The Power of the Confederation Congress was very limited. It was set up this way on
purpose so that it could not get to powerful and tell the states what they could and
could not do. Even when the Congress passed laws it could not enforce them. If a
state ignored a law Congress could do nothing.
The Articles of Confederation was to weak to deal with many of the problems
facing the new country. The states did win the war and forced the British to
recognize their independence. This did not end the states problems. The US faced
serious financial problems. They were broke. The Articles did not allow the new
country to collect taxes so money could not be raised. The Continental Congress had
borrowed money from France and had run up a very very large debt.
State governments had also run up debt. To raise money they started taxing their
people heavily. Trade had slowed and many people had lost their jobs. The country
was still recovering from the war and many farms had not produced crops in some
time. Because trade was down, and prices had gone up, farmers had problems
selling their crops for a fair price which led to many of them losing their farms.
Many states placed taxes on stuff coming in from other states which further slowed
trade down. Even though all of this was going on the Continental Congress had no
power at all to change any of these things.
The Congress also had no power to help to calm the people. The people believed
that the government could not protect them. Between 1786 and 1787, riots began
to break out. One large riot let to a small scale revolt in Massachusetts. It was led by
a man named Daniel Shay. Shay was a farmer who owed money because of heavy
state taxes. He had been told by the Government that he would not have to repay
debts and taxes because he had fought in the war. This turned out to be a lie. Mass.
Threatened to take his farm and land to repay his debts. Shay did not believe that
the state had any right to do this and many others felt the same way. He led 1,200
protesters to attack a federal arsenal. This uprising was called Shay’s Rebellion.
The revolt was put down but it raised a lot of eyebrows and questions about
whether the country could handle an all out rebellion and maintain law and order.
This led to a lot of politicians, merchants, and writers began calling for a stronger
national government. In 1787 representatives from 12 states met in Philadelphia.
The plan was to revise or change the Articles of Confederation. Washington was
chosen to lead the convention. The delegates wished to keep the work at the
convention secret to that people could speak freely. What started out as a meeting
to revise the Articles of Confederation soon turned into a meeting to write a brand
new constitution. This convention is known as the Constitutional Convention.
The delegates had realized that the current national government could in no way
continue to support and deal with the problems that were arising throughout the
country.
Writing a new constitution was not an easy task. The delegates soon realized that
they were divided about a lot of different things. One of the biggest things was over
how strong they believed the new National Government should be. Two factions
arose. The first were the Federalists who believed that federal law should be
supreme over state law. Here, the federalists believed that responsibilities
should be divided between the state, local, and federal governments where
the federal government should have the overall power. This did not sit well with
some of the states. They still felt that a strong federal government could lead to
tyranny and then they would be right back where they were before the war.
Federalism is a form of government in which power is divided between the
federal, or national, government and the states.
The federalists made a strong argument for a strong central government saying that
the nation could not survive without it.
The Anti-Federalists argued that the new constitution would destroy the
liberties won in the American Revolution. They feared that the new
constitution would create a national government that was strong and would
ignore the state’s individual rights. They also felt that a strong national
government would favor the wealthy few over the common people. They felt
that the government should just be strong enough to preserve the union. Most
importantly, the new constitution had no Bill of Rights which states what the
rights of the people were. The Anti-Federalists said that they would not sign
the constitution until the personal freedoms of the people were written down
and guaranteed. When the Bill of Rights was finally written the AntiFederalists finally signed the new constitution.