The American Revolution had created an independent country. It had not yet created a government capable of holding that country together. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress struggled to raise money, regulate commerce, enforce its decisions, or settle disputes among the states. By the 1780s, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and others feared the young republic might not survive unless something changed.
Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College and author of The Founders’ Key, shares the story of how that crisis led delegates to Philadelphia in 1787, intending to repair the Articles and ultimately convinced them to replace them. At the heart of their work was a difficult question: How do you create a government strong enough to govern without making it powerful enough to threaten the liberty it exists to protect?
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Lee Habeeb (00:10):
And we continue with Our American Stories, and up next, one of our favorite types of stories, a story about American history. And all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. And you can go to Hillsdale.edu to sign up for their free and terrific online courses. That’s Hillsdale.edu.
Lee Habeeb (00:30):
Before the Constitution that we know today was ratified, the United States’ governing document was the Articles of Confederation. Here to tell the story about how we got from that document to our Constitution is Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, and our own Montie Montgomery, a graduate of the college. Take it away, Dr. Arnn.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (00:55):
The story of the American Revolution, the story of American history, is one of the most remarkable stories in human history. We came here from nowhere, we settled a continent, we extended freedom across the whole continent. All that, you know, it’s a really amazing story. But this revolution is a really great story too.
Montie Montgomery (01:14):
And the story of the Revolution begins like this.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (01:19):
State legislatures under the British Crown were the most democratic system of government ever practiced in the world. For about 150 years it grew over that time, and so they all had, you know, they had their identities. They were not, by the way, separate. They were united by the British Crown, but they didn’t have to work together.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (01:41):
And the British government took care of foreign policy.
Montie Montgomery (01:44):
And the British, managing the colonies’ foreign policy, would get themselves involved in the French and Indian War, which Britain would win. But with victory came debt.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (01:57):
The British, flushed with victory, decide, we’ve just spent a lot of money on those colonies, and so we’re going to tax them and regulate them, get some advantage from them. Well, that was 150 years too late, because these people were used to running their own business. And that’s how the American Revolution started. It really started in 1763. It went in stages. People just started communicating differently. They started writing to each other more and different kinds of things across state lines and cities, and Boston was a hot seat, but the rest of the country was very involved. And then finally they sent delegates to a legislative body called the Continental Congress. And this Continental Congress, they wrote and adopted a constitution.
Montie Montgomery (02:49):
The Articles of Confederation.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (02:52):
The Articles of Confederation leave the states in near-total power. But it’s also called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Perpetual. So it had become a country, you know. So it’s charged now with waging a war for the birth of the nation. And so the Articles provided that there was no real executive branch, that Congress would pick somebody to run the government. Most things required nine states to agree out of 13. That meant a supermajority. That meant it’s hard to agree about anything. And some things required unanimity. And they didn’t have any power to get any money except by asking the states. And, you know, with the best will in the world, if you don’t really have to send the money, will you? You know, and they didn’t. I mean, it got so bad that in the last year of the war, there was a big meeting of the Continental Army. By the way, it’s really cool that George Washington named the army the Continental Army, because at the time he did that, he didn’t know how big the continent was, and he actually never lived to hear the knowledge of how big it was, because Lewis and Clark was about six years after he died. And so they had a big meeting in Newburgh, and they had this cockamamie plan. They were going to pick up and go out west and start over and leave these idiots to their own devices, because we have won the war against the greatest power on Earth, having started with not only no army, but no large military experience anywhere in America. And we’ve won this war, and they won’t pay us. So they just didn’t get paid, you know. So the best plan they came up with was, let’s just march out west and leave them to their own devices. You know, they had justice on their side, but it’s also a little bit like a petulant child. And George Washington corrected that. He went there. He wasn’t invited. He heard about it.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (05:00):
And the one thing you couldn’t do by this time, and for the rest of his life, was have a fight in public with George Washington, because he was just so great. So he intervened. First, he moved the meeting to a different time, and then he showed up and walked up there to make a speech. It’s a very affecting speech. It’s the one where he takes out his spectacles and said, excuse me. He says, I’ve grown old serving with you, and then he makes himself their servant. George Washington’s way. He says, in this matter of your pay, I will be your servant. See, and then George Washington wasn’t getting paid. So that shows the weakness of the government under the Articles of Confederation.
Montie Montgomery (05:48):
The Articles of Confederation were failing, and soon prominent thinkers such as James Madison were writing that change needed to happen, and happen fast.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (05:59):
He writes an essay called The Vices of the Political System of the United States. So this, Vices of the Political System, just names what’s wrong. We can’t pay our bills, we can’t keep the peace. There are riots all over the country, the British are all over our soil, and we can’t get them off. And they just scoff at us, their armies. We’re afraid to go near them. And so this ain’t working. Those factors led a group of people, and it was widespread. All of the states sent somebody. Not all of them remained to the end, but all of them sent somebody to figure out how to revise the Articles of Confederation. That’s what the Constitution was called for.
Montie Montgomery (06:43):
But to bring states to the table to discuss it, they needed Washington.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (06:48):
Well, Madison and Hamilton had Washington persuaded to go, but Washington was so honorable that his sense of honor could get in his way. And there were articles in the paper saying that the Society of the Cincinnati, you know, which exists in America today, it’s the society of now the descendants of people who fought in the Revolutionary War.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (07:11):
And, you know, it’s named for a Roman statesman who is famous for resigning his commission and returning to private life every time he won a war. And so they styled themselves after this man. But then people got the false idea that it was an emerging aristocracy, and Washington was embarrassed by that because he hated the idea of that, as he would later prove. And so he decided not to go to a convention of the Cincinnati. But then he decided, if I go to the Constitutional Convention, it’ll be in the papers, and it will be apparent that I have snubbed my fellow officers in the Cincinnati. And so my personal situation prevents my attendance. And, you know, Madison reads that and he gets on his horse and he goes to Mount Vernon, and, you know, he goes that day. You got to go talk to that guy because we can’t do it without him, see, and he talks him into it. We don’t know exactly what arguments he used, but he knows. After that visit, Washington returned to the idea of going. And, you know, Washington was a very shrewd man. He’s a tremendous judge of men and things. He was not, let’s say, expansive in his eloquence in the Constitutional Convention. He said one thing, but he’s sitting up there at the front, and the one thing he said was he offered, toward the end, a mild correction. Richard Brookhiser wrote a good book about Washington, short too, called Founding Father. It’s a very good book, and he says in that book that the nature of Washington, what Washington had to say, emphasized the point that there’s not much wrong.
Lee Habeeb (08:53):
With this document.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (08:55):
But of course they’re designing a strong executive in that convention. That was controversial because they’d just been fighting a king. The fact that Washington was sitting up there and everybody just knew, whatever the executive is, he’s sitting right there. And, you know, he ran twice unopposed because you couldn’t oppose him.
Montie Montgomery (09:15):
Washington could have been made a king, but he wasn’t, even though there were forces asking him to be made one.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (09:24):
There was a different fella. He was circulating the letter, let’s make Washington king. And of course they’re, you know, they’re like we are today, a lot of us. We don’t know what to do. Is the whole regime going to change? Maybe? And Washington intervened to denounce that idea strongly, to that particular soldier and to others.
Montie Montgomery (09:45):
In the end, it was Washington that helped hold together our newly formed nation and bring about a better rule of law through example. But Madison actually made the gears turn and wrote the best reasoning for our Constitution, replacing the Articles of Confederation. Here’s what Madison had to say.
Dr. Larry P. Arnn (10:05):
What is government but the profoundest of all commentaries on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be needed. If angels were to govern men, neither internal nor external controls on the government would be necessary. Now that’s a piece of beautiful logic that is, by the way, undeniable, and it justifies the Constitution of the United States in two sentences.
Lee Habeeb (10:38):
The story of the journey from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, told by Dr. Larry Arnn, here on Our American Stories.
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