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The Confederation and the Constitution

Cont.

By: Lailah Hoque, Grissel Garcia, Marissa Vasquez, Amy Mendoza

  • John Jay, secretary for foreign affairs hoped Americans would be humiliated enough to create a new government strong enough to command respect.
  • Spain was unfriendly to the U.S; it controlled the mouth of the Mississippi, where pioneers of Tennessee and Kentucky were forced to float their produce. In 1784, Spain closed the river to American commerce.
  • Altogether British, Spaniards, and Indians prevented America to take effective control over about half of its total territory.
  • French demanded the repayment of money loaned during the war and restricted trade between the U.S. and West Indies.
  • Pirates of North African states were hurting America's Mediterranean commerce and enslaving Yankee sailors.

Constitution Making in the States

Economic Crosscurrents

  • Economic Changes were not overwhelming
  • Loyalist holdings were confiscated and cut up into small farms. One example is Roger Morris's estate in New York that was cut into 250 parcels.
  • Frightful excess of the French revolution was avoided because cheap land was easily available.
  • Economic democracy came before political democracy
  • Prewar non importation agreements and war gave a sharp stimulus to manufacturing.
  • Goods normally imported from Britain were cut off so they had to make their ow weapons.
  • New commercial outlets compensated for the loss of old ones.
  • Ability to trade freeely with foreign nations.
  • 1784-Empress of China led way to the East Asian market.
  • But war spawned demoralizing extravagance,speculation, and profiteering( sometimes 300%)
  • Congress failed to curb economic laws
  • Financially off worse then at the beginning.
  • 1776- Continental Congress called the colonies to draft new constitutions.(summoning the states into being new states)
  • Massachusetts called a special convention to draft its constitution, then submitted the final draft directly to the people for ratification.
  • Once adopted in 1780 it could only be changed if another constitutional convention was called. It was later limited in the drafting and ratification of the federal constitution.
  • They were contracts that defined the powers of government but drew their authority from the people.
  • Common Traits:
  • Bill of Rights(guaranteeing long prized liberties)
  • Annual Election of legislators(so they were forced to stay in touch with the mood of the people)
  • Weak executive and judicial branch(due to a deep distrust of despotic goveners and arbitrary judges)
  • Effects:
  • Several states moved their capital inward, states like New Hampshire,New York, Virginia, N.Carolina, S. Carolina and Georgia.
  • Moves portended political shifts that deeply discomfited many more conservative Americans.

A Shaky Start Toward Union

Women in the Revolutionary Era

The World's Ugly Duckling

  • The responsibility of creating and operating a new central government had been dumped into their laps after the Revolution.
  • Prospects for establishing a lasting regime were far from bright (difficult to set up a new type of government)
  • Leaving the conservative Tory element left the political system inclined toward experimentation and innovation
  • In 1786, after the war, Britain flooded America with cheap goods, greatly hurting American industries.
  • However, signs of hope were perceived, the states all were alike in governmental structures and functioned under similar constitutions, had a rich political inheritance form Britain, and were blessed with high ordered political leaders like Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and John Adams.
  • The extension of the doctrine of equality to women was also incomplete.
  • Women served in the military (disguised as men) and in New Jersey's constitution they were even allowed to vote (for a time)
  • "Civic Virtue": the notion that democracy depended on the unselfish commitment of each citizen to the public good. Who better to cultivate these habits than mothers, who taught moral education to the young?
  • "Republican motherhood": the selfless devotion of a mother to her family being cited as the very model of proper republican behavior.
  • This elevated women to a new role as the special keepers of the nation's conscience.
  • Educational opportunities expanded for women , which led to expectations of educated wives and mothers further cultivating virtues that Republic husbands, daughters, and sons demanded.
  • Angry citizens demanded that the U.S. force British into line by imposing restrictions on their imports to America.
  • But Congress couldn't control commerce, and the states refused a tariff policy, although some states did lower their tariffs to attract an unfair share of trade.
  • Foreign relations remained troubled during the anxious years of the confederation.
  • Britain resented them and for 8 years refused to send a minister to America. They also declined to make a commercial treaty or repeal its Navigation Laws and shut off their profitable West Indies trade with the Americans.
  • The British had red coats that held a chain of trading posts in U.S. soil along the northern border where they kept trade with Indians.
  • A possible reason for their stay could have been the failure of American states honoring the treaty of peace in regard to debts and loyalists but the most likely reason was to favor with the Indians and keep them on the king's side as a barrier against attacks on Canada from Americans.

Slavery

Creating a Confederation

  • In 1774, the Continental Congress calls for complete abolition of the slave trade.
  • Some Northern states went the extra mile and either abolished slavery outright or provided the gradual emancipation of blacks. And some plantations in Virginia even freed slaves.
  • States south of Pennsylvania didn't abolish slavery, and in both North And South, all blacks were discriminated by the law.
  • The Second Continental Congress of Revolutionary days was more than just a conference of the thirteen states with their ambassadors, it was without constitutional authority though it asserted some control over military affairs and foreign policy.
  • The states call for their first government(a Confederation) of a loose union of states where a federal and state level exist, yet having the state level retain the most sovereignty to do as they like. In example, the states coined money, raised armies and navies, and created tariff barriers on their own.
  • Shortly before declaring independence in 1776, Congress appoints a committee to draft a written constitution for the nation, known as the Articles of Confederation, which are adopted by Congress in 1777, and later they are completely ratified by all thirteen states in 1781.
  • In 1775, Philadelphia Quakers founded the 1st antislavery society.
  • "Great as the evil [of slavery] is, a dismemberment of the union would be worse." - James Madison, 1787
  • A fight over slavery would have fractured the fragile national unity they desperately needed.

Continued...

  • The chief apple of discord was western lands. The six land-hungry states made a major dispute about states like New York and Virginia having huge tracts of land west of the Alleghenies that they could sell to pay off their debts while they could not do so.
  • Congress pledged itself to dispose of these vast areas for the “common benefit” and further agreed to carve from the public domain not colonies, but a number of republican states, which were admitted to the Union on terms of complete equality.
  • This amazing commitment faithfully reflected the anticolonial spirit of the Revolution, and the pledge was later fully redeemed in the famed Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
  • Fertile public lands thus transferred to the central government proved to be an invaluable bond of union.
  • A uniform national land policy was then finally made possible.

Landmarks in land laws

  • The old northwest was an immense part of the public domain recently acquired from the states this included land northwest of the Ohio river, east of the Mississippi river and south of the great lakes
  • The feeble congress managed to pass the land ordinance of 1785: it provided the acreage of the old northwest be sold to help pay national debt.

The Pursuit of Equality

  • Northwest ordinance if 1787: a judicious compromise. First there would be two evolutionary stages, a territory would be subordinate to the federal government then if the territory had a population of 60,000 it would be admitted as a state by congress with all the privileges of the other states.It also forbade slavery in the old northwest.The scheme worked so well that the new congress' basic principles were ultimately carried over to other frontier areas.

The Articles of Confederation: America's first constitution

  • Most states reduced (but didn't completely eliminate) property-holding requirements for voting.
  • Titles like "Mrs." and "Mr." could now be used by ordinary people.
  • Social democracy was stimulated by growth of trade organizations for artisians and laborers.
  • Medieval inheritance laws were "sawed off" by citizens that were flushed with republican fervor.
  • Although well-entrenched Congregational Church continued to be legally established in New England states, the Anglican Church was still humbled. De-anglicized it reformed as the Protestant Episcopal Church.
  • Struggle for separation of religion and government was fierce.
  • In 1786 Thomas Jefferson and his co-reformers, including Baptists, won a victory with the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.
  • the Articles of Confederation provided for a loose confederation of "firm league of friendship"
  • A clumsy congress was the chief agency of government, there was no executive branch, the vital judicial arm was left the the states.
  • Each state had one vote
  • Important bills required support with nine states, any amendment required unanimous ratification
  • Congress was designed to be weak, the states had no desire to yield their new privileges to a parliament.
  • The congress had no power to regulate commerce or enforce the tax-collection program
  • The new congress was less effective than the old continental congress
  • Yet the articles proved to be a landmark in government, a stepping stone toward the Constitution and kept alive ideal of union.
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