The King Is Gone, Now What?

Last year, our new government was formed. We agreed to what the Articles had said. It seems that now we are having issues with what we had once agreed with. In this newsletter, I will only address four of the most problematic things in the Articles of Confederation. However there are many more that will not be brought to light today.

In the books The Quartet and Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Ellis and Joyce Appleby discuss their thoughts on two important moments in American history and how they believe them to be revolutionary. The Quartet describes the political situation of the United States immediately following the American Revolution and how it made the transformation from a confederation into a republic. To do this, it follows the actions of four prominent men – George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – as they work toward their goal of bringing about a new national government and discusses nationalism, issues such as economics and expansion, and arguments about personal, state, and federal powers. He argues that the debate over the Constitution was between “nationalists” and “confederationists”, that the second Revolution was a by-product of the first in that it took the systems of the newly-independent states and reworked them into a coherent national collective, and that without this change, the United States couldn’t have become a modern model of government.

The Revolutionary War effectively ended on October 17th, 1781. Having successfully won independence, that task shifted to maintaining independence. The newly independent ‘United’ States, faced an array of issues, and proved to be anything but united under the existing Articles of Confederation. In hindsight, analyzing the arguments against the articles, as well as the

In the year of 1867 the nation we know as Canada came into being. The Confederation in this year only came about after things had been overcome. Many political and economic pressures were exerted on the colonies and a federal union of the colonies seemed to be the most practical method of dealing with these pressures and conflicts. While Confederation was a solution to many of the problems, it was not a popular one for all the colonies involved. In the Maritime colonies views differed widely on the topic. Some were doubtful, some were pleased, others were annoyed and many were hopeful for a prosperous future.1

After the colonies gained independence, the founding fathers soon found that becoming a new independent nation was going to be a difficult task. The biggest task was deciding on the division of power in the government. This issue divided the people into two groups, the federalists and the Jeffersonian republicans. Alexander Hamilton led the federalists and Thomas Jefferson led the republicans. These two important men in history would later show how the challenges of becoming a new nation. In this essay I will be analyzing the ideas of Linda K. Kerber’s “The Fears of the Federalists,” to Drew R. McCoy’s “The Fears of the Jeffersonian Republicans.” Furthermore, comparisons will be made about both essays to gain a better understanding of the struggles of government in early America.

In conclusion, the Articles of Confederation provided the United States with an ineffective government in the 1780’s because of the lack of power to tax, raise an army, or regulate trade; however, it redeemed itself with the creation of the land ordinances of 1785 and 1787, and keeping the states together after the American Revolution. This government held the states together after the war, but it would not have for much longer if the constitutional convention did not draft a new document with which to govern the country that would fix the arising issues that came with the Articles of

In the late 1700s, the United States had began to split into two factions: Federalists and Antifederalists. Factions are groups of citizens united by a common interest. The reasoning behind the differing views of how the government works across the world was best said by Locke “Men are equal in a natural sense, but society establishes many dimensions that are unequal”. (Barbour and Wright, 2017). In the states, Federalists wanted a strong central government while anti-federalists wanted a weak one. “The Georgians, for example, wanted a strong central authority to provide military protection for their huge, underpopulated state against the Creek Confederacy; Jerseymen and Connecticuters wanted to escape from economic bondage to New York; the Virginians hoped to establish a system which would give that great state its rightful place in the councils of the republic” (Roche, 800). The one thing they agreed on was having George Washington as president. George Washington tried to be a neutral leader of the United States and suggested for the states to stay together rather than divide into factions. “Thomas Jefferson is credited as stating: “North and South will hang together if they have you to hang on””(Jamison, 2016).

The government that our country operates under in modern times is quite different than the government in place at our country’s conception. However, they do share many of the same practices and ideologies. The Articles of Confederation were founded on the basis of a very limited national government, and the idea that states should interact with each other through a “loose league of friendship”. In this friendship, the states would work and trade together, but no form of central government was needed. This system was not nearly sufficient for the nations problems at the time. Recognizing the need for a reform, the nations leaders tried to reform the current system, and with little success, the decision was made that they should start

Although independence was just won, the country still needed protection from other hostile countries. Besides protecting the country from foreign enemies, the Anti-Federalists wanted to protect the American people from its own government. In fact, the “Anti-Federalists were especially concerned with preserving for ordinary citizens the ability to participate in government” (Amar). After all, the Revolutionary War was fought in order to gain freedom from oppression. However, by giving all of the power to the states, the nation would be divided. A nation divided would not stand forever because it would be limited against foreign enemies. While the Anti-Federalists had the right idea in mind, not all possibilities were thought of.

After the defeat of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, America was faced with many challenges. Some of these challenges brought upon the Americans grew from the weakness of new national government. This government was founded upon the Articles of Confederation, America’s first constitution. The Articles of Confederation resulted in a weak national government and strong state governments, making it seem as though each individual state were its own country. With the Articles of Confederation failing to serve America properly, the debate arose about whether or not to make a new constitution for America. The Federalists and Anti-Federalists were the two groups that debated the ratification of

The Federalist Party sought to destroy the threat of failure by strengthening the United States’ central government. As Alexander Hamilton said, “A firm Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the states, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection.” In Hamilton’s mind, strengthening the central government would ensure freedom for every American citizen by uniting the people to think and speak with a single voice. Hamilton had witnessed firsthand the political and economic confusion caused by states’ conflicting interests and corrupt taxation policies under the Articles of Confederation. He realized that the only way for the Union to survive and prosper was for the Federal government to take control of the country’s political and economic decision-making. With a strong Federal power in place, troublesome interstate conflicts could be solved swiftly and decisively, before they

The Articles of Confederation, a written agreement that ensured each state’s sovereignty, freedom and independence, led America to victory over the British centralized government. During the late eighteenth century, the empowered government terrified the Americans, hence the thirteen colonies decided to spread governance powers equally to all functional states. The states had absolute dominance over the Congress due to the Articles of Confederation. While the localized power of states seemed to be promising, the system posed great threat to the major components of a democratic government, which are coercion, revenue, and legitimacy (Lecture 1 - The Roots of Government). The system of localized power did not ensure legitimacy, which referred to people’s recognition of national government. Congress’s lack of power to control each state’s actions caused great chaos. Eventually, national government’s lack of power and inability to unify the states exposed multiple flaws in the Articles of Confederation; consequently, a new supreme law, the Constitution was established by the founding fathers. The new supreme law successfully altered the imbalanced system into a novel democratic government.

“The Ultimate Struggle”, in the search for a national government was the military conflict with Great Britain, and the political battle in America. The Americans were in a great debate about whether to create their own independence from Great Britain and how to structure the nation as independent.

Federalism was an inevitable and paramount mechanism to creation the of the Union. Therefore, it is acceptable that its governing principles would define and refine a majority of the nation’s history. Shaping the government, laws, and politics of the current and future generations during the creation of the Constitution, federalism permanently altered the life of every American. Federalism and the Constitution were derived from a similar ideal: endurance of free society had to be preserved by a sense of unity that acted as a safeguard against prevalent dangers, advanced the common good while still maintaining responsiveness to the diversity of the nation (Wechsler, 1954). The Constitution established a central government that possessed the capacity to interpret its

Any nationwide endeavor across the world over is always faced with a myriad of challenges when one factor in, the interest of different individuals or groups. During the early years of the USA, there were many problems that politicians at the time faced when trying to create and strengthen the country’s Constitution. In the early 1780’s the young country was in a deep depression, and this played a key role in influencing the exercise as it ultimately led to a heated debate about the powers of the National and State governments. Most of the conservative politicians at the time preferred a stronger federal government while state radicals believed that states should have more power since it was in a better position to determine what was best for their citizens (Jilson, 2009). More sticking points divided the founding fathers which threatened the stability and establishment of the USA, such as slavery and federalism.