Articles Of Confederation Analysis

The Articles of Confederation provided for the basic structure of American government from 1781. The articles bound states together, but this tie was so weak that central government was impossible. "A national government should have the ability to enforce its authority, have a clear description of where the governing powers lie, a delineated leadership, and disposition of economic and foreign affairs. The Articles themselves were drafted at the beginning of the war, but all 13 states had to sign before they could be ratified."1 At last ratified in 1781, "the articles granted a basic system providing a unicameral congress in which each state had one vote, and was itself elected by the state legislatures. As there was no conventional executive,
committees oversaw weighty areas of concern. Measures of significance would require the agreement of all states."2 This essay discusses how the imperfections of the Articles of Confederation were corrected by the new constitution. In order to understand the magnitude and multitude of the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation that led to an ineffective United States response to effective state-building, it is first necessary to examine the intricacies of the Articles themselves.

Soon after the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress drafted and approved the Articles of Confederation. The states ratified its thirteen articles, which established the name, "The United States of America,"3 and created a confederacy in which the sovereign states agreed to enter into "a firm league of friendship with each other."4 The choice of the words, "league of friendship," was intentional on the part of the founders, who did not want to produce a well-ordered, central government. In their opinion, the sovereign states were "order-centered" in themselves. 5 The intent was to form a government that starkly contrasted the tyrannical, central authority of Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence, by its very nature, formed the colonies into a nation that abandoned that tyrannical government. So, it is quite understandable that the founders were eager to avoid any great similarities to the British system, choosing instead to organize a much weaker central government.6

In the Articles of Confederation, the states were considered "the soul of [the] confederation."7 Therefore, the intentionally weak, "confederal" government, run by an elected congress without strong chief executive, dealt with a very limited range of concerns common to the sovereign states.8 Relying heavily on the voluntary cooperation of the states,9 the Confederation, according to James Madison, gave each state the right to "dissolv[e] the Union altogether" if any state "breach[ed]…any of the articles of the Confederation."10 This encouraged the idea of a "league of friendship," rather than the idea of a unified "nation".

The emphasis on voluntary cooperation and the right of states to dissolve the Confederation at any time were only few of the provisions that reflected the fact that the states were the "soul" of the Confederacy. "The greatest financial weakness of the articles as a structure for reliable national government, was the lack of an independent congressional income."11 Without it, congress could only remain subordinate and weak. Many however, were fearful that a strengthened congress would threaten the sovereignty and independence of the states. Kate Rowland remarked, "When the same set of men holds both the sword and the purse, there is an end to liberty."12 Congress could only requisition the states, which then if they chose, collected taxes. The public had no direct link to congress for financial affairs. There was no single national currency because the states could coin money. Congress could not raise an army without consent of the states. Each state created its own judiciary. There was no regulation of foreign trade. There was no regulation of intrastate trade.13 These inherent political governing and financial defects had to lead to the demise of the Articles of Confederation, or the union itself would have disintegrated. "The result of these observations to an intelligent mind must clearly be this, that if it be possible to any rate to construct a federal government capable of regulating the common concerns and preserving the general tranquility, it must be founded…"14

In May 1787, the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia. "The delegates who assembled …had to establish a national government powerful enough to prevent the young nation from dissolving but not so powerful that it would crush individual liberty."15 What they were attempting was a revision of the Articles. After much debate, conflict and compromise, on September 17, 1787, the delegates stopped debating 16 "The delegates had gone far. They had disregarded Congress 's instruction to do no more than revise the Articles."17

The founders ' response to their charter was to scrap the Articles of Confederation all together, and create an entirely new governmental instrument. The Constitution would not merely cobble together amendments intending to "fix" the problems with the Articles it would rather replace the confederacy.

What the framers devised was a bi-cameral form of congress reflecting their belief in a balanced government. "The House of Representatives represents the people. The Senate represents the states. The President is indirectly elected by an electoral college which mixes together national and federal elements; his powers, largely undefined, reflect the influence of the good example of George Washington and the bad example of George III. The structure of the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts was left to be shaped by whatever judiciary statute would be enacted by Congress. The Constitution also included compromises over slavery-the most famous being the three-fifths clause, the fugitive slave clause, and the slave trade clause. It should be noted as well, however, that the words slave or slavery appear nowhere in the document. The Supremacy clause made the Constitution the law of the land." 18 Congress was given the power to tax, the power to regulate inter/intrastate trade and foreign trade. Only the national government was given the power to coin money. The national government was not empowered to act directly upon individuals. The states retained a fair amount of power.

"Just as it took time and painful political experimentation for the colonists to break with Great Britain and embrace independence, so too, it took time for Americans to think of themselves as (in Alexander Hamilton 's words in The Federalist No 85) "a nation without a national government"- something he decried as "an awful spectacle"- and to take steps to remedy that defect.
Again, as with independence, there were no guarantees undergirding this process of national development; the outcomes were neither assured nor foreordained. Rather, the Americans had to do some heavy political lifting to prepare the political ground for reform of their government, and some heavy intellectual and theoretical lifting as well to devise the mechanisms and institutions that they felt ought to be put into place as a new national constitution."19 The impact of the Articles of Confederation on the Constitutional Convention of 1787 is underlined "by more than 150 years of conventional wisdom which deemed the Articles to be a total failure. Not until 1940, did historian Merrill Jensen - in his first book, The Articles of Confederation (1940)-set out to redeem the articles from the strictures of conventional wisdom. Today we have a clear-eyed view of the strengths and weaknesses of the Articles and of the achievements of the government under the Articles as well as the
draw-backs"20.

The Articles provided a legal mechanism through which the desires of a number of moneyed interests could hijack the construction of a new national government. As spun by Madison in The Federalist No 40. "Let them that declare whether it was of most importance to the happiness of the people of America that the Articles of Confederation should be disregarded, and an adequate government be provided, and the Union preserved; or that an adequate government should be omitted, and the Articles of Confederation preserved." From a charter written at the Annapolis Convention of 1786, providing for the _alterations and provisions,_ 21, to amend the Articles, we were given an illegal, Federalist koan to property and aristocratic _civic_ rights. What we have today (thanks to Reconstruction and the New Deal) is a more thoroughly fleshed out idea about just how equally we were all created.

"In framing a government which is to be

administered by men over men, the great

difficulty lies in this: you must first

enable the government to control the

governed; and in the next place oblige it to

control itself"

James Madison, The Federalist No 51

"The miracle in Philadelphia remains just that-there can be no denying that the framers divined the future course of American history and came down with governing formulae that deserve our continuing respect."22 So, they threw out the Articles of Confederation, our framework during the war, and drafted a newer, better, document drawn up from the compromised best intellectual, abstract and political ideas of the men in attendance. The central government was strengthened, and codified. From what many believe (beginning with Beard) was an illegal act of overthrowing of the rule of law (Articles of Confederation) the resulting remarkable imperfect instrument for governing was created. The Constitution was put up for ratification.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Articles of Confederation,

Raoul Berger, Federalism The Founders ' Design, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987

Bruce Ackerman, We The People: Transformations, Harvard Univ. Press 1998

Burns, Peltason, Cronin, Magleby, Government By The People, Prentice Halll 2000, 11-18

William Dudley, ed., The Creation of the Constitution: Opposing Viewpoints, Greenhaven Press, 1995, 40

Hamilton, Jay, Madison The Federalist Papers, Rossiter Ed. Mentor 1999

Robert Hoffert, A Politics of Tensions: The Articles of Confederation and American Political Ideas,

University of Colorado Press 1992, 40

Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History

of American Revolution, 1774-1781 , University of Wisconsin Press 1940, 109

Herbert Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For, University of Chicago Press, 1981, 12

1 William Dudley, ed., The Creation of the Constitution: Opposing Viewpoints, Greenhaven Press, 1995, 40

2 William Dudley, ed., The Creation of the Constitution: Opposing Viewpoints, Greenhaven Press, 1995, 40

3 Articles of Confederation, art 1

4 Articles of Confederation, art 3

5 Robert Hoffert, A Politics of Tensions: The Articles of Confederation and American Political Ideas, University of Colorado Press 1992, 40

6 Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of American Revolution, 1774-1781 , University of Wisconsin Press 1940, 109

7 Herbert Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For, University of Chicago Press, 1981, 12

8 Ibid., 9

9 Ibid.
10 William Dudley, ed., The Creation of the Constitution: Opposing Viewpoints, Greenhaven Press, 1995, 40

11 Raoul Berger, Federalism The Founders ' Design, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987, 23

12 Merrill Jensen, The New Nation New York 1950, 410

13 Robert Hoffert, A Politics of Tensions: The Articles of Confederation and American Political Ideas, University of Colorado Press 1992, 64

14 Hamilton, Jay, Madison The Federalist Papers, Rossiter Ed. Mentor 1999, No
16

15 Burns, Peltason, Cronin, Magleby, Government By The People, Prentice Halll 2000, 11-18

16 Ibid., 11-18

17 Ibid., 11-18

18 Raoul Berger, Federalism The Founders ' Design, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987 17

19 Bruce Ackerman, We The People: Transformations, Harvard Univ. Press 1998, 35-37

20 Ibid., 35-37

21 Hamilton, Jay, Madison The Federalist Papers, Rossiter Ed. Mentor 1999 No 40

22 Bruce Ackerman, We The People: Transformations, Harvard Univ. Press 1998 35-37

MALVENE COLLINS

POLSCI 216

19 JULY 2001

QUESTION ONE

EXPLAIN THE IMPACT OF THE ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787. HOW WERE THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE ARTICLES 'CORRECTED ' WITH THE NEW CONSTITUTION?