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Confederation Period-Brinkley The Confederation Period by Alan Brinkley This reading is excerpted from Chapter Five of Brinkley’s American History: A Survey (10th ed.). I wrote the footnotes. If you use the questions below to guide your note taking (which is a good idea), please be aware that several of the questions have multiple answers. Study Questions 1. What big ideas were the foundation of early American government? Why? (This question covers most of the first two pages of the reading.) 2. What were the goals of those who wrote the Articles of Confederation? 3. How do the Articles reflect those goals? 4. What problems had to be overcome before the Articles could be put into effect? 5. The government established by the Articles is often seen as a failure. What are the arguments for and against this position? 6. In what ways did the Northwest land settlement change the landscape of the United States? 7. What do the Northwest land ordinances reveal about the principles of the new nation? 8. Why do you think representatives from slaveholding states would vote to approve a ban on slavery in the Northwest? THE CREATION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS At the same time that Americans were struggling to win their independence on the battlefield, they were also struggling to create new institutions of governments for themselves, to replace the British system they had repudiated. That effort continued for more than fifteen years, culminating in the federal Constitution of 1789. But its most crucial phase occurred during the war itself, and at the state, not the national, level. The formation of state governments began early in 1776, even before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. At first, the new state constitutions reflected primarily the fear of bloated executive power that had become so pronounced during the 1760s and early 1770s.1 Gradually, however, Americans began to become equally concerned about the instability of a government too responsive to the popular will. In a second phase of state constitution writing, therefore, they gave renewed attention to the idea of balance in government. The Assumptions of Republicanism If Americans agreed on nothing else when they began to build new governments for themselves, they agreed that those governments would be republican.2 To them, that meant a political system in which all power came directly from the people, rather than from some supreme authority (such as a king) standing above them. The success of any government, therefore, depended on the nature of its citizenry. If the population consisted of sturdy, virtuous, independent property owners, then the republic could survive. If it consisted of a few powerful aristocrats and a great 1 As seen in the Stamp, Tea, and Intolerable Acts, amongst others, that had so outraged the colonists. 2 Note the lower-case “r.” If you spell “Republican” with a capital letter you are referring to the political party of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. If you use the lower-case you are referring to the idea of republicanism. This is an important distinction to master. The Confederation Period mass of dependent workers, then it would be in danger. From the beginning, therefore, the ideal of the small “freeholder” became basic to American political ideology. Another crucial part of that ideology was the concept of equality. The Declaration of Independence had given voice to that idea in its most ringing phrase: “all men are created equal.” It was a belief that stood in direct contrast to the old European assumption of an inherited aristocracy. Every citizen, Americans believed, was born in a position of equality with every other citizen. The innate talents and energies of individuals would determine their roles in society, not their position at birth. The republican vision did not, in other words, envision a society without social gradations.3 Some people would inevitably be wealthier and more powerful than others. But all people would have to earn their success. There would be no equality of condition, but there would be full equality of opportunity. In reality, of course, these assumptions could not always be sustained. The United States was never to become a nation in which all (or even most) people were independent property holders. From the beginning, there was a large dependent labor force—of which the white members were allowed many of the privileges of citizenship and the black members had virtually no rights at all. American women remained both politically and economically subordinate, with few opportunities for advancement independent of their husbands. Native Americans were systematically exploited and displaced by whites hungry for land and impatient with legalities…. Nevertheless, in embracing the assumptions of republicanism, Americans were adopting a powerful, even revolutionary new ideology, one that would enable them to create a form of government never before seen in the world. Their experiment in statecraft became a model for many other countries and made the United States the most admired and studied nation on earth.4 The First State Constitutions Two of the original thirteen states5 saw no need to produce new constitutions…. The other eleven states, however, chose to create entirely new governments. In doing so, they set out to avoid the problems of the British system they were repudiating. The first and perhaps most basic decision was that the American constitutions, unlike the English one, were to be written down. Americans believed that the vagueness of the English system had opened the way to the corruption of the British government. To avoid a similar fate, they insisted that their own governments rest on clearly stated and permanently inscribed laws, so that no individual or group could pervert them. The second decision was that the power of the executive, which Americans believed had grown bloated and threatening in England (and even, at times, in the colonies), must be limited. One state—Pennsylvania—went so far as to eliminate the executive altogether. But most states inserted provisions sharply limiting the power of the governor over appointments, reducing or eliminating his right to veto bills, and preventing him from dismissing or otherwise interfering with the legislature. Above all, every state forbade the governor or any other executive officer from holding a seat in the legislature, thus ensuring that (unlike in England) the two branches of 3 That is, without social classes. There were no commies creating early American government. 4 “And we shall be as a City upon a Hill…” 5 Connecticut and Rhode Island 2 The Confederation Period government would remain wholly separate. The constitutions also added provisions protecting the judiciary from executive control, although in most states the courts did not yet emerge as fully autonomous branches of government. In limiting the executive and expanding the power of the legislature, the new constitutions were moving in the direction of direct popular rule. They did not, however, move all the way. Only in Georgia and Pennsylvania did the legislature consist of one house. In all the other states there was an upper and a lower chamber, and in most cases, the upper chamber was designed to represent the “higher orders” of society. In all states, there were property requirements for voters—in some states, only the modest amount that would qualify a person as a taxpayer, in other states somewhat greater requirements. Universal suffrage (even among white men) was not yet an accepted part of American government…. THE SEARCH FOR A NATIONAL GOVERNMENT Americans were much quicker to agree on the proper shape of their state institutions than they were to decide on the form of their national government. At first most believed that the central government should remain relatively weak and unimportant. Each state would be virtually a sovereign nation, and national institutions would serve only as loose, coordinating mechanisms, with little independent authority. Such beliefs reflected the assumption that a republic operated best in a relatively limited, homogeneous area; that were a republican government to attempt to administer too large and diverse a nation, it would flounder. It was in response to such ideas that the Articles of Confederation emerged. The Confederation No sooner did the Continental Congress appoint a committee to draft a declaration of independence in 1776 than it appointed another to draft a plan of union. After much debate and many revisions, the Congress adopted the committee’s proposal in November 1777 as the Articles of Confederation. The Articles provided for a national political structure very similar to the one already in operation. Congress was to survive as the central—indeed the only—institution of national authority. But its powers were to be somewhat expanded. It was to have the authority to conduct wars and foreign relations, and to appropriate, borrow, and issue money. But it could not regulate trade, draft troops, or levy taxes directly on the people. For troops and taxes it would have to make formal requests to the state legislatures, which could and often did refuse them. There was to be no separate executive (the “president of the United States” was merely the presiding officer at the sessions of Congress). Each state would have a single vote in Congress, and at least nine of the states would have to approve any important measure. All thirteen state legislatures would have to approve the Articles before they could be ratified or amended. The ratification process revealed broad disagreements over the plan. The small states had insisted on equal state representation, but the larger states wanted representation based on population. More important, the states claiming western lands wished to keep them, but the rest of the states demanded that all such territory be turned over to the Confederation government.
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