Government in the United States, National, State and Local Part 12

CHAPTER IX

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UNION

=The Articles of Confederation.=--The Continental Congress, which managed the common affairs of the Union during the early stages of the Revolution, was a body whose authority was not defined by any const.i.tution or fundamental law. It a.s.sumed large powers in the belief that the people, relying upon its patriotism and wisdom, would acquiesce in its acts. As yet, however, the states were not closely united, and each was free to go its own way. As time pa.s.sed, the advantages of union became more manifest, and the states began to recognize the desirability of creating a common government with larger powers and with definite authority. After a debate lasting off and on for more than a year, Congress adopted in November, 1777, an instrument called the Articles of Confederation, which was to go into effect when ratified by all the states.

_Ratification of the Articles._--During the years 1778 and 1779, all the states except Maryland ratified the Articles. Maryland withheld her approval because she doubted the advantage of a union among states, some of which held vast territory in the West while some did not. The states claiming lands northwest of the Ohio River were Virginia, New York, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Connecticut. As these lands had been wrested from Great Britain while that power was weakened by her war with all the states, Maryland insisted, as a condition to her adhesion, that the states claiming these lands should surrender them to the nation for the benefit of all the states. This argument appealed to the sense of patriotism and justice of the states claiming this northwestern territory, and in the course of the next few years they ceded most of their lands to the United States for the common benefit. When it became certain that this would be done, Maryland ratified the Articles, and the Confederation of the states was completed.

=Government under the Articles.=--The Confederation thus formed was styled a "firm league of friends.h.i.+p" under the name of "the United States of America," and its declared purpose was to provide for the common defense of the states, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare. To secure these ends the states bound themselves to a.s.sist each other against all attacks upon either or all of them, upon any pretense whatever.

For the management of certain affairs common to the states composing the Confederation, the Articles provided for an annual Congress of delegates to be chosen by the states, no state to be represented by less than two members or more than seven. Unlike the Continental Congress, the Congress of the Confederation was given express power to deal with certain affairs, and therefore it did not have to a.s.sume the powers it exercised. Among these were the power to declare war and make peace; to send and receive diplomatic representatives; to enter into treaties; to make rules regarding captures on the high seas; to grant letters of marque and reprisal; to settle disputes between the states, upon pet.i.tion of the disputants; to regulate the alloy and value of coin, whether struck under the authority of Congress or by the states; to fix the standard of weights and measures throughout the United States; to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indians; to make rules for the government of the land and naval forces; to establish post offices; and a few other powers of a like character.

No provision, however, was made for an executive department or for a national judiciary, with the single exception of a court of appeal in cases involving captures on the high seas in time of war.

_Prohibitions on the States._--In the interest of the general peace and security, the states were forbidden, except with the consent of Congress, to send diplomatic representatives to foreign countries, or enter into treaties or alliances, or levy any duties on articles imported from abroad, if such duties should conflict with the provisions of foreign treaties; or keep s.h.i.+ps of war in times of peace; or engage in war; or grant letters of marque and reprisal.

=Defects of the Articles of Confederation.=--Although the Articles of Confederation proved of great value in securing concert of action among the states in certain matters, the weaknesses of the union which they created and the defects of the governmental machinery provided by them soon proved serious.

_The States Retained too Much Power._--The union turned out to be the loosest sort of a league, in which the states for the most part did as they pleased. Each retained its own sovereignty and could not be compelled to perform its obligations as a member of the Confederation.

Some of them deliberately violated the treaty of peace with Great Britain, and the Congress was unable to prevent such infractions.

Congress being thus powerless to carry out the stipulations of the treaty, Great Britain refused to perform her obligations thereunder.

Since no executive department and no courts were created to enforce and apply the laws pa.s.sed by Congress, the nation had to depend upon the states to carry out its will.

_The Congress was not well Organized._--In the organization and procedure of Congress there were serious defects. No member could serve for more than three years in six, and each state paid its own members and might recall them at pleasure. Thus the dependence of the representative upon his state was emphasized and his character as a national representative minimized. Worse than this was the provision that allowed each state, regardless of its population and size, but one vote in Congress. Thus Georgia with a population of only a few thousand souls enjoyed the same power in all matters of national legislation that Virginia did, although the population of Virginia was some sixteen times as great. Still another serious weakness was the rule which required the a.s.sent of nine states to pa.s.s any important bill, such as those for borrowing or appropriating money, issuing bills of credit, declaring war, entering into treaties, coining money, building war s.h.i.+ps, raising military forces, selecting commanders, and the like. As it was frequently impossible to secure the concurrence of so large a proportion of the states, needed legislation was often prevented by the opposition of a few members or by the lack of a quorum. Thus in April, 1783, there were present only twenty-five members from eleven states, nine being represented by only two members each. It would have been possible, therefore, for three members to defeat any important measure.[24]

[24] Andrews, "Manual of the Const.i.tution," p. 38.

_Congress had No Power of Taxation._--Not only were the defects in the organization and procedure of Congress of a serious character, but the powers conferred upon it by the Articles of Confederation were so meager that its authority was little more than a shadow and carried little weight. One of the essential powers of government is that of taxation, yet the Congress had no authority to impose a dollar of taxes on any individual in the land. Money was needed to pay the soldiers who were fighting the battles of the country, to pay the salaries and expenses of diplomatic representatives who had been sent to Europe to negotiate treaties and solicit the aid of foreign friends, to pay interest on loans incurred in France and Holland, to defray the cost of building war s.h.i.+ps and equipping the army, and to meet the various other expenses which every government must needs incur, yet the government of the Confederation was powerless to raise the necessary funds by taxation. In the absence of all power to levy and collect taxes, Congress adopted the policy of apportioning the national expenses among the states. But no state could be compelled to contribute a dollar toward its quota; some of them in fact contributed little, and most of those which did respond to the appeal of Congress did so grudgingly and tardily. Of the $15,000,000 apportioned among the states between 1781 and 1786 less than $2,000,000 was actually paid in. Often there was not a dollar in the treasury of the Confederation to pay the obligations of the government.

Two attempts were made to amend the Articles of Confederation so as to give Congress power to levy a five per cent tariff duty on imported goods, but since it required the a.s.sent of each of the thirteen states to adopt an amendment, the scheme fell through, in both cases on account of the opposition of a single state.

_Congress had No Power to Regulate Commerce_, either with foreign countries or among the states themselves. This was a serious defect.

Each state had its own tariff system and its own customhouses, and collected its own duties on goods brought into its ports from abroad. As each state was anxious to exploit this source of revenue for itself, it naturally framed its tariff regulations and tonnage laws in such a way as to attract foreign commerce to its own ports. And so it was with regard to commerce among the states themselves. Each framed its trade regulations with its neighbors according to its own selfish interests and without regard to the general good. The result was continual jealousies, dissensions, and sometimes reprisals and retaliations. New York levied an import duty on certain articles brought in from its less fortunate neighbors, Connecticut and New Jersey, and each in turn retaliated as best it could. For purposes of foreign and interstate commerce, each state was a nation itself, and the Confederation was a nonent.i.ty.

=The Annapolis Convention.=--The worst evils described above reached a climax in 1786, and the political leaders of America such as Hamilton and Was.h.i.+ngton were convinced that the government of the Confederation must either be revised or superseded entirely by a new system. In September, 1786, there a.s.sembled at Annapolis, Maryland, a convention of delegates from five states, namely, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia, called at the instance of the legislature of Virginia to take into consideration the subject of uniform trade regulation among the states, the lack of which had come to be one of the chief evils of the Confederation. So few states were represented that the convention decided not to enter upon the business for which it had been called, but instead determined to put forth an effort to bring about the a.s.sembling of a convention representing all the states and empowered to take into consideration the question of a general revision of the Articles of Confederation so as to render them more adequate to the needs of the nation. Accordingly, a resolution prepared by Alexander Hamilton, one of the delegates from New York, was adopted, calling on the states to appoint delegates to a convention to be held at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next, for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.

=The Const.i.tutional Convention of 1787; Personnel.=--In pursuance of this resolution, all the states except Rhode Island promptly appointed delegates, the failure of Rhode Island being due to her satisfaction with the Confederation, under which she enjoyed larger commercial advantages than she could hope to enjoy if the Articles were amended so as to take away from the states their control over commerce. Altogether fifty-five members sat in the convention at one time or another, though only thirty-nine signed the Const.i.tution. From Virginia came George Was.h.i.+ngton, Edmund Randolph, and James Madison; from Ma.s.sachusetts, Rufus King and Elbridge Gerry; from Connecticut, William Samuel Johnson and Roger Sherman; from New Hamps.h.i.+re, John Langdon; from New York, Alexander Hamilton; from New Jersey, William Livingston and William Paterson; from Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, Robert and Gouverneur Morris, Jared Ingersoll, and James Wilson; from Delaware, John d.i.c.kinson; and from South Carolina, John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Some of the delegates, as Benjamin Franklin, had been members of the Albany Congress as far back as 1754; some had been members of the Stamp Act Congress of 1765; most of them had served in the Continental or Confederation Congresses; and a number of them were signers of the Declaration of Independence. A great many of them had served in the legislatures of their states, and of the whole number there was not one who had not had some legislative experience.

=The Work of the Convention of 1787.=--When the convention had been duly organized, "plans" of a proposed const.i.tution were submitted by the delegations of several states, and these became the bases of the discussion which followed.

_The Virginia Plan._--The plan submitted by the Virginia delegation represented the views of delegates from the larger and more populous states, and the Const.i.tution as finally adopted embodied more largely the features of this plan than those of any other. The most important resolution of this plan was that a national government ought to be established consisting of a supreme legislative, judiciary, and executive. This resolution, adopted in committee of the whole, went directly to the root of the chief evil of the existing system, which contained no provision for an executive or a judicial department. It recognized also what has come to be a fundamental doctrine of American political science, namely, the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions.

_The New Jersey Plan._--The views of delegates from the small states were embodied in the New Jersey plan, which was laid before the convention by William Paterson. In general, the New Jersey plan provided for the retention of the princ.i.p.al features of the existing system, except that it proposed to enlarge the powers of Congress so as to make its authority more effective. This was all, in the judgment of the small states, that was necessary to remove the existing evils.

_The Problem of Representation in Congress._--The convention without much discussion decided that Congress should consist of two chambers or houses instead of one as was the case under the Articles of Confederation. This done, the next problem was to determine the basis of representation in each. This proved to be one of the most difficult tasks of the convention. The delegates from the large states insisted that representation in both houses should be based on population, so that a state such as Virginia with sixteen times the population of Georgia should have sixteen times as many representatives in Congress.

But to this system of proportional representation, the delegates from the small states objected. They maintained that the importance of a state was not to be measured by its population; that the states were sovereign political ent.i.ties, and when it came to partic.i.p.ation in the government of the nation they were all equal, large and small alike.

There was no more reason, said a delegate from one of the small states, why a large state should have more representation in Congress than that a large man should have more votes than a small man. For a time the differences seemed irreconcilable, and more than once it looked as if the convention would be disrupted on this question. The spirit of compromise triumphed, however, and it was finally agreed that the states should be represented equally in the senate but in proportion to their population in the house of representatives. As a result of this rule, Nevada to-day with a population of less than 100,000 sends the same number of senators to Was.h.i.+ngton as does New York with a population of some 10,000,000 souls. New York, on the other hand, sends forty-three representatives to Congress while Nevada sends but one. This was the first great compromise of the Const.i.tution.

_The Question of Counting the Slaves._--The next problem, which was almost equally difficult and which likewise had to be settled by compromise, was the question of whether the slaves should be counted in determining the population of the state for purposes of representation.

The delegates from the Southern states argued that slaves were an important factor in contributing to the wealth and power of the country and should, therefore, be counted for purposes of representation. To this argument the delegates from the Northern states, where the slave population was inconsiderable, objected on the ground that the slaves at law were treated merely as property and were not allowed to vote in the states where they resided. The discussion over this question was long and at times exciting, but finally a compromise was reached by which it was agreed that in determining the population for purposes of representation, all the white population but only three fifths of the slaves should be counted. At the same time it was decided that direct taxes among the states should be apportioned on the same basis. This compromise was favorable to the slave states in that it gave them an increased number of representatives, but it was unfavorable in that it increased their proportion of direct taxes. This is known as the three-fifths compromise.

_Federal Regulation of Commerce._--Another question which became the subject of heated discussion related to the national control of commerce. The Northern states wished Congress to be given the power to regulate commerce, but the Southern states, which at the time furnished the princ.i.p.al articles of export, feared that the power might be employed in such a manner as to injure their commerce, and might also be used to prohibit the slave trade and thus prevent the Southern planters from stocking their farms with laborers. They accordingly insisted that Congress should be expressly prohibited from interfering with the importation of slaves, and that it should be allowed to pa.s.s navigation acts only by a two-thirds majority of both houses. The whole matter was finally settled by a compromise which forbade Congress to interfere with the importation of slaves before the year 1808, but which allowed it to pa.s.s laws by a majority vote for the regulation of commerce. This was the last great compromise of the Const.i.tution.

_Other Compromises._--Many other questions were settled on the basis of compromise, though none of them occasioned so much discussion as the three mentioned above. Some have regretted that such compromises as that which allows the states equality of representation in the senate, as well as the one which allowed representation on the basis of the slave population, should have ever found their way into the Const.i.tution; but it is certain that without these compromises the Const.i.tution could never have been adopted.

After the settlement of the questions mentioned above, the work of framing the Const.i.tution proceeded with less difficulty. Finally, on September 17, the completed draft was signed by thirty-nine delegates, after which the convention adjourned. A few were absent and did not sign for that reason; others, such as Gerry of Ma.s.sachusetts and Mason of Virginia, disapproved of the Const.i.tution and refused to attach their signatures.

=Ratification of the Const.i.tution.=--Before adjourning, the convention resolved to send the draft of the Const.i.tution to Congress with the request that it should transmit the instrument to the legislatures of the several states and that these in turn should submit it to conventions for ratification. It was agreed, moreover, that when it should have been ratified by conventions in nine states it should go into effect between the states so ratifying.

_Opposition to the Const.i.tution._--As soon as the text of the Const.i.tution was made known to the people of the states, a flood of criticism was turned loose on it from almost every part of the country.

Those who approved the Const.i.tution and favored its ratification were called Federalists; those who opposed it were called Anti-Federalists.

The princ.i.p.al grounds of opposition were that in providing for a national government with extensive powers the Const.i.tution had sacrificed, to a large degree, the rights of the states; that such a government would prove dangerous to the liberties of the people; that the President for which the Const.i.tution provided might become a dictator and a tyrant; that the senate would be an oligarchy; and that the Federal Const.i.tution, unlike those of the states, contained no bill of rights for the protection of the people against governmental encroachment upon their inherent rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religious wors.h.i.+p, freedom of a.s.sembly, and the like. The last mentioned objection was removed by the a.s.surance on the part of the friends of the Const.i.tution that in the event of ratification they would endeavor to have the Const.i.tution amended at the earliest opportunity in such a way as to provide proper safeguards for the security of these rights, a promise which was carried out soon after the new government went into effect, by the adoption of the first ten amendments.

_Ratification by the States._--The first state to ratify the Const.i.tution was Delaware, one of the small states whose delegates in the Philadelphia convention had been strongly opposed to changing the existing system. This state ratified on December 6, 1787, without a dissenting vote. Its action was shortly followed by Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut, the last three of which were small states whose delegates in the Philadelphia convention had also been in the opposition. In Pennsylvania, however, the Const.i.tution was ratified with less unanimity and only after a fierce struggle in which the Anti-Federalists attacked almost every part of it. Ma.s.sachusetts was the next to ratify, although by a narrow majority, many of the leading citizens being opposed or indifferent. Maryland and South Carolina followed, and finally the favorable action of New Hamps.h.i.+re on June 21, 1788, insured its success, since nine states had now ratified and the Const.i.tution could be put into effect between the states that had so ratified. Four days later, before news of the ratification of New Hamps.h.i.+re was received, Virginia fell in line and ratified, in spite of the powerful opposition of Patrick Henry, Mason, Lee, and others.

Attention was now turned to New York, where the opponents of the Const.i.tution were believed to be in the majority. Geographically, New York was like a wedge which divided the Union into two parts, and hence its adhesion was especially desirable. Because of its favorable commercial position, the state enjoyed great advantages under the Articles of Confederation, since it could collect and turn into its own treasury the duties on all articles coming into its ports from abroad--a privilege of which it would be deprived under the Const.i.tution. There was good reason, therefore, why it should hesitate to exchange its position for one less favorable. When the state convention a.s.sembled to take action on the Const.i.tution, it was found that about two thirds of the members were at first opposed to ratification. Among the friends of the Const.i.tution, however, was Alexander Hamilton, whose powerful argument prevailed, and the Const.i.tution was ratified by a majority of three votes.

Rhode Island, like New York, enjoyed a favorable position under the Articles of Confederation, and was not in sympathy with the Const.i.tution. She refused to ratify and remained out of the Union until May, 1790, more than a year after the Const.i.tution had gone into effect.

North Carolina likewise refused to ratify until November, 1789.

_The Const.i.tution Goes into Effect._--When the ratification of the Const.i.tution had been a.s.sured, the old Congress of the Confederation enacted that the new government should go into effect on March 4, 1789.

In the meantime senators and representatives were elected as the first members of the new Congress, and George Was.h.i.+ngton was chosen President.

Thus the old Confederation pa.s.sed away and the new Republic entered upon its great career.

=The System of Government Created.=--The government created by the Const.i.tution is federal in character; that is, it consists of a system of national and state government under a common sovereignty. It is a republic as contradistinguished from such a limited monarchy as the British; that is, it is a government having a popularly elected executive rather than a t.i.tular executive who holds his office for life by hereditary tenure, who is politically irresponsible, and who governs through ministers who are responsible to the Parliament for his acts. It is also distinguished from confederate government or that form in which the states are practically sovereign and in which the general government is nothing but the agent of the states for the care of a very few things of common concern, such as defense against foreign aggression. Finally, the American system is one of popular rather than of aristocratic government, that is, it is government by the ma.s.ses of the people instead of government by the favored few.

=References.=--ANDREWS, Manual of the Const.i.tution, ch. ii. BEARD, American Government and Politics, ch. iii. BRYCE, The American Commonwealth (abridged edition), ch. ii. FISKE, Critical Period of American History, chs. vi-vii. HINSDALE, American Government, chs.

vii-xi.

=Doc.u.mentary Material.=--1. The Articles of Confederation. 2. The Const.i.tution.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. Trace the steps leading up to the meeting of the convention which framed the Const.i.tution.

2. How were the delegates to the convention chosen? What, in general, was the nature of their instructions? Who was the oldest delegate? the youngest? the most distinguished? Who of them were signers of the Declaration of Independence? Who acted as president of the convention?

3. Name the members of the convention who refused to sign the Const.i.tution.

4. Why did Hamilton, the author of the resolution calling the convention, take so little part in the work of making the Const.i.tution?

5. Why did not New York send its ablest men to the convention?

6. Did the convention organize itself into committees for the transaction of business?

7. What was the att.i.tude of some of the delegates from the Eastern states toward the West?