The Articles of Confederation Overview

After declaring independence in 1776, the Second Continental Congress essentially became the provisional government for the colonies during the war years and then even for a couple years after that, as we'll see. And one of the things that the new government had to do then, of course, was to draft a new constitution. You may not know this or you may know this. in our country's history, we have actually had two constitutions. The first of those is a document that's called the Articles of Confederation. We'll talk about the drafting of the second constitution, our current constitution, a little bit later. But in this lecture, we want to spend time talking about America's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, a document that, again, outlined and defined the parameters, the bylaws, the operating procedures of the government during the revolution and during, well, for roughly three years, three or four years after the revolution. So let's talk a little bit about the Articles of Confederation. Now, again, the Second Continental Congress, in addition to declaring independence. did a variety of different things, creating an army, creating a currency. But they also, perhaps most notably, drafted a constitution for a new government. The man who was especially instrumental in drafting the Articles of Confederation was a farmer from Pennsylvania. His name was John Dickinson. And he was often thought of as a farmer. And in truth, he was a well-to-do land owner. His grandfather actually had begun the process of assembling a large collection of land in Pennsylvania. His father had added to it, and then John Dickinson added more to that. And so while he was known as a farmer, it is important to understand, certainly, he was a well-to-do Pennsylvania landowner. He was also a Quaker, which makes him kind of an interesting... person to think about as we look especially at the revolution. Quakers tended to be opposed to violence and warfare more generally. They would fight if need be, but they tended to prefer, obviously, peaceful resolution of conflict. And certainly, John Dickinson was like that. Remember, the whole, the religion was called the Society of Friends. So there was a certainly a peaceful bent, if you will, among Quakers. And so for that reason, John Dickinson had actually opposed U.S. involvement in a violent revolution. He had hoped that the differences between the American colonies and the crown could be worked out. peacefully. He had appealed. He had written to the crown directly, hoping for assistance. But that simply had never fully materialized. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, and he did sign the Declaration of Independence, he did join the militia. But he largely justified that as a defense initiative, arguing that he was doing that in order to protect the people. Pennsylvania, not necessarily for the purposes of conducting war against Great Britain, although that's exactly what it was. And for that reason, John Dickinson actually, when it came to promotions in the militia, he was bypassed. He was overlooked on several different occasions. He was just not a man who fully supported the idea of a violent revolution. He, as a Quaker, was also a man who opposed the institution of slavery. He had been he had inherited slaves, I should say, as part of his landed inheritance in Pennsylvania. But the Revolutionary War era brought with it a very powerful abolitionist movement among Quakers. And ultimately, it would culminate in many of the northern states drafting laws to abolish slavery. The laws were not observed in the southern states. states, but as we'll see in greater detail later on in this class, certainly the northern states did begin to abolish slavery. And many northerners, including John Dickinson, went so far as to manumit or free their slaves even before slavery was abolished. So John Dickinson, the author of the Articles of Confederation. And... In order to understand the Articles of Confederation and in order to understand government in the early years of the country's history, it is critical to understand that Dickinson and others did not want to surrender considerable amounts of power to a central government. That is, the Congress that was assembled, the Second Continental Congress, that was assembled in Philadelphia was to have very limited powers within this governing system. Power was ultimately to remain with the states. And indeed, ultimately, the states were considered sovereign. That is more or less independent. So let's talk a little bit about the government that was established under the Articles of Consideration. First of all, the Congress, as it was organized, was a unilateral legislature. Sorry, not unilateral, unicameral legislature. A unicameral legislature is a legislature that has one house, only one house. That's obviously very different than Congress today. Congress today has two houses, a House of Representatives and a House of Representatives. a Senate. Originally, under the Articles of Confederation, we had only one legislature, one house. That was also, by the way, very different than Parliament. Parliament was a bicameral legislature. There was a House of Lords and a House of Commons. So this is a unicameral, one house of the legislature. And among the states represented in that house, There was to be absolutely equal representation. OK, each state would have the same amount of power, the same voice that every other state had. OK, so each state had one vote and only one vote. You could have, I think, up to six members in your delegation if you wanted. But in the end, if you had that many representatives, those six. representatives would have to decide among themselves how to cast the state's one single vote. So each state had one vote, meaning that there were 13 votes possible at any given time. And in order to even pass the simplest of legislation, you had to have nine of 13 votes to pass that legislation. Now that's really quite amazing if you think about it, because In our present Congress, in order to pass simple legislation, at least in theory, you have to have a simple majority. That is more than 50 percent. Fifty one percent will get you will pass simple legislation. In order to override a veto, you have to have two thirds of the legislature, which is 66 percent. OK, if you think about this, nine of 13. is something like 70% just to pass the simplest of legislation, okay? So the point is that it was going to be difficult in the Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, to even pass simple legislation, right? If you could muster more than five votes against something, then you could defeat that legislation, all right? So unicameral legislature. Was there a president? Well, the answer is yes. Under the Articles of Confederation, there was a president. But the president's job was basically and simply to preside over Congress. Okay, that's why he was called a president. His job was to simply preside over Congress. He did not have a vote. Okay, he could not vote separately. You know, there were 13 votes. Those went to the states. He could not vote. He could not veto. Today, presidents have the right to the power to veto a bill and prevent it from becoming law. Under the Articles of Confederation, the president could not do that. The president had no veto power. The president had no vote. What could the president do? Well, basically, the president had the power to shape debate because he presided over Congress. He could determine what Congress would debate. What? matters, what issues they would take up. He could determine how long they would continue to vote, or to debate, I should say, and when they would vote. So he had the power to influence and even control debate within Congress, but he didn't have real decision-making powers when it came to making those decisions. So the central government under this Congress, Very important. It did not have the power to tax. It had no power to levy taxes. OK, under the Articles of Confederation, there was no federal income tax. There were no federal import duties, taxes like that. The federal government under the Articles of Confederation, the central government, did not have the power to tax. OK, now that created real problems because. If the central government can't tax, then the central government has little capacity to make revenue or to make money. And if it has no ability to make money, then it has no ability really to govern. And that became a real problem, as we will see going along. And one of the ultimate criticisms and one of the reasons why the Articles of Confederation ultimately failed is because it couldn't govern adequately. All right, so what could the government do? The duties of the government under the Articles of Confederation were rather simple. The government could resolve trade disputes. If there were trade disputes among the 13 states, if two states were engaged in a battle over commerce for whatever reason, the federal government, the central government, would intervene and help to resolve and mediate trade disputes. Okay? And the other thing is the federal government could conduct foreign policy. That means the federal government could represent the United States and ultimately sign treaties. If necessary, the central government could declare war if the legislature agreed to it. Okay. Hence that, you know, that is why the Congress dictated. declared independence and effectively waged war in order to secure that independence, right? So conduct foreign policy, wage war if need be, resolve trade disputes. These were the primary duties, the responsibilities of the central government. All other responsibilities were left to the states, right? So in summary, again, what we can say, the first government of the United States, the first government under the Articles of Confederation. was weak. It was weak. It had very limited power. Just trying to get legislation passed was difficult because it required so many votes just to pass simple legislation. The president had very limited power. And again, because the government couldn't tax, the government couldn't do anything. Ultimately, what John Dickinson and the Second Continental Congress wanted to do was to keep power. with the 13 states, all right? And so the first government was weak. The states retained sovereignty, okay? And what that ultimately means, and this is how I want you to try and understand this. Under the Articles of Confederation, this constitution was not creating a central government. It was effectively recognizing the independence and sovereignty of 13 different governments, okay? This was effectively a loose confederation of 13 independent countries. And that's how you need to understand the original 13 United States. They were, under the Articles of Confederation, considered to be 13 independent sovereign countries. That would change as a result of the Constitution of 1787, which we'll talk about later. But... the under the articles of confederation this united states was a very loose confederation of independent countries or states. So what kinds of things did the government accomplish? What kinds of actions were taken under the Articles of Confederation? Well, again, I've already mentioned one or a couple of those. Under the Articles of Confederation, a war of independence was waged. Under the Articles of Confederation, we had a peace treaty signed in Paris in 1783. In addition, The Articles of Confederation are going to address some very difficult matters, especially as they related to lands. After the United States had secured its independence, after Britain recognized that independence, then one of the big questions that was raised was, what about the Western lands? Who owned those Western lands? Which states owned Western lands? We're going to... talk more about that as we go along in this lecture. But before we can even think about the claims to Western lands, equally important was the question about the people who lived on those lands. What about the Native Americans who lived on the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains? So what we find is that under the Articles of Confederation, one of the first things that the federal government did was begin the process. of dealing with Native Americans. And the first of the treaties that was ratified under the Articles was ratified in 1784, the year after the Peace of Paris. And it was signed at Fort Stanwix in New York. And it was signed between the federal government and leaders of the Iroquois Confederation. Now, remember that the Iroquois Confederation had fought with Britain against the independence movement, against the United States during the revolution itself, right? The United States had signed a treaty with Great Britain, the Treaty of Paris. Now it's going to begin signing treaties with Native Americans. And the first of these is the Treaty of Fort Stanwitz with the Iroquois. Now, the Iroquois were considered the enemy in this war, okay? They had been defeated in the war. And since they had been defeated in the war, the U.S. government argued that they had forfeited, they had given up their rights to dictate any of the terms of the peace settlement. So the peace settlement at Fort Stanwix basically was dictated by the American government to the Iroquois people. And as part of the spoils, that is the... the reward, if you will, for winning the war, the Iroquois were going to have to give up their land. That is not something that they agreed to. It's something that was dictated to them. There was no compensation. It was a view of you lost the war, you're going to lose your territory. And they did. As a result of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix now, the Iroquois are going to be forcibly relocated. from New York to the Ohio River country, okay, further west. And that's going to now set an important precedent, okay? This precedent is going to be followed with other tribes, maybe not in the same way, okay? There will be compensation with some tribes. Some tribes are going to, you know, they're not going to have been at war with the U.S. government. And so there may be compensation in the form of gifts or money, okay? But in either case, it is going to be a process of treaty negotiation and effectively using treaties to dispossess Native Americans of their land. OK, that dispossession will go on after 1784 with with multitude of tribes as the country, the white population of America began to expand westward. OK, so. What happened to the lands that basically were seized from the Iroquois and from other native tribes? Well, these lands are now going to become part of what's called the public domain. The public domain, public lands. Now, who is going to own those lands? Which of the 13 states is going to have land? That's what people want to know. Is the state of New York going to get all of the land that's taken from the Iroquois or are other? Are our other states going to get land? Okay, that's the question. Well, in the end, the public domain is going to be turned over to the federal government. Okay, a new responsibility now for the central government is going to be to manage and oversee the public domain. Okay, those lands that are now collectively owned by the United States of America. But... those lands are earmarked for privatization. That is, when the government takes over, takes those lands over, the government is going to begin the process then of effectively selling those lands to private individuals so people can buy the land and go out and farm, okay? Now, this disposition of the public domain has to be an orderly process, okay? Otherwise, you're going to have frontier land wars. You're going to have groups of farmers going out onto the frontier and ultimately fighting with one another because they've got overlapping claims to land. You may have heard of the very famous feud between the Hackfields and the McCoys in the, I guess, is the Virginia-Kentucky border region. It was an old feud, almost certainly had its origins. in a land dispute, okay? So these kinds of land disputes could be avoided if you could go out onto the public domain, and if you could survey the land first, draw all the boundaries, and then make sure that the people who bought the land then knew where all of the boundaries were. Then there wouldn't be a, then there wouldn't be fighting taking place, all right? That at least was the theory, okay? And so... another action taken under the Articles of Confederation was the passage of a land ordinance called the Land Ordinance of 1785. Now this land ordinance, again, was designed to especially bring about the orderly settlement and disposition of the public domain. And towards that end then, it created a land survey, and it's called the Township and Range Survey. The township and range survey is a rectangular survey, and it basically brought about a map of public lands that look very much like this map in this in this slide. OK, basically, you had a bunch of squares that were surveyed onto the landscape. And as I mentioned in the slide here, when you're dealing with a nice, perfectly flat plain. Everything looks nice and good and everything in theory works out well. The problem, of course, is that the United States is not just one flat plain. It's a whole series of mountains and valleys and rivers. And there's all kinds of issues then that make it difficult to fit this township and range, this rectangular survey, to the real land. All right, so... Even though this was an attempt at an orally disposition, there were survey issues from the start. Absolutely, there were survey issues. Now, one of the important provisions of the Land Ordinance of 1785 is that Section 16 of every township was designated as the public school section. So, first of all, I'll try to explain. Under this rectangular survey, there would be townships set up. And those townships were basically squares of land that were 36 square miles each. OK, 36 square miles. Each township was six miles on one side by six miles on another side. And that would create a township of 36 square miles or what was called a section. OK, a square mile is a section of land. OK, so. And then there was a numbering system, and within this numbering system, then every township would have a section that was number 16. And so section 16 was the public school section. And each township then would be able to sell the land in section 16, and then the township, the people of that township, then would get that money to build a school. and to pay a teacher. So from the very beginning, and I can't stress this strongly enough then, going back to 1785, even before we had our present Constitution, the federal government was sponsoring public education. and helping to underwrite the cost of public education. You will often hear today complaints that are being made. The federal government has no business in public education and overseeing and regulating public education and supporting public education. The reality is the federal government has been subsidizing public education in the United States. since 1785. It did it by granting land to townships to build schools. And indeed, public education, in Thomas Jefferson's mind, was absolutely critical for the success of the United States. If you're going to have a democratic system where people are making decisions, then people have to be able to make informed, intelligent decisions. And the only way they can make informed, intelligent decisions is if they're going to have a democratic system. if they are educated, all right? So the federal government has always advocated for and sponsored public education. It is historically one of the most important roles of the federal government. We can look at Land Ordinance 1785 as evidence of that, okay? Now, having said that, what this land ordinance did more than anything was to pave the way for a powerful, or... group of land companies to now control and sell the best and largest lands. And here's how it happened. The federal government, in order to survey these lands now, is going to contract with surveyors. Those surveyors are going to get paid to go out and survey the public domain. And even as they do that, they're keeping notebooks and they're identifying where the best lands are. So not only are they making money for the surveying, they also now know where the best lands are. So we have now teams of surveyors and lawyers. They're going out. They know where the best and most valuable lands are, and they now start buying them. They buy them cheap, and they sell them expensive, okay? They make money off of it, right? So this land ordinance of 1785 made it very possible to make lots of money. on land. And ultimately, the idea that this was a perfect, organized way of disposing of the public domain is really not very accurate at all. It led to tremendous discrimination. Now, once people started populating these lands, then one of the next questions that the the government had to address was whether these new territories should become states or not. Should these new territories continue to be part of the central government, or should they ultimately become equal states within the union, meaning they have a vote in Congress? Well, in 1787, the government addressed that very question when it signed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Under the Northwest Ordinance, now the region north and west of the Ohio River, remember the Ohio River is the southern border of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and all of the territory north and west of the Ohio now, was going to be divided into five federal territories. The territories of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Now initially, those five territories were to be administered by the federal government. The federal government establishing the territories would appoint a governor. And that governor would be the individual who would go out and he would start governing. He would start a government there. He would organize a territorial assembly. There would be stages in which the territorial population, the people, would start gaining more and more power, more and more influence over the governing process. Once the population of a territory reached 60,000 propertied citizens, and I have to stress, Not just 60,000 people, but 60,000 propertied citizens, meaning 60,000 people who own land in that territory. Once the population reached 60,000 propertied citizens, then the territory was ready to apply for statehood. The first step was that they would sit down, they would have a constitutional convention, and they would draft a constitution. Once they drafted that constitution, they submitted the constitution to Congress. And Congress then had the power to either admit a state into statehood or to deny statehood. So that power, the power of statehood. was reserved to Congress. I can't stress that enough because that is going to be a contentious issue. In the 1800s, when we start talking about slavery and the extension of slavery to the West, the question of whether states are going to be admitted to the Union is going to hinge on the question of slavery. And it's going to be Congress then that has the power to determine whether or not a state like Texas, as we'll see, is going to be admitted into the union. So Congress has the power to determine statehood under the Northwest Ordinance. And once a state is admitted to the union, then it will have the power to vote, send a representative to Congress, and participate in government. Now, there was one more very important aspect or feature of the Northwest Ordinance that I need to mention, and that is that under the Northwest Ordinance now, slavery... was outlawed in the Northwest Territory. Okay. North and west of the Ohio River, slavery could not be introduced. Okay. Again, remember, I told you that during the revolutionary era, especially the influence of Quakers was very powerful in curbing slavery. Okay. And certainly African-Americans themselves were very outspoken. The problem, of course, is few African-Americans who were outlawed. had access to power. But on the other hand, Quakers did. And there were a growing number of people, especially in the Northeast, who were beginning to oppose slavery. So the federal government now was saying, no slavery on this federal territory north and west of the Ohio River. Even once they become states, they will not be able to have slavery. So that question, too, is going to come up again. Does the federal government... have the power to deny individuals their quote-unquote property, which is what slaves were considered, does the federal government have the power to deny people their property just because they relocate to federal land? That's going to be a very contentious issue, too. And we'll talk about the Dred Scott decision much later in this class. And that is going to be the issue. that Dred Scott decision is going to be addressing, all right? So the Northwest Ordinance, very important legislation, all right? So even spite of the fact that it was difficult to pass laws, the Articles of Confederation or the government under the Articles of Confederation did get things done, okay? The Northwest Ordinance, the... the land ordinance, treaties. The government did get things done, but the powers of the government were very limited. And because this government had limited ability to even do and perform its basic functions, very quickly people began to recognize serious weaknesses in the central government under the Articles of Confederation. This became most apparent. In 1786, there was a rebellion that took place in Massachusetts and in upstate New York that really forced people to begin rethinking the degree to which limiting power in the central government was a good thing after all. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Shee's. Rebellion as a reflection of some of the social and economic crises that existed right after the American Revolution. OK, so here's what happened. After the revolution ended, after the Battle of Yorktown, there were large numbers of Revolutionary War veterans who left, left the fight and returned home. OK, large numbers of these these soldiers, these veterans were farmers. And in their absence, they had left their wives in charge of the farm. And women had to worry not only about raising children and trying to run a farm, but more than that, women had to worry about being quite literally raided by soldiers. This was a wartime and hungry soldiers were constantly ransacking farms. They were doing everything they could to survive. And so if a farm had food, if a farm had... blankets, if a farm had any kind of supplies that soldiers could use, well, they would ransack it. They would take everything, right? Point being that when the farmers then came home after the war was over, what they found was that their farms were virtually destroyed. And in many cases, they had to start rebuilding almost from the ground up. And on top of that, then, they arrive home And if their wives and family have survived and if they are still there, then one of the things, the first things that a farmer's wife is probably going to hand him is a bill from the tax collector. You owe property taxes on this property and you owe them immediately. And of course, the farmer has no way of paying those taxes because he has no revenue. He needs money just to rebuild his farm before he can start making money off of his farm. So it was a really, really bad situation for Revolutionary War veterans. And if they couldn't pay their bills, well, the answer is that you go to jail. You go to debtor's jail. Anybody who has debts they can't pay, they go to debtor's jail. So you fight to win independence for your country. You return home to find out that your country is now going to throw you in jail because you can't pay your bills. OK, that's what many civil or revolutionary war veterans encountered after the war was over. And there was anger. OK, one of the men, one of these veterans was a man by the name of Daniel Shays. Daniel Shays, like many farmers. was being threatened not only with eviction, but he was being threatened with incarceration because he couldn't pay his bills, all right? So Daniel Shays and others began to organize. Other farmers, they now began to pick up their arms. And they're effectively now going to start organizing a social counter-revolution, a revolution against the revolution, right? Something like 1,500 Revolutionary War veterans now are going to take up arms under Daniel Shea's leadership. And in order to stop the incarceration of veterans, well, basically, they're going to occupy the county courthouse in Hampshire County, Massachusetts. They're going to shut down the court. No judge is going to be able to send somebody to jail. if the judge can't even open the court, all right? So under arm now, the Shaysites, as they're called, the rebels, are now shutting down the courthouse. And in Boston, the capital, there's grave concerns about what's going on here and something has to be done, okay? The bigger concern now is that if Shays men... occupy and seize control of a federal armory that's located in Springfield, Massachusetts, then they will be in a position where they could quite literally take over. And so the governor of Massachusetts was a man by the name of James Bowden. And having already seen a courthouse shut down, he now writes a letter off to the secretary of war, to Henry Knox. And he's asking the secretary of war. Can we have permission to use these federal arms? In other words, can the state of Massachusetts borrow the federal government's guns? That's quite literally what's happening. This was an armory that was organized during the Revolution. It was a federal armory. It was located in Massachusetts. But the problem is that the federal government, because it couldn't levy taxes, couldn't even protect its own armory. It was just an armory that was sitting there stocked full of guns and waiting for somebody to take over. The federal government couldn't do it. And if Daniel Shays did, then Bowdoin was looking at the possibility of a mass rebellion that he might not be able to put down. Henry Knox's response to the governor, he said, you know, I'd like to help you, Mr. Governor. This is what the Secretary of War said. I'd like to help you, but I can't do that unless Congress authorizes it. Well, when would that be? Well, Congress isn't meeting all the time. I can't tell you when it might be. And oh, by the way, you're going to have to have nine out of the 13 votes agree with you before we can do anything. anyway. And the governor now is saying, this won't work at all. We're going to have a massive revolution here in Massachusetts and upstate New York. Something has to be done. So Bowdoin organizes the state militia, the Massachusetts state militia. He recruits 4,400 men. They are a militia. They are under volunteer. They're not paid, which means you better hope you can rely on them. And the other thing to remember is they may or may not be armed, right? So they're going to be placed, this militia is placed under a man named William Shepard. And basically, Bowdoin sends William Shepard to Springfield to guard this armory. And when he gets there, Shepard takes the liberal, well, he takes the liberating view of this, I should say. And he liberates the arms himself. In other words, the state militia is now taking the federal arms. OK. And when Shays and his men arrived at the at Springfield, at the arsenal. Well, guess what? Shepard and his men were waiting and there was a violent contest in which four of Daniel Shays men were killed. And Shepard and his men, using federal arms that they had illegally confiscated, now arrested 1,000 others. Now the question, the big question, what do you do with all of these rebels? I mean, in effect, these were rebels. In effect, they could be executed. But is the governor prepared to start executing 1,000 men? I mean, that would be absolutely disastrous. So... Over time, James Bowden began pardoning the rebels. And eventually a general pardon was initiated and the rebels returned to their farms. But at the same time, there was now a recognition that something had to be done. The governor of Massachusetts had to begin to manage those courts so that people, could get their finances in order. And equally concerned now was this question of the federal government's role in all of this. This was a dispute that spilled over into New York. This was not exclusive to Massachusetts. It was in New York as well. So in some ways it was an interstate matter. The federal government should have been intervening. The federal government had done absolutely nothing as this conflict had unraveled in Massachusetts. As a result now, in 1786, there are those who are going to begin arguing that something has to be done to begin empowering the federal government to perform its basic duties. A man by the name of James Madison. is going to start becoming active in trying to push for an expanded role of the federal government. And that's going to start resulting eventually now in a new constitution. We will talk about that new constitution when we come back in our next lecture.

We'll talk about the drafting of the second constitution, our current constitution, a little bit later. But in this lecture, we want to spend time talking about America's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, a document that, again, outlined and defined the parameters, the bylaws, the operating procedures of the government during the revolution and during, well, for roughly three years, three or four years after the revolution. So let's talk a little bit about the Articles of Confederation. Now, again, the Second Continental Congress, in addition to declaring independence. did a variety of different things, creating an army, creating a currency.

But they also, perhaps most notably, drafted a constitution for a new government. The man who was especially instrumental in drafting the Articles of Confederation was a farmer from Pennsylvania. His name was John Dickinson.

And he was often thought of as a farmer. And in truth, he was a well-to-do land owner. His grandfather actually had begun the process of assembling a large collection of land in Pennsylvania.

His father had added to it, and then John Dickinson added more to that. And so while he was known as a farmer, it is important to understand, certainly, he was a well-to-do Pennsylvania landowner. He was also a Quaker, which makes him kind of an interesting... person to think about as we look especially at the revolution.

Quakers tended to be opposed to violence and warfare more generally. They would fight if need be, but they tended to prefer, obviously, peaceful resolution of conflict. And certainly, John Dickinson was like that. Remember, the whole, the religion was called the Society of Friends.

So there was a certainly a peaceful bent, if you will, among Quakers. And so for that reason, John Dickinson had actually opposed U.S. involvement in a violent revolution. He had hoped that the differences between the American colonies and the crown could be worked out. peacefully.

He had appealed. He had written to the crown directly, hoping for assistance. But that simply had never fully materialized.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed, and he did sign the Declaration of Independence, he did join the militia. But he largely justified that as a defense initiative, arguing that he was doing that in order to protect the people. Pennsylvania, not necessarily for the purposes of conducting war against Great Britain, although that's exactly what it was. And for that reason, John Dickinson actually, when it came to promotions in the militia, he was bypassed.

He was overlooked on several different occasions. He was just not a man who fully supported the idea of a violent revolution. He, as a Quaker, was also a man who opposed the institution of slavery. He had been he had inherited slaves, I should say, as part of his landed inheritance in Pennsylvania.

But the Revolutionary War era brought with it a very powerful abolitionist movement among Quakers. And ultimately, it would culminate in many of the northern states drafting laws to abolish slavery. The laws were not observed in the southern states.

states, but as we'll see in greater detail later on in this class, certainly the northern states did begin to abolish slavery. And many northerners, including John Dickinson, went so far as to manumit or free their slaves even before slavery was abolished. So John Dickinson, the author of the Articles of Confederation.

And... In order to understand the Articles of Confederation and in order to understand government in the early years of the country's history, it is critical to understand that Dickinson and others did not want to surrender considerable amounts of power to a central government. That is, the Congress that was assembled, the Second Continental Congress, that was assembled in Philadelphia was to have very limited powers within this governing system.

Power was ultimately to remain with the states. And indeed, ultimately, the states were considered sovereign. That is more or less independent.

So let's talk a little bit about the government that was established under the Articles of Consideration. First of all, the Congress, as it was organized, was a unilateral legislature. Sorry, not unilateral, unicameral legislature.

A unicameral legislature is a legislature that has one house, only one house. That's obviously very different than Congress today. Congress today has two houses, a House of Representatives and a House of Representatives. a Senate.

Originally, under the Articles of Confederation, we had only one legislature, one house. That was also, by the way, very different than Parliament. Parliament was a bicameral legislature. There was a House of Lords and a House of Commons. So this is a unicameral, one house of the legislature.

And among the states represented in that house, There was to be absolutely equal representation. OK, each state would have the same amount of power, the same voice that every other state had. OK, so each state had one vote and only one vote.

You could have, I think, up to six members in your delegation if you wanted. But in the end, if you had that many representatives, those six. representatives would have to decide among themselves how to cast the state's one single vote. So each state had one vote, meaning that there were 13 votes possible at any given time. And in order to even pass the simplest of legislation, you had to have nine of 13 votes to pass that legislation.

Now that's really quite amazing if you think about it, because In our present Congress, in order to pass simple legislation, at least in theory, you have to have a simple majority. That is more than 50 percent. Fifty one percent will get you will pass simple legislation.

In order to override a veto, you have to have two thirds of the legislature, which is 66 percent. OK, if you think about this, nine of 13. is something like 70% just to pass the simplest of legislation, okay? So the point is that it was going to be difficult in the Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, to even pass simple legislation, right?

If you could muster more than five votes against something, then you could defeat that legislation, all right? So unicameral legislature. Was there a president?

Well, the answer is yes. Under the Articles of Confederation, there was a president. But the president's job was basically and simply to preside over Congress.

Okay, that's why he was called a president. His job was to simply preside over Congress. He did not have a vote.

Okay, he could not vote separately. You know, there were 13 votes. Those went to the states. He could not vote. He could not veto.

Today, presidents have the right to the power to veto a bill and prevent it from becoming law. Under the Articles of Confederation, the president could not do that. The president had no veto power. The president had no vote.

What could the president do? Well, basically, the president had the power to shape debate because he presided over Congress. He could determine what Congress would debate. What? matters, what issues they would take up.

He could determine how long they would continue to vote, or to debate, I should say, and when they would vote. So he had the power to influence and even control debate within Congress, but he didn't have real decision-making powers when it came to making those decisions. So the central government under this Congress, Very important. It did not have the power to tax. It had no power to levy taxes.

OK, under the Articles of Confederation, there was no federal income tax. There were no federal import duties, taxes like that. The federal government under the Articles of Confederation, the central government, did not have the power to tax. OK, now that created real problems because. If the central government can't tax, then the central government has little capacity to make revenue or to make money.

And if it has no ability to make money, then it has no ability really to govern. And that became a real problem, as we will see going along. And one of the ultimate criticisms and one of the reasons why the Articles of Confederation ultimately failed is because it couldn't govern adequately. All right, so what could the government do? The duties of the government under the Articles of Confederation were rather simple.

The government could resolve trade disputes. If there were trade disputes among the 13 states, if two states were engaged in a battle over commerce for whatever reason, the federal government, the central government, would intervene and help to resolve and mediate trade disputes. Okay?

And the other thing is the federal government could conduct foreign policy. That means the federal government could represent the United States and ultimately sign treaties. If necessary, the central government could declare war if the legislature agreed to it. Okay.

Hence that, you know, that is why the Congress dictated. declared independence and effectively waged war in order to secure that independence, right? So conduct foreign policy, wage war if need be, resolve trade disputes.

These were the primary duties, the responsibilities of the central government. All other responsibilities were left to the states, right? So in summary, again, what we can say, the first government of the United States, the first government under the Articles of Confederation. was weak. It was weak.

It had very limited power. Just trying to get legislation passed was difficult because it required so many votes just to pass simple legislation. The president had very limited power.

And again, because the government couldn't tax, the government couldn't do anything. Ultimately, what John Dickinson and the Second Continental Congress wanted to do was to keep power. with the 13 states, all right? And so the first government was weak. The states retained sovereignty, okay?

And what that ultimately means, and this is how I want you to try and understand this. Under the Articles of Confederation, this constitution was not creating a central government. It was effectively recognizing the independence and sovereignty of 13 different governments, okay?

This was effectively a loose confederation of 13 independent countries. And that's how you need to understand the original 13 United States. They were, under the Articles of Confederation, considered to be 13 independent sovereign countries.

That would change as a result of the Constitution of 1787, which we'll talk about later. But... the under the articles of confederation this united states was a very loose confederation of independent countries or states. So what kinds of things did the government accomplish?

What kinds of actions were taken under the Articles of Confederation? Well, again, I've already mentioned one or a couple of those. Under the Articles of Confederation, a war of independence was waged.

Under the Articles of Confederation, we had a peace treaty signed in Paris in 1783. In addition, The Articles of Confederation are going to address some very difficult matters, especially as they related to lands. After the United States had secured its independence, after Britain recognized that independence, then one of the big questions that was raised was, what about the Western lands? Who owned those Western lands? Which states owned Western lands? We're going to...

talk more about that as we go along in this lecture. But before we can even think about the claims to Western lands, equally important was the question about the people who lived on those lands. What about the Native Americans who lived on the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains? So what we find is that under the Articles of Confederation, one of the first things that the federal government did was begin the process. of dealing with Native Americans.

And the first of the treaties that was ratified under the Articles was ratified in 1784, the year after the Peace of Paris. And it was signed at Fort Stanwix in New York. And it was signed between the federal government and leaders of the Iroquois Confederation.

Now, remember that the Iroquois Confederation had fought with Britain against the independence movement, against the United States during the revolution itself, right? The United States had signed a treaty with Great Britain, the Treaty of Paris. Now it's going to begin signing treaties with Native Americans.

And the first of these is the Treaty of Fort Stanwitz with the Iroquois. Now, the Iroquois were considered the enemy in this war, okay? They had been defeated in the war.

And since they had been defeated in the war, the U.S. government argued that they had forfeited, they had given up their rights to dictate any of the terms of the peace settlement. So the peace settlement at Fort Stanwix basically was dictated by the American government to the Iroquois people. And as part of the spoils, that is the...

the reward, if you will, for winning the war, the Iroquois were going to have to give up their land. That is not something that they agreed to. It's something that was dictated to them.

There was no compensation. It was a view of you lost the war, you're going to lose your territory. And they did. As a result of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix now, the Iroquois are going to be forcibly relocated.

from New York to the Ohio River country, okay, further west. And that's going to now set an important precedent, okay? This precedent is going to be followed with other tribes, maybe not in the same way, okay? There will be compensation with some tribes. Some tribes are going to, you know, they're not going to have been at war with the U.S. government.

And so there may be compensation in the form of gifts or money, okay? But in either case, it is going to be a process of treaty negotiation and effectively using treaties to dispossess Native Americans of their land. OK, that dispossession will go on after 1784 with with multitude of tribes as the country, the white population of America began to expand westward. OK, so.

What happened to the lands that basically were seized from the Iroquois and from other native tribes? Well, these lands are now going to become part of what's called the public domain. The public domain, public lands. Now, who is going to own those lands?

Which of the 13 states is going to have land? That's what people want to know. Is the state of New York going to get all of the land that's taken from the Iroquois or are other?

Are our other states going to get land? Okay, that's the question. Well, in the end, the public domain is going to be turned over to the federal government. Okay, a new responsibility now for the central government is going to be to manage and oversee the public domain. Okay, those lands that are now collectively owned by the United States of America.

But... those lands are earmarked for privatization. That is, when the government takes over, takes those lands over, the government is going to begin the process then of effectively selling those lands to private individuals so people can buy the land and go out and farm, okay? Now, this disposition of the public domain has to be an orderly process, okay?

Otherwise, you're going to have frontier land wars. You're going to have groups of farmers going out onto the frontier and ultimately fighting with one another because they've got overlapping claims to land. You may have heard of the very famous feud between the Hackfields and the McCoys in the, I guess, is the Virginia-Kentucky border region.

It was an old feud, almost certainly had its origins. in a land dispute, okay? So these kinds of land disputes could be avoided if you could go out onto the public domain, and if you could survey the land first, draw all the boundaries, and then make sure that the people who bought the land then knew where all of the boundaries were.

Then there wouldn't be a, then there wouldn't be fighting taking place, all right? That at least was the theory, okay? And so... another action taken under the Articles of Confederation was the passage of a land ordinance called the Land Ordinance of 1785. Now this land ordinance, again, was designed to especially bring about the orderly settlement and disposition of the public domain. And towards that end then, it created a land survey, and it's called the Township and Range Survey.

The township and range survey is a rectangular survey, and it basically brought about a map of public lands that look very much like this map in this in this slide. OK, basically, you had a bunch of squares that were surveyed onto the landscape. And as I mentioned in the slide here, when you're dealing with a nice, perfectly flat plain. Everything looks nice and good and everything in theory works out well. The problem, of course, is that the United States is not just one flat plain.

It's a whole series of mountains and valleys and rivers. And there's all kinds of issues then that make it difficult to fit this township and range, this rectangular survey, to the real land. All right, so...

Even though this was an attempt at an orally disposition, there were survey issues from the start. Absolutely, there were survey issues. Now, one of the important provisions of the Land Ordinance of 1785 is that Section 16 of every township was designated as the public school section. So, first of all, I'll try to explain. Under this rectangular survey, there would be townships set up.

And those townships were basically squares of land that were 36 square miles each. OK, 36 square miles. Each township was six miles on one side by six miles on another side. And that would create a township of 36 square miles or what was called a section. OK, a square mile is a section of land.

OK, so. And then there was a numbering system, and within this numbering system, then every township would have a section that was number 16. And so section 16 was the public school section. And each township then would be able to sell the land in section 16, and then the township, the people of that township, then would get that money to build a school. and to pay a teacher.

So from the very beginning, and I can't stress this strongly enough then, going back to 1785, even before we had our present Constitution, the federal government was sponsoring public education. and helping to underwrite the cost of public education. You will often hear today complaints that are being made.

The federal government has no business in public education and overseeing and regulating public education and supporting public education. The reality is the federal government has been subsidizing public education in the United States. since 1785. It did it by granting land to townships to build schools.

And indeed, public education, in Thomas Jefferson's mind, was absolutely critical for the success of the United States. If you're going to have a democratic system where people are making decisions, then people have to be able to make informed, intelligent decisions. And the only way they can make informed, intelligent decisions is if they're going to have a democratic system.

if they are educated, all right? So the federal government has always advocated for and sponsored public education. It is historically one of the most important roles of the federal government.

We can look at Land Ordinance 1785 as evidence of that, okay? Now, having said that, what this land ordinance did more than anything was to pave the way for a powerful, or... group of land companies to now control and sell the best and largest lands.

And here's how it happened. The federal government, in order to survey these lands now, is going to contract with surveyors. Those surveyors are going to get paid to go out and survey the public domain. And even as they do that, they're keeping notebooks and they're identifying where the best lands are.

So not only are they making money for the surveying, they also now know where the best lands are. So we have now teams of surveyors and lawyers. They're going out. They know where the best and most valuable lands are, and they now start buying them. They buy them cheap, and they sell them expensive, okay?

They make money off of it, right? So this land ordinance of 1785 made it very possible to make lots of money. on land. And ultimately, the idea that this was a perfect, organized way of disposing of the public domain is really not very accurate at all. It led to tremendous discrimination.

Now, once people started populating these lands, then one of the next questions that the the government had to address was whether these new territories should become states or not. Should these new territories continue to be part of the central government, or should they ultimately become equal states within the union, meaning they have a vote in Congress? Well, in 1787, the government addressed that very question when it signed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Under the Northwest Ordinance, now the region north and west of the Ohio River, remember the Ohio River is the southern border of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and all of the territory north and west of the Ohio now, was going to be divided into five federal territories.

The territories of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Now initially, those five territories were to be administered by the federal government. The federal government establishing the territories would appoint a governor. And that governor would be the individual who would go out and he would start governing.

He would start a government there. He would organize a territorial assembly. There would be stages in which the territorial population, the people, would start gaining more and more power, more and more influence over the governing process.

Once the population of a territory reached 60,000 propertied citizens, and I have to stress, Not just 60,000 people, but 60,000 propertied citizens, meaning 60,000 people who own land in that territory. Once the population reached 60,000 propertied citizens, then the territory was ready to apply for statehood. The first step was that they would sit down, they would have a constitutional convention, and they would draft a constitution.

Once they drafted that constitution, they submitted the constitution to Congress. And Congress then had the power to either admit a state into statehood or to deny statehood. So that power, the power of statehood. was reserved to Congress.

I can't stress that enough because that is going to be a contentious issue. In the 1800s, when we start talking about slavery and the extension of slavery to the West, the question of whether states are going to be admitted to the Union is going to hinge on the question of slavery. And it's going to be Congress then that has the power to determine whether or not a state like Texas, as we'll see, is going to be admitted into the union.

So Congress has the power to determine statehood under the Northwest Ordinance. And once a state is admitted to the union, then it will have the power to vote, send a representative to Congress, and participate in government. Now, there was one more very important aspect or feature of the Northwest Ordinance that I need to mention, and that is that under the Northwest Ordinance now, slavery...

was outlawed in the Northwest Territory. Okay. North and west of the Ohio River, slavery could not be introduced. Okay. Again, remember, I told you that during the revolutionary era, especially the influence of Quakers was very powerful in curbing slavery.

Okay. And certainly African-Americans themselves were very outspoken. The problem, of course, is few African-Americans who were outlawed.

had access to power. But on the other hand, Quakers did. And there were a growing number of people, especially in the Northeast, who were beginning to oppose slavery. So the federal government now was saying, no slavery on this federal territory north and west of the Ohio River.

Even once they become states, they will not be able to have slavery. So that question, too, is going to come up again. Does the federal government... have the power to deny individuals their quote-unquote property, which is what slaves were considered, does the federal government have the power to deny people their property just because they relocate to federal land? That's going to be a very contentious issue, too.

And we'll talk about the Dred Scott decision much later in this class. And that is going to be the issue. that Dred Scott decision is going to be addressing, all right? So the Northwest Ordinance, very important legislation, all right? So even spite of the fact that it was difficult to pass laws, the Articles of Confederation or the government under the Articles of Confederation did get things done, okay?

The Northwest Ordinance, the... the land ordinance, treaties. The government did get things done, but the powers of the government were very limited. And because this government had limited ability to even do and perform its basic functions, very quickly people began to recognize serious weaknesses in the central government under the Articles of Confederation. This became most apparent.

In 1786, there was a rebellion that took place in Massachusetts and in upstate New York that really forced people to begin rethinking the degree to which limiting power in the central government was a good thing after all. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Shee's. Rebellion as a reflection of some of the social and economic crises that existed right after the American Revolution.

OK, so here's what happened. After the revolution ended, after the Battle of Yorktown, there were large numbers of Revolutionary War veterans who left, left the fight and returned home. OK, large numbers of these these soldiers, these veterans were farmers.

And in their absence, they had left their wives in charge of the farm. And women had to worry not only about raising children and trying to run a farm, but more than that, women had to worry about being quite literally raided by soldiers. This was a wartime and hungry soldiers were constantly ransacking farms.

They were doing everything they could to survive. And so if a farm had food, if a farm had... blankets, if a farm had any kind of supplies that soldiers could use, well, they would ransack it. They would take everything, right?

Point being that when the farmers then came home after the war was over, what they found was that their farms were virtually destroyed. And in many cases, they had to start rebuilding almost from the ground up. And on top of that, then, they arrive home And if their wives and family have survived and if they are still there, then one of the things, the first things that a farmer's wife is probably going to hand him is a bill from the tax collector.

You owe property taxes on this property and you owe them immediately. And of course, the farmer has no way of paying those taxes because he has no revenue. He needs money just to rebuild his farm before he can start making money off of his farm. So it was a really, really bad situation for Revolutionary War veterans.

And if they couldn't pay their bills, well, the answer is that you go to jail. You go to debtor's jail. Anybody who has debts they can't pay, they go to debtor's jail. So you fight to win independence for your country.

You return home to find out that your country is now going to throw you in jail because you can't pay your bills. OK, that's what many civil or revolutionary war veterans encountered after the war was over. And there was anger. OK, one of the men, one of these veterans was a man by the name of Daniel Shays. Daniel Shays, like many farmers.

was being threatened not only with eviction, but he was being threatened with incarceration because he couldn't pay his bills, all right? So Daniel Shays and others began to organize. Other farmers, they now began to pick up their arms.

And they're effectively now going to start organizing a social counter-revolution, a revolution against the revolution, right? Something like 1,500 Revolutionary War veterans now are going to take up arms under Daniel Shea's leadership. And in order to stop the incarceration of veterans, well, basically, they're going to occupy the county courthouse in Hampshire County, Massachusetts.

They're going to shut down the court. No judge is going to be able to send somebody to jail. if the judge can't even open the court, all right?

So under arm now, the Shaysites, as they're called, the rebels, are now shutting down the courthouse. And in Boston, the capital, there's grave concerns about what's going on here and something has to be done, okay? The bigger concern now is that if Shays men...

occupy and seize control of a federal armory that's located in Springfield, Massachusetts, then they will be in a position where they could quite literally take over. And so the governor of Massachusetts was a man by the name of James Bowden. And having already seen a courthouse shut down, he now writes a letter off to the secretary of war, to Henry Knox.

And he's asking the secretary of war. Can we have permission to use these federal arms? In other words, can the state of Massachusetts borrow the federal government's guns? That's quite literally what's happening. This was an armory that was organized during the Revolution.

It was a federal armory. It was located in Massachusetts. But the problem is that the federal government, because it couldn't levy taxes, couldn't even protect its own armory.

It was just an armory that was sitting there stocked full of guns and waiting for somebody to take over. The federal government couldn't do it. And if Daniel Shays did, then Bowdoin was looking at the possibility of a mass rebellion that he might not be able to put down. Henry Knox's response to the governor, he said, you know, I'd like to help you, Mr. Governor. This is what the Secretary of War said.

I'd like to help you, but I can't do that unless Congress authorizes it. Well, when would that be? Well, Congress isn't meeting all the time.

I can't tell you when it might be. And oh, by the way, you're going to have to have nine out of the 13 votes agree with you before we can do anything. anyway. And the governor now is saying, this won't work at all.

We're going to have a massive revolution here in Massachusetts and upstate New York. Something has to be done. So Bowdoin organizes the state militia, the Massachusetts state militia. He recruits 4,400 men. They are a militia.

They are under volunteer. They're not paid, which means you better hope you can rely on them. And the other thing to remember is they may or may not be armed, right? So they're going to be placed, this militia is placed under a man named William Shepard.

And basically, Bowdoin sends William Shepard to Springfield to guard this armory. And when he gets there, Shepard takes the liberal, well, he takes the liberating view of this, I should say. And he liberates the arms himself. In other words, the state militia is now taking the federal arms. OK.

And when Shays and his men arrived at the at Springfield, at the arsenal. Well, guess what? Shepard and his men were waiting and there was a violent contest in which four of Daniel Shays men were killed.

And Shepard and his men, using federal arms that they had illegally confiscated, now arrested 1,000 others. Now the question, the big question, what do you do with all of these rebels? I mean, in effect, these were rebels. In effect, they could be executed.

But is the governor prepared to start executing 1,000 men? I mean, that would be absolutely disastrous. So... Over time, James Bowden began pardoning the rebels. And eventually a general pardon was initiated and the rebels returned to their farms.

But at the same time, there was now a recognition that something had to be done. The governor of Massachusetts had to begin to manage those courts so that people, could get their finances in order. And equally concerned now was this question of the federal government's role in all of this. This was a dispute that spilled over into New York. This was not exclusive to Massachusetts.

It was in New York as well. So in some ways it was an interstate matter. The federal government should have been intervening. The federal government had done absolutely nothing as this conflict had unraveled in Massachusetts.

As a result now, in 1786, there are those who are going to begin arguing that something has to be done to begin empowering the federal government to perform its basic duties. A man by the name of James Madison. is going to start becoming active in trying to push for an expanded role of the federal government. And that's going to start resulting eventually now in a new constitution. We will talk about that new constitution when we come back in our next lecture.

Transcript for:The Articles of Confederation Overview

Transcript for:
The Articles of Confederation Overview