AP GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS:CHAPTER 2

The Articles of Confederation and The

Framers’ Dilemma

Consider: •What was “the problem of liberty”? x2•Describe “human nature” in the minds of many colonists.•Has the power of the presidency surpassed the power of Congress in a way that might make the Framers nervous?Homework: Assignment 4 for Tuesday

The Declaration of Independence

Section 2: Declaration of Natural Rights “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that

they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –

What elements of Locke’s philosophy are evident in this section?

The Articles of Confederation

A national government that went into effect in 1781 to bring order to the nation The Journals of the Continental Congress contain the first

draft of the Articles of Confederation as presented to the Continental Congress on July 12, 1776. It would take more than a year of debate before Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Two days later the Articles were submitted to the states with a request for immediate action. However, it was not until Maryland's approval on March 1, 1781 that the Articles of Confederation were finally ratified by all the states. In reality was little more than a “league of friendship” with numerous

weaknesses.

Why/how did each of these aspects weaken the AoC? No ability to levy taxes or regulate commerce One vote in Congress for each state 9/13 votes needed for any measure, unanimity needed for amendments Delegates picked by state legislatures No national executive or judiciary All sovereignty and independence retained by states

The First Presidents?

The Articles of Confederation, the predecessor to the Constitution, also “called for” a “president”– albeit one with greatly diminished powers. Eight men were appointed to serve one-year terms as president under the Articles of Confederation. The first was John Hanson, in 1781. His exact title was the “President of the United States in Congress Assembled.”

The following list is of those who led the Congress of the Confederation under the Articles of Confederation as the “Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled”. Under the Articles, the president was the presiding officer of Congress, chaired the Committee of the States when Congress was in recess, and performed other administrative functions. He was not, however, an executive in the way the successor President of the United States is a chief executive, since all of the functions he executed were under the direct control of Congress.

John Hanson (1782) Elias Boudinot (1783) Thomas Mifflin (1784) Richard Henry Lee (1785) John Hancock (1786) – never even entered NYC, which was capital at the time Nathan Gorman (1787) Arthur Saint Clair (1788) Cyrus Griffin (1789)[3]

The DilemmaAt that point, what did many people in the United States

realize? What was the dilemma that the Framers faced in trying to correct this

problem?Madison, in Federalist 37…

“It has been shown in these papers, …the existing Confederation is founded on principles which are fallacious; … It has been shown, that the other confederacies which could be consulted as precedents have been vitiated (reduced in value) by the same erroneous principles, and can therefore furnish no other light than that of beacons, which give warning of the course to be shunned, without pointing out that which ought to be pursued. The most that the convention could do in such a situation, was to avoid the errors suggested by the past experience of other countries, as well as of our own; and to provide a convenient mode of rectifying their own errors, …

Among the difficulties encountered by the convention, a very important one must have lain in combining the requisite stability and energy in government, with the inviolable attention due to liberty and to the republican form.”