American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Another notable weakness was the fact that there was no separation of powers at the national level: All power, such as it was, lay in the legislature. The lack of a federal judiciary compounded the problems associated with trade wars among the states. For example, some states passed legislation cancelling their debts to other states. With no federal judiciary to turn to, those affected by such legislation sometimes had no legal recourse. Likewise, the lack of a federal judiciary made it difficult to resolve boundary disputes among the states. The lack of an executive branch meant that the national government had no real ability to execute its laws. Early attempts to administer laws through ad hoc committees, councils, and conventions were unsuccessful.

      In short, the new national government had no power to lead, and often did not even have enough power to do what little it was supposed to. The national government seemed to be little more than a “rope of sand” holding the confederation together.²⁸ The states did not help the situation. They encroached on the authority of the national government by raising their own militaries, ignoring the nation’s treaties with foreign powers, and waging war with Native Americans. Sometimes states did not even bother to send delegates to Congress, making it difficult to muster the necessary quorum for passing legislation.²⁹

      Shays’ Rebellion

      By the mid-1780s, the new nation was in the midst of an economic depression. Farmers, in particular, had gone into debt to rebuild their farms after the Revolutionary War, in which many of them had served as soldiers. The combination of a bad growing season, high interest rates, and high state taxes to pay off the war debt made it impossible for many farmers to pay their bills. Foreclosures (losing one’s property due to failure to pay a loan) skyrocketed, and imprisonment for debt was common. In Massachusetts, desperate farmers turned to the state for help. When help did not come, the farmers—led by Daniel Shays, who had been a captain in the Continental Army—banded together and tried, by force, to shut down the courthouses where foreclosures were issued. This armed rebellion by more than 2,000 farmers, which began in August 1786 and continued into 1787, came to be known as Shays’ Rebellion.

      Massachusetts appealed to the national government for help in restoring order. Congress requisitioned states for money to fund a national militia to quell the rebellion, but only Virginia complied. Without money, Congress was powerless to act. Massachusetts did not have enough money in its own state treasury to fund a state militia, and therefore had to rely on money from private donors. The whole event was unsettling, and it proved to be an important turning point. By highlighting the impotence of the national government, Shays’ Rebellion galvanized the nation. Those who had long feared that the Articles of Confederation were deficient now had a dramatic example of Congress’s inability to maintain order and protect the safety of the people.

      Starting Over: The Constitutional Convention

      Before Shays’ Rebellion, Virginia had already called for a convention to discuss a uniform regulation of commerce to remedy one of the primary defects of the Articles of Confederation. Only five states sent delegates to the convention, which convened in Annapolis, Maryland, in the fall of 1786. One of the delegates was Alexander Hamilton, who had previously served in the Confederation Congress; frustrated by the weakness of the national government, he had resigned in 1783. Long opposed to the Articles of Confederation, Hamilton now drafted a resolution that called on Congress to authorize a convention to examine the need either to amend the Articles of Confederation or to replace them altogether. Shays’ Rebellion provided the impetus for the Annapolis Convention to support Hamilton’s resolution. Congress now felt pressure to act. On February 21, 1787, it passed a resolution to convene a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.

      Shays’ Rebellion An armed rebellion by farmers in Massachusetts who, facing foreclosure, tried using force to shut down courthouses where the foreclosures were issued. The national government’s inability to quell the rebellion made the event a potent symbol of the weakness of the Articles of Confederation.

      The Delegates and Their Motives

      All of the states except Rhode Island (which opposed changing the Articles of Confederation) sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Of the 74 delegates the states had appointed, only 55 actually attended the convention, and far fewer stayed for the entire convention. The attendees included two of the most famous men in America, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and other luminaries such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Notably absent were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who were abroad serving as ambassadors to Great Britain and France, respectively. Some passionate advocates of states’ rights, such as Patrick Henry, also stayed away.

      In 1913, influential political scientist and historian Charles A. Beard proposed a controversial thesis: In writing the constitution, the framers’ primary goal had been to protect their property holdings and financial self-interest.³⁰ Beard argued that the framers were a group of wealthy elites who had been adversely affected by the type of government created under the Articles of Confederation (see Table 2.1 for an overview of the delegates’ characteristics).³¹ Beard argued that in establishing property rights and protecting the economic interests of elites, the framers had purposely limited the ability of the majority to exercise real power.

      In the 1950s, historians such as Robert E. Brown and Forrest McDonald suggested that a rigorous analysis of the data debunked Beard’s thesis. They pointed out that the framers were not as monolithic in their interests as Beard suggested (for example, some opponents of the Constitution also came from the privileged wealthy class, and not all supporters were wealthy creditors), and that a broader array of interests than Beard recognized had influenced the framers.³²

      Nonetheless, debate continues. Reality may rest somewhere between Beard’s clear-cut assumptions and the views of critics such as Brown and McDonald. The framers, after all, were politicians influenced by a range of factors. Economics was undoubtedly one of them, but not the only one—or even, necessarily, the most significant one.

Table 2.1

      A bare quorum of delegates attended the opening session of the Constitutional Convention on May 25 in what is now called Independence Hall (the room where the members of the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence). Thirteen tables—one for each state’s delegation—were arranged in a semicircle. Rhode Island never sent delegates, and New Hampshire’s arrived two months late. No more than 11 state delegations were ever in attendance at any one time. As had been the practice in Congress, each state delegation had one vote. The group deliberated in absolute secrecy so that delegates could express their views without fear of outside retaliation or pressure. Despite the heat, they kept the large windows closed that summer and posted sentries outside to ward off eavesdroppers.³³

      Large States versus Small States: The Virginia and New Jersey Plans

      The Virginia delegation quickly took the reins after arriving in Philadelphia. Virginian James Madison issued a detailed critique of the Articles of Confederation entitled “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” and further argued that confederations were, by their very nature, doomed to failure.³⁴ Most significantly, the group of Virginia delegates met every morning at a local boardinghouse to plot strategy for how to convince the other delegates to construct a new constitution rather than merely amend the Articles of Confederation. They also met each afternoon to greet arriving delegates.

      The СКАЧАТЬ