Articles Confederation Quotes
The debate had come to an impasse over the issue of voting and taxation by state equally or proportional to the population. Witherspoon warned of the consequence of there being no agreement on some form of unity.
Despite his warning---and that of othersβall that they could get agreement upon had each of these three weaknesses. After winning the American Revolution, the new country found the Articles of Confederation and the Continental Congress completely inadequate and finally in 1787 there was a Constitutional Convention held in secret in Philadelphia to overcome the weaknesses of the existing structure of which the warnings of Rush were three of the problems that had to be fixed.
The Articles of Confederation had no Federal teeth and the Continental Congress and the State Governmentβs were a mess after the Revolution. At the time of this writing to Jefferson in Europe, the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention had begun and many were pinning all their hopes on the outcome. While the proceedings of the convention were secret, the fact that it was ongoing was not only public knowledge, but there was intense public interest and hope for its outcome. The delegates were under a great deal of public pressure to unify the nation and come up with a viable form of government.
The Constitution was not drafted until 1787 and was ratified later. In the interim the young United States functioned under the Articles of Confederation, in a sense, our first Constitution. This clause established that the Federal Government should have the exclusive power and authority to conduct foreign affairs.
This fascinating quotation is very frequently quoted out of context. For example even in modern times some Southern slavery apologists quote this passage stating that Adams saw no moral difference between slavery and employment of the lower classes. And anti-capitalists have claimed that this was an attack on capitalism as no better than slavery for many workers. Neither is true. The debate was on the head taxes that states should pay to the central government. Southerners were claiming that they should not have to pay per person taxes on slaves. Adams position was that they should pay in that there is no practical difference in the work and working conditions very often. If slaves should be exempted from the head tax, so should the poor, lower class workers like the fisherman in New England. He always maintained at huge moral difference between a poor free worker and a slave even thought their working conditions might be similar.
Later, in 1697, William Penn made the first proposal to unite all the American colonies. See {612247}.
The smaller states were insisting on an equal vote for each state (colony). However, when it came to paying taxes to the national government, they wanted a head tax so that the total tax was proportional to the population. Franklin, representative from Pennsylvania, one of the larger states, wanted the voting power to parallel the tax burden.
Comment made in the Congressional Congress debates in 1787. This precedes individual taxation. In the debate, Wilson felt state taxation βshould accord with the number of freemenβ as βit is strange that annexing the name of βStateβ to ten thousand men, should give them an equal right with forty thousand.β
The Constitution had not yet been written. The new nation was struggling under a system which almost all agreed was inadequate. The legislatures of the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia agreed to hold a mini convention to determine what could be done. The Constitutional Convention a year later was the outgrowth of the recommendations of this Annapolis meeting.
Maryland had not yet ratified, and was not to do so until March 1, 1781, yet Jay operationalized the new nation with this letter.
The legal and governmental relationships with the Indians has from the very beginning of the nation been very complex and difficult. The Articles of Confederation had been wholly inadequate to the task and there were attempts to remedy this in the Constitution. There was an improvement but the problems still remain and may never be fairly and reasonably resolved.
Maryland was the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation, not doing so until March 1, 1781.
Even after the American Revolution, the Government of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation was a mess which would only be resolved by the Constitutional Convention the next year and the ratification of the Constitution.
The fear of civil war amongst the colonies if they were free from Britain was substantial. There were a number of potential conflict flash points of which slavery was one. See {619100}
In every American war, there have been those leaders who wanted to fight it βon the cheap.β While most modern people are most aware of the George W. Bush Administration providing insufficient funds to our troops in the Iraq War, there was a problem in the First World War, and President Roosevelt had to twist conservative arms to get the funds necessary for the Second World War. But even the American Revolution had the same problem as this quotation illustrates.
In the years leading up to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the weakness of the Articles of Confederation and the Continental Congress were clearly inadequate to govern the new nation. Riots and protests broke out in many parts of the country. Washington asked his associates from the war to determine what was really happening and when he found out, he was as discouraged as he ever was sharing this quotation with only a few friends.
