The Articles of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation were established due to the fear of a strong central government threatening people's freedom.
The new national government was considered more of a defense agreement between the states rather than a real government.
It was described as a "perpetual union" but acted more like a treaty.
Under the Articles, each of the thirteen states retained its "sovereignty, freedom, and independence."
The relationship between the states was termed a "firm league of friendship."
The national government consisted of a one-house Congress where each state had one vote, regardless of size.
There was no president to enforce laws or courts to interpret them.
Major decisions required the approval of nine states instead of a simple majority.
The national government had limited powers necessary for winning independence:
- Declaring war
- Handling foreign relations
- Making treaties with other countries
Congress lacked the power to collect taxes or control trade, relying mainly on funds from individual states.
Changing the Articles required unanimous agreement among all thirteen states, making amendments difficult.
Numerous amendments were proposed to strengthen the national government, but none were approved by all states.
The Articles made it difficult for the national government to be strong, but Congress achieved some important things in the 1780s.
The most significant achievement was gaining control over land west of the thirteen states and establishing rules for settlement.
Disagreements over access to western lands almost prevented the Articles from being approved.
Some states, like Virginia, the Carolinas, and Connecticut, claimed large western land areas based on their original royal charters.
Other states argued that this land should belong to the whole country.
The Articles were approved after states with large land claims ceded their western territories to the central government to promote national unity.

Congress and The West

Creating rules for settling the land controlled by the federal government (from the western edges of the states to the Mississippi River) was challenging.
Approximately 100,000 Native Americans resided in this land, although some Americans acted as if it was empty.
Post-independence, Congress believed Native Americans had forfeited their land rights by supporting the British during the war, without considering tribal affiliations.
At peace talks in Fort Stanwix, New York (1784), and Fort McIntosh, near Pittsburgh (1785), American officials compelled Native Americans to cede large areas of land north of the Ohio River.
Similar treaties were established with the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes in the South, with Congress promising these tribes could retain their remaining land.
These treaties gave the U.S. control over a large portion of western land.
The government faced significant pressure regarding selling this land and determining settlement rules.
Many leaders believed the new nation's economy required farmers to access western land.
Land sales were seen as a revenue source but there were concerns that unregulated westward expansion would lead to conflicts with Native Americans.
Land companies actively lobbied Congress to allow private companies to manage the West's development by purchasing land and reselling it to settlers for profit.
Many leaders worried that uncontrolled westward expansion would result in constant conflicts with Native Americans.
Frontier settlers were viewed as unruly and disrespectful of authority.
Benjamin Franklin described them as "our debtors, loose English people, our German servants, and slaves."
To maintain order in the West and attract respectable settlers, leaders felt it was crucial to establish strict settlement rules and prevent tensions between the frontier and settled areas.

The Land Ordinances

Throughout the 1780s, Congress enacted multiple laws to establish guidelines for the sale and settlement of western lands.
Thomas Jefferson authored the Ordinance of 1784, which outlined stages of self-government for the West.
The land was to be divided into districts initially governed by Congress, which would later become states within the Union.
A provision in the ordinance that would have prohibited slavery in the West was narrowly rejected by Congress.
In 1785, another law was enacted to regulate land sales in the area north of the Ohio River, known as the Old Northwest.
The government would survey the land and sell it in square-mile sections (640 acres) at 1 per acre.
One section in each township was to be reserved to fund public schools.
The aim of the new land organization system was to structure settlement and generate revenue for Congress,but settlers often moved west before official surveys were completed.
American leaders struggled to control the desire for new land.
The minimum price of 640 made it hard for most settlers to afford.
Many settlers bought smaller pieces of land from speculators and land companies.
In 1787, Congress decided to sell large amounts of land to private groups, like the Ohio Company, which bought 1.5 million acres.
For many years, national land policies benefited big land companies and wealthy buyers more than individual settlers.
It wasn't until the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave away free land, that this changed.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 created a plan to form three to five new states north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi.
This followed the idea of Jefferson's "empire of liberty"-instead of ruling the West like a colony, the U.S. would make its population equal members of the political system.
Expansion and self-government would happen together.
The Northwest Ordinance also promised to treat Native Americans fairly and said that their land would not be taken without their agreement.
This was the first time the U.S. officially recognized that Native Americans owned their land.
Congress realized that letting settlers or state governments take Native lands would lead to endless, costly wars.
One congressman said it would be cheaper to win over Native Americans than to pay for wars to destroy them.
But the government still assumed that the Native American presence would eventually disappear, either through land purchases, treaties, or voluntary removal.
The Ordinance also banned slavery in the Old Northwest, which would later play a big role in the conflict between the North and South.
However, some slave owners got around the rule by claiming their slaves had agreed to long-term labor contracts.

The Confederation's Weaknesses

The Confederation government had some successes, but many influential Americans believed its failures were more significant.
Both the national government and the country were dealing with growing economic problems.
To pay for the War of Independence, Congress borrowed a lot of money by selling bonds and paying soldiers and suppliers with notes that promised future payment.
Without a steady source of income, the government couldn't pay the interest on these debts or the debts themselves.
After leaving the British empire, American ships were no longer allowed to trade with the West Indies.
At the same time, imported goods flooded the U.S. market, hurting many craftsmen, lowering wages, and draining money out of the country.
Since Congress couldn't fix the situation, the states created their own economic policies.
Some states placed taxes on imported goods.
Farmers who were in debt and in danger of losing their land because they couldn't pay their taxes or mortgages pushed their state governments for help, as did urban workers who owed money to local merchants.
To increase the amount of money available and make it easier for people to pay their debts, several states printed a lot of paper money.
Some states also passed laws that delayed debt collection.
Creditors, or people who were owed money, saw these measures as attacks on their property rights.
In many states, elections became heated, with candidates accusing creditors of taking advantage of the poor and blaming importers of luxury goods for hurting republican values.

Shays's Rebellion

In late 1786 and early 1787, groups of farmers who were in debt shut down courts in western Massachusetts to stop their land from being taken because they couldn't pay their taxes.
They called themselves "regulators," a name used by other protesters in the Carolina backcountry in the 1760s.
This uprising became known as Shays's Rebellion, named after one of its leaders, Daniel Shays, a former soldier in the War for Independence.
Massachusetts had resisted helping struggling farmers by printing paper money or easing their debts.
The people in Shays's Rebellion felt they were continuing the spirit of the Revolution.
They used the same tactics as the protests of the 1760s and 1770s and used symbols like liberty trees and liberty poles.
However, the state's governor, James Bowdoin, did not sympathize with them and sent an army led by former Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln. The rebels were defeated in January 1787, and over 1,000 were arrested.
Governor Bowdoin argued that without following the law, Americans would fall into "anarchy, confusion, and slavery."
Thomas Jefferson, observing Shays's Rebellion from Paris, wasn't worried. He wrote to a friend that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" and that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
But for many Americans, this uprising and other events in the 1780s convinced them that the national government needed to be stronger.
They believed the government should create stable economic policies and protect property owners from local majorities that might take away their rights.
The actions of state legislatures, which were often elected by a broader voting population, and events like Shays's Rebellion made some people fear that democracy had gone too far.
In 1785, Samuel Adams said, "our government at present has liberty for its object."
But those who wanted a stronger national government felt that liberty had become dangerous.
They began to believe that individual rights were now threatened not by a central government, but by the people themselves.
James Madison stated that "liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power."
In other words, individual freedoms-especially the right to own property-could be at risk when public liberty, or unchecked power in the hands of the people, went too far.

Nationalist of the 1780s

James Madison was a strong supporter and follower of Thomas Jefferson.
He was part of a group of talented and well-organized men who led the push for a stronger national government.
Another key figure was Alexander Hamilton, who had come to America from the West Indies as a young man.
Hamilton was a strong supporter of a powerful government that could make the U.S. an important player in world trade and politics.
He believed true liberty required a government with enough authority to create and enforce laws.
Men like Madison and Hamilton were focused on building the nation, so they began to feel that Americans were wasting the benefits of independence and that the country's future success depended on giving more power to the national government.
People who criticized the Articles of Confederation found support from men who had developed a sense of national identity during the Revolution.
Nationalists included army officers, members of Congress who worked with people from different states, and diplomats who represented the U.S. abroad.
John Marshall began to see America as his country and Congress as his government.
Important economic groups also wanted a stronger national government, like bondholders, city workers, merchants and property owners.
In September 1786, delegates from six states met in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss ways to improve trade between the states and with other countries.
Madison wrote that the violent events in Massachusetts showed the need for a new constitution.
He complained that no one respected the federal government.
Without changes to the system, he warned that either chaos or monarchy would follow, ending the experiment with republican government.
Every state except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates to the Philadelphia convention.
When the delegates met in May 1787, they decided to throw out the Articles of Confederation and write a new constitution for the United States.