Articles of Confederation

Impact

The Articles of Confederation made the United States of America a nation. Whereas all other attempts at colonial unification had failed, the Articles created a government that could direct the American Revolution and be represented in Spanish and French courts. Thirteen states would no longer be seeking freedom; the United States of America would request aid, and, as such, one large nation would negotiate with foreign powers the terms of financial agreements, loans, and military assistance. France would recognize and assist the United States of America in the American Revolution.

With the end of the Revolution, however, the radicals' interests in a national government faded. The defeated British were expected to withdraw from forts on western lands, which the Treaty of Paris (1783) ceded to the United States. (The United States did not force full British compliance until the War of 1812.) Independence had been achieved. The radicals were concerned with state legislatures and local government, embodied in the states. As time went on, the Congress of the Confederation found it harder to get the states to pay what they owed into the national treasury and to send enough delegates for Congress to have a quorum to conduct Confederation business.

Even in 1783 Congress lacked the funds to pay veterans of the Continental army. On June 21 mutinous Pennsylvania soldiers surrounded the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia and refused to let the legislators leave until they promised to pay them. The crisis was averted when the soldiers became drunk and distracted, and the legislators were able to escape without serious incident. The Congress of the Confederation, however, never again met in Philadelphia.

Shays's Rebellion, which erupted in western Massachusetts in August 1786, was far more serious. Because of an economic downturn, small farmers were facing foreclosures and debt proceedings while still trying to pay high taxes. Daniel Shays and other local leaders organized hundreds of armed men, who forced the closing of several courthouses; they even forced the Massachusetts Supreme Court in Springfield to adjourn. The governor of Massachusetts sent an urgent request to the Congress of the Confederation for U.S. troops to be sent to help put down the rebels and restore order. Congress requested troops be sent to Massachusetts; the Confederation lacked the funds to pay for such an army, and the states simply ignored Massachusetts' plea. Shays's Rebellion eventually ended in February 1787 when Massachusetts forces finally defeated Shays at Petersham without help.

The solution to the western land problems was resolved in the Confederation through three land acts, adopted by Congress in 1784, 1785, and 1787, that finally settled the western boundaries of landless states and set up the process by which these territories were administered. Along with the two previous ordinances (1784 and 1785), the Northwest Ordinance addressed the area of the Northwest Territory (also known as the Old Northwest) and created a blueprint for how public lands would be surveyed and divided into smaller parcels of land. In addition, the ordinances directed how local and regional governments were created, how each town had public lands for schools, how the territory would be represented in Congress, and how and when these territories could enter the Union. The Northwest Ordinance outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territory. The land ordinances also ensured that new states would enter the Union on an equal footing with the original states and not be inferior in status to them.

Spain, a potentially hostile state that controlled the mouth of the Mississippi River at New Orleans, served as a bottleneck for farmers living in the western lands. The Mississippi was the natural way for the farmers to move their crops to market, but the United States had no commercial treaty with Spain over usage of the Mississippi. Some farmers, seeking to use the river, went so far as to swear allegiance to the crown of Spain so that their crops could go to New Orleans. As a result, the Annapolis Convention met in September 1786 to discuss these and other commercial problems. Five states attended, and it was resolved that the Articles had to be revised to solve the problems of national commerce.

The conservatives saw their chance. In 1787 the Congress of the Confederation created a committee to revise or amend the Articles of Confederation. Most of the delegates were conservatives (the radicals boycotted or simply had no interest). This committee, now known as the Constitutional Convention of 1787, secretly and illegally drafted the current U.S. Constitution, thereby creating a new form of government, although most of the Articles were rewritten and incorporated into the Constitution. It can also be said, in retrospect, that the Constitution of 1787 closed the gaps in the Articles of Confederation and eliminated the weaknesses, to create a functional federal government for the United States.

The Articles of Confederation did give the United States a strong start as a new nation. The Articles, however, never mentioned or addressed slavery and did not create a federal judiciary. The Constitution of 1787 discussed slavery and set up the checks and balances of the three branches of the federal government.

Under the Articles, the United States reduced its Revolutionary War debt by more than half, diffused the disputes over the western lands ceded by Great Britain, settled how new states would enter the Union, and allowed the creation of the first national banking system in the United States. The Congress of the Confederation held its first debates at the new national capital.