Articles of Confederation: US History

• The Articles of Confederation served as an important precursor to the 1787 Constitution.
• The Articles functioned as the first national constitution of the United States.
• The Articles reflected early American political theory and were a logical extension to the 1787 Constitution.
• Much of the content of the Articles was later incorporated into the U.S. Constitution.

Antifederalists and the Articles

• American history has been unkind to the "Antifederalists".
• Those who wrote the Articles of Confederation were relegated to the ranks of mere opposition.
• Academics have largely dismissed them as "men of little faith."
• Recent efforts to comprehensively recover the American founding have only marginally improved views of the Antifederalists.
• These Antifederalists worked from a coherent, positive view of politics.
• Antifederalist ideals stressed liberty, popular sovereignty, majority rule, deliberative processes and localism.
• Antifederalists wrote two dozen state constitutions, successfully fought a war of liberation, and generated many political writings.
• Material from Antifederalists eventually went into the U.S. Constitution.

The Importance of Whigs

• Essays against the Constitution would disappear when compared to their total political writing.
• The Antifederalists are inappropriately remembered for this small portion of their work.
• The collected writings of the Antifederalists dated back to the 1760s.
• Writings constituted mainstream American political thought before 1787.
• The Americans writing during these three decades would probably have called themselves "Whigs".
• Whig theorists defined the mainstream of American political thought.
• The Federalists had to build and renovate, partially based on Whiggism.
• The Antifederalists added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.
• The Antifederalist presence at the Constitutional Convention forced the Federalists to abandon a unitary government.
• This resulted in what is now termed a "federal republic."
• The Antifederalists (Whigs) are central to any discussion of the origins of federalism.
• The importance of the Articles of Confederation has not been widely recognized.
• The "boomlet" of publications didn't happen during the bicentennial celebration of the Articles of Confederation.

Articles Underestimated

• Aside from Merrill Jensen's work published in 1940, and three books that deal with the Continental Congress, there is only a special issue of Publius devoted to a discussion of the Articles of Confederation.
• The Articles have been written off as unimportant and uninteresting.
• The Articles should be placed more securely as the first national constitution of the United States, as part of first national compact.
• The Articles should be the instrument upon which the present United States Constitution was directly built.

Early Plans for Union in America

• Political relationships in colonial America had three levels: intracolonial, intercolonial, and colony-mother country.
• The solution tended to be federalism in the first and third instances.
• The federalism was unconscious, not derived from theory, and had no name to describe it.
• The colonies were each a collection of towns or counties rather than a single entity.
• Plymouth Colony had seven towns, each with its own town meeting.
• These towns had to coordinate policy and control becasue Charters only recognized a single entity, a colony.
• They coordinated by writing federal documents.
• Examples of federal documents include the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639).
• Another example is the Acts and Orders of Rhode Island (1647).
• These created a common, colony-wide government with limited powers while preserving town governments.
• Both town and colony governments were often derived in form and substance from covenants.
• Covenants were based upon what is now known as "federal theology."
• Colonial governments functioned effectively as federal polities, having been built up from below.
• Relations between the colonies and England revolved around two key provisions found in most charters.
• The first permitted the colonists to form and operate their own local governments.
• The second provision required that laws passed by these local governments not be contrary to the laws passed by the English Parliament.
• These arrangements were based upon needs of practicality.
• A minimum two-month round trip existed between the colonies and England.
• The colonies could not be run from the mother country.
• The Crown could not use the military to run the colonies if it wished to attract settlers.
• People migrating often owned partial stake in the colony and thus had voting rights.
• England's preoccupation with the Civil War and French expansionism, led to the charter provisions.
• These described a relationship between colony and mother country that was federal in operation, although not federal by design.

Lack of Interest United America

• Post-independence Americans would turn to a federal solution for interstate relations.
• The general lack of interest existed during the colonial era in combining the colonies under a common government.
• This left the colonists with almost no practical experience at continent-wide political institutions before 1754.
• Benjamin Franklin worked out one of the first serious designs for an intercolonial government.
• Franklin's plan was much closer to a federal system than the Articles of Confederation.
• English colonists lacked interest to unite their colonies under a continent-wide government.
• A considerable number of plans existed despite lack of interest.
• The New England Confederation (1643) was created by the colonists and was the first such plan.
• Typical for plans written in America, it was generated by the need for common security and essentially preserved the independence of local governments.
• The 1660 Commission of the Council for Foreign Plantations was typical for plans of union devised in Britain.
• It was predicated upon mercantilist principles of economic development for the colonies and enhanced revenue for Britain but was indifferent to institutions in place.
• Attempts at region-wide confederations, such as the New England Confederation, seem a natural extension, as does a confederation uniting all of the colonies.
• Whigs showed devotion to local control made the Whigs highly resistant to confederations larger than a single state.
• Ideas and plans for a united America were not simply "pie-in-the-sky" creations.
• Each addressed the issues that would continue to exercise national politics through the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
• The Albany Plan of Union is briefly examined.
• In June 1754, the English Board of Trade called for a congress of American colonies to discuss problems of mutual defense.

Albany Plan of Union

• Britain was on the verge of a major war with France.
• The war was expected to spill over into North America.
• It was felt that without a collective effort, the colonists would be no match for the French, especially with their Indian allies.
• Delegates were supposed to negotiate with the Iroquois Confederacy and thus undercut the French advantage.
• Seven colonies sent delegates to Albany: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
• Negotiations with the Iroquois were not successful.
• The Iroquois later sided with the French.
• A litt appreciated effect of the meeting was to bring the colonists in direct contact with the successful Iroquois confederation.
• Three plans for uniting the English colonies in a similar confederation were presented at the Albany congress.
• Benjamin Franklin wrote one of these plans.
• The plan was adopted by the congress as its major recommendation termed the Albany Plan of Union.
• This not only set a precedent for united colonial congresses dealing with common problems.
• It provided the first version of a united colonial government arrived at by a trans-colonial political process.
• This was similar to process used during the Stamp Act crisis and then the Continental Congresses during the 1770s.
• Unlike the Iroquois model, Franklin's plan did not provide a veto for each colony.
• It was a logical extension of the American colonial pattern of political organization.
• An executive was appointed by the crown and termed the "president general".
• The legislature was called the Grand Council.
• The Grand Council controlled the purse strings, although all legislation had to be signed by the president general as well.
• The typical colonial pattern of a royal governor locked in combat with a legislature elected by the colonists was reproduced on the "national" plane.
• The legislatures had gained the upper hand in the colonies, there was no reason to suspect that anything but the same would occur eventually on the trans-colonial plane.
• The united legislature was to write and regulate treaties with the Indians.
• The legislature was to regulate trade with the Indians.
• The legislature was to provide for troops, forts, ships, and anything else required for the defense of any colony
• A colony's legislature was required to raise troops within it.
• The legislature was to create and regulate new settlements until their own government was granted by charter from the king.
• The legislature would raise money through duties and taxes "collected with the least inconvenience to the people; rather discouraging luxury than loading industry with unnecessary burdens."
• Proposed legislatures were designed superior to that of the forthcoming Articles.
• The representatives were to be apportioned according to financial contributions of each colony.
• Colonies would have been put in the position of arguing for a decrease in their respective representation every time they asked for a lower tax levy.
• The smaller states would have been overrepresented because they had disproportionately fewer citizens in low income-producing frontier situations.
• The apportionment proposed for the first three years until tax contributions could be worked out illustrated shrewd calculations that Franklin had made about probable future politics in a united legislature.
• It was possible for four out of the eleven colonies to create a majority.
• The three largest colonies were each centerpiece of a different political subculture.
• The most likely coalitions were based on a New England coalition centered around Massachusetts, a center coalition built around Pennsylvania, and a southern coalition centered around Virginia.
• Pennsylvania was likely to lead the swing coalition, and thus, likely be disproportionately influential.

Division of Regions

• The division between the three regions suggested by Franklin would later be reproduced almost exactly in the Continental Congress and Articles of Confederation.
• Though each state had one vote and parity would be 4-5-4 instead of 16-16-16, Franklin's proposal remained politically astute for the long run.
• The seats apportioned by Franklin to the southern colonies in 1754 matched what they would have been given using a population base with slaves counted as roughly three-fifths of a person.

Albany Plan's Failure

• The Albany Plan of Union was rejected by the crown as undercutting its authority.
• The plan also failed to gain acceptance of colonial legislatures.
• Legislatures were unwilling to sacrifice any of their power.
• Whigs showed with respect to "national" union.
• Preference was always given to local control over political entities at a distance.
• The same perspective that later fueled a break with Britain, when perceived as tyrannical.
• The same fuel suspected that any continental government would be a source of danger.
• The American Whigs opted for something much closer to the Iroquois Confederation instead of their own state systems as represented by Franklin's Plan.
• Franklin's Plan was proposed as an alternative during the debate in the Continental Congress.
• It would have overcome the weaknesses in the national government.
• The need for the Federalist Constitution of 1787 would stall out if if it was adopted.
• The form of government proposed by Franklin would have evolved into a parliamentary system.

Articles of Conferderation

• On 7 October 1777, the Continental Congress voted on representation.
• States should have one vote for every 50,000 white inhabitants and was only voted for by Pennsylvania and Virginia.
• Representation of one vote for every 30,000 inhabitants was then proposed but only Virginia voted.
• John Adams cast one of Massachusetts' three votes in favor.
• Representation proportional to a state's contribution in tax revenue was proposed.
• Virginia voted in favor and John Adams cast his minority vote in support of the proposal.
• Proposal to give each state one vote and only the Virginia delegation voted no.
• The Virginia vote, the desire of a large state to double its proportional representation fails to account for the support from other states.
• John Witherspoon clarified opposition to proportional representation.
• The national government should act upon the states rather than directly upon individuals within a state.
• Individuals were seen as part of a community, it makes little sense to act upon anything other than the community.
• Acting upon individuals implied destruction of the community.
• American Whigs showed the most committment to the national level due to communitarian stance.
• Witherspoon distinguished between a "federal union," and an "incorporating" union.
• The "federal union" had those composing it remain independent.
• An "incorporating" union created a new community of all the individuals in the nation.
• John Adams saw the need for an opposite model and the confederacy as creating a new community, a new entity.
• He used the metaphor of melting separate pieces of metal into a common mass such that “we shall no longer retain our separate individuality, but become a single individual as to all questions submitted to the confederacy"
• Adams backed Franklin's position on representation and taxation being distributed proportionally and that analysts did not produce a large-state/small-state split.

Benjamin Rush

• Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania pressed the same position using another Whig argument (common good).
• Noted future Federalists were working out the shift from traditional Whig theory to a theory more suitable for national union.
• Experience with the operation of the Articles were not yet strong enough to prevail.
• Experience with the operations helped make the critical change of government operate directly upon individuals.
• Roger Sherman began by supporting the states-as-communities position by saying: “We are representatives of States, not individuals."
• The Continental Congress had resolved on 11 June 1776 to create a committee to write up articles of confederation and was adopted 15 November 1777.
• On 26 June 1778 a form for ratification by the states was presented.
• Maryland was the last to ratify was on 1 March 1781.
• The next day Congress assembled for the first time.

A National Constitution

• The Continental Congress assembled under The Articles, America's first national constitution.
• The text of the document looked both forward and backward.
• The first line said "we the undersigned," the traditional style for opening foundation documents since the Mayflower Compact (1620).
• There was a list of signatures grouped by state in the form commonly used during the colonial era.
• The fact that the agreement was made by delegates of states was underscored by listing the states in geographical order from north to south, not once but twice.
• "The United States of America" was written for the first time in American documentary history.
• Article II noted that each state retains its sovereignty as well as any powers not expressly granted to the United States.
• Emphasis was made so heavily on its status as a compact between the states.

Colonial Echoes

• Articles III and IV referred to the states entering into "a firm league of friendship" to "perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse."
• The preamble called the document "articles of Confederation and perpetual Union."
• Echoes of colonial documents existed.
• Article IV restricted Congress being restricted to no less/more than 2/7 members in the "range suggested by Franklin in the Albany Plan of Union in 1754".
• Franklin's idea for three-year terms was also echoed.
• No delegate could serve more than three one-year terms over any six-year period, which in practice usually meant that the average delegate served for three years and then was off for three years.

Other Article Provisions

• The prohibition on multiple office-holding, were common provisions in state constitutions.
• Of great interest was the extent to which the Articles of Confederation contained what was later found in the 1787 Constitution.
• It would be more accurate to say that the 1787 document was wrapped around an amended Articles of Confederation.
• Section 2 of Article IV noted "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States" demonstrating an expression of federalism becaus every American is both a a citizen of US/state.
• The Articles set up a national court system in Article IX.
• This court system functioned only to adjudicate disputes between states, not individuals as the Confederal Congress could pass no laws affecting them.
• The power given by the Constitution to affect individuals directly, the notion of dual citizenship was revolutionized.
• The invention of dual citizenship structured the way in which national citizenship operated later in the US Constitution in the basis of federalism.

US Constitution's Existence

• Had there not been the Articles of Confederation, there would be no dual citizenship and the US Constitution would not have taken its present form.
• The Articles was like a vessel waiting to be filled up.
• Aside from the narrower grant of power to the national Congress, and a unicameral legislature where each state had one vote, the Articles differed from the US Constitution.
• US Constitution had a Committee of the States.
• The Committee was comprised of one delegate from each state -and a court that was directly a creature of the Congress.
• State constitutions were characterized by a weak executive and often under sway of committees/legislatures.
• The Articles represented a straightforward extension of Whig political thought to national government.
• They also represented limited grant of power and described styles of institution.
• The looseness of the confederation was similar to the Iroquois but otherwise nine states was required for legislation, and approval by nine of the states in the Committee of the States was required to execute said powers.

Extended Republic

• Madison did much to make himself known as the "extended republic".
• Analysts credit the notion of the extended republic's modernnesss for being at the heart of the Madisonian model.
• Two constitutional provisions produced the republic for the U.S. Constitution: the need for nine states to approve before ratifying and the provision of states approval.
• Why they picked nine instead of seven for a majority is unknown because that would cause an issue for nations of states.
• They decided the New nation would have had to have at least three of the four largest states being Massachussets, NY, and Pennsylvania with an exception of Virginia.
• Number nine provided an excellent chance for for three of these states for inclusion.
• Political Calculations resulted in the belief that nine states were needed.
• People started to expect 9 as the standard and was structured this way with approval as that nine states was two thirds majority.
• This resulted in the understanding that the most the Framers would accept leading to what Americans had to learn for the Continental Basis.

Experience & Conclusion

• The continental basis was necessary which had a government and what was needed.
• It also demonstrated that the US should't require the power to apply which resulted in the ability to take over for critical decision.
• The experience to add new parts was innovative aspect.
• History has shown nation to add new land but not to have said part be conquered.
• This required extra liberalization and therefore was an extended republic.
• Madison may have got the language from david Hume on the fact of his own experience as well.
• A need was seen that a crucial element was needed so that if there was a connection to the US Citizens needed to have an Implied Citizenship.
• Conclusion
• The Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation together formed America's first national compact and a Whig Theory that we should implement.
• The Declaration of Independence and US Constitution later formed a more powerful compact with Federlaism and did not remove power from the previously written articles.