Date |
What’s the Situation? |
What’s the Problem? What’s the
Solution? |
1777 |
Articles
of Confederation – Congressional approves. Basic rules: - unanimous
vote to change the system – that’s 13
of 13 - can’t tax, but can print
money and borrow |
¾ These are the beginning points for the government,
but they are not the only beginning points. Quakers had been the main
religious group opposing slavery and they continue. Appropriately, the state
of PA is the first one to abolish slavery. |
1777+ |
State governments What do they do about
executive branch? |
The state governments are a practice ground for
future national patterns. The initial experiment is anti-executive branch—a
view coming from their recent anti-king experience. They find placing all
power in the legislature is equally troublesome. The solution:
an executive branch must exist. |
1779 |
Virginia Statute of
Religious Freedom (does not pass) Who wrote it? |
Called for no established church. Click here for
the change. Who wrote it? Thomas Jefferson |
1781 |
Articles of Confederation –
States ratify |
¾ |
1781,
1783… |
No support for “impost” (5%
on imports to fund nation) Note: impost
= tariff, a tax collected at port, for revenue |
No income meant no ability
to pay such things as the money owed soldiers (next line). The solution:
Congress must be able to tax and Congress must be able to pass laws
(something true for all below) by shifting -
from 2/3 (66+%) vote of the states (Scroll up or click here for
the Articles of Confederation) -
to just being
more than 50% vote of the representatives with the Constitution |
1783 |
Philadelphia insurrection by
unpaid military (one of several) |
The solution:
Congress must be able to tax. |
1783 |
Treaty of Paris - US to protect Loyalists,
pay debts (US doesn’t) - British to leave Ohio
Valley (Br also doesn’t) |
These become part of the problems. |
1783 |
1st (of many)
state begins to pass protective tariffs Note: This tariff is meant to keep out products
that are cheaper than those that can be made in the
US. If you don’t understand this term, you need to
look it up in a detailed dictionary. Also protective tariffs are usually in the
interests of manufacturers, not in the interests of those exporting
agricultural products for global markets (such as the South). If you don’t
know why, please ask. |
2 issues for national well-being: 1. Click here for
the British example. 2. Imagine this pretend, simplified example:
2 neighboring states in the US, one with
a tariff of .10 cents on British widgets valued at $2.00 and one with a
tariff of $1 on the same widget. In other words, one state’s citizens can
have a British widget for $2.10, but the other state’s citizens pays $3.00
Crafty citizens in the .10 cent
state haul imported widgets across the state line and then sell them for say
$2.75—THUS wiping out the usefulness of the protective tariff while making a
.65 personal profit per widget. The solution:
Congress must be able to regulate interstate (between states) commerce. |
1784 |
Spain blocks Americans from
lower Mississippi |
Americans in the west can only cheaply market their
grains if they can put their crops on barges in the rivers that feed the
Mississippi River and float downstream to the Gulf and New Orleans and thus
to the great global markets. The solution:
Congress must be able to get passable treaties. |
1784 |
Post-war economic recession,
beginning of |
|
|
The British refuse to make a commercial treaty with
us, saying they’d have to make 13 treaties not 1. BUT Americans are used to British goods and want such a
trading relationship to exist. The solution:
Congress must be able to regulate commerce and be able to get passable treaties. |
|
1784 |
-Who writes the first draft? |
The Northwest Ordinance is usually
talked about as the only positive action of the Articles of
Confederation era. It setup:
Process for full statehood (not continuing colonial status
as the British did) where an area became a territory with appointed governor,
then when it had enough population wrote a state constitution and asked to be
admitted, and finally when admitted had equal voting rights with any other
state (no matter how old)
No slavery
Sale of public lands to support public education No solution required. |
1785 |
“Memorial and Remonstrance” against
a bill to provide tax support for support of religion by James Madison |
Virginia
votes for separation of church and state, the model for the nation. |
1785 |
Virginia Statute of
Religious Freedom (does pass) - This time submitted to the
Virginia legislature by James Madison. |
|
1785 |
Failure to pass treaty with
Spain over the Mississippi “forbear[ing]” US use
for 25+ years(Jay-Gardoqui) |
Jay negotiated a treaty favorable to one section, his
own. The 1 state-1 vote Congress rejected it. The solution:
Some organization other than Congress must negotiate treaties and we must be
able to get passable treaties. |
1785 |
States governments (PA, SC,
NC, NY, RI, NJ, GA) issuing paper money |
Paper money not backed by real assets leads to deadly
inflation. The solution:
Congress must be the only level of government that can print or coin money. |
1786 |
Annapolis Convention –
interstate commerce issues, but only 12 delegates |
-- The solution:
Congress must be able to regulate interstate (between states) commerce. |
1786 |
Daniel Shays’s
Rebellion |
See your textbook on this rebellion, but the
implication is that we are powerless to stop it nationally. The solution:
Congress must guarantee that mobs (even well intentioned) can’t
take over government. |
1787-05 -09 |
Philadelphia Convention - Who’s
often called the “Father of the Constitution”? |
James Madison of Virginia – He takes notes; he
understands historical precedent for different methods. Click here for his role with the Federalist Papers
and here for his role with the Bill of
Rights. |
- Why a convention? |
The states had experimented with this method. Reason: 1.
Think for a minute. If Richmond city government in
2000 passes a law saying folks can raise pigs in the city but in 2003 passes
a law saying they can’t, which law is true. The LAST
law wins. Legislation by those chosen to create laws can be changed by just
having a different city government. 2.
Conventions of representative citizens for the purpose of writing a Constitution, move the
process offline and make the document not comparatively temporary
legislation, but permanent. The solution:
Write the Constitution in a convention. |
|
- Who are the factions
there? - Big state/small state |
Like most arrangements in
the Constitution, this splits the difference:
The House of Representatives and representation based
on the number of people in the state pleased big states like PA and NY.
The Senate with 2 votes per
state pleased small states like NJ. |
|
- Slave owners |
Slave owners got:
3/5 of slaves counted toward their representation in
the House of Representatives (and taxation)
Fugitive slave return
No ending of the slave trade until 1808 |
|
1787-07 |
Northwest Ordinance passes |
Click here for this
ordinance. |
1787-1788 |
Federalists and Federalist
Papers -
Who writes it? |
Federalists = name that minimizes the strong central
government desired by the framers and maximizes attention on the 2 levels of
government (central and state) that existed in the plan. Federalist Papers = Publications in newspapers to try
to convince states to ratify the Constitution. Who writes it? = James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.
Madison’s paper # 10 is among the most famous. He argues for a republic (government by elected
representatives), not a democracy. The Constitution’s framers reject democracy,
aristocracy, and monarchy. -
If you don’t know those
words, look them up. -
If you want to be sure of their support for the
republic, enter the letters repub.
Then try the first letters of the other 3 forms of
government listed. The only one you’ll find is republic |
Anti-Federalists - Why? |
Anti-Federalist? = men such
as Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, John Dickinson Why? Such issues as: -
Secrecy of the convention. -
That the focus of government shifted
from the states to the central government. -
That there was no statement of rights preserved to
the people and the states (Click here for
more.) -
Method used to replace the Articles of Confederation
(Click here for its method and here for the
Constitution’s. |
|
Constitution What’s the method of approval? |
Method of
approval = 9 of 13 states 5 states asked for a Bill of Rights. Federalists had argued against that saying it was
unnecessary. Do notice IN FUTURE MATERIALS what
the Federalist are doing by 1798 with the Alien and Sedition Laws to evaluate
how wrong they were. |
|
Bill of Rights |
In running for a seat in the House of
Representatives, Madison promised his constituency that he would work for the
Bill of Rights. He went through existing lists of rights and came up with 12,
of which 10 were later ratified by the states. |
Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2013 |
WCJC
Department: |
History
– Dr. Bibus |
Contact
Information: |
281.239.1577
or bibusc@wcjc.edu |
Last
Updated: |
2013 |
WCJC
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