Indivisible: The U.S. Constitution and the Assimilation of National Power following the Articles of Confederation.

Indivisible:
The U.S. Constitution and the Assimilation of National Power following the Articles of Confederation.

J.M. Rogers


...

The Articles of Confederation were an essential first step in the establishment of a governing body over the United States. The Articles provided a system through which the thirteen states could interact with one another, including the groundwork for a mutual union or confederacy among the states. However, the Articles did not provide dynamic answers to the dynamic issues of interstate economic policies, international affairs, or war times, due to the widely held belief that a strong centralized government would erode the independent nature of the country. [1] George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and other nationalists noted this disparity of oversight and sought to expand the role of the national government in the hopes of increasing congressional and legislative power, as well as bolstering the economic potential of a burgeoning country that was rife with debt and sparse on monetary liquidity.
            In the years following the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, the economy of the country flagged. A large part of the issue began with Congress’s inability to raise the needed funds to repay Revolutionary War debts owed to bond-holders, such as suppliers and soldiers, but it was also tied directly to the lack of national trade infrastructure.[2] The absence of such a structure enabled vast amounts of imports to enter the American market, driving deflation in an economy that was poorly connected.[3] This economic strife was compounded by Congress’ ineffectiveness in enforcing market rules and regulations among the thirteen bodies of state legislation which resulted in states developing their own economic policies, the presence of which ultimately resulted in local uprisings in the late 1780’s such as Shay’s Rebellion.[4] George Washington voiced his frustration over this congressional ineffectiveness in a letter to John Jay stating that those “Legistatures” who “violated the treaty of peace and invaded the prerogatives of the confederacy” would “laugh in your face.” [5] The idea that Congress had “too often made use of the suppliant tone of requisition in application to the States when they had a right to assume imperial dignity and demand obedience” was a recurrent theme in the letters between Washington and Jay, and it frames the relationship of command that he envisioned between the government and the states. [6] The sentiment that a national governing body should hold powers that could trump those of individual states was shared, and in truth seen as the only way to avoid total economic collapse, by fellow nationalists such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, who did more to strengthen the centrality of national government more than any Americans before them.[7]
            The result of this shared belief was the Constitutional Convention in 1787, wherein fifty-five delegates established the need for a national legislature, an executive, and judiciary through which the government would represent the people, raise funds, and regulate economic policies. However, differing views on how powerful such national branches should be in relation to the states were evident from the start. [8] These differing views would come to define many of the concessions that were installed before The Constitution was ratified. The inclusion of such items as the bicameral legislature, three-fifths clause, and the general expansion of presidential powers encapsulate the tug-of-war between established state powers and growing government power.[9] Washington saw the office of presidency ascend, as The Constitution not only allotted the president the power of veto, but also the power to appoint federal judges with a Senate approval. [10] These policy changes would have been a victory for Washington, who felt that “mankind (sic) are not competent to their own government without the means of coercion in the Sovereign.” [11] And, while the installation of a federalist system did not ensure economic success, the prohibition on abolishing imported slaves, and the inclusion of the electoral college, three-fifths clause, and fugitive slave clauses, in the Constitution provided what Hamilton referred to as “the rich, the able, and the well-born,” with the ability to dominate early national economics and public offices. [12]     
            As the years showed, following the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, the hopes of a union of sovereign states were challenged by local uprisings, economic crises, and a lack of a cohesive identity. In their attempts to gain power, individual states claimed extra territories and imposed tariffs upon imported goods, all with seemingly little regard for the effects such actions would have on the interdependent network of states. The inability to coordinate a unified front to deal with foreign and domestic affairs drove the wealthy elite to establish a federalist rule that would simultaneously unify the nation’s population, as well as its economic prospects. Constitutional delegates from northern and southern states were not unified themselves, however, and thus the resulting document is riddled with various concessions to bickering states that would ultimately determine the outcomes of presidential elections, the national economic policy and the definition of America’s foreign policy.  Taken in its original form, The Constitution provides no protection for freedom of speech, the right to bear arms or the right to assemble.[13] Rather, it centered on key changes to the Articles of Confederation that focused on economic expansion and the establishment of a centralized and sovereign ruling body in The United States.



Bibliography

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty. 5th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Washington, George. From George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786. Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017. http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-05-02-0078. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, vol. 5, February 1787-31, December 1787, ed. W.W. Abbot, Charlottesville: University Press Virginia, 1997, pp 79-80.]

Washington, George. From George Washington to John Jay, 10 March 1787. Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017.
http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-05-02-0078. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, vol. 5, February 1787-31, December 1787, ed. W.W. Abbot, Charlottesville: University Press Virginia, 1997, pp 79-80.]

[1] Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History, vol. 1, Fifth Brief (W.W. Norton and Company, 2017), 195.
[2] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 200
[3] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 200
[4] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 201
[5] Washington, George, From George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786, 1
[6] Washington, From George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786, 1
[7] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 202
[8] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 202-203
[9] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 204
[10] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 204-205
[11] Washington, From George Washington to John Jay, 10 March 1787, 1
[12] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 226
[13] Foner, Give Me Liberty, 212

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