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The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
1776 to 1789
"The love of Power is so alluring that few have ever been able to resist its bewitching influence."
-- New Hampshire Convention, 1781
The Articles of Confederation had few pretensions. They fulfilled a pragmatic need. With King and Parliament eloquently rejected by the Declaration, the Americans now needed to put their theories into practice. They needed the Articles to describe the rules for national government.
So how did the Articles apply the great essentials to the task of governing? How did they try to control the "bewitching influence" of power? While they accepted the fact that power is given to government by the people, they grappled with how the people can best protect their welfare. The states, they determined, held the answers.
By only agreeing to a "firm league of friendship," each state still retained "its sovereignty, freedom and independence." Delegates elected to the legislature, a single, unicameral body where each state had one vote, would be "appointed in such manner as each State shall direct." The national government possessed only specifically described powers -- primarily in international affairs. Other authority remained close to the people, in the states.
Think about the times and it is easy to understand this approach to the "great essential" of limited national government. Still locked in a violent war with the "tyrant," George III, Americans harbored deep suspicions of consolidated power. They included no chief executive in the Articles. They even shunned independent national courts. Only months beyond colonial status, with different economies and religions, separated by what they believed was a vast unsettled wilderness, many scoffed at thoughts of a single, national republic as widespread as coastal North America. |