The Failure of Republicanism

THE FAILURE OF REPUBLICANISM:

THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

UNIT #5

Background:

Having defeated the British and gained political and economic freedom for themselves, the gentry were positioned to embark on a great experiment called Republicanism. With

the Church marginalized and Enlightenment ideas triumphant, the question was, would

the Gentry’s new religion of republican politics triumph over self-interest and rid the

nation of the evil of slavery? However, republicanism failed to provide the young nation with an effective government, and failed to resolve the issue of slavery.

I. THE TWIN LEGACIES OF THE REVOLUTION: A DIVIDED NATION AND SLAVERY

A. POST-REVOLUTION AMERICA WAS A NATION DIVIDED

B. POST-REVOLUTION AMERICA STILL FACED THE ISSUE OF SLAVERY

1. Protecting slavery was a high priority in the Carolinas and Georgia because of the

______which

______.

II. THE FIRST GOVERNMENT: THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, 1781

A. THE ARTICLES’ MOST LASTING ACHIEVEMENT

The most lasting achievement of the Articles was passage of the Norwest Ordinance of

1787 that banned slavery in the Northwest Territory.

B. THE PROBLEM WITH THE ARTICLES WAS THE GOVERNMENT’S

LIMITED AUTHORITY

Article II of the new constitution had crystal clear where power lay: Each state retains

its sovereignty, freedom, and independence….” [Mid-605] America was hardly the “United States.” Rather it was a collection of thirteen small republics, each with its own constitution. The gloomy predictions loyalists had voiced back in 1775-1776 seemed to be coming true.

1. There was no executive; no judiciary, no control over the economy. Congress lacked

taxing authority. It could only print paper money and issue notes to pay expenses. [The

paper money became a proverb: “not worth a Continental.”]

2. ______.

3. Illustration of how weak government under the Articles was: ______

C. REPUBLICANISM GOVERNMENT WAS HARDLY MORE EFFECTIVE AT

THE STATE LEVEL. HOWEVER, THERE WERE AT LEAST TWO

BRIGHT SPOTSON AN OTHERWISE DREARY POLITICAL LANDSCAPE:

1. The Virginia Constitution included a provision on religious freedom—Jefferson’s

famous “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom.” When independence was declared

everyone in Virginia, whatever his religion, paid taxes in support of the established

church, the Episcopal Church.

a. Dissenters, especially Presbyterians and Baptists, now demanded that they at least

be freed of this requirement. Their argument: ______

______

b. The principle that guided their thinking was that ______

______

2. Northern states enacted laws mandating ______.

Pennsylvania (1780), Rhode Island (1784), New York (1799). These laws were less

idealist than they appeared. Northern society had far less an economic stake in slavery

than did the South. These laws were post-nati emancipation: blacks born after a

given date were freed after they had reached a given age. Northern slave owners

evaded the emancipating intent by selling soon-to-be freed slaves in the South before

that age. Still, such laws were gradually creating a slaveless North, in marked contrast

to the South, and gave Southerners ______

III. SOUTHERN GENTRY MISSED AN OPPORTUNITY TO END SLAVERY

A. THE TIME FOR EMANCIPATION WAS RIGHT FOR FOUR REASONS:

1. ______

2. ______

3. ______

4. ______

B. THREE REASONS WHY SOUTHERN GENTRY REFUSED TO SUPPORT

GRADUALEMANCIPATION:

1. REASON #1: ______: ______

2. REASON #2: ______:

a. Thus, they could not explain ______

Someone has written, Denying sin’s reality and evil’s power [is] poor

preparation for acting virtuously.”

3. REASON #3: ______:

4. Despite all of this, they almost did! The case of Virginia:

Jefferson recommended colonization because he believed that blacks and whites

could not live together. “Deep rooted prejudices entertained by whites; ten

thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new

provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other

circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will

probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.”

IV. POSTSCRIPT: ON THE EVE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

A. EVERYONE SEEMED TO BE SACRIFING THE PUBLIC GOOD TO

PRIVATE INTEREST.

1. James Madison served in Virginia’s state legislature from 1784-1787. There he was annoyed at “the endless quibbles, chicaneries, perversions, vexations, and delays of lawyers” who all had “a particular interest to serve” apart from the public interest. Virginia passed “debtor-relief legislation” aimed at British creditors, who were required to accept depreciated paper money as payment and were denied access to Virginia’s courts to sue debtors. On average, Virginia’s debtors (many of them gentlemen) got by with paying only $1 for every $18 they owed! That was using the state to pursue private interest.

2. Two fears: A strongman might emerge; or one or more European powers might

intervene. By late 1782, France’s envoy to the U.S. was informing Paris that chaos was

possible. By the summer of 1786, Washington himself wrote, “prominent citizens had

begun to discuss a monarchial form of government….” And James Madison, early the

next year, acknowledged that the shortcomings of Confederation had “tainted the faith

of the most orthodox republicans.”

B. THE ONE BRIGHT SPOT: THE WAY WASHINGTON HAD RESIGNED HIS

COMMISSION AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. DECEMBER 19, 1783

1. Washington seized the opportunity to affirm the uniqueness of the new nation in which

a representative body, held a weightier authority than the military. THERE WOULD

BE NO AMERICAN CEASAR.