We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution

By George William Van Cleve

“Provides a focused explanation of the reasons the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first federal constitution, went lurching toward collapse.” —Jack Rakove, Pulitzer Prize winner, The Washington Post

In 1783, as the Revolutionary War came to a close, Alexander Hamilton resigned in disgust from the Continental Congress after it refused to consider a fundamental reform of the Articles of Confederation. Just four years later, that same government collapsed, and Congress grudgingly agreed to support the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, which altered the Articles beyond recognition. What occurred during this remarkably brief interval to cause the Confederation to lose public confidence and inspire Americans to replace it with a dramatically more flexible and powerful government? We Have Not a Government is the story of this contentious moment in American history.

At the time, America was a sharply divided country. Amid a deep, long-lasting recession, the Confederation faced massive war debts and experienced punishing trade restrictions and strong resistance to American territorial expansion. Exploding western settlement led to bitter sectional divisions that deadlocked the Continental Congress. Van Cleve shows how these remarkable stresses transformed the Confederation into a stalemate government and eventually led previously conflicting states, sections, and interest groups to advocate for a union powerful enough to govern a continental empire.

Touching on the stories of a wide-ranging cast of characters—including John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Shays, George Washington, and Thayendanegea—Van Cleve makes clear that it was the Confederation’s failures that created a political crisis and led to the 1787 Constitution. Clearly argued and superbly written, We Have Not a Government is a must-read history of this crucial period in our nation’s early life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9780226480640

Book preview

We Have Not a Government

We Have Not a Government

THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION AND THE ROAD TO THE CONSTITUTION

George William Van Cleve

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Chicago and London

George William Van Cleve is research professor in law and history at Seattle University School of Law. He received his PhD from University of Virginia and his JD from Harvard Law School.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2017 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2017

Printed in the United States of America

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17    1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-48050-3 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-48064-0 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226480640.001.0001

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Van Cleve, George, 1952– author.

Title: We have not a government: the Articles of Confederation and the road to the Constitution / George William van Cleve.

Description: Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017015706 | ISBN 9780226480503 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226480640 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: United States. Articles of Confederation. | Constitutional History—United States—18th century. | United States—Politics and government—1775–1783. | United States—Politics and government—1783–1789. | United States—History—1783–1815.

Classification: LCC KF4508 .V353 2017 E302.1 | DDC 342.7302—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015706

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

In memoriam Foster Osgood Chanock, beloved friend

For my wife and children and our fellow citizens, now and in the years to come

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason

CONTENTS

Principal Characters

The Confederation’s Final Years: A Chronology

Introduction

PART ONE  THE SEARCH FOR NATIONAL IDENTITY

1  War’s Aftermath

2  Americans and Postwar Debts: Public Faith or Anarchy?

3  Republic and Empire: The Struggle over Confederation Taxes

4  Protecting American Commerce in an Imperial World

PART TWO  WESTERN EXPANSION STRAINS

5  Astonishing Emigrations and Western Conflicts

6  The Spanish-Treaty Impasse and the Union’s Collapse

PART THREE  INTERNAL DIVISIONS: STATE SOCIAL CONFLICTS

7  Economic Relief, Social Peace, and Republican Justice

8  Shays’s Rebellion: The Final Battle of the American Revolution?

PART FOUR  CONFEDERATION COLLAPSE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

9  The Truth Is, We Have Not a Government: Confederation Stalemate and the Road to the Philadelphia Convention

Conclusion: The Birth of the American Empire

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Footnotes

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

CONFEDERATION OFFICIALS

John Adams (1735–1826). Born Braintree, Massachusetts. Attorney. Negotiator, Paris Treaty of Peace, 1782–83. Ambassador to England, 1785–88. Husband of Abigail Smith Adams.

Josiah Harmar (1753–1813). Born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Revolutionary War soldier. Army commander on Ohio frontier, 1783–91.

John Jay (1745–1829). Born New York, New York. Attorney. Negotiator, Paris Treaty of Peace, 1782–83. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, 1784–89.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). Born Albemarle County, Virginia. Slave-plantation owner, attorney, and author. Congressman, 1783–84. Minister (trade), 1784. Minister to France, 1785–89.

Henry Knox (1750–1806). Born Boston, Massachusetts. Bookseller. Army major general, Revolutionary War. Secretary of War, 1785–94.

Arthur Lee (1740–1792). Born Stratford Hall, Virginia. Doctor and attorney. Revolutionary War diplomat. Member of Virginia House of Delegates, 1781–83, 1785, 1786. Congressman, 1782–84. Indian commissioner, Treaties of Fort Stanwix and Fort Mcintosh. Member, Board of Treasury, 1785–89. Brother of Richard Henry Lee.

Benjamin Lincoln (1733–1810). Born Hingham, Massachusetts. Army major general, Revolutionary War. Secretary at War, 1781–83. Led Massachusetts troops against Shays’s Rebellion, 1786–87.

Robert R. Livingston (1746–1813). Born Clermont, Columbia County, New York. Attorney and major landowner. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, 1781–83.

Robert Morris (1734–1806). Born Liverpool, England. Philadelphia international merchant. Superintendent of Finance, 1781–84. Member of Pennsylvania Assembly, 1785–87. Annapolis Convention delegate, 1786. Philadelphia Convention delegate, 1787.

CONGRESSMEN

¹f

Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814). Born Marblehead, Massachusetts. International merchant. Congressman, 1783–85. Member of Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1786–87. Philadelphia Convention delegate, 1787.

William Grayson (1736?–90). Born Prince William County, Virginia. Attorney. Member of Virginia House of Delegates, 1784–85. Congressman, 1785–87.

David Howell (1747–1824). Born Morristown, New Jersey. College professor, mathematics and natural philosophy. Congressman for Rhode Island, 1782–85.

Rufus King (1755–1827). Born Scarborough, Maine (then part of Massachusetts). Attorney. Member of Massachusetts legislature, 1783–85. Congressman, 1784–87. Philadelphia Convention delegate, 1787.

Henry (Light-Horse Harry) Lee, Jr. (III?) (1756–1818). Born Prince William County, Virginia. Revolutionary War officer. Congressman, 1786–88.

James Madison (1751–1836). Born King George County, Virginia. Heir to slave plantation. Career politician and political theorist. Congressman, 1780–83, 1787. Member of Virginia Assembly, 1784–86. Annapolis Convention delegate, 1786. Philadelphia Convention delegate, 1787.

James Monroe (1758–1831). Born Westmoreland County, Virginia. Attorney. Member of Virginia Assembly, 1782, 1786. Congressman, 1783–86.

STATE LEADERS/INFLUENTIAL CITIZENS

Abigail Smith Adams (1744–1818). Born Weymouth, Massachusetts. Managed family farm and investments in Braintree, 1776–85. With husband, John Adams, in Paris and London, 1785–88.

Samuel Adams (1722–1803). Born Boston, Massachusetts. Revolutionary statesman. Member of Massachusetts Senate and Governor’s Council during the 1780s.

George Clinton (1739–1812). Born Ulster County, New York. Revolutionary soldier and statesman. Served seven terms as governor of New York, including 1783–89.

Tristram Dalton (1738–1817). Born Newburyport, Massachusetts. Merchant. Member of Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1782–85. Member of Massachusetts Senate, 1785–88.

Nathaniel Gorham (1738–96). Born Charlestown, Massachusetts. Merchant. Congressman, 1782–83, 1785–87. Member of Massachusetts legislature, 1781–87. Active in suppression of Shays’s Rebellion. Philadelphia Convention delegate, 1787.

Alexander Hamilton (1755?–1804). Born Charlestown, Nevis, West Indies. Revolutionary War officer; staff aide to General Washington. Congressman, 1782–83. Annapolis Convention delegate, 1786. Member of New York legislature, 1787. Philadelphia Convention delegate, 1787.

Patrick Henry (1736–99). Born Hanover County, Virginia. Attorney. Member of Virginia legislature, 1782–84, 1787–88. Five-term governor of Virginia, including 1785–86.

Stephen Higginson (1743–1828). Born Salem, Massachusetts. International merchant. Congressman, 1783. Served as lieutenant colonel in forces opposing Shays’s Rebellion, 1786–87.

Richard Henry Lee (1732–94). Born Stratford Hall, Virginia. Slave-plantation owner, career politician. Congressman, 1784–85, 1787. Member of Virginia legislature, 1785.

Daniel Shays (ca. 1747–1825). Born Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Revolutionary War soldier and officer. Farmer. A main leader of the 1786 insurgency against Massachusetts government.

George Washington (1732–99). Born Westmoreland County, Virginia. Slave-plantation owner, land and canal investor. Revolutionary War army commander in chief, 1775–83. President, Philadelphia Convention, 1787.

FOREIGN AND NATIVE AMERICAN DIPLOMATS AND LEADERS

Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) (1743–1807). Born Ohio Country. Mohawk military and political leader. Revolutionary War officer (British ally). Slave-farm owner. Among the principal leaders of postwar Native American tribes’ Western Confederacy.

Bernardo de Gálvez, Viscount of Galveston and Count of Gálvez (1746–86). Born Macharaviaya, Spain. Spanish general in Revolutionary War. Governor of Cuba, 1784. Viceroy of New Spain, 1785–86.

Don Diego María de Gardoqui (1735–98). Born Bilbao, Spain. Spanish envoy to the United States, 1785–89.

Alexander McGillivray (Hoboi-Hili-Miko) (1750?–93). Born Little Tallassee (near present-day Montgomery, Alabama). Revolutionary War officer (British ally). Slave-plantation owner. Main leader of Upper Creek (Muscogee) tribes, 1782–87. Attempted to create Native American tribes’ Southern Confederacy.

Esteban Rodriguez Miró (1744–85). Born Reus, Spain. Spanish Army officer. Acting governor/governor of Spanish provinces of Louisiana and Florida, 1782–91.

Louis-Guillaume Otto, Comte de Mosloy (1754–1817). Born Kork, Baden. French chargé d’affaires ad interim to the United States, 1785–87.

Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes (1719?–87). Born Dijon, France. Foreign minister of France, 1774–87.

THE CONFEDERATION’S FINAL YEARS: A CHRONOLOGY

1783

1784

1785

1786

1787

Introduction

It appears, sir, that in all the American provinces there is more or less tendency toward democracy; that in many this extreme form of government will finally prevail.

The result will be that the confederation will have little stability, and that by degrees the different states will subsist in a perfect independence of each other.

This revolution will not be regretted by us. We have never pretended to make of America a useful ally; we have had no other object than to deprive Britain of that vast continent. Therefore, we can regard with indifference both the movements which agitate certain provinces and the fermentation which prevails in congress.

Secret instructions about American affairs and possible Confederation collapse from the French royal government to Louis-Guillaume Otto, French chargé d’affaires in the United States. Sent during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, August 30, 1787¹

This is a history of the final years of the Confederation—America’s first continental government—from 1783 until its collapse in mid-1787. It had begun as a Revolutionary War alliance between the thirteen American states, operating through the Continental Congress. By 1775, Congress started to manage the war effort closely. But the Confederation’s governing instrument, the Articles of Confederation—America’s first constitution—was not finally adopted by all states until 1781, late in the war. Due principally to their harsh experience as colonists under the British monarchy, many Americans feared that they would be oppressed by any powerful central government. The Confederation’s limited powers—primarily over war and peace—reflected those strong fears and wartime divisions and pressures as well.

The Confederation’s last years were a marvelous peacetime experiment in republicanism—representative government by popular consent—at both the state and continental levels.² Perhaps because of that, the mid-1780s battles over the Confederation’s future resembled those of the American Revolution itself. The revolution began as a tax revolt. Similarly, the true heart of the controversy over the Confederation’s collapse was whether Americans were willing to transfer sovereignty—tax and law enforcement powers—to a central government.

Like the revolution, the Confederation’s final years were marked by deep divisions about whether and how two fluid, potentially conflicting ideas—empire and republicanism—should be embodied in any new central government. Should a new government be made powerful enough to enable America to become a continental empire? Or should it remain a government of tightly limited powers—like the Confederation—that many thought was more consistent with revolutionary principles protecting liberty? Should majority power be unlimited in a republic, or should minorities instead receive constitutional protection under some circumstances? Answering those questions required Americans to weigh anew the competing claims of liberty, equality, power, and order in the harsh light of postwar realities.

The book opens as Americans achieved their independence after eight years of struggle against the world’s most powerful empire, Great Britain. Americans’ futures in an expanding country seemed extraordinarily bright. Most people had no inkling that their lives would soon be heavily burdened by the war’s legacies. But to their dismay, over the next several years Americans found that there was a massive gap between the promises of the peace and its realities.

After conducting a victorious war, the Confederation had majority public support. But by 1783, America’s revolutionary leaders were already divided over its future. Some, such as George Washington, advocated changes to create a much more powerful central government. Others, such as Virginian Richard Henry Lee, fervently opposed them. The Confederation faced massive war debts. Soon it encountered punishing trade restrictions and strenuous resistance to American territorial expansion from powerful European governments. Bitter sectional divisions that deadlocked the Continental Congress arose from exploding western settlement. Efforts to strengthen the Confederation met repeated defeats. A deep, long-lasting recession led to sharp controversies and social unrest across the country over greatly increased taxes, debt relief, and paper money. In sum, during the Confederation’s final years, America confronted severe external challenges while facing growing socioeconomic class and sectional conflicts. Those remarkable stresses transformed the Confederation into a stalemate government, which could not make changes needed to withstand them. That in turn led to its loss of public confidence—in other words, its political collapse (as opposed to its imminent financial collapse).

The Confederation’s collapse first became publicly visible when Congress voted in February 1787 to support a constitutional convention that May in Philadelphia. Congress’s action was a definitive no confidence vote on the Confederation. James Madison wrote that both its friends and its enemies regarded it as a deadly blow. By the eve of the convention, it had become evident that many, though by no means all, Americans had lost confidence in the Confederation. This book tells the story of how and why that confidence was undermined. It concludes by exploring how the convention’s proposed 1787 constitution would end stalemate government through a dramatic—some thought shocking—grand bargain. The rest of this introduction provides an overview of the book, and then contrasts its perspective with the views of earlier historians.

Overview

The Articles of Confederation explicitly preserved the sovereignty, freedom and independence of the Confederation’s thirteen constituent states. In the Articles, the states delegated narrowly limited powers to the central government they created. The Confederation’s powers primarily concerned waging war, conducting external diplomacy and making treaties, judicial resolution of interstate grievances, and related matters. It had no power to tax, and no commerce powers (except as to Indian tribes and under its limited treaty authority). The states retained broad powers of local self-government, affecting most aspects of Americans’ daily lives only if and as their citizens chose. New Confederation powers had to be agreed to unanimously by the states.³

The Articles envisioned that the Confederation would be governed by a one-house Congress. Each of the states had one equal vote in Congress. All Confederation fiscal and military legislation needed to be adopted by a supermajority vote of at least nine states. The Confederation’s structure and supermajority voting requirements greatly strengthened the hands of those who wanted to prevent changes in central-government political and economic powers. During the postwar years, the Confederation faced a series of divisive challenges that were principally legacies of the war. It reached stalemates on all of them.

Though America emerged victorious from the war, it was a deeply traumatic, costly conflict that shattered many Americans’ lives and altered society. Soon after its end, the country experienced a severe, lengthy economic recession. New evidence leads recent historians to think that it may have been the worst in American history before the 1930s Great Depression. Debtors all over America were being hard-pressed to pay debts and increased taxes precisely when they had the least ability to pay them. As they searched for remedies, Confederation and state leaders increasingly realized that the economic interests of various states and sections sharply conflicted. Chapter 1 describes the turbulent postwar economic and political landscape they encountered.

The Confederation’s overarching problem was the morass of debt left by the Revolutionary War. To fight it, Congress had printed paper money and borrowed millions of dollars from France, Spain, and the Netherlands. And it had issued enormous amounts of promissory notes for debts. States and private citizens also had large debts. But the Confederation had no power to tax to pay either its debts or its operating expenses. Instead it depended entirely on state compliance with requests for money made through requisitions. Compliance was voluntary, because the Confederation lacked any practical means of enforcing it. Its efforts to cope with the problems of debt and taxation are the subjects of chapters 2 and 3. After the war, it encountered several other major problems as well.

The Confederation’s lack of any substantial powers to regulate foreign or domestic commerce quickly became an acute concern. In the summer of 1783, Britain prohibited American ships from trading to the British West Indies. Soon American shipping in the Mediterranean Sea came under attack by North African state–sponsored pirates. European governments, including America’s wartime allies France and Spain, also imposed postwar trade restrictions. Efforts began in Congress to give the Confederation trade powers to enable it to retaliate and to pay off the pirates. Sectional and interstate struggles over possible Confederation commerce powers and trade policy are the subjects of chapter 4.

America’s western expansion also caused sharp conflicts over financial, commercial, and military policy. After the war, Americans began to move west in record numbers. Leaders such as Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts insisted that sales of America’s massive western lands could pay the Confederation’s debts, making most Confederation taxation unnecessary. Congress passed ordinances in 1784 and 1785 to enable land sales. It remained deadlocked on territorial government, however, especially the deeply divisive issue of slavery extension. Many leaders opposed or wanted to discourage western expansion, which raised a host of concerns, including likely wars with Native Americans.⁴ The Confederation’s response to western emigration, and British, Spanish, and Native American resistance to expansion are the subjects of chapter 5.

Spain’s concerted effort to contain America’s western expansion caused a pivotal clash over Confederation policy as well. In the mid-1780s, as part of its strategy, Spain offered to negotiate a trade treaty with the United States. New England and other northern states pressed Confederation secretary of foreign affairs John Jay to agree to Spain’s proposal. It would have handsomely benefited New England’s shipping and fisheries. But southern states vehemently opposed it because they thought that it wholly sacrificed their strong interest in western expansion. The treaty clash also raised fundamental questions about America’s postwar military establishment. In 1786, it became the most divisive sectional dispute of the entire decade. That controversy and its far-reaching implications for the Confederation’s future are considered in chapter 6.

America’s severe recession also caused bitter social conflicts. One profound effect of the Revolutionary War was that to pay for it, many states sharply increased postwar taxes. From South Carolina to Vermont, the harsh economic conditions of the mid-1780s, including increased taxation, led to sporadic and in some cases serious social unrest. As a result, legislation to protect debtors against creditors—British, domestic, or both—was passed in a number of states. Seven states also adopted laws authorizing paper money. In Pennsylvania, its issuance was followed by an exceptionally divisive struggle over revoking the charter of the private Bank of North America. That contest raised the vexing question whether popular majorities should have to respect vested property rights. State struggles over paper money and debt relief and their effects on the Confederation are the subjects of chapter 7.⁵

The period’s most striking social unrest was an armed insurgency led by Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays and others that broke out in 1786 in Massachusetts. The rebels focused their initial efforts on obstructing courts and sheriffs, to prevent the collection of tax and private debts. Their other demands included political reforms, the issuance of paper money, tax relief, and debt relief. Chapter 8 analyzes the rebellion and its effects on the Confederation.

By the end of 1786, majorities (sometimes slim ones) in many states concluded that time had run out for the Confederation. They expected it to collapse financially, which they anticipated would be followed by the Union’s dissolution. Deeply dismayed by chronic Confederation weakness, and often disturbed by the actions (or inaction) of their own states as well, many Americans for the first time became willing to risk strong central government. In late 1786, Virginia called for an unlimited national reform convention to be held in Philadelphia in May 1787. Chapter 9 discusses the long and winding road to the convention. It analyzes why critical states finally agreed to it despite intense opposition, and how it set the stage for a constitutional grand bargain. It also considers how major leaders, including George Washington and James Madison, viewed it.

The book’s conclusion explores how the Constitution resolved the Confederation’s underlying problem of stalemate government. It transferred sovereignty to the national government and adopted a far more powerful and flexible decision-making process. But it did so by creating an intersectional elite power-sharing agreement, a grand bargain that had profound long-term economic and political consequences.

Historians on the Confederation’s Collapse

Prior historians have largely fallen into one of two camps that hold dramatically different views of the Confederation’s final years. For some late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century historians, those years were a critical period during which a political and economic crisis occurred. America’s state and Confederation governments behaved in what historians saw as dysfunctional ways when tested by those crises. In their view, that led to the creation by the 1787 convention of a more powerful new government.⁶

Many twentieth-century historians, however, deny that there was a real crisis during the mid-1780s.⁷ For Charles Beard, the idea that the 1780s were a critical period is a phantom of the imagination produced by some undoubted evils which could have been remedied without a political revolution.⁸ Another leading historian, Merrill Jensen, derides the earlier view as the chaos and patriots to the rescue conception of Confederation collapse.⁹ In Jensen’s view, during the Confederation’s final years America was recovering economically, and moving toward a vibrant, decentralized, egalitarian democracy.

Jensen and others accordingly conclude that fundamental reform of the Confederation was unnecessary. They contend that cooperation between the states was successful in resolving important national problems during the 1780s. They claim that such cooperation would have continued had the Confederation not been needlessly destroyed. At most, they think, minor amendments to the Articles could have permitted the Confederation to function well as a national government while preserving state and popular freedom.¹⁰ From their point of view, the Constitution was a conservative counter-revolution by an elite determined to protect its wealth and its control of national politics, thwarting rising popular democracy.¹¹

This book offers an alternative view that does not fall squarely in either camp. The sources suggest that earlier historians did exaggerate in describing the late Confederation period as one of chaos, but it was nevertheless a period of extraordinary economic and political stresses. Some governments responded far more effectively to those strains than others did. The sources show that many leading contemporaries thought that there was a political crisis. The book contends that that view was not merely a pretext for class aggression or a delusion. There was an objective basis in the country’s circumstances for such a belief.

Ultimately, this book will show that Confederation reform was driven most heavily by the perceived need to create a sovereign national government that could preserve American independence, protect western expansion, combat foreign trade aggression, provide unified continental government and law enforcement, and maintain internal order. The Confederation lacked every one of those capabilities. Reform efforts were also motivated by a desire to protect wealthy conservatives’ property against popular economic redistribution demands, but such concerns played a subsidiary role.

We can begin our analysis with an undeniable fact: as historian Gordon Wood concludes, there is strong evidence that by 1786 many Americans believed that a crisis existed. They believed, he writes, that the course of the Revolution had arrived at a crucial juncture.¹² As Congressmen Rufus King of Massachusetts reported to Elbridge Gerry that year, The People generally throughout the Confederation remark that we are at a crisis.¹³ But what did contemporaries think that a crisis was? What kind of crisis did leaders believe existed?

Crisis did not have the same meaning for Americans in the eighteenth century that it typically has for us today.¹⁴ Most commonly then, a crisis was an irreversible turning point, or what we would today call a fork in the road, toward which events were thought to be moving. A crisis could therefore change the course of history decisively for better or worse, just as the crisis of an illness could lead to recovery or death.¹⁵ Decisions made when events were moving toward a crisis could in some cases avert it and change the course of events that would otherwise foreseeably result from it.¹⁶ That sense of crisis is employed here in discussing contemporaries’ attitudes.

In the mid-1780s, the sources suggest that most leaders did not think that there was an economic crisis, though there were exceptions. The times were unquestionably hard. There now appears to be an emerging consensus that actual domestic and foreign-trade economic conditions in most of the country during that period are best described as a continuing severe recession, contrary to the more optimistic view of earlier historians such as Merrill Jensen.¹⁷ And there is no doubt that economic recession and related social unrest such as Shays’s Rebellion significantly contributed to the collapse of confidence in the Confederation—in some parts of the country.¹⁸ But although to varying degrees leaders supported economic policy changes, such as giving the Confederation commerce powers, failure to obtain them was not at the heart of what many leaders had in mind when they described the Confederation’s situation by late 1786 as a crisis. Instead, the sources suggest that by then many leaders thought that there was a political crisis.¹⁹

By 1786, the Confederation had undeniably become both insolvent and chronically stalemated. The intractability of the Confederation’s problems stemmed principally, I argue, from growing sectional and interstate conflicts, often based on economic interest, as it confronted the massive challenges to America posed by the burdensome legacy of the Revolutionary War. Given the rigid political fractures caused by these exceptionally divisive issues, there is no sound reason to think that the Confederation could have resolved them absent fundamental reform. As the book shows, historians who argue otherwise are compelled to support their claims by defining the Confederation’s problems away or by proposing solutions to them that had large unavoidable costs and tradeoffs that made such solutions unacceptable to many contemporaries. The pivotal controversy over Confederation war debt and taxation is a good example.

The Confederation’s inability to pay its massive war debts appeared to many thoughtful contemporaries to be an urgent national political problem by late 1786. Recent historians argue that the Confederation’s debt was not a serious problem, however.²⁰ They contend that the Confederation’s foreign debt could have been paid by voluntary state contributions or minor new taxes. They argue that the states could individually have paid their assigned shares of its domestic war debt, including repaying it with state paper money. These untenable views were rejected by contemporaries for reasons explored in chapters 2 and 3. Unless the Confederation received adequate tax and enforcement powers, it was not going to be able to pay its debts. In that event, most leaders, whether they supported the existing Confederation or not, expected that the Union would dissolve.

For many leaders, the prospect of Confederation dissolution constituted a true political crisis. They were convinced that it would be followed inevitably by separate confederations, which in turn would lead to civil war, dictatorship, or foreign intervention.²¹ George Washington held that view, and expressed it repeatedly. Washington and others held such views by the end of the war, long before mid-1780s social unrest began. Washington’s opinions, and those of others who saw the situation similarly, were based on strongly held conclusions drawn from their understanding of earlier political history. They were not merely expedient or self-interested rationalizations based on current political conditions.²²

Historians have had a tendency to dismiss the idea that there was a Confederation political crisis. But the sources show that Washington, John Jay, and others had concerns, justified by events, that went well beyond class or self-interest. These included the concerted efforts of the major European powers to limit the trade and territorial growth of the United States after the war. They also included the powerful centrifugal pressures facing the Confederation by late 1786, such as western settlement and the Spanish treaty, not to mention Shays’s Rebellion. All these developments manifested the country’s pressing need for central government tax, military, and economic powers. Such powers could not be obtained by the existing Confederation, nor could it have wielded them effectively in any event.

As will become clear, economic motives lay behind many of the political decisions made during the period, as well as behind controversies over Confederation reforms. I agree entirely with historian Charles Beard that whoever leaves economic pressures out of history . . . is in mortal peril of substituting mythology for reality.²³ The sources suggest, though, that Beard and his followers nevertheless sometimes overstate the significance of directly economic class-related motives (or, in a variant view, dislike for egalitarian democracy) in shaping political change. Their view of the Confederation’s collapse fails to account sufficiently for the insurmountable governance problems contemporaries thought it faced, including deep sectional divisions, and leaders’ grave concerns about the disastrous consequences they believed would follow its dissolution. Those concerns led to increased demands for structural reforms that could protect and support America’s expansion to become a continental empire, not reforms merely intended to protect existing wealth or to reward speculation (though some reformers sought them as well).

The prolonged debate among historians over the reasons for the Confederation’s collapse has often strongly resembled a modern continuation of the eighteenth-century debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the adoption of the Constitution.²⁴ To advance our understanding, we need to escape what is essentially an irresolvable ideological—and even, one might say, quasi-theological—debate of that kind. To do that, we need to explore as precisely as possible what led to a loss of public confidence in the Confederation’s ability to govern. Many Americans did not lose confidence, of course; but enough people did to enable the movement for the Philadelphia Convention to succeed. Massachusetts congressman Rufus King’s evolving views provide a good example of how opinions changed.

King had been a fervent opponent of holding the Philadelphia Convention as recently as late 1786, when he opposed it in a speech to the Massachusetts legislature during Shays’s Rebellion. Yet he had written to Theodore Sedgwick, a Massachusetts colleague, in May 1786, months before Shays’s Rebellion, of the gravity of the Confederation’s problems:

The British ministry will not consent to any commercial treaty . . . they know our disjointed system, and despise us. Mr. Adams demanded the evacuation of the [western] Posts, and has been officially refused. . . . Eighty thousand dollars were appropriated for the Barbary [pirate] Treaties—the sum is too small, 150,000 Guineas being the least sum necessary. There is no money in the federal Treasury—the civil list is in arrear—the troops in service mutinous for pay—the loans abroad exhausted . . . and the payments made by the four Eastern and three Southern states for 15 months past not equal to 4 thousand Dollars. Adieu.²⁵

King reluctantly changed his mind about the Philadelphia Convention after the suppression of Shays’s Rebellion, and became one of Massachusetts’s leading delegates there. He slowly and very grudgingly accepted that creating a more powerful central government was an unpleasant necessity. Others whose opinions changed during this period, such as Virginia leader Patrick Henry, became powerful opponents to stronger central government. This book considers the causes and weighs the effects of pivotal changes in opinion in both directions.

Ultimately, the Confederation’s abject failures, and the major state weaknesses and sectional divisions they exposed, played the predominant role in the movement for strengthening the Confederation. But postwar economic conflict between wealthy conservatives on the one hand, and middling and ordinary citizens on the other, also played a limited though significant role in increasing support for strengthening central government.

A final note to readers. This book is not a comprehensive history of the period 1783–87. It does not, for example, give extensive consideration to the emerging struggle against slavery, changes in women’s roles, or the reintegration of Loyalists into American society after the war. It explores the events that led to the Philadelphia Convention in detail and considers the 1787 Constitution’s major implications for curing the Confederation’s defects as contemporaries saw them. But it does not discuss in depth the events of the convention or those of the constitutional ratification debate. This book is about why the Confederation became a stalemate government and failed in the eyes of many contemporaries. And it is about why it did so just a few years after America emerged victorious from the Revolutionary War.

PART 1

The Search for National Identity

1

War’s Aftermath

By early 1783, the United States was nearing independence after its eight-year war against Great Britain. Over the next several years, Americans struggled to rebuild their country and to engage with the wider European imperial world. In doing so, they faced a series of formidable economic and political obstacles.

Although America emerged victorious, the war had been deeply traumatic, and it had fundamentally altered American society. Tens of thousands of soldiers had been killed, wounded, or disabled. Many innocent civilians’ lives had been shattered. America’s economy was severely damaged. Many people’s fortunes had been altered dramatically. Soldiers, women, artisans, and the middling sort (people situated between the gentry and the poor) increasingly viewed themselves as entitled to equal participation in politics. Several states’ political cultures had become more democratic.

The war’s end left the Confederation with heavy burdens and facing significant threats. To fight Britain, it had been forced to go deeply into debt. By early 1783, many creditors were pressing it for payment, especially its disgruntled army. American leaders were sharply divided over the Confederation’s wartime performance and about how much peacetime power and resources it needed. The 1783 Treaty of Peace greatly expanded the United States’ boundaries, causing many people to dream that it would become a continental empire. But the peace terms had strong enemies in Britain, other major European powers, and Native Americans. The treaty’s apparently liberal terms concealed important threats to American expansion at home and abroad.

Adding to the Confederation’s troubles, after the war America experienced a severe and long-lasting economic recession. Export incomes slumped drastically below prewar levels. Americans endured sharply falling prices for goods, land, and commodities, skyrocketing interest rates, and extreme money scarcity. Thousands of people lost their jobs, farms, or homes. Thousands migrated westward under economic duress. This divisive economic maelstrom became a prominent feature of the environment in which the Confederation and the states were forced to govern.

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Poor America is prepared for peace, indeed it may be said that she is prepared for nothing else.

Congressman Abner Nash to James Iredell, January 1783¹

War, Economy, and Society

Philadelphia merchant Robert Morris was one of America’s most prominent and wealthy international businessmen during the revolutionary era. Many of the Revolution’s leaders saw him as an opponent of republican popular government and regarded him