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262C H . 7 Founding a Nation, 1783 –1789AMERICA UNDER THE CONFEDERATIONAn engraving from The Farmer’s andMechanics Almanac shows farmfamilies moving west along a primitiveroad.who monopolized available acreage and asking that preference in landownership be given to “actual settlements,” their motto was “Grant usLiberty.” Indeed, settlers paid no heed to Indian land titles and urged thegovernment to set a low price on public land or give it away. They frequently occupied land to which they had no legal title. By the 1790s, Kentuckycourts were filled with lawsuits over land claims, and many settlers lostland they thought they owned. Eventually, disputes over land forced manyearly settlers (including the parents of Abraham Lincoln) to leaveKentucky for opportunities in other states.At the same time, however, like British colonial officials before them,many leaders of the new nation feared that an unregulated flow of population across the Appalachian Mountains would provoke constant warfarewith Indians. Moreover, they viewed frontier settlers as disorderly andlacking in proper respect for authority—“our debtors, loose English people,our German servants, and slaves,” Benjamin Franklin had once called them.Establishing law and order in the West and strict rules for the occupationof land there seemed essential to attracting a better class of settlers to theWest and avoiding discord between the settled and frontier parts of thenew nation.THELANDORDINANCESA series of measures approved by Congress during the 1780s defined the termsby which western land would be marketed and settled. Drafted by ThomasJefferson, the Ordinance of 1784 established stages of self-government forthe West. The region would be divided into districts initially governedby Congress and eventually admitted to the Union as member states. By asingle vote, Congress rejected a clause that would have prohibited slavery

263What were the achievements and problems of the Confederation TH AMERICA(CANADA)R.MAINE(part of Massachusetts)St.LawrenceLake SuperiorFortMichilimackinacLakeErNEW YORKieOHIO(1803)INDIANA(1816)MASSACHUSETTSRHODE ISLANDCONNECTICUTNEWJERSEYMARYLAND.200 milesNORTH CAROLINATENNESSEE (1796)THE SEVEN RANGESFirst Area SurveyDETAIL OF TOWNSHIP36 square 2726253132333435361 mileA series of ordinances in the 1780s provided for both the surveying and saleof lands in the public domain north of the Ohio River and the eventual admission ofstates carved from the area as equal members of the Union.Income from section 16reserved for school supportDETAIL OF SECTION1 square mile (640 acres)Half-section(320 acres)1 mileVIRGINIAPENNSYLVANIA7th Range6th Range5th Range4th Range3rd Range2nd Range1st Range6 milesA t l a n ti cO cea nFortsDisputed boundariesNorthwest TerritoryKENTUCKY(1792)200 kilometers6 milesDELAWAREVIRGINIAOhi100OswegoHudson R.iganLake Michu ro ni R.FortNiagaraFortDetroitoR100oe akWISCONSIN(1848)Mis sisPointau-FerLHalf-quarter-section(80 acres)Quarter-quarter-section(40 acres each)Quarter-section(160 acres)

264C H . 7 Founding a Nation, 1783 –1789AMERICA UNDER THE CONFEDERATIONthroughout the West. A second ordinance, in 1785, regulated land sales inthe region north of the Ohio River, which came to be known as the OldNorthwest. Land would be surveyed by the government and then sold in“sections” of a square mile (640 acres) at 1 per acre. In each township, onesection would be set aside to provide funds for public education. The system promised to control and concentrate settlement and raise money forCongress. But settlers violated the rules by pressing westward before thesurveys had been completed.Like the British before them, American officials found it difficult toregulate the thirst for new land. The minimum purchase price of 640,however, put public land out of the financial reach of most settlers. Theygenerally ended up buying smaller parcels from speculators and landcompanies. In 1787, Congress decided to sell off large tracts to privategroups, including 1.5 million acres to the Ohio Company, organized byNew England land speculators and army officers. (This was a differentorganization from the Ohio Company of the 1750s, mentioned in Chapter4.) For many years, national land policy benefited private land companiesand large buyers more than individual settlers. And for many decades, actual and prospective settlers pressed for a reduction in the price of government-owned land, a movement that did not end until the Homestead Act of1862 offered free land on the public domain.A final measure, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, called for the eventual establishment of from three to five states north of the Ohio River andeast of the Mississippi. Thus was enacted the basic principle of whatJefferson called the “empire of liberty”—rather than ruling over the Westas a colonial power, the United States would admit the area’s population asequal members of the political system. Territorial expansion and selfgovernment would grow together.The Northwest Ordinance pledged that “the utmost good faith” would beobserved toward local Indians and that their land would not be taken without consent. This was the first official recognition that Indians continuedto own their land. Congress realized that allowing settlers and state government simply to seize Indian lands would produce endless, expensive military conflicts on the frontier. “It will cost much less,” one congressmannoted, “to conciliate the good opinion of the Indians than to pay men fordestroying them.” But national land policy assumed that whether throughpurchase, treaties, or voluntary removal, the Indian presence would soondisappear. The Ordinance also prohibited slavery in the Old Northwest, aprovision that would have far-reaching consequences when the sectionalconflict between North and South developed. But for years, ownersbrought slaves into the area, claiming that they had voluntarily signedlong-term labor contracts.THECONFEDERATION’SWEAKNESSESWhatever the achievements of the Confederation government, in theeyes of many influential Americans they were outweighed by its failings. Both the national government and the country at large faced worsening economic problems. To finance the War of Independence,Congress had borrowed large sums of money by selling interest-bearingbonds and paying soldiers and suppliers in notes to be redeemed in the

What were the achievements and problems of the Confederation government?265future. Lacking a secure source of revenue, it found itself unable to payeither interest or the debts themselves. With the United States now outside the British empire, American ships were barred from trading withthe West Indies. Imported goods, however, flooded the market, undercutting the business of many craftsmen, driving down wages, and draining money out of the country.With Congress unable to act, the states adopted their own economicpolicies. Several imposed tariff duties on goods imported from abroad.Indebted farmers, threatened with the loss of land because of failure tomeet tax or mortgage payments, pressed state governments for relief, as didurban craftsmen who owed money to local merchants. In order to increasethe amount of currency in circulation and make it easier for individuals topay their debts, several states printed large sums of paper money. Othersenacted laws postponing debt collection. Creditors considered such measures attacks on their property rights. In a number of states, legislative elections produced boisterous campaigns in which candidates for officedenounced creditors for oppressing the poor and importers of luxury goodsfor undermining republican virtue.SHAYS’SREBELLIONIn late 1786 and early 1787, crowds of debt-ridden farmers closed the courtsin western Massachusetts to prevent the seizure of their land for failure topay taxes. They called themselves “regulators”—a term already used byprotesters in the Carolina backcountry in the 1760s. The uprising came tobe known as Shays’s Rebellion, a name affixed to it by its opponents, afterDaniel Shays, one of the leaders and a veteran of the War for Independence.Massachusetts had firmly resisted pressure to issue paper money or inother ways assist needy debtors. The participants in Shays’s Rebellionbelieved they were acting in the spirit of the Revolution. They modeledtheir tactics on the crowd activities of the 1760s and 1770s and employedliberty trees and liberty poles as symbols of their cause. They received nosympathy from Governor James Bowdoin, who dispatched an army headedby former revolutionary war general Benjamin Lincoln. The rebels weredispersed in January 1787, and more than 1,000 were arrested. Withoutadherence to the rule of law, Bowdoin declared, Americans would descendinto “a state of anarchy, confusion and slavery.”Observing Shays’s Rebellion from Paris where he was serving as ambassador, Thomas Jefferson refused to be alarmed. “A little rebellion now and thenis a good thing,” he wrote to a friend. “The tree of liberty must be refreshedfrom time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” But the uprisingwas the culmination of a series of events in the 1780s that persuaded aninfluential group of Americans that the national government must bestrengthened so that it could develop uniform economic policies and protect property owners from infringements on their rights by local majorities.The actions of state legislatures (most of them elected annually by anexpanded voting population), followed by Shays’s Rebellion, produced fearsthat the Revolution’s democratic impulse had gotten out of hand.“Our government,” Samuel Adams wrote in 1785, “at present has libertyfor its object.” But among proponents of stronger national authority, liberty had lost some of its luster. The danger to individual rights, they came toA Bankruptcy Scene. Creditors repossessthe belongings of a family unable to payits debts, while a woman weeps in thebackground. Popular fears of bankruptcyled several states during the 1780s to passlaws postponing the collection of debts.

266C H . 7 Founding a Nation, 1783 –1789AMERICA UNDER THE CONFEDERATIONbelieve, now arose not from a tyrannical central government, but from thepeople themselves. “Liberty,” declared James Madison, “may be endangeredby the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.” To put it anotherway, private liberty, especially the secure enjoyment of property rights,could be endangered by public liberty—unchecked power in the hands ofthe people.NATIONALISTSJames Madison, “father of theConstitution,” in a miniature portraitpainted by Charles Willson Peale in 1783.Madison was only thirty-six years oldwhen the Constitutional Convention met.Alexander Hamilton, another youthfulleader of the nationalists of the 1780s,was born in the West Indies in 1755.This portrait was painted by CharlesWillson Peale in the early 1790s.OFTHE1780SMadison, a diminutive, colorless Virginian and the lifelong disciple andally of Thomas Jefferson, thought deeply and creatively about the nature ofpolitical freedom. He was among the group of talented and well-organizedmen who spearheaded the movement for a stronger national government.Another was Alexander Hamilton, who had come to North America as ayouth from the West Indies, served at the precocious age of twenty as anarmy officer during the War of Independence, and married into a prominent New York family. Hamilton was perhaps the most vigorous proponentof an “energetic” government that would enable the new nation to becomea powerful commercial and diplomatic presence in world affairs. Genuineliberty, he insisted, required “a proper degree of authority, to make andexercise the laws.” Men like Madison and Hamilton were nation-builders.They came to believe during the 1780s that Americans were squanderingthe fruits of independence and that the country’s future greatness depended on enhancing national authority.The concerns voiced by critics of the Articles found a sympathetic hearing among men who had developed a national consciousness during theRevolution. Nationalists included army officers, members of Congressaccustomed to working with individuals from different states, and diplomats who represented the country abroad. In the army, John Marshall (latera chief justice of the Supreme Court) developed “the habit of consideringAmerica as my country, and Congress as my government.” Influential economic interests also desired a stronger national government. Among thesewere bondholders who despaired of being paid so long as Congress lackeda source of revenue, urban artisans seeking tariff protection from foreignimports, merchants desiring access to British markets, and all those whofeared that the states were seriously interfering with property rights.While these groups did not agree on many issues, they all believed in theneed for a stronger national government.In September 1786, delegates from six states met at Annapolis,Maryland, to consider ways for better regulating interstate and international commerce. The delegates proposed another gathering, inPhiladelphia, to amend the Articles of Confederation. Shays’s Rebelliongreatly strengthened the nationalists’ cause. “The late turbulent scenes inMassachusetts,” wrote Madison, underscored the need for a new constitution. “No respect,” he complained, “is paid to the federal authority.”Without a change in the structure of government, either anarchy ormonarchy was the likely outcome, bringing to an end the experiment inrepublican government. Every state except Rhode Island, which had gonethe farthest in developing its own debtor relief and trade policies, decidedto send delegates to the Philadelphia convention. When they assembled in

What were the achievements and problems of the Confederation government?267May 1787, they decided to scrap the Articles of Confederation entirely anddraft a new constitution for the United States.A NEW CONSTITUTIONThe fifty-five men who gathered for the Constitutional Convention included some of the most prominent Americans. Thomas Jefferson and JohnAdams, serving as diplomats in Europe, did not take part. But among thedelegates were George Washington (whose willingness to lend his prestigeto the gathering and to serve as presiding officer was an enormous asset),George Mason (author of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights of 1776), andBenjamin Franklin (who had returned to Philadelphia after helping tonegotiate the Treaty of Paris of 1783, and was now eighty-one years old).John Adams described the convention as a gathering of men of “ability,weight, and experience.” He might have added, “and wealth.” Few men ofordinary means attended. Although a few, like Alexander Hamilton, hadrisen from humble origins, most had been born into propertied families.They earned their livings as lawyers, merchants, planters, and large farmers. Nearly all were quite prosperous by the standards of the day.At a time when fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans attendedcollege, more than half the delegates had college educations. A majorityhad participated in interstate meetings of the 1760s and 1770s, and twentytwo had served in the army during the Revolution. Their shared social status and political experiences bolstered their common belief in the need tostrengthen national authority and curb what one called “the excesses ofdemocracy.” To ensure free and candid debate, the deliberations took placein private. Madison, who believed the outcome would have great consequences for “the cause of liberty throughout the world,” took careful notes.They were not published, however, until 1840, four years after he becamethe last delegate to pass away.THESTRUCTUREOFGOVERNMENTIt quickly became apparent that the delegates agreedon many points. The new Constitution would createa legislature, an executive, and a national judiciary.Congress would have the power to raise moneywithout relying on the states. States would be prohibited from infringing on the rights of property.And the government would represent the people.Hamilton’s proposal for a president and Senate serving life terms, like the king and House of Lords ofEngland, received virtually no support. The “richand well-born,” Hamilton told the convention,must rule, for the masses “seldom judge or determine right.” Most delegates, however, hoped to finda middle ground between the despotism of monarchy and aristocracy and what they considered theexcesses of popular self-government. “We had beenA fifty-dollar note issued by theContinental Congress during the Warof Independence. Congress’s inability toraise funds to repay such paper moneyin gold or silver was a major reason whynationalists desired a stronger federalgovernment.

268C H . 7 Founding a Nation, 1783 –1789The Philadelphia State House (now calledIndependence Hall), where the Declarationof Independence was signed in 1776 andthe Constitutional Convention took placein 1787.A NEW CONSTITUTIONtoo democratic,” observed George Mason, but he warned against the dangerof going to “the opposite extreme.” The key to stable, effective republicangovernment was finding a way to balance the competing claims of libertyand power.Differences quickly emerged over the proper balance between the federal and state governments and between the interests of large and smallstates. Early in the proceedings, Madison presented what came to be calledthe Virginia Plan. It proposed the creation of a two-house legislature with astate’s population determining its representation in each. Smaller states,fearing that populous Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania woulddominate the new government, rallied behind the New Jersey Plan. Thiscalled for a single-house Congress in which each state cast one vote, asunder the Articles of Confederation. In the end, a compromise wasreached—a two-house Congress consisting of a Senate in which each statehad two members, and a House of Representatives apportioned accordingto population. Senators would be chosen by state legislatures for six-yearterms. They were thus insulated from sudden shifts in public opinion.Representatives were to be elected every two years directly by the people.THELIMITSOFDEMOCRACYUnder the Artic

1772 Somerset case 1777 Articles of Confederation drafted 1781 Articles of Confederation ratified 1782 Letters from an American Farmer 1784- Land Ordinances approved 1785 1785 Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia 1786- Shays's Rebellion 1787 1787 Northwest Ordinance of 1787 Constitutional Convention convened 1788 The Federalist Constitution ratified 1790 Naturalization Act