The Real Story of the American Revolution 

From a Confederation to a Republic

Latest Changes: 07Sep12 - link to EDSITEment lesson plans / 07Oct27 - expand material 1783-87, add notes on VT and KY / 07Nov07 - add links to TeachingAmericanHistory's extensive resources on the Constitution: many documents, analyses, and audio lectures /

The Problems of a Confederation (1783-1787) Documents from the Continental Congress [Library of Congress: American Memory] has many broadsides that trace the evolution of proposed legislation at various stages of consideration. These often differ significantly from the amended resolutions that were finally adopted by the Continental Congress. Determining a States' Fair Share of Support: One of the problems facing the Confederation Congress was deciding how to distribute fairly among the states the cost of prosecuting the war and conducting other business of the United States. Article Eight of the Articles of Confederation said that the tax requested of each state should be "in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated...." Securing an honest valuation of so much property proved to be impractical, and after considerable debate a compromise proposal was made in 1783. This would have amended Article Eight to say "in proportion to the number of white and other free citizens and inhabitants, and three fifths of all other persons, Indians not paying taxes excepted" While this amendment was not adopted for the Articles of Confederation, a slightly modified version of this compromise was proposed during the Constitutional Convention as a fair way to determine how to apportion among the states the Representatives to Congress.

Homework: What was this "slight modification"? Why might it be considered "slight" or not "slight"?

Several states revised their state constitutions after the Articles of Confederation were adopted but before the U.S. Constitution was written: Year State Web Link 1783 New Hampshire no 1786 Vermont (not yet a state) Yale: Avalon The self-interest of states and the intentional weakness of the central government's powers led to a rising array of problems. Some states sent abroad emissaries who pursued state interests without coordinating their activities with the U.S. delegations there. In spite of the extensive efforts in many states to develop sound principles of governance and to enact laws that would ensure domestic tranquility strong protest movements threatened the stability of several states and many states did not honor their financial obligations to the confederation's central governing body (the Continental Congress). As uprisings against state governments grew more frequent and violent, culminating in Shays' Rebellion in 1787 January, many national leaders called for a Constitutional Convention to develop a structure strong enough to provide security from large-scale violence, flexible enough to debate and resolve issues from a multi-state perspective, and sufficiently sophisticated to give people at home and abroad confidence in enacting or negotiating policies that would be stable for a long time. Leaders feared that the alternative to a new constitution would be disintegration into several regions that would soon be conquered and re-colonized one or more by European nations. See The Road to the Constitutional Convention [EDSITEment lesson plan]. and The Constitutional Convention [TeachingAmericanHistory.org] The state leaders had to be convinced that the new U.S. Constitution provided benefits for their political futures that outweighed the loss of power and control that they had under the Articles of Confederation. Also -- in this new nation of public discourse and elections -- it also imoprtant to inform and convince the people that the proposed new structure was desirable.

Converting a Confederation into a Republic In Great Britain the "Common Law" had grown gradually over centuries, and it was not embodied in a single document. The United States had the motive, opportunity, and means to have the best political minds in the nation consider all these questions simultaneously and to test various alternatives for more than a decade (1775-1787). Several of these national leaders had studied earlier nation-states to see what worked well and to consider where and how the major weaknesses had developed. See Biographies of the Founders This combination of factors allowed the Constitutional Convention to develop a document that assembed the most promising options into a stronger and clearer structure than British Common Law. After experiencing the consequences of many failures of widely separated bodies (the states) to agree on and then sustain a united course of action, they gathered the political leaders from all states to wrestle with the problems of concentrating power while preventing any small group from usurping authroity and blocking the majority from effective participation in governance. campaigned for, and secured popular ratification of a Constitution that defined a three-part (legislative, executive, judicial] governance structure. recognized the need to protect individual rights (and thus the rights of minority groups -- whose rights could otherwise be voted away by the majority) by explicitly exempting them from legislative control.

Developing the U.S. Constitution (1787) The Foundations of the U.S. Constitution, by Judge Edward F. Butler, Sr. (Texas Society SAR) Debate on and Views of the U.S. Constitution [TeachingAmericanHistory.org] -- over 100 documents related to writing of the U.S. Constitution; also about a dozen audio files such as How to Read the U.S. Constitution [TeachingAmericanHistory.org] by Prof. Gordon Lloyd, has links to an audo file of his 77 minute lecture -- What traditional features of republicanism and federalism as revealed in The Articles of Confederation and state constitutions are present in the constitution? Where do the states fit into the U.S. Constitution? George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention. Delegates debated at length several issues which had plagued the Continental Congress. How should legislative power be distributed among the states? Should this distribution take into account slaves? See the EDSITEment lesson plan on The Connecticut Compromise. Do we need a powerful head of state? How powerful? What legal (constitutional) checks should be in place to prevent tyranny? Who should make the selection of the leader, and how should the people have a voice in this selection? See the EDSITEment lesson plan on Creating the Office of the President James Madison was the principal author of the final document. The Constitution of the United States as originally presented for ratification had no amendments (by definition) and was opposed by a number of prominent leaders because it provided for a strong central government with no explicit protection for individual liberties. The U.S. Constitution was approved by 39 of the 55 delegates on 1787 Sept 17 and sent to the states for ratification. Roster: Signers of The Constitution of the United States [PDF file]

Ratification of the U.S. Constitution Ratification of the Constitution [TeachingAmericanHistory.org] is the story of the debate over the ratification of the United States Constitution, with summaries of the debates at the ratification conventions in Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York Delaware ratified the U.S. Constitution almost immediately, on 1787 Dec 7, becoming "The First State". In some sense it was not really the first state in the new United States since the U.S. Constitution would not take effect until nine states had ratified it. Nevertheless, until Dec 12 -- when Pennsylvaia voted to ratify -- Delaware was the first and only state formally committed to the new form of government. Interest in and debate over the new form of government were intense and widespread. In New York Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote a series of 85 newspaper articles in 1787-88 -- now called The Federalist Papers. These used both logic and prejudice to convince New Yorkers to support ratification of the U.S. Constitution. On 1788 June 21 New Hampshire became the nineth of the required two-thirds of the states to ratify the U.S. Constitution, but leaders were reluctant to move ahead until New York and Virginia acted. On June 26 and July 26, respectively, these states voted in favor of ratification. State Delegate Votes for and against Ratification (in order of date) state for against date Delaware 30 0 1787 Dec 07 Pennsylvania 46 23 1787 Dec 12 New Jersey 38 0 1787 Dec 19 Georgia 26 0 1788 Jan 02 Connecticut 128 40 1788 Jan 09 Massachusetts 187 168 1788 Feb 06 Maryland 63 11 1788 Apr 28 South Carolina 149 73 1788 May 23 New Hampshire 57 46 1788 Jun 21 Virginia 80 79 1788 Jun 25 New York 30 27 1788 Jul 26 North Carolina 184 77 1788 Nov 21 Rhode Island 34 32 1790 May 29 The first Congress elected under the new U.S. Constitution met on 1789 March 4, and the first President (George Washington) was inaugurated on 1789 April 30.

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The Bill of Rights North Carolina and Rhode Island refused to ratify the Constitution until a bill of rights was added to the U.S. Constitution. Most of the state constitutions included declarations of rights -- see the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 [Avalon Project] and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 [teachingamericanhistory.com]. James Madison led the effort to adopt The Bill of Rights. On 1789 Sept 25 twelve amendments were approved by the new Congress and sent to the states for ratification. North Carolina ratified the U.S. Constitution on 1789 Nov 21 and Rhode Island (by a vote of 34 to 32) on 1790 May 30. Nineteen months later, on 1791 Dec 15 ten of the amendment had been ratified (received approval by over 2/3 of the states) and went into effect. The remaining two were not adopted. It is interesting to note that neither the original U.S. Constitution nor the The Bill of Rights specified any qualifications for who could vote (suffrage), leaving that up to the individual states.

Homework: What were the two amendments that were not adopted in 1791?

State Constitutions Revised after 1787 After the U.S. Constitution was ratified the relationships among the states changed (since they were no longer independent nations), so many states revised their earlier constitutions: Year State Web Link 1789 Georgia Univ. GA 1790 South Carolina no 1790 Pennsylvania no 1792 Delaware no 1793 New Hampshire (extensively revised) no 1798 Georgia (further revisions) Wikipedia 1818 Connecticut State of Connecticut 1843 Rhode Island no Vermont continued to be an independent republic. In 1790 it resolved disputes with New York and New Hampshire, paving the way for admission to the United States as the fourteenth state on 1791 March 04. In 1792 May Kentucky (which had been a county of Virginia since 1776) adopted a constitution in preparation for joining the United States as the fifteenth state in 1792 June.

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