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... ry generation by the standards of the 1990 s. IV. The Ordeal of the Confederation, 1781 - 1789 Popular memory jumps straight from Yorktown to the writing of the Constitution, or even to the inauguration of President George Washington. But the period between 1781 and 1789, which so often slips through our fingers, was vitally important in American history. It was the era of the Confederation -- more precisely, the era of the ordeal of the Confederation.
The Articles of Confederation, framed in 1777 by the Continental Congress and ratified by all thirteen states by 1781, was the first charter of government for the American republic. Its architects, terrified of the specter of a too-powerful centralized government, sought a balance between a government strong enough to preserve the "perpetual union" of the states and one too weak to injure the sovereignty (ultimate political authority) of the states or the rights of individual Americans. The quest for t his balance engaged the Continental Congress for over a year, from June 1776 through November 1777; the results of their labors hung in limbo for nearly four more years -- until 1 March 1781, when Maryland, the last state to act, ratified the proposed charter. Historians have subjected the Articles to unfair scorn and abuse. The Confederation Congress, the government authorized by the Articles, deserves credit for the winning of the war, the winning of the peace (the negotiation and adoption of the Treaty of Paris of 1783), and the administering of one of the greatest benefits of that peace -- the western territories acquired from Britain under that treaty. After all, the Confederation Congress established the principle that territories would be organized as states that would join the Union on an equal footing with the original thirteen.
A nation of former colonies would have no colonies of its own. But the Articles of Confederation were fatally defective as a form of government, and the difficulties the Confederation faced from 1783 to 1789 nearly shattered the nation. Because the Confederation had no power to raise revenue, it had to rely on contributions requested from state governments -- who could not be forced to pay up. The Confederation had no power to establish a uniform system of trade between states, or between the United States and foreign nations. The Confederation could not force the states to comply with the Treaty of Paris.
And, because only an amendment adopted by all thirteen states could give the Confederation powers that it lacked, one state's stubbornness could -- and did -- frustrate the demands of the other twelve. Responding to the challenges of this period, politicians of the 1780 s who thought in national terms demonstrated a political creativity and courage rarely equaled in history. The struggle, first to repair the Articles, then to replace them with the Constitution, touched off the first great national political debate. It was the first time in human history that a free people had the opportunity to decide how they would govern themselves.
Beginning in 1780, nationally-minded politicians began to exchange letters and ideas, just as politicians of the 1760 s and 1770 s had done in pooling their ideas about resisting the British. A series of interstate conferences resulted in a movement that persuaded the Confederation Congress (on 21 February 1787) to authorize the Federal Convention of 1787. After casting aside its mandate simply to propose amendments to the Articles, the Convention spent four months behind closed doors writing a revolutionary new charter of government: the Constitution of the United States. Why was the Constitution so revolutionary? First, the new nation was the largest in the Western world except Russia, and the conventional wisdom of the time taught that no republican government could survive if extended over too large an area. It was for this reason, among others, that the Confederation had no power to operate directly on individual citizens.
Second, for reasons of both political principle and pragmatic interest, state politicians preferred a weak and distant central government to an active and vigorous one having the power to coerce individual citizens. Third, the Constitution authorized a new, untried chief executive (the President) and a new, experimental federal judiciary -- features that the Confederation lacked, and that most Americans instinctively distrusted. Fourth, the Constitution created not only a new national government (though the Framers avoided even the word "national") but a national political community, one where the doings of New Yorkers could affect Virginians, and vice versa. The Convention could not impose the finished Constitution on the nation. The Constitution therefore had to be debated and voted on in a complex political process that took place both within each state and as the first national political argument. The s states held elections for special ratifying conventions, which then debated the Constitution in full view of the people.
The existence and openness of that argument persuaded Americans to think of themselves as one united people, and laid the foundations for national politics under the Constitution. Perhaps the most important issue of this period for historians is: Did the Constitution repudiate the democratizing influences of the Revolution (as Charles Beard, Merrill Jensen, and Gordon S. Wood have contended)? Or (as Richard B. Morris, Bernard Bailey, and Richard B.
Bernstein have maintained) was it actually the ideological and institutional fulfillment of the Revolution? Tied to this issue are such questions as: (i) Were the Articles of Confederation a failure? (ii) Was the "crisis of 1787 " a real crisis? (iii) Who were truer to the principles of the Revolution, the Federalists of 1787 - 1788 or the Anti-Federalists? There is room for vigorous debate on the "right" answers to these questions. As Gerald Graff has written in another context, "teaching the conflicts" is the best way to enable students to understand the extraordinary political challenges of 1787 - 1788, the solutions devised by the Federal Convention, the arguments between the Constitution's supporters and its opponents, and the importance of that continuing argument for posterity. V.
The Ordeal of the Constitution, 1789 - 1801 Even though the Federalists triumphed in 1787 - 1788, their victory was neither complete nor assured; the ordeal of the Constitution was only beginning. Anti-Federalists expected the Constitution to be amended, as they had demanded and as the Federalists had promised. What shape would amendments take? Who would put the new government into effect? What policies would the government pursue? How would it cope with issues of domestic debt, economic stagnation, and foreign policy?
The period from 1789 to 1801 posed two clusters of issues of substance and two clusters of issues of method: Issues of substance included: (i) How should the federal government deal with problems posed by the crushing burden of federal debt from the Revolution? What, if anything, should the federal government do about state debts from the Revolution? (ii) Should the government promote American economic growth? If so, what kind of economic growth? (iii) What place should the United St...
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Research essay sample on Articles Of Confederation Treaty Of Paris
