The American Revolution: Confederation and Articles

While the States were thus adopting new constitutions and organizing new governments, whose imperfections were negatived by the important feature that the people retained the power of altering and amending them whenever they chose, the General Congress continued the consideration of the Articles of Confederation which were to combine these separate States into a single nation. The debate upon this was very deliberately conducted, and sixteen months elapsed before it was ready to be communicated to the States. Three years more elapsed ere it was ratified by all the States. The principal objections were those which had already been abundantly debated in Congress, and that of the disposal of the vacant Western lands. This latter question was finally settled by the cession of these lands, by the States which claimed them, to the Union, for the common good of the people. The suffrage-difficulty was overcome by viewing the States as individuals and giving them equality of votes. The last State to ratify the Articles of Confederation was Maryland, on March 1, 1781. The principal powers of Congress, as defined by this agreement, were -- the sole right of deciding on peace and war, of sending and receiving ambassadors, of forming treaties and alliances, of regulating coinage, of fixing the standard of weights and measures, of managing Indian affairs, of establishing post-offices, of borrowing money or issuing bills on the credit of the United States, of raising an army through requisitions upon the States, and of forming a navy. It constituted also the final court of appeal in disputes between the States.

This system, though suitable to the conditions then existing, was destined to prove inadequate to the political requirements of the country after peace had succeeded to war. The confederation was little more than a league of friendship between the States. While investing Congress with many of the powers of sovereignty, it left it destitute of all means to enforce its decrees, the States retaining important powers which properly belonged to the central government. Not many years had passed after the termination of the war before it appeared that a radical change in the whole system was necessary for the proper government of the nation. Yet the Articles of Confederation sufficed to hold the States together till the conflict had ended, and the wisdom of American legislators could be applied to the important duty of organizing a stable union, in which the relations of the State and the national governments would be properly adjusted, and the American theory of local control of local affairs, and of national control of general affairs, could be carried out in all the complex details of the existence of a great confederated nation.

As for the means through which the declared independence was to be consummated, and the opposing means through which England hoped to reduce her revolted colonies to obedience, there were discouraging circumstances on both sides. We have already adverted to the difficulties experienced by Washington in making an army out of the intractable materials placed in his hands, and of the inconvenience arising from the short terms of enlistment of the men. There were other disheartening conditions. An officer who at that time wrote to a member of Congress presented a deplorable picture of the state of the army: "Almost every villainy that can disgrace the man, the soldier, or the citizen is daily practised, without meeting the punishment they merit. So many of our officers want honor, and so many of our soldiers want virtue, civil, social, and military, that nothing but the severest punishments will keep both from practices that must ruin us. . Our men are at present only robbers; that they will soon be murderers, unless some are hanged, I have no doubt." This is the testimony of a patriotic American, and it is confirmed by other statements.