in the international community.
Because nationalists at the Constitutional Convention (1787) scrapped the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with the present federal constitution, it will never be known for certain if the
United States would have flourished under the initial charter. A counter-factual analysis of the question might be interesting, but it would probably not prove to be any more conclusive. If nothing else,
though, the issue forces one to consider which groups of people were suffering the most during the
1780s and what the nationalists hoped to gain with a stronger central government. Were they motivated in their actions by a true concern for the public welfare or by self-interest? Moreover, were they
upholding or violating the political principles of the American Revolution as expressed in the Declaration of Independence (1776) that a people have a right to "alter or abolish" a government when it
"becomes destructive" of their "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?
Viewpoint:
Yes. The Articles of Confederation
provided an effective framework
of government by resolving the
postwar financial crisis,
establishing the basic policies for
westward expansion, and creating a
permanent federal bureaucracy to
carry on the affairs of state when
Congress was not in session.
Many historians regard the Articles of Confederation, the first federal constitution of the
United States, as materially flawed. They compare
the Articles to the Constitution of 1787 and
assume as a standard of judgment the answers to
questions of constitutional order and public policy created in the latter. Historians then judge the
alternative answers crafted in the Articles to be
inadequate or incorrect. In so doing they misunderstand the Articles and the political culture that
underlay them.
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The criticisms about the Articles of Confederation are based on a set of assumptions that in
anthropological terms could be described as ethnocentric. Ethnocentrism is the evaluation of a
society or culture from the perspective of one's
own culture and imposing as a standard of judgment one's own values. To describe the natives
of the New World, following European contact
(1492), for example, as "heathens" or "uncivilized" is to impose a European model upon
another culture. It leads to frequent misunderstandings about the nature, customs, and values
of the foreign society. Likewise, historians judge
the Articles from the perspective of the Constitution of 1787 and impose as a standard of judgment the answers to questions of constitutional
order and public policy created by the latter document. In doing so they profoundly misunderstand the Articles and the alternative solutions
to governance they represent.
No doubt the Articles of Confederation created a "weak" central government, if the standard
of measurement is the national government created by the Constitution of 1787. It created a confederation rather than a national government. A
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
more meaningful assessment would be a comparison of the powers and practices of the central government under the Articles to previous
confederations known to Americans at the time.
In "Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies" (1786) James Madison described and evaluated several confederacies, some of which
possessed in theory greater powers than those
held by the central government under the Articles. The Amphictionic Confederacy (circa sixteenth century B.C.E.), for example, possessed full
power "to propose and resolve whatever they
judged useful to Greece." In the Belgic Confederacy (mid seventeenth century C.E.) the "States
General" held a power to levy both import and
export taxes. In both cases, however, Madison
observed, the execution of powers was quite different from the theory. The Amphictionic Confederacy did not prevent war between its constituent
parts, and the taxing authority existed in the Belgic Confederacy but was never utilized. Some of
the Framers also knew of the one American antecedent to the Articles, the New England Confederation. Formed in 1643 to unite the colonies of
Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Hartford, and
New Haven, the Confederation granted to the
central government the power to consider causes
of a general nature and to conduct foreign affairs
while reserving to each constituent part the conduct of its internal affairs. Like the European confederacies that Madison studied, internal
difficulties plagued the New England Confederation. The most pressing problem proved to be the
inability of the Confederation to enforce its decisions against its most powerful member, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As with the European
confederacies, the theoretical strength of the New
England Confederation failed to translate into
reality during its duration (it ended in 1684).
Madison incorrectly assumed that the defect was
endemic to all confederacies. As he observed in
The Federalist No. 37, the "history of past confederations can furnish no other light than that of
beacons, which give warning of the course to be
shunned, without pointing out that which ought
to be pursued." His rejection of all confederacies,
of course, ignores the relative strength of the government created by the Articles.
In contrast to its predecessors, the Confederation government exercised the powers granted to
it with a considerable vigor—securing independence, establishing the institutional framework of
government, and organizing the Northwest territories. The responses of states that ratified the
Articles of Confederation between 1777 and 1781
constitute a second indication of the strength of
the Confederation. Virtually every state expressed
some degree of displeasure with the Articles as
they were presented to the state legislatures. Much
of that dissatisfaction related to the demand of
the "landless" states for a share of the common
lands of the king. Other states disliked the apportionment of expenses among the states on the
basis of the white population only. Seven states,
even as they ratified the Articles, expressed a concern that in particular ways the document created
too powerful a central government. Individual
state legislatures called for a diminution of the
central government's power to maintain a peacetime army and to pass legislation with the votes of
only nine states. Some states also wanted to
impose greater controls on the post office, while
others wanted to have the rights to conduct foreign affairs and to allow state, rather than federal,
courts the power to try pirates and settle disputes
over land claims. In the context of eighteenthcentury America, the problem is not that the Articles lacked adequate powers but that they possessed too many powers.
The political power of its defenders, during
the debate over ratification of the Constitution,
represented the relative strength of the Articles of
Confederation. Because history is more often
written by (or for) the winners, one tends to forget
the losers in the debate over ratification. Yet, a
substantial number of Americans were not merely
opposed to the Constitution but were in favor of
the Articles. For example, many Antifederalist
pamphleteers and
essayists—among
them
"Agrippa" of Massachusetts, "Cato" of New York,
and "Centinel" of Pennsylvania—argued explicitly
in favor of the Articles and against the Constitution. One should remember, too, that a sizable
percentage of the American people, as measured
by the candidates they voted for in the ratification
convention elections, believed the Articles adequate for the needs of the nation in 1787-1788.
Although it is not possible to determine total
popular support for the Constitution, the votes of
the people's representatives are illustrative. If one
considers only the first North Carolina convention and includes the votes of Rhode Island
towns on whether to call a state convention, one
discovers that 935 delegates or their equivalent
voted for the Constitution; 709 voted against it.
These latter delegates favored the Articles of Confederation. Some Antifederalists who voted for
ratification also preferred the Articles, but Federalists persuaded them that the alternative to ratification was anarchy and civil war. In this
doomsday scenario, Federalists' dire prognostications were clearly wrong. The nation could have
continued to operate under the Articles. Morton
Borden and Otis L. Graham Jr. speak directly to
this issue in Speculations in American History
(1977). Although their work is obviously counterfactual, they conclude that the short-term results
of the rejection of the Articles would not have
been catastrophic. "We can speculate with assurance that there would have been no invasions, no
revolutions, and no wars between the states—for
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N REVOLUTION
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THE FIRST AMERICANCONSTITUTION
Several sections of the Articles ol Confederation address
the rights and powers of the federal government:
VI. No State, without the consent of the
United States in Congress assembled, shall
send any embassy to, or receive any embassy
from, or enter into any conference, agreement,
alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or
State; nor shall any person holding any office
of profit or trust under the United States, or
any of them, accept any present, emolument,
office or title of any kind whatever from any
King, Prince or foreign State; nor shall the
United States in Congress assembled, or any
of them, grant any title of nobility.
No two or more States shall enter into
any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever
between them, without the consent of the
United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the
same is to be entered into, and how long it
shall continue.
No State shall lay any imposts or duties,
which may interfere with any stipulations in
treaties, entered into by the United States in
Congress assembled, with any King, Prince
or State, in pursuance of any treaties already
proposed by Congress, to the courts of
France and Spain.
No vessel of war shall be kept up in time
of peace by any State, except such number
only, as shall be deemed necessary by the
United States in Congress assembled, for the
defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall
any body of forces be kept up by any State in
time of peace, except such number only, as
in the judgement of the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite
to garrison the forts necessary for the
defense of such State; but every State shall
always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have
ready for use, in public stores, a due number
of field pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.
No State shall engage in any war without
the consent of the United States in Congress
assembled, unless such State be actually
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invaded by enemies, or shall have received
certain advice of a resolution being formed by
some nation of Indians to invade such State,
and the danger is so imminent as not to admit
of a delay till the United States in Congress
assembled can be consulted; nor shall any
State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal,
except it be after a declaration of war by the
United States in Congress assembled, and
then only against the Kingdom or State and
the subjects thereof, against which war has
been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United
States in Congress assembled, unless such
State be infested by pirates, in which case
vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall
continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise.
VII. When land forces are raised by any
State for the common defense, all officers of
or under the rank of colonel, shall be
appointed by the legislature of each State
respectively, by whom such forces shall be
raised, or in such manner as such State shall
direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by
the State which first made the appointment.
VIII. All charges of war, and all other
expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed
by the United States in Congress assembled,
shall be defrayed out of a common treasury,
which shall be supplied by the several States
in proportion to the value of all land within
each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and
improvements thereon shall be estimated
according to such mode as the United States
in Congress assembled, shall from time to
time direct and appoint.
The taxes for paying that proportion shall
be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States
within the time agreed upon by the United
States in Congress assembled.
Source: "The Articles ol Confederation,'U.S. Historical Documents Archive <http-J/w3.one.net/
-mweiler/ushda/artconf.htm>.
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
none of those threatened. Nor would there have
been an economic breakdown, social chaos, or
mob rule—for the state governments were ruling
effectively." There would probably have been
another constitutional convention, as some Antifederalists proposed while opposing the Constitution. That convention would, Borden and
Graham suggest, have done what the first meeting
failed to do: amend the Articles of Confederation.
Such a convention would almost certainly have
granted to the central government, as was urged in
1785, the power to regulate trade and collect an
impost. A sure source of revenue, in turn, would
have allowed the central government to begin to
reduce the Revolutionary War debt and secure the
loyalty of its citizens.
Had the Confederation survived, it also
seems likely that the powers of the federal government would have expanded. The leadership in
government would, however, have been focused
not in the cabinet (Alexander Hamilton as secretary of treasury and Thomas Jefferson as secretary
of state) but in Congress, where the locus of political authority existed under the Articles of Confederation.
In the long run, of course, Madison insisted,
all confederations were doomed to failure, but it is
possible that the Articles of Confederation could
have governed the nation well into the nineteenth
century. Granted, the War of 1812 would in all
likelihood not have occurred because the votes of
the New England states would have prevented the
adoption of a resolution of war. Neither would
the abolition of slavery have taken place in the
manner it did (although the Confederation government had in fact blocked the expansion of slavery in 1787, while individual states were acting
against it as well in the 1780s). American political
history would have been different, but it seems
unlikely that the future of the nation would have
been in jeopardy had the United States kept the
Articles.
The gradual development of the powers and
processes of the new government after 1789 also
profoundly influence interpretations of the Articles of Confederation. Some historians have criticized the Confederation Congress because some
states did not bother to send delegates to its meetings; for the lack of a quorum, which often prevented the consideration of pressing issues; and
because the government lacked a permanent capital. To some extent all of these criticisms are valid,
although the implications that historian Robert
Divine in America, Past and Present (1984) draws
are rather present minded. Yes, some states did
not send delegations to the Confederation Congress at times. What can be deduced from a similar situation when Rhode Island refused to send
any delegates to the Constitutional Convention;
when New Hampshire's delegates did not attend
until July (nearly two months after the start of the
convention); or when delegates that signed the
Constitution did so as individuals, since New
York was not represented at the time of the signing? Pressing issues in the Confederation Congress were, according to Divine, "often" postponed
for lack of a quorum. One might legitimately ask:
how frequent is "often"? The answer, according to
Edmund Cody Burnett, historian of the Confederation Congress, is five times between 1774 and
1787. Is it a sign of weakness or a sign of a different political system and values?
The so-called weaknesses of the Articles of
Confederation were a result of a different set of
assumptions about the purpose of representation
in the federal legislature and the relationship of
that legislature to the states. The initial meeting
of the Continental Congress was designed to
unite the colonies in their resistance to British
colonial policy. Delegates from Massachusetts, in
particular, believed that the colonies must stand
together if the resistance movement was to succeed. Their mission therefore was to build a consensus among the delegates. The "unanimous"
declaration of the thirteen states in 1776 also
reflected the purpose of the existence of the Congress—to unite the individual colonies in the common cause. The Articles required more than a
simple majority for the legislature to act. They
did so because the Framers of the Articles
believed that the central government, itself a creature of the states, should act only when there was
widespread agreement—a nationally distributed
majority rather than a simple or regional one.
Twenty-first-century criticisms of the Articles
would have made no sense to the Framers. Of
course, Congress adjourned upon occasion for
lack of a quorum. Yes, states sometimes did not
send delegates. When Congress therefore did not
act, it was not a sign of weakness or debility; it was
a sign the system was working as its Framers had
intended. Modern criticism that the Congress met
in different places rather than in a single permanent location (a capital city) would similarly have
perplexed the Framers of the Articles. During the
Revolutionary War (1775-1783) the Congress
moved several times. After the war Congress met
in both Philadelphia and New York. Eighteenthcentury political leaders recognized the importance of the meeting place of any legislative body.
Those states closest to this location had an inherent advantage; close geographic proximity meant
an increased likelihood that those states would
have a full representation in the legislature. Outlying states in a premodern transportation era
would more often be underrepresented in the legislature. Jurist John Jay explicitly stated during
the New York ratification convention that the
"residence" of the central government was worth
$3 million per year to the state that secured it. The
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N REVOLUTION
21
fact that the Massachusetts state convention
assembled in highly Federalist Boston is one factor mentioned by historians in explaining why the
Antifederalist majority became a Federalist one by
the close of the meeting.
These political and economic considerations—and perhaps a recognition of the need to
bring government to the people—meant that in
the eighteenth century some states shifted the
meeting place of their legislature among several
locations. In North Carolina and New York the
meeting place of the state legislatures changed on
a regular basis. Two New Hampshire ratifying
conventions met in different cities—again an
accommodation to the assumption that government should make itself accessible to the people
by coming to them rather than establishing a single permanent residence. Furthermore, after 1789
the "permanent" federal capital shifted from New
York to Philadelphia and then to Washington,
D.C. Other branches of government continued to
be dispersed, with the mint remaining in Philadelphia and the federal courts and justices of the
Supreme Court riding circuit until 1837.
Modern scholars tend to interpret the Articles of Confederation from the perspective of the
Constitution and therefore assume that the
answers to political questions decided in the Constitution were right and that the Articles were
wrong. In doing so one misjudges the Articles in
both theory and practice. The Articles were neither ineffective in their time nor inappropriate to
their age.
-STEVEN R. BOYD, UNIVERSITY
OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO
Viewpoint:
No. The Articles of Confederation
provided for a central government
that was too weak to confront and
resolve the postwar financial,
commercial, and diplomatic
emergencies facing the
young nation.
In the mid 1780s New Jersey leaders
desperately needed to improve their state's
fledgling economy. Not only was the state
mired in a depression that had struck all of
post-Revolutionary War America, but New Jersey's economy had long been weak because of its
commercial dependence on nearby New York
City and Philadelphia. State leaders, therefore,
sought to use Great Britain's recent Order in
Council to invigorate their commerce, but at
the expense of their neighbors. The Order
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laid crippling trade restrictions upon the
now-independent United States. It cut off
American access to lucrative markets in the West
Indies and prohibited U.S. merchant ships from
doing business in British home ports. Pennsylvania and New York retaliated with steep tariffs.
New Jersey officials, however, refused to discriminate, hoping that goods from the old mother
country would now flow through their own
ports. New York retaliated against New Jersey
and imposed a tax upon foreign products entering its borders through another state. This measure led New Jersey to levy a £30-per-month fee
upon New York for use of a lighthouse the state
maintained on Sandy Hook. These actions constituted, as historian Norman K. Risjord has
noted in Jefferson's America, 1760-1815 (2002),
"an exercise in malarkey." They point, nonetheless, to several critical problems that confronted
the new nation in the 1780s: the fragility of the
union following the War for Independence
(1775-1783) and the utter inability of the federal government created by the Articles of Confederation either to solve the postwar crises or to
engender a broad-based sense of national loyalty.
In 1888 historian John Fiske labeled the
1780s the "Critical Period of American history,"
and for many years afterward scholars judged the
decade to be a time of turmoil and peril for the
young nation. Indeed, the United States seemed
on the verge of collapse. In the second half of
the twentieth century, however, more extensive
research into the Confederation period has provided scholars with a more complex picture.
Some historians have concluded that the 1780s
were not chaotic at all. Rather, these years contained important accomplishments, including
the famous Land Ordinance (1785) and Northwest Ordinance (1787), both of which determined the process for orderly settlement of the
Ohio Valley region up into present-day Michigan
and Wisconsin.
The Articles though, were not one of the
great achievements of the period. Time and again,
this system of national government failed to meet
the economic and political challenges of nationhood. The United States unlikely could have survived intact under its provisions. Part of the
problem was that little thought and preparation
went into their creation. During the Revolutionary period, Americans' central loyalty remained
with their states, and few were truly concerned
with the national government. Thus, the Articles
were hastily drafted in 1776 and passed by the Second Continental Congress in 1777. It then took
four years of petty wrangling among the states
before the plan was formally adopted.
Although the Articles were stronger than
some people had anticipated, the government
lacked significant powers. The Continental Con-
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N REVOLUTION
gress could neither impose direct taxes nor raise
independent revenues of any sort. States were
expected to fund the government through voluntary requisitions. Congress could enter into commercial treaties with foreign nations, but it
lacked the ability to regulate interstate commerce. The federal government could not even
control trade between individual states and foreign powers. At the same time, the states
retained considerable freedom. Article 2 declared
that "each State retains its sovereignty, freedom
and independence, and every power, jurisdiction,
and right, which is not by this confederation
expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."
The strains engendered by the long war
against Great Britain further undermined this
already flimsy system. Rather than creating
stronger unity, the conflict exacerbated existing
divisions. As historian John Murrin has pointed
out in "Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of
American National Identity" (1987), "Americans
discovered during the Revolutionary War that
they did not really like each other very much."
Therefore, with leaders highly protective of their
states' prerogatives and possessing little allegiance to a national government, many insisted
that the United States remain nothing more
than "a firm league of friendship."
Following the defeat of Charles Cornwallis's
army at York Town (1781), British determination
to continue the war waned. As a result, however,
the states began to ignore the Confederation government and its needs altogether. Not only did
they often refuse to pay congressional requisitions, but the states also consistently appointed
delegates of inferior talent and quality. Indeed,
most postwar members of Congress lacked the
intellectual weight and political skills of their predecessors. They were also notoriously lax about
attending sessions. In the winter of 1784, Congress nearly failed to ratify the Treaty of Paris
(1783) before its deadline simply because it could
not reach a quorum. Although enough members
finally materialized to approve the accord, attendance dropped again afterward. An exasperated
Thomas Jefferson told James Madison, "We cannot make up a Congress at all. We have not sat
above 3 days I believe in as many weeks. Admonition after admonition has been sent to the states,
to no effect." In addition to protecting the influence of their states, leaders withheld support for
the Confederation government out of ideological
convictions. Few genuinely believed that a land as
large and diverse as the United States could and
should be ruled as a unified republic. The republics throughout history had always been territorially small and possessed homogeneous populations.
In the interest of stability, it seemed wiser to let the
states take the lead, with Congress serving as a
simple coordinating body.
These factors caused, as Madison put it, "a
spirit of locality" to sweep postwar America,
with state legislatures becoming the dominant
force in politics. Other developments accelerated
the process. Throughout the Revolutionary
period, male citizens voted in ever greater numbers for their state representatives, and the voters
increasingly demanded that these representatives
fully address their specific needs and interests.
Therefore, an avalanche of bills designed to
appease local constituents were introduced in
one state house after another. Most of these measures were passed without any regard to their
impact on the nation. Madison witnessed this
process as a member of Virginia's General
Assembly, and he pessimistically concluded that
the states were blithely undermining both the
federal government and the union. Congress
found itself, moreover, unable to address several
serious problems because of this growing factionalism and fears that concerted national
action might hurt the individual states.
These shortcomings became abundantly
clear by the mid 1780s when several economic
and diplomatic crises came to a head. The problems originated in the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. American commerce, for example,
slowed considerably after the conflict as military
contracts evaporated and spending declined.
Import trade with the former mother country,
moreover, resumed with a vengeance because of a
pent-up demand for British manufactures. American exports, however, did not advance at nearly
so robust a pace. The result was a significant outflow of specie coupled with deflation. The economic crisis hurt Americans in several ways.
Falling prices made debts (both public and private) more burdensome. Debtors throughout
the country demanded that state governments
halt collections and foreclosures until the economic crisis had passed. The economic downturn also led assemblies to issue paper currency
to relieve money shortages. Rhode Island went
the furthest of any state by issuing a fresh batch
of currency notes and also by requiring creditors
to accept the bills at face value and levying a
£100 fine on those who refused to accept the
paper. The result was, as Madison noted, a "convulsion," with merchants packing up and fleeing
the state rather than doing business under such
conditions. As the depression deepened, other
people also found their lives disrupted. Many
fishermen throughout New England immigrated to Nova Scotia to find work. Mariners
who remained could often find no other employment than in the Atlantic slave trade—a branch of
commerce that had remained tragically robust.
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
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First page of Benjamin
Franklin's copy of the
nation's first charter with
annotations by Thomas
Jefferson
(Manuscript Division, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.)
There has been considerable debate among
scholars concerning the depression of the 1780s.
Some historians, such as Merrill Jensen, have
contended that the United States actually experienced rapid economic growth during this
period. Other scholars have argued the opposite-that America veered toward economic collapse. Recent research reveals that neither
conclusion is justified. Studies of regional economies show an uneven downturn. Large parts of
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the country, such as New England and the
Lower South, suffered greatly while other
regions, such as the Mid-Atlantic states, were
only slightly affected. Whatever its true depth,
the depression was nonetheless crucial in bringing an end to the Confederation government.
The slump raised significant doubts about the
adequacy of the Articles. Because it could not
regulate commerce, Congress had few tools with
which to address the crisis. It controlled neither
H I S T O R Y IN D I S P U T E , V O L U M E 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
the national money supply nor commercial relations among the various states. Congressional
leaders implemented some measures to improve
the economy, but their efforts foundered. Near
the conclusion of the war, for example, Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris convinced
Congress to establish the Bank of North America. Chartered by the government to help finance
the conflict as well as bring the states under a
uniform "money connexion," Morris believed
the bank would stabilize the national economy.
Although manifestly needed, the charter of the
bank expired in 1784 solely because Rhode
Island refused to support a needed national
impost to fund the institution.
Adding to the country's woes were diplomatic problems, especially with Great Britain.
American leaders (perhaps naively) believed that
once hostilities ended they would be able to
resume old trading patterns with the empire. In
July 1783, however, the London government
ordered American shipping closed both to the
home islands and to imperial ports throughout
the Caribbean. This measure dealt the U.S. economy a double blow by seriously weakening the
nation's maritime industries and greatly curbing
the export of food commodities. National leaders
wanted to strike back, but Congress lacked the
authority. Thus, retaliation fell to the states. As the
dispute between New Jersey and New York illustrates, this solution was hardly an effective means
of resolving this problem. Americans resented the
restrictions, but getting thirteen state legislatures
to respond together proved impossible.
Other British actions further illustrate the
Confederation government's ineffectiveness. In
1782 the Crown had promised to surrender British forts in what soon would become the Northwest Territory of the United States. After the
war, however, many statehouses and courts
barred the collection of debts owed to British
creditors; the states also refused to return confiscated property of Loyalists. Because the royal
government believed that both these things had
been promised in the Treaty of Paris, Britain
refused to evacuate the forts. Despite the violation of U.S. territory, Congress was powerless.
America's diplomat in England, John Adams,
lodged a protest, but the ministry simply ignored
it. Congress had originally sent Adams to London to negotiate a treaty of commerce that
would end British trade discrimination against
the United States. He failed to accomplish his
mission, largely because the hapless U.S. government convinced Britain not to budge on a single
issue. In Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in
the Making of the Constitution (1996), historian
Jack N. Rakove noted that Adams's "failures
owed nothing to his own faults as a diplomat
and everything to the fundamental weaknesses of
the Articles of Confederation."
The United States fared little better with
Spain over navigation rights to the Mississippi
River. In 1784 Spain closed the great waterway
to Americans. The move proved devastating to
settlers who needed to transport their produce
to market. Without access to the Mississippi,
Spain's action rendered U.S. Western territories
economically useless, at least in the near term.
Officials from Madrid also sought to create disaffection among American settlers, hoping that
Spain would eventually obtain at least some of
the eastern shore of the river. Congress selected
Secretary for Foreign Affairs John Jay to negotiate the dispute. After finding himself unable to
move Spanish negotiators, Jay reluctantly agreed
in 1786 to surrender America's right to navigate
the river for twenty-five years in return for a commercial treaty between the two powers. The proposal sparked bitter outrage among Southern
delegates who felt that Jay (a New Yorker) had
sacrificed their region's interests—especially their
ability to expand westward—in order to boost the
Northeast's economy. Congress eventually killed
the pact because of fierce Southern opposition,
but it revived long-standing sectional animosities
as well as fears that the United States, bound
only by a weak central government and little
national loyalty, would soon disintegrate into
regional confederacies.
Shays's Rebellion (1786-1787) proved the
final straw leading Americans to abandon the
Articles. When the insurrection began in western
Massachusetts in early autumn, Congressional
leaders were already looking for ways to
strengthen the national government. Events
since the early 1780s had convinced many political leaders that significant changes were needed
if the United States was to survive. Recent historians have correctly pointed out that Shays's
Rebellion was hardly a true insurrection. The
rebels simply wanted justice within a system they
perceived as politically and economically unfair.
The magnitude of the "rebellion," however,
hardly matters. The upheaval demonstrated to
key American leaders (in particular, George
Washington) that instability was only going to
grow worse unless significant changes occurred.
In April 1787, just weeks before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Madison
drafted a memo titled "Vices of the Political System of the United States" in which the
soon-to-be "father of the Constitution" poured
out his frustrations. He complained about the
failure of the states to pay requisitions, their
repeated encroachments upon congressional
authority, and the "Injustice of the laws." He
also lamented the powerlessness of the central
government. Madison's memo accurately
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
25
described the problems the nation confronted
under the Articles of Confederation. Created at a
time when American leaders were loyal above all
to their states, this system of national government had encouraged regional self-interest, factionalism, and localism. The Articles also failed
to provide leaders with the political means to
handle in a systematic and united fashion the
many problems unleashed by the Revolution.
Indeed, the events of the 1780s demonstrate
that a stronger national system was not only
desirable but also was absolutely crucial for the
long-term survival of the United States.
-PHILLIP HAMILTON, CHRISTOPHER
NEWPORT UNIVERSITY
References
Morton Borden, The Antifedemlist Papers (East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
1965).
Borden and Otis L. Graham Jr., eds., Speculations
in American History (Lexington, Mass.:
Heath, 1977).
Edmund Cody Burnett, The Continental Congress (New York: Macmillan, 1941).
Robert Divine, America., Past and Present (Glenview, 111.: Scott, Foresman, 1984).
26
Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation: An
Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774-1781
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1940).
Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United
States during the Confederation, 1781-1789
(New York: Knopf, 1950).
Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union,
1781-1789 (New York: Harper & Row,
1987).
John
Murrin, "Roof Without Walls: The
Dilemma of American National Identity,"
in Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity,
edited by Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein,
and Edward C. Carter II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).
Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and
Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New
York: Knopf, 1996).
Norman K. Risjord, Jefferson's America, 17601815 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
2002).
Robert A. Rutland and others, eds., The Papers of
James Madison, volume 9 (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1975).
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N REVOLUTION