UNIT FIVE
ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
CONSTITUTION
The Articles of Confederation
The colonies had won their independence. They were now thirteen separate and independent little countries. Now that the common threat was gone, they lapsed back into their old habits of looking after their state only, and of distrusting each other, and of thinking people from other states than theirs were "foreigners". They began to treat each other like separate countries - they began to put tariffs on each other’s goods crossing state lines and they got into fights. This would not do. Also, there were issues left over from the War for Independence. For example, the Continental Congress had issued all that paper money you learned about in the last chapter. That money was next to worthless now. Congress had no money left, not anybody’s money, by the end of the war. Something had to be done about the appalling inflation that was the result of the Congress’ having issued that paper money for which they had nothing valuable on deposit in the bank. Also, some issues concerned the colonies in common. For example, the colonies needed a common policy against Indians and foreign countries.
For these reasons the new states, during the war, had drafted a constitution called the Articles of Confederation. A constitution is a description of a government. This provided for a weak central government. A confederation is not a union; it is an agreement to work together toward a common goal. No one is committed to stick with the confederation - you could drop out at any time. The Articles gave the central government the following powers:
From the beginning, the Articles did not work too well. The states could not be made to do any of the things above as Congress had no power to enforce its decisions. The number of states that had to agree to something made it almost impossible to get things done. Congress could not tax or regulate internal trade. In time, things got even worse. The states continued to levy tariffs on each other, they fought, and many times did not send the money they were supposed to send to Congress. The new country was getting a bad reputation for not paying its debts, and it was becoming a laughing-stock for other nations. The British refused to get out of some forts that were supposedly the property of the new country. The leaders of the new nation, mainly the conservative ones, felt that something had to be done. To this end, a convention was called for May, 1787, in Philadelphia, to revise the Articles of Confederation.
The Constitution
In May, 1787, the delegates convened in Philadelphia to meet to revise or rewrite the Articles of Confederation. This meeting is known in the history of the United States as the Constitutional Convention. All the states were represented except Rhode Island, which refused to send delegates. While there were some familiar faces at this meeting, other faces were notably missing. There were some new faces. This was because the delegates who came to the Constitutional Convention were more conservative people as a whole than were the ones who prepared for and won independence. Some people, like Sam Adams and Patrick Henry, refused to come as a way of protesting stronger central government. The men who came to the convention were well - prepared for the job; many had been representatives to their state legislatures, some were judges, some were lawyers; there were bankers among them and merchants; some had already made a name for themselves by their writing. As a whole, they represented a wealthier group of people than the earlier congresses had, and this was sometimes held against them later; they were accused of making a document which favored the rich. It is true that not a single delegate came from the poorer classes.
These men wanted to from a government that was firm, dignified and respected at home and by other countries. They wanted a government that could successfully make trade treaties with other countries. They wanted a government that could tax and enforce payment. They wanted a government that could make people behave. They wanted a government that, when it told the British to get out of the forts that were supposed to be America’s, the British stood up and paid attention. They were afraid of what they called "mobocracy"; that is, control by the lower classes, which they considered to be not educated or prepared enough to run governments. The idea of violence to get what you want appalled them. They wanted to make sure that peoples’ lives and property were safe from such violence.
From the beginning, the delegates decided just to throw out the Articles and begin over again. Since these guys had been told by Congress to revise the Articles only, these men in a sense, overthrew the existing government by peaceful means. The meetings were held in closed session; that means the press and public were not allowed inside the room, so people did not know until the deed was done that the men had done this.
James Madison, delegate from Virginia, had been thinking about what to do for some time, and he arrived at the convention with a plan for a constitution already made. Madison was greatly influenced by the French philosophe and Emlightenment thinker, Montesquieu. Montesquieu thought it was important to separate power, so that no one group or person got all the power. Madison’s plan reflected that idea. He separated power between states and central government. This makes a kind of government called a federal government, which is the kind Americans have in their country today. He also created three branches of government, called executive, legislative and judicial, to separate power between branches of government. This way no one person or group had all the power. He then devised a way that these different branches would constantly be checking each other, so that no one branch of government could abuse power and take over. This idea is called checks and balances. Madison proposed a two-house legislature. The representation in this legislature would be based on population in a ratio; you got so many representatives per 10,000 people in the state, for example. This plan became known as the Virginia Plan and it formed the basis of debate and discussion at the convention.
As the convention began, Edmund Randolph presented the Virginia Plan. The convention was organized so that each state represented had one vote, regardless of its size and the number of delegates it had there. A majority was required to make the many decisions about the revisions up for discussion before the convention. From time to time, special committees were set up to help in working out compromises or in writing out the document that would be proposed as the nation’s constitution. However, all major decisions were made by the convention in full session. James Madison took notes at these meetings, and his notes are our chief record of the meetings.
The Legislative Branch - the Congress
Setup
The Virginia Plan proposed two houses of Congress. Instead of each state having equal representation, each state would get so many representatives in accordance with its population. The lower house would be elected by the voters of each state. The upper house would be elected by the lower.
The smaller states (by smaller, we mean those with fewer people, not smaller area) immediately objected to the Virginia Plan’s proposal on the Congress. They said that the plan favored states which had many people in them, and that this would lead to the larger states getting their way all the time, which, they pointed out, was highly unfair!!!! The smaller states, led by William Patterson of New Jersey, offered the New Jersey Plan as a substitute. In the New Jersey Plan, each state got the same number of representatives, regardless of population in the state.
The supporters of the Virginia Plan, of course, did not like the New Jersey Plan and for awhile, the convention was stalled. Then Roger Sherman of Connecticut came up with what is often referred to as the ‘Great Compromise’, the Connecticut Plan. The Connecticut Plan proposed that the lower house, called the House of Representatives, would have its representation based on population. In the upper house, called the Senate, each state, regardless of its population, would have two representatives. Originally, the senators were chosen by the state legislatures. Later, this was changed; today, the senators are elected directly by the people, as are the representatives. The convention accepted the Connecticut Plan’s compromise.
The delegates got into another argument over how to count the many black slaves in the South. It was decided that the slaves would be counted in a ratio of 3 slaves to every 5 white men. This means that if you had 3000 slaves, the census taker counted three fifths of them, or 1800 of them. This method of counting slaves was changed after the Civil War, and the blacks then counted for one person each, like everyone else.
Powers
The delegates agreed that the old Congress under the Articles had not had enough power. They wanted to expand the powers of Congress in certain ways. After reaching agreement on what new powers should be granted, and which old ones to keep, the convention had the powers written up in legal language. The powers Congress were given basically had to do with money and defense: Congress could impose and collect taxes, decide how much tariff to charge, pay the debts of the United States, spend money for defense, coin money, declare war, call out the militia, regulate trade, make rules for the military, and pay for wars. The Congress also was given the power to make laws that would be necessary to carry out the other powers it had been given.
The Executive Branch - the President
Setup
The Articles of Confederation had not provided for an executive branch. One of the things the new states were afraid of was too much executive power. They remembered King George all too well, and they were afraid that if they gave one man power, he would become a tyrant. After a few years with no executive, however, they were ready now to have one. They wanted to be careful how much power they gave him, though. They also wanted to be careful what they called him. For the title, they decided on president, and that he would be addressed as "Mr. President". The Virginia Plan proposed that the President be elected from the Congress for a seven year term. The delegates decided they did not like that idea because it give the Congress too much power over the President. They decided instead to have the president elected by a complex two-stage process. Every fourth year, special electors chosen by the state’s voters would meet and cast votes for president. A state got the same number of electors as it had representatives and senators. For example, if a state had 13 representatives, and 2 senators, it would have 15 electors. After this meeting had taken place and the votes cast, the result would be reported to Congress, and whichever candidate had the majority would be declared president. If nobody had a majority, the House of Representatives would vote to choose the winner, each state’s delegation having one vote to cast. Later, the procedure for electing the president was changed somewhat to accommodate the fact that America developed a two party system, which the Founding Fathers had not anticipated. Today the president is elected directly by the people; however, we still have the voting by the electors, also.
The convention also provided for a vice president who would take over the powers and duties of the president in case he died or became too ill to carry on. Originally, the vice president was the person who came in second in the voting by the electors. That also had to be changed when the two party system developed. Left as it was, the vice president would always be of the other political party from the president. This would not do.
Powers
The president is considered the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States. The president may answer an attack on the United States in an emergency situation; however, he cannot declare a war; Congress must do that. The president may make treaties, but the Senate, by a two-thirds majority, must agree to the treaty. The president may nominate Supreme Court justices; that also must be agreed to by the Senate. He may appoint cabinet members and ambassadors, again with the agreement of the Senate. Every year, he must address the Congress, giving them information as to the "state of the union" and giving them his ideas for new legislation. The president also represents the United States in dealings with foreign countries. You can see by reading this over that the president, on paper, does not have much power. This reflects the fear the Founding Fathers still had of too much executive power in the hands of one person. Over the years, the presidency has strengthened its powers, and the political party system helped, too, when the president and the party who controlled Congress were the same party. In that situation, the Congress was willing to carry out the president’s wishes, so that made him look like he had more power than he actually does on paper.
The Judicial Branch - the Supreme Court
Setup
The convention readily agreed to the need for a national judiciary to settle various kinds of legal disputes that might arise under the proposed constitution. They decided to set up a Supreme Court of nine justices, who would be nominated by the president and agreed to by the Senate. The term of a justice would be for life. The Founding Fathers did not want the justices of the Supreme Court to have to be influenced in their decisions by the politics involved in being elected.
Powers
The Supreme Court was given power to settle disputes between states and other states, states and the national government, and citizens and state or national government. It was also given power to try certain kinds of crimes against the government. Also implied among the powers of the Supreme Court was the power to declare a law made by Congress or the states unconstitutional, that is, the law is not allowed by the constitution or goes against it in some way. The way this works is that a law is brought to the attention of the Supreme Court by a case in which that law was involved. The Supreme Court then decides if the law should have been made in the first place. An example would be Brown vs. The Board of Education. This case involved the segregation laws of a Southern state, which said that black students could not go to the same schools as white students, but rather to a black school which was supposed to be of equal quality with the white one. The black schools were never of equal quality, so that black students were discriminated against in the quality of education they received. The Supreme Court ruled that the Southern state could not make such a rule, because it took away the black student’s civil rights, as given to him in the constitution. When a law is declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, it is immediately null and void, no longer in existence.
Amending the constitution
While the Founding Fathers wanted to make the constitution so that it could be amended, they didn’t want to make it too easy to do. They thought of a way that they thought would achieve this goal. There would be two steps to the amendment process. First, the amendment would be proposed and voted on by Congress. To pass, an amendment had to be passed by a two-thirds majority of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Then, three-fourths of the state legislatures have to approve it. The Constitution has been amended about 26 times in 206 years, with the first ten amendments having been added immediately as the Bill of Rights.
Once the proposed constitution had been agreed to by the convention, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania wrote the constitution over, organizing it and putting it in readable English. He improved its style and clarified some of its statements. He added the now-famous Preamble to be a statement of purpose. Once it was finished, the delegates signed their names to it. All that was left now was to get the states to ratify it, and that was going to be no easy task, and the delegates knew this well.
Ratifying the Constitution
When the proposed constitution was revealed to the public, many people were shocked and dismayed by it. Some thought the convention had broken a trust; they had said they were going to revise the Articles of Confederation, not destroy it. Some people thought that if this new government were to be established , they would have fought the War for Independence in vain. People were especially upset that only nine states had to ratify it for it to go into effect, as the old constitution had said all thirteen states had to agree to any major changes in the constitution. People were also upset that it did not contain a "bill of rights" guaranteeing civil rights to all citizens.
James Madison and others of his friends organized a movement in support of ratification. They wrote a series of newspaper articles defending the proposed constitution. The articles began appearing in papers in late 1787, and in early 1788, were published in book form. The book was called The Federalist. Friends of the proposed constitution became known as "Federalists" and their opponents as "Antifederalists". The Antifederalists published pamphlets and articles, too. The most important of these was written by George Mason and called for a bill of rights to protect civil liberties and local government. The Federalists said that that was not necessary because the central government created by the constitution had certain listed powers and no others, the others belonging to the people or the states. Mason’s answer was that he wanted it down in writing what the national government could not do!
Slowly the states, one by one, began to ratify the constitution. Pennsylvania was the first large state to ratify it; by January of 1788, Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut had ratified it; by the spring, Maryland, South Carolina and New Hampshire ratified it. Massachusetts ratified it only after it was agreed a bill of rights would be added; Virginia finally ratified it with the same recommendation about a bill of rights. New York ratified after a long struggle in its convention. North Carolina and Rhode Island refused to ratify until a bill of rights was added. However, the required number of states had agreed to it, and plans were made to put it into effect.
The Bill of Rights
Because so many of the states had expressed a concern about a bill of rights, and two states still were not ratifying the constitution because of the lack of one, the first Congress took up the issue immediately. A bill of rights was written as ten separate amendments. Once written, these amendments were quickly passed by Congress and ratified by the states. The last two states then ratified the Constitution late in 1789. Thus, all thirteen states now belonged to the new federal union, the first of its kind in history.
The rights given to the citizens in this country reflect some of the problems that the colonists had had with the British, as well as being about other issues. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press had been an issue in the colonies, as had freedom of religion. You will remember Britain’s closing the New York Assembly, and limiting town meetings in Boston. The First Amendment deals with all those kinds of things. The Second Amendment gave the citizens the right to have firearms in their possession. At that time in our history, as our people spread ever westward, that right seemed to be necessary for people to be able to protect themselves, especially in frontier situations. The Third Amendment protects the citizens against having the military quartered with them, and reflected the colonists’ experience with the British and the Quartering Act. The Fourth Amendment made searches and seizures of goods illegal unless the searcher has a warrant, and also protects right to privacy. This amendment reflected the colonists’ experiences with the writs of assistance, which, remember, gave British officials the right to search their homes without a warrant; it also reflected their experience with the admiralty courts, which seized goods. The Fifth Amendment made it illegal for your property to be taken without legal action; again, it reflected the experiences colonists had had with the British taking their goods. The Fifth Amendment also said a person, in a trial situation, has to be proven guilty without his having to testify against himself, and that a person cannot be tried for the same crime twice. The Sixth Amendment gives citizens certain rights in a situation where they are accused of a crime; for example, an accused person has the right to see his accuser, to know what crime he is accused of, to have a fair and impartial trial; to have a trial in a reasonable amount of time, to call witnesses in his defense and to have a lawyer if he wants one and can’t afford to pay one. The Seventh Amendment provides for trial by jury in suits at common law. The Eighth Amendment protected citizens from being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and excessive bail being set. The Ninth Amendment states that the people have rights not listed in the Bill of Rights. The Tenth Amendment says "All powers not specifically delegated to the United States government by the Constitution, belong to the states and /or the people".
In conclusion to this chapter, it is a testament to what these men did in the Constitutional Convention that the United States has the oldest written constitution in the world, and that it has been necessary to amend it only sixteen times after the Bill of Rights was added. The Constitution is over two hundred years old, yet is as relevant today as it was when it was written. As with the Declaration of Independence, the United States is known and respected for this document, and many nations have tried to copy it.
Questions
UNIT SIX-The French Revolution, Part 1