Description
After reading Ch. 8, respond to one of the following topics. Use standard English. 1. Describe the core beliefs of the Federalists and Antifederalists and examples of how they tried to implement them. Which view of government would you have supported, and why? 2. Read a primary source from Ch. 8 in RAP. Discuss 2 or more questions for discussion found at the end of your selection.
JAMES MADISON GRADUATED FROM PRINCETON COLLEGE IN NEW
Jersey in 1771, not knowing what to do next with his life. Certainly, the
twenty-year-old had an easy fallback position. As the firstborn son of a
wealthy plantation owner, he could return to the foothills of Virginia and
wait to inherit substantial land and many slaves. But Madison was an intensely
studious young man, uninterested in farming. Five years at boarding
school had given him fluency in Greek, Latin, French, and mathematics;
and three years at Princeton had acquainted him with the great thinkers,
both ancient and modern. Driven by a thirst for learning, young Madison
hung around Princeton for six months after graduation.
In 1772, he returned home, still adrift. He tried studying law, but his
unimpressive oratorical talents discouraged him. Instead, he swapped reading
lists and ideas about political theory by letter with a Princeton classmate,
prolonging his student life. While Madison struggled for direction,
the powerful winds before the storm of the American Revolution swirled
through the colonies. In May 1774, Madison traveled north to deliver his
brother to boarding school and was in Philadelphia when the startling
news broke that Britain had closed the port of Boston in retaliation for the
destruction of the tea. Turbulent protests over the Coercive Acts turned him
into a committed revolutionary.
Back in Virginia, Madison joined his father on the newly formed committee
of public safety. For a few days in early 1775, the twenty-fouryear-
old took up musket practice in a burst of enthusiasm for war, but it
was quickly plain that his greater contribution lay in the science of politics.
In the spring of 1776, he gained election to the Virginia Convention, a
Revolutionary assembly replacing the defunct royal government. The convention’s
main task was to hammer out a state constitution with innovations
such as frequent elections and limited executive power. Shy, selfeffacing,
and still learning the ropes, Madison mostly stayed on the
sidelines, but Virginia’s elder statesmen noted the young man’s logical,
thoughtful contributions. When his county failed to return him to the
assembly in the next election, he was appointed to the governor’s council,
where he spent two years gaining experience in a wartime government.
Building a
1775–1789
Republic
8
The Articles
of Confederation 229
The Sovereign States 232
The Confederation’s
Problems 237
The United States
Constitution 245
Ratification of
the Constitution 248
Conclusion: The
“Republican Remedy” 254
228 CHAPTER 8 • BUILDING A REPUBLIC / 1775–1789
In early 1780, Madison represented Virginia in the Continental
Congress. Not quite twenty-nine, unmarried, and supported by
his father’s money, he was free of the burdens that made
distant political service difficult for so many others. He
stayed in the North for three years, working with men
such as Alexander Hamilton of New York and Robert
Morris of Pennsylvania as the congress wrestled
with the chaotic economy and the ever-precarious
war effort. In one crisis, Madison’s negotiating
skills proved crucial: He broke the deadlock over
the ratification of the Articles of Confederation
by arranging for the cession of Virginia’s vast
western lands. Those lands would soon appear
on maps as the Northwest Territory, calling forth
a series of western land ordinances, planned out
by Madison’s friend Thomas Jefferson, that exemplified
the promise of and high hopes for the
future of the new confederation government. But
more often, service in the congress proved frustrating
to Madison because the confederation government
seemed to lack essential powers, chief among
them the power to tax.
Madison resumed a seat in the Virginia assembly in 1784.
But he did not retreat to a local point of view as so many other state
politicians of the decade did. The economic hardships created by heavy state
taxation programs — which in Massachusetts led to a full-fledged rebellion
against state government — spurred Madison to pursue means to strengthen
the government shared by the thirteen new states. In this, he was in the
minority: To many Americans, it was not clear that the Articles of
Confederation needed major revamping.
Madison thought the Articles did need overhauling. He worked hard to
organize an all-state convention in Philadelphia in May 1787, where he took
the lead in steering the delegates to a complete rewrite of the structure of
the national government, investing it with considerably greater powers. True
to form, Madison spent the months before the convention in feverish study
of the great thinkers he had read in college, seeking the best way to constitute
a government on republican principles. His lifelong passion for scholarly
study, seasoned by a dozen years of energetic political experience, paid off
handsomely. The United States Constitution was the result.
By the end of the 1780s, James Madison had had his finger in every kind
of political pie on the local, state, confederation, and finally national level.
He had transformed himself from a directionless and solitary youth into one
of the leading political thinkers of the Revolutionary period. His personal history
over the 1780s was deeply entwined with the path of the emerging
United States.
James Madison,
by Charles Willson Peale
Philadelphia artist Charles Willson
Peale painted this miniature portrait of
Madison in 1783, along with a matching
miniature of Madison’s fiancée, Kitty
Floyd, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a
New York delegate to the Continental
Congress. Madison’s portrait was
mounted in a brooch (note the pin sticking
out on the right) so that his lady
love might wear it on her person, but
Floyd returned the miniature to Madison
when she broke off the engagement.
Eleven years later, Madison tried
romance again when New York congressman
Aaron Burr introduced him
to a young Virginia widow named
Dolley Payne Todd. Madison was fortythree,
and Todd was twenty-six; they
married four months after meeting.
Library of Congress.
sional offices. State delegations could vary in
size from two to seven, and each delegation cast
a single vote. Routine decisions in the congress
required a simple majority of seven states; for
momentous decisions, such as declaring war,
nine states needed to agree. To approve or amend
the Articles required the unanimous consent
both of the thirteen state delegations and of the
thirteen state legislatures — giving any state
an unrealistic and eventually crippling veto
power. Most crucially, the Articles gave the
national government no power of direct taxation.
Taxation was a necessity, since all governments
require money and governments pursuing
wars need even more. The congress issued bonds
to finance most of the war’s hefty and immediate
costs (for supplies and manpower); the bonds
were held in part by French and Dutch bankers
but also by large numbers of middling to wealthy
Americans. (Bondholders considered bonds with
6 percent interest an attractive investment,
especially when they could be purchased with
depreciating Continental dollars that were
accepted at face value.) The congress also anticipated
new peacetime expenses in addition to
the large war debt and the expanding interest
owed to bondholders. Trade regulation required
a paid force of customs officers; a postal system
required postmen, horses and wagons, and wellmaintained
postal roads; the western lands
required surveyors; and Indian diplomacy (or
war) added further large costs. Article 8 of the
confederation document declared that taxes were
needed to support “the common defence or general
welfare” of the country, yet the congress
also had to be sensitive to the rhetoric of the
Revolution, which denounced heavy taxation by
a distant and nonrepresentative power.
The congress hoped to solve this delicate
problem with a two-step procedure. The congress
would requisition (that is, request) money to
be paid into the common treasury, and each
state legislature would then levy taxes within
c The Articles of
Confederation
From 1775 to 1781, the Continental Congress
met in Philadelphia and other cities without
any formal constitutional basis. It took time to
work out a plan of government that embodied
Revolutionary principles. With monarchy gone,
where would sovereignty lie? What would be
the nature of representation? Who would hold
the power of taxation? The resulting plan, called
the Articles of Confederation, proved to be
surprisingly difficult to implement, mainly
because the thirteen states disagreed over boundaries
in the land to the west of the states. Once
the Articles were ratified and the active phase
of the war had drawn to a close, the congress
faded in importance compared with politics in
the individual states.
Congress and Confederation
After the Declaration of Independence had been
signed and circulated, the Continental Congress
set a committee in motion to draft a document
that would specify what powers the congress
had and by what authority it existed. There was
widespread agreement on key central governmental
powers: pursuing war and peace, conducting
foreign relations, regulating trade, and running
a postal service. Yet the congress’s attention
was still mainly on the war, and so it took a year
of tinkering before its members reached agreement
on the Articles of Confederation in November
1777. The Articles defined the union as a loose
confederation of states, characterized as “a firm
league of friendship” existing mainly to foster a
common defense. The structure of the government
paralleled that of the existing Continental
Congress. There was no national executive (that
is, no president) and no national judiciary. Term
limits of three years ensured rotation in congres-
Revolutionary War Flag from New Hampshire
In June 1777, the Continental Congress decreed specifications for the new American flag.
Thirteen red and white stripes lay adjacent to a blue corner embellished with thirteen
white stars “representing a new Constellation,” a powerful metaphor that anchored the
fragile union of the thirteen states in the vast and timeless expanse of the heavens. Flag
designers experimented with the arrangement of the stars—in a circle or a square, in rows,
or, in this case of a flag made in New Hampshire, in staggered rows. Early American flags
were strictly military banners; not for another half century would they become ever-present
symbols of nonmilitary patriotism. American Antiques, David A. Schorsch — Eileen M. Smiles.
THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 229
230 CHAPTER 8 • BUILDING A REPUBLIC / 1775–1789
signed, “not from a Conviction of the Equality
and Justness of it,” said a New Jersey delegate,
“but merely from an absolute Necessity there
was of complying to save the Continent.” But
Delaware and Maryland continued to hold out,
insisting on a national domain policy. In 1779,
the disputants finally compromised: Any land a
state volunteered to relinquish would become
the national domain. When James Madison and
Thomas Jefferson ceded Virginia’s huge land
claim in 1781, the Articles of Confederation were
at last unanimously approved. (See appendix I,
page A-1.)
The western lands issue demonstrated that
powerful interests divided the thirteen new states.
The apparent unity of purpose inspired by fighting
the war against Britain papered over sizable
cracks in the new confederation.
Running the New Government
No fanfare greeted the long-awaited inauguration
of the new government in 1781. The congress
continued to sputter along, its problems far from
solved by the signing of the Articles. Lack of a
quorum often hampered day-to-day activities.
The Articles required representation from seven
states to conduct business and a minimum of
two men from each state’s delegation. But some
days, fewer than fourteen men in total showed
up. State legislatures were slow to select delegates,
and many politicians preferred to devote their
energies to state governments, especially when
the congress seemed deadlocked or, worse, irrelevant.
Some had difficulty learning the art of
formal debate. A Pennsylvanian reflected that
“I find there is a great deal of difference between
sporting a sentiment in a letter, or over a glass
of wine upon politics, and discharging properly
the duties of a senator.”
It also did not help that the congress had
no permanent home. During the war, when the
British army threatened Philadelphia, the congress
relocated to small Pennsylvania towns
such as Lancaster and York and then to Baltimore.
After hostilities ceased, the congress moved
from Trenton to Princeton to Annapolis to New
York City. Many delegates were reluctant to
travel far from home, especially if they had
wives and children. Consequently, some of the
most committed delegates were young bachelors,
such as James Madison, and men in their fifties
and sixties whose families were grown, such as
Samuel Adams.
To address the difficulties of an inefficient
congress, executive departments of war, finance,
its borders to pay the requisition. The Articles
specified that state contributions were to be
assessed in proportion to the property value of
the state’s land; thus, large and populous states
paid more than did small or sparsely populated
states. Requiring that the actual tax bill be
passed by the state legislatures preserved the
Revolution’s principle of taxation only by direct
representation. However, no mechanism compelled
states to pay.
The lack of centralized authority in the confederation
government was exactly what many
state leaders wanted in the late 1770s. A league
of states with rotating personnel, no executive
branch, no power of direct taxation, and a requirement
of unanimity for any major change seemed
to be a good way to keep government in check.
Yet there were problems, and the first was the
requirement that every state ratify the Articles
of Confederation. This mandatory unanimity
stalled the acceptance of the Articles for four
additional years, until 1781.
The Problem of Western Lands
The most serious disagreement over the Articles
of Confederation involved the absence of any
plan for the lands to the west of the thirteen
original states. This absence was deliberate; an
earlier draft of the Articles gave the congress
the power to set state boundaries
and to administer the sales
of the western lands. But states
with large land claims objected.
A few states — Virginia and
Connecticut, for example — had
old colonial charters that located
their western boundaries at the
Mississippi River, and they
insisted that their claims be recognized.
Six more states also had plausible legal
claims to extensive territories (Map 8.1). Five
states lacked such land claims entirely, and
they preferred that the congress preserve all
the western lands as a national domain that
would eventually be sold off to settlers and
constitute new states, administered by the congress.
Financial motives loomed large, for, as
one Rhode Island delegate put it, “the western
world opens an amazing prospect as a national
fund; it is equal to our debt.”
The eight land-claiming states were ready
to sign
