Articles of Confederation and 1787 Constitution

Articles of Confederation and 1787 Constitution



Articles of Confederation and 1787 Constitution

Democracy and Articles of Confederation

Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum i.e. direct democracy or by means of voted into office representatives of the people. Democracy in 1787 was understood as "mob rule." Democracy meant that government could do anything it wanted as long as 51% of the strongest gathering was willing to support it. Democracy intended government not by the direct of regulation, but by the force of mob power.

America is not a democracy, nor should it be. Our form of government is founded upon legal regulations which apply to everyone. Here, 51 per hundred of the persons can disagree with a law, but until they mount the effort to legally change that regulation, they are compelled to it. Here the mob does not rule, no issue what the public opinion samples state; and no one, no issue how mighty, well known, or rich, is to be held overhead the law. (Tribe, 1999)

Highlights of Articles of Confederation and 1787 Constitution

The Revolution succeeded by virtue of a temporary coalition of competing viewpoints and conflicting interests. At one end of the coalition stood the American radicals— men such as Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson. The radicals challenged to unwarranted government power in general and not easily to British rule in particular. Spearheading the Revolution's opening stages, the radicals were responsible for all the truly revolutionary alterations in the domestic status quo. At the other end of the Revolutionary coalition were American nationalists—men such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Representing a powerful array of mercantile, creditor, and landed interests, the nationalists went along with independence, but resisted the Revolution's libertarian thrust. They preferred an American central government that would reproduce the hierarchical and mercantilist features of the 18th-century British state, only without the British.

The Revolution had started out as a struggle against taxation. What passed among the newly independent American states for a central government did not have direct access even to this most basic and usual of political powers. The Articles of Confederation, a written constitution adopted in 1781, failed to give Congress any authority either to collect taxes or to regulate trade. The war, however, helped spawn various pressure groups that clamored for stronger government. Eastern land speculators agitated for a standing army that could protect their vast claims, and in this effort they were joined by many of the Continental Army's former officers. (Mason and Donald, 2004)

One of the nationalists' most potent political weapons was the Revolutionary War debt, which provided an enduring rationale for national taxation and another special interest, those to whom the debt was owed, who supported such taxation. An equally popular justification for strengthening Congress was trade regulation. Subsequent accounts have painted a fanciful picture of competing trade barriers among various states ...