The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain. It established a weak central government that mostly, but not entirely, prevented the individual states from conducting their own foreign diplomacy.
The Albany Plan an earlier, pre-independence attempt at joining the colonies into a larger union, had failed in part because the individual colonies were concerned about losing power to another central insitution. As the American Revolution gained momentum, however, many political leaders saw the advantages of a centralized government that could coordinate the Revolutionary War. In June of 1775, the New York provincial Congress sent a plan of union to the Continental Congress, which, like the Albany Plan, continued to recognize the authority of the British Crown. Some Continental Congress delegates had also informally discussed plans for a more permanent union than the Continental Congress, whose status was temporary. Benjamin Franklin had drawn up a plan for “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.” While some delegates, such as Thomas Jefferson, supported Franklin’s proposal, many others were strongly opposed. Franklin introduced his plan before Congress on July 21, but stated that it should be viewed as a draft for when Congress was interested in reaching a more formal proposal. Congress tabled the plan. Following the Declaration of Independence, the members of the Continental Congress realized it would be necessary to set up a national government. Congress began to discuss the form this government would take on July 22, disagreeing on a number of issues, including whether representation and voting would be proportional or state-by-state. The disagreements delayed final discussions of confederation until October of 1777. By then, the British capture of Philadelphia had made the issue more urgent. Delegates finally formulated the Articles of Confederation, in which they agreed to state-by-state voting and proportional state tax burdens based on land values, though they left the issue of state claims to western lands unresolved. Congress sent the Articles to the states for ratification at the end of November. Most delegates realized that the Articles were a flawed compromise, but believed that it was better than an absence of formal national government. On December 16, 1777, Virginia was the first state to ratify. Other states ratified during the early months of 1778. When Congress reconvened in June of 1778, the delegates learned that Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey refused to ratify the Articles. The Articles required unanimous approval from the states. These smaller states wanted other states to relinquish their western land claims before they would ratify the Articles. New Jersey and Delaware eventually agreed to the conditions of the Articles, with New Jersey ratifying on Nov 20, 1778, and Delaware on Feb 1, 1779. This left Maryland as the last remaining holdout. Irked by Maryland’s recalcitrance, several other state governments passed resolutions endorsing the formation of a national government without the state of Maryland, but other politicians such as Congressman Thomas Burke of North Carolina persuaded their governments to refrain from doing so, arguing that without unanimous approval of the new Confederation, the new country would remain weak, divided, and open to future foreign intervention and manipulation. Meanwhile, in 1780, British forces began to conduct raids on Maryland communities in the Chesapeake Bay. Alarmed, the state government wrote to the French minister Anne-César De la Luzerne asking for French naval assistance. Luzerne wrote back, urging the government of Maryland to ratify the Articles of Confederation. Marylanders were given further incentive to ratify when Virginia agreed to relinquish its western land claims, and so the Maryland legislature ratified the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781.
The Continental Congress voted on Jan 10, 1781, to establish a Department of Foreign Affairs; on Aug 10 of that year, it elected Robert R. Livingston as Secretary of Foreign Affairs. The Secretary’s duties involved corresponding with U.S. representatives abroad and with ministers of foreign powers. The Secretary was also charged with transmitting Congress’ instructions to U.S. agents abroad and was authorized to attend sessions of Congress. A further Act of Feb 22, 1782, allowed the Secretary to ask and respond to questions during sessions of the Continental Congress. The Articles created a sovereign, national government, and, as such, limited the rights of the states to conduct their own diplomacy and foreign policy. However, this proved difficult to enforce, as the national government could not prevent the state of Georgia from pursuing its own independent policy regarding Spanish Florida, attempting to occupy disputed territories and threatening war if Spanish officials did not work to curb Indian attacks or refrain from harboring escaped slaves. Nor could the Confederation government prevent the landing of convicts that the British Government continued to export to its former colonies. In addition, the Articles did not allow Congress sufficient authority to enforce provisions of the 1783 Treaty of Paris that allowed British creditors to sue debtors for pre-Revolutionary debts, an unpopular clause that many state governments chose to ignore. Consequently, British forces continued to occupy forts in the Great Lakes region. These problems, combined with the Confederation government’s ineffectual response to Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts, convinced national leaders that a more powerful central government was necessary. This led to the Constitutional Convention that formulated the current Constitution of the United States.
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The 1787 Constitutional Convention traces its origins to early September 1786, when Virginia congressman James Madison and eleven other delegates interested in increasing the powers of the national government met at a tavern in Annapolis, Maryland. Although attended by representatives of only five states – New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia – the Annapolis Convention issued a report, written by Alexander Hamilton, citing “important defects in the system of the federal government” under the Articles of Confederation. Members proposed a convention in Philadelphia the following May to discuss possible improvements to the Articles. In February, Congress endorsed the idea. Members of Congress and others were increasingly concerned that the Articles of Confederation was inadequate. The Articles placed strict limits on the power of the national government, which had a unicameral legislature of equally represented states, no independent executive, no national judiciary, no power to tax or regulate interstate commerce, and limited ability to raise armies for defense. Congress needed supermajorities to pass certain laws and unanimity to pass amendments. During the Confederation period in the 1780s, states ignored congressional requisitions for taxes, passed tariffs on each other, nearly went to war over trade and territorial disputes, and routinely overlooked the provisions of the 1783 peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War. Members of the Virginia delegation, including Washington and Madison, arrived in Philadelphia early. Believing the states were too powerful compared to the central government, they met with the Pennsylvania delegation and drafted a plan of government, largely of Madison’s design. This Virginia Plan was guided by the goal of creating a much stronger national government to govern the country more effectively. On Friday, May 25, 1787, the delegates assembled in the Pennsylvania State House. All agreed the Articles of Confederation had numerous weaknesses that needed to be addressed, but they disagreed strongly on the appropriate solutions. First, the convention unanimously selected Washington to preside as president, and his prestige legitimized the gathering in the minds of many. The delegates then decided to allow each state delegation one vote and to conduct the proceedings in secret to allow greater candor in free and open debate. On Tuesday, May 29, Virginian Edmund Randolph introduced the fifteen resolutions of the Virginia Plan. This plan proposed an independent executive, a national judiciary, and a bicameral Congress. Representation would be proportional to population in both houses. The plan also included a national veto over state laws to prevent injustice in the states. Finally, it proposed to send the work of the convention to popular ratifying conventions in the states rather than to state legislatures. Madison knew the Virginia Plan went beyond Congress’s instructions merely to revise the Articles, so he wanted the people’s representatives to approve it. He wanted to avoid the state legislatures, however, suspecting they would oppose the plan’s strengthening of the national government at the expense of their own governments. The Virginia Plan immediately sparked contention over the consolidation of power in the national government and the shape of Congress. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina asked whether the plan “meant to abolish the state [governments] altogether.” Madison responded that a stronger national government was necessary to “provide for the safety, liberty, and happiness” of the people. Although the delegates accepted a bicameral Congress without debate, they disagreed over whether the state legislatures or the people would elect its members. Madison wanted the House to be elected by popular vote, based on the principle of republican self-government. “The great fabric to be raised would be more stable and durable, if it should rest on the solid foundation of the people themselves.” Although he also continued to support a national congressional veto on the laws of the states as “absolutely necessary to a perfect system,” this clause was eventually defeated. The large and small states, and the North and South, deadlocked over the issue of representation. The large states wanted both houses of Congress to be based on population size, whereas the smaller states (which had generally smaller populations) wanted equal representation and one vote per state. George Read of Delaware even threatened to leave the convention if proportional representation were accepted. A further split developed when the South wanted to count slaves fully as human beings for purposes of representation; the northern states argued that slaves were property and wanted to count them for taxes but not representation. On June 15, William Paterson of New Jersey offered an alternative to the Virginia Plan that maintained state sovereignty based on the federal principle. This New Jersey Plan preserved the unicameralism, equal representation, and weak executive of the Articles. Paterson did offer to strengthen the powers of the national Congress over taxation and regulation of trade, however, as well as to make federal treaties the supreme law of the land. The delegates made little headway in attempting to create a national executive. Rival ideas about how many individuals would serve as executive (one or many), the length of the term of office, and the mode of election (by the people, the states, or Congress) were all debated for weeks. Randolph feared a single executive would be the “fetus of monarchy” and preferred a plural executive. George Mason, also from Virginia, asked whether the convention meant “to pave the way to hereditary monarchy.” Believing that an energetic single executive would actually better prevent tyranny than a weak one, Pennsylvanian James Wilson answered that “Unity in the executive . . . would be the best safeguard against tyranny.” The floor of the State House was not the only arena where the delegates debated their principles and tried to find common ground. They held informal discussions at dinners and in taverns in the evenings and on weekends. Still, they could find little ground for compromise, and some feared their differences might never be resolved. A special committee of eleven was appointed to break the impasse. On Monday, July 16, the convention agreed to the special committee’s proposals in the form of the Connecticut Compromise, which created a bicameral Congress that was partly national, partly federal. The House of Representatives would be based upon proportional representation and would serve as the source of spending bills, adhering to the principle of no taxation without popular representation. Five slaves would count as three free persons for purposes of calculating representation. In the Senate, all states would have two votes, with senators elected by state legislatures. This became known as the Great Compromise. On Thursday, July 26, the convention adjourned for several days to allow a Committee of Detail to reconcile and organize all the resolutions that had been accepted up to that point. On August 6, the committee offered a report that, during the coming month, the convention painstakingly debated line by line. For instance, the committee said Congress could never prohibit or tax the international slave trade. But Mason thought the slave trade immoral and called it a “nefarious traffic.” Gouverneur Morris, a New Yorker representing Pennsylvania, said it was conducted “in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity.” John Rutledge of South Carolina countered by arguing for economic self-interest: “If the Convention thinks that [North Carolina], [South Carolina,] and Georgia will ever agree to the plan, unless their right to import slaves be untouched, the expectation is vain. The people of those states will never be such fools as to give up so important an interest.” The delegates eventually compromised and banned congressional interference with the international slave trade for only one generation, until 1808. The convention then resolved the remaining contentious points. The executive branch would have a single president, who served a four-year term, was eligible for re-election, could veto laws passed by Congress, and would have broad powers over foreign policy and war making. The president would be elected by an electoral college, to which each state would choose, in whatever manner its legislature decided, electors equal in number to the sum of its members of the Senate and House of Representatives. In addition, a national judiciary was conceived and its jurisdiction established. On September 8, Congress appointed a Committee of Style to draft the Constitution, which enumerated the powers of Congress and was largely the work of Governor Morris. Starting on September 12, Congress debated the wording of the Constitution for three days. The end was in sight, but Mason strenuously argued for a bill of rights to protect essential liberties and offered to draft it himself. Many delegates argued that state constitutions already had protections, and the state delegations unanimously rejected Mason’s proposal. Mason, Randolph, and Elbridge Gerry thus registered their opposition to the document by refusing to sign. Mason said he would “sooner chop off his right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands.” Several delegates admitted that, although imperfect, the document was the best that could be achieved and urged their fellow delegates to sign. (a) George Mason, (b) Edmund Randolph, and (c) Elbridge Gerry all refused to sign the Constitution, claiming it gave too much power to the national government. On September 17, thirty-nine delegates from twelve states signed the Constitution as written. Besides the three who did not, some had gone home. The remaining delegates then retired to the City Tavern, where they dined together and, as Washington noted in his diary, “took a cordial leave of each other.” The framers of the Constitution had drafted a document that created a stronger republican government embodying the principles of popular sovereignty, separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and limited government. If ratified, this “new order of the ages” would become the fundamental law of the land. But first the people’s representatives had to approve it through a deliberative process conducted in state ratifying conventions. Watch this BRI Homework Help video on the Constitution for a comprehensive review of key issues in the development of the constitution, including representation (state vs. population and how slaves should be represented), checks and balances, federal versus state powers, and the Bill of Rights. Review Questions1. Which of the following was not an item for debate during the Constitutional Convention?
2. During the Constitutional Convention, states were divided in their arguments as
3. During the Constitutional Convention, the idea to base representation on population and have ratification take place in special conventions was part of which plan?
4. The idea to maintain the Articles of Confederation’s equal representation between the states and a very weak executive branch in this new Constitution was
5. Who lent his prestige to the convention by acting as the leader?
6. Which of the following was not a weakness of the Articles of Confederation?
7. The primary difference between the Articles of Confederation and the proposed new Constitution was the
8. Which of the following statements best describes the new Constitution?
Free Response Questions
AP Practice Questions
James Madison, Vices of the Political System of the United States, April 1787 1. According to James Madison, which of the following statements was not a problem with the government under the Articles of Confederation?
2. Which of the following characteristic of the 1787 Constitution directly addressed the issues Madison outlined in the excerpt provided?
Benjamin Franklin, September 17, 1787 Refer to the excerpt provided.3. Which of the following items discussed during the Constitutional Convention was not a “local interest,” as described by Franklin in the excerpt provided?
4. Which of the following best represents Franklin’s intention when discussing this new Constitution?
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution Refer to the excerpt provided.5. Taken together, these two sections of Article 1 might be applied to allow the government to do which of the following?
6. Which of these problems under the Articles of Confederation is most closely related to remedies provided in the Article 1, Sections 1 and 8 excerpts provided?
Preamble of the Articles of Confederation, 1781
Preamble of the United States Constitution, 1787 Refer to the excerpt provided.7. A historian might use the excerpts provided to demonstrate
8. What historical event relates to the change in the powers of the national government articulated in the excerpts provided?
Primary Sources“Articles of Confederation. Primary Documents in American History.” Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/articles.html “Constitution of the United States: A Transcription.” National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript Madison, James. “Vices of the Political System of the United States, April, 1787.”Founders Online, National Archives and Records Administration. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-09-02-0187 Madison, James. Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/jamesmadisonsnot00scot/jamesmadisonsnot00scot_djvu.txt Suggested ResourcesBeeman, Richard. Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution. New York: Random House, 2009. Berkin, Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution. New York: Harcourt, 2002. Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787. Boston: Little Brown, 1966. Brookhiser, Richard. James Madison. New York: Basic, 2012. Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin, 2004. Ellis, Joseph J. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 2015. Farrand, Max. The Framing of t |