by Ray Raphael
On September 5, 1787, while the Federal Convention was still in session, a writer for the Pennsylvania Gazette put it this way: “The Year 1776 is celebrated for a revolution in favor of Liberty. The year 1787, it is expected, will be celebrated with equal joy, for a revolution in favor of Government.”5
The Full Story
From the very beginning, Anglo American colonists were wedded to the idea of local self-government. “We, whose names are underwritten,” wrote forty-one male passengers aboard the Mayflower in 1620, “do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better ordering and preservation.” For “the general good of the Colony,” these signers of the Mayflower Compact agreed to create “just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers … unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”6
For the next century and a half, English subjects in Massachusetts gathered in town meetings to decide for themselves how to prevent hogs from digging up the streets or keep cougars at bay. They also weighed in on issues affecting the whole province, such as deciding on a royal governor’s salary or whether to tax the consumption of wine and spirits. Once the town meeting arrived at a decision, it instructed its representative to the provincial assembly to speak for the town. In 1766 Worcester told its representative to oppose tax-supported Latin schools, which were of no use to ordinary citizens, and the following year it commanded him to “use your influence to obtain a law to put an end to that unchristian and impolitick practice of making slaves of the humane species in this province.” He should “adhere to these our instructions, and the spirit of them, as you regard our friendship, and would avoid our just resentment.”7
Although colonists to the south of New England did not hold town meetings, free whites nonetheless established and benefited from representative government. In 1619 local communities in Virginia selected representatives who gathered as the House of Burgesses, a legislative assembly that passed laws and levied taxes. Other colonies created similar assemblies. Throughout the colonial era these bodies tussled with royal governors, who admitted that they represented the Crown first and the people second, as they naturally would in a monarchical empire. “My firm attachment to his majesty’s person family & government challenges my first attention,” said New Hampshire’s governor Benning Wentworth. “My next pursuit shall be the peace & prosperity of his majesty’s subjects of this Province.”8
Preferring their own representative bodies and resenting the failure of authorities to recognize and defend English liberties, many colonists ignored or resisted the dictates of Crown and Parliament and the governors who administered them. In 1769, retaliating against Virginia legislators’ expressed opposition to British colonial policies, Virginia’s Lord Botetourt dissolved the House of Burgesses—to no avail. Members simply moved down the street to the Raleigh Tavern, where they continued to conduct business under their own authority. In 1774, in response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament outlawed Massachusetts town meetings, but angry residents of Salem met just a block from the office of the royal governor, General Thomas Gage. When Gage arrested seven men for calling the meeting, three thousand local farmers showed up in an instant and forced him to set the prisoners free. After the successful defiance of Governor Gage in Salem, patriots in neighboring Danvers held another meeting “and continued it two or three howers longer than was necessary, to see if he [Gage] would interrupt ’em.” He didn’t. Town meetings would continue, Parliament and the royal governor notwithstanding.9
Insistence on local government was a major cause of the War for Independence. Long before the Second Continental Congress declared independence, local communities stated they were ready to make that definitive move. On October 4, 1774—exactly twenty-one months before the adoption of the congressional Declaration of Independence—the town meeting of Worcester, Massachusetts, instructed its representative to the provincial congress to push for a new and independent government. In the spring of 1776, immediately preceding the final break from British rule, local and state bodies passed at least ninety other declarations, each one stating that it was time for the United Colonies of America to rule themselves. These resolutions and declarations did not mean, however, that a new central government should call all the shots. Many of these earlier declarations of independence insisted that whereas Congress must assume new powers, the states must retain “the sole and exclusive right” to govern their own internal affairs. People were not about to relinquish any of their political independence, even to other Americans.10
So yes, absolutely, Americans in 1776 “knew all too well the abuse rendered by a large, centralized government” and did not wish to replicate the proto-British, top-down model. But that was 1776. By 1787, much had changed.11
• • •
Our national government, in embryonic form, began in September 1774, when delegates from twelve separate and distinct colonies assembled in Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. We call that initial meeting the First Continental Congress, but people didn’t know what to call it then. Virginia’s colonists spoke of “a general congress of deputies from all the colonies”; in Massachusetts people talked of “a meeting of committees from the several Colonies on this Continent”; and in Connecticut citizens referred, in a confused manner, to “such congress, or convention of commissioners, or committees of the several Colonies in British America.” In any case, when rebellious colonists called this meeting a “congress,” they did not mean an actual government, but something more akin to the county conventions of the Committees of Correspondence and the provincial congresses that had been trying to coordinate local resistance efforts. It passed resolutions, not laws. After less than two months, the “deputies” adjourned, and they would not meet again until the following spring, more than six months later.12
By the time that Second Continental Congress convened in May of 1775, British soldiers had marched on Lexington and Concord, local militiamen had driven them back, and a homegrown army of New Englanders had formed a cordon around Boston to keep British officers from staging any further assaults. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress, another makeshift group lacking governmental credentials, was running this army—unwillingly. It petitioned the Continental Congress: “As the army, collecting from different colonies, is for the general defence of the rights of America, we would beg leave to suggest to your consideration, the propriety of your taking the regulation and general direction of it.” Delegates from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other colonies outside New England could hardly refuse. The New England Army suddenly became the Continental Army, with George Washington, a Virginian, in command, appointed to that post by the Second Continental Congress.13
Suddenly in the business of administering an army, Congress needed to raise money, procure and deliver supplies, and perform other tasks generally undertaken by governments. It did this in two ways. It issued its own money (even though it was not even a government), and it asked (not required) each of the separate states to kick in.
Over a year later, on July 2, 1776, Congress resolved “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States” and “that a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.” Some states had already adopted permanent or provisional constitutions, some were in the process of doing so, and all assumed that since they were no longer under British authority, they would be forming their own new governments. Congress, though, was not contemplating a sovereign government but “a plan of confederation,” to be submitted to the sovereign states. What form would that take? Indeed, what exactly was Congress or, for that matter, the United States of America, this newly created entity?
Nobody had clear answers to these questions, and all recognized that precise resolutions to sensitive issues might shatter the fragile consensus holding the states together. Nonetheless, Congress h
ad to come up with a plan of some sort. It established a committee, which appointed John Dickinson, the celebrated author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, a prewar critique of British imperial policies, to write an initial draft.
When Dickinson first presented his work, it contained a curious provision: “All charges of war and all other expences that shall be incurr’d for the general wellfare and allowed by the Union in General Congress, shall be defrayed out of a Common Treasury, which shall be supplied by the several Colonies in proportion to the number of [blank] in each Colony.” How should that blank be filled in? If expenses were to be apportioned by population, should slaves be included? Northern states, which permitted slavery but had few slaves, said of course, while southern states, in which enslaved people counted for significant portions of the population, said never. If property were the base, should improvements be counted as well as land? Northern states, with more improvements, said never, while southern states thought it was a good idea. Since each colony had much to gain or lose according to how the mysterious blank would be filled in, members of Congress bickered.14
Other issues arose. Should Congress control western settlement? Maryland, with no state claims in the West, wanted that, but Virginia, which claimed land clear across the continent to the “South Sea” (Pacific Ocean), said it would never accept any plan that threatened its rights to those lands. Should each state have an equal voice in Congress? Tiny Delaware, Dickinson’s home state, said yes, but Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, the most populous states, said no.
Months passed and no settlement was reached. Local interests superceded the national interest. Not until November 1777, when France refused to lend the United States any money unless there was a United States, did Congress finally approve the Articles of Confederation and send it to the states for ratification. It would take more than three years for all thirteen states to sign on.
Throughout most of the Revolutionary War, the United States remained under the interim management of the Second Continental Congress. Although Congress was expected to administer the Continental Army, it possessed no means of raising money on its own. The state governments were Congress’s milch cows, as people said in those days. When the army needed more soldiers, Congress asked each state to field a specific number of men. It also set quotas for beef, flour, gunpowder, blankets, tent canvas, and other supplies, but if a state did not come up with its fair share, there was no enforcement mechanism. Soldiers would simply go without.
As the war dragged on, the currency Congress issued lost more than 99 percent of its value, and by the end, in order to remain solvent, Congress granted full authority over the nation’s finances to a single individual (see chapter 2). Only with considerable help from abroad and begrudging sacrifice by unpaid soldiers did Congress manage to keep an army in the field.
On March 1, 1781, after France threatened to withdraw military support unless the states pulled it together, the thirteenth state, Maryland, finally approved the Articles of Confederation. At last there was a nation of sorts, but calling “The United States of America” at that point an actual nation is a stretch, and few people at the time used that term. The Articles themselves did not use the word “nation,” preferring the term “firm league of friendship.” In structure this league of friendship differed little from a military alliance, and most of its provisions concerned either relations with other nations or mechanisms for refereeing disputes between the states. The Articles did grant Congress the power to establish a minimal national infrastructure—creating post offices, regulating the land and naval forces “when in service of the United States,” and fixing standards for coinage, weights, and measures—but it provided no means to raise revenues other than requisitions issued to the states and no mechanisms to enforce compliance. In short, the Articles of Confederation tread lightly around the authority of the states, and Article II made this very clear: “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.”
Could this system work? Would a “firm league of friendship” among otherwise sovereign and independent states with diverse and competing interests suffice?
In October of 1781, seven months after the Articles were ratified, a French fleet and a combined American and French land force trapped General Charles Cornwallis and seven thousand British soldiers at Yorktown, Virginia, forcing their surrender. Although Britain still had some forty thousand troops stationed in America and King George III wanted to continue the fight, its army and navy soon suffered other setbacks in what had become a global war against France, Spain, and the Netherlands. To preserve its empire elsewhere, Parliament finally decided to pull back from North America. However constrained and beleaguered, Congress and the army it supported had prevailed in a war of attrition.
Yet in the minds of some leading political figures, peace presented its own set of challenges. No longer facing a common enemy, Georgians and Virginians and Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers were less willing to sacrifice for the common good. “War is indeed a rude, rough nurse to infant states,” said Gouverneur Morris in August 1782, fearful that a treaty of peace would prove a setback to nation building. Only “a continuation of the war” would “convince people of the necessity of obedience to common counsel for general purposes.”15
George Washington also craved a dynamic federal government. He knew from firsthand experience how a disjointed administration by Congress and thirteen quarrelsome states had sapped the nation’s strength for eight long wartime years, from 1775 to 1783. Throughout that time, he had begged Congress for money, men, and supplies, while Congress in turn begged the largely autonomous states to make good on the requisitions issued to them. If America continued on such a course, it would fail, he felt. Just before retiring from the military, while he still had the attention of his fellow countrymen, “The General,” as everybody called him, offered strong words on the subject. On June 8, 1783, in a circular letter to the thirteen states, called at the time his “legacy,” he sounded an urgent tone: “According to the system of policy the states shall adopt at this moment, they will stand or fall, and by their confirmation or lapse, it is yet to be decided, whether the Revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse. With this conviction of the importance of the present crisis, silence in me would be a crime.”16
Then, pulling no punches, in language that was emotional and persuasive, he presented his own “system of policy,” a broad outline for “an indissoluble union of the states under one federal head.” Americans must “forget their local prejudices and policies,” he said, and “make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the community.” That was the lecturing part, what the public might expect from the country’s most exalted leader, but Washington went further: “There should be lodged somewhere a supreme power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the confederated republic, without which the union cannot long endure.” By “supreme power” he meant neither God nor an individual executive, but a national government, a “supreme authority” over and above the separate states. With those words, Washington retired from public life.17
The nation did not heed Washington’s advice. As Gouverneur Morris suspected, people saw less need for “common counsel for general purposes” when no external enemy threatened. As each state struggled to pay its debts and otherwise recover from wartime disruptions, politics turned local. Within the Confederation Congress, those favoring a stronger general government lost power to men who considered themselves true republicans—not that it really mattered, for Congress was conducting very little business in any case.
Regional interests came to a head when John Jay sought permission from Congress to negotiate an agreement with Spain that would win special trading status for the United States but reli
nquish American claims to shipping rights on the Mississippi River. The agreement, which would have benefited the commercially oriented northeastern states but hurt the westward-leaning southern states, bogged down in Congress. The United States could not settle on a uniform commercial policy.
Washington watched all this from the sidelines, and in October 1785, he grumbled in a private letter to James Warren: “Illiberality, jealousy, & local policy mix too much in all our public councils for the good government of the Union. In a word, the Confederation appears to me to be little more than an empty sound, and Congress a nugatory body…. [W]e are descending into the valleys of confusion and darkness…. The necessity therefore of a controuling power is obvious, and why it should be with-held is beyond comprehension.”18
In Washington’s view, the descent continued. Britain required that all American debts to British subjects be paid in specie, setting off a chain reaction that undercut the American economy. During the economic downturn that started in 1785, creditors and tax collectors demanded payment in hard-to-come-by coins of gold and silver. Unable to meet such demands, hard-pressed citizens, and primarily farmers, insisted that state governments relieve the burdens they faced. In some states, such as Rhode Island, they forced legislatures to print paper money, soften enforcement for the collection of debts, allow taxes to be paid in the form of old horses or small parcels of worthless pine barrens, and so on. Washington and his fellow nationalists feared that such maneuvers would jeopardize the nation’s credit and its future. Indebted farmers, meanwhile, thought that some state governments were not acting quickly or vigorously enough to protect their interests. They rebelled.