The People?

1. The People? Making a New National Government

2. Daniel Shays and Job Shattuck, 1786

3. Making sense of the American Revolution’s “Final Battle” • Problems besetting new nation in 1780s: • Inefficiencies of Articles of Confederation (presented 11/1777; ratified 3/1781): • Powers of national government limited: • Only powers necessary to war and independence (with 9 states assenting to diplomatic and money-related issues): • Foreign relations : conducting war, and conducting treaties • Can coin and borrow money • Can regulate Indian affairs • Can NOT: • Levy taxes • Regulate commerce

4. Making sense of the American Revolution’s “Final Battle” • Problems besetting new nation in 1780s: • The problem of state government • Resolution: creating a new federal Constitution

5. Creating new state governments Begins in an unstructured way amid conflict • Need to fulfill civilian functions Little direction from Continental Congress Yet seen as marking “total, absolute independence.”

6. Creating new state governments • Common principles: 1. Reduced power of chief magistrate Elected by legislature; terms limited; impeachment process created no legislative power

7. Creating new state governments • Common Principles: 2. Importance of separation of powers YET: Bulk of power with elected legislatures prerogative powers lodged here right to pardon (judicial function) right to conduct foreign relations, declaring war and peace

8. Creating new state governments • Big problem: Devising a scheme of representation to reflect key elements of “the People” Options: • Reflect ownership of property • Geographic parity • Distribution of population

9. State Governments: Devising a representative scheme • Example: Maryland • Dominated by elite planters • High property requirements to vote, higher to hold office: • L. 500. to serve in house of delegates • L. 1000. to serve in state senate • L. 5000. to serve as governor Reflects key classical republican ideal: only the economically independent can make decisions in interest of greater good, selflessly

10. State Governments: Devising a representative scheme Example: Pennsylvania Radical artisans, professionals, western farmers Every element of government dependent on legislature Broad suffrage: all male taxpayers and adult sons Unicameral legislature annual elections term limits Benjamin Rush: ““absurd,” it “substituted a mob government to one of the happiest governments of the world.”

11. Problem of devising a representation scheme: Shay’s Rebellion • Conservative constitution – weighted towards east, with high property requirements to vote and hold office • Context of 1780s: • Problem of war debt • MA decides to pay at face value immediately (boon to creditors) • Raise taxes • Delay paying promissory notes to veterans

12. Shays Rebellion • Western farmers: Petition for debt relief, end to imprisonment for taxes, foreclosure moratorium • Are ignored, • Begin forcing closures of courts

13. Shay’s Rebellion • Precedents: • Declaration of Independence: ‘“governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and institute new government.” • A new conspiracy among the powerful to trample liberty

14. Shay’s Rebellion Perspective of Massachusetts’ governors: Attacks on courts are attacks on orderly government “a rebellion against reason” Rebels threaten property – in contractual credit Rebels plotting own rise to power, promising distribution of wealth “this revolution has introduced so much anarchy that it will take half a century to eliminate the licentiousness of the people. The pulling down of government tends to produce a settled and habitual contempt of authority in the people.”

15. 1780s state actions: revision to republican ideology • Old vision: elite power threatens liberty • New revision: democratically elected legislatures threaten rights of the minority to property: • Danger of a tyranny of the majority

16. Perceived crisis of government • Need authority in government to ensure social order • Monarchy has threat of force • Republic needs people willing to accept authority of state • Demands “public virtue” • What to do without virtuous people? ADJUST GOVERNMENT TO THEIR LICENTIOUSNESS

17. Solution: New federal scheme of government • Reserves power to the few virtuous individuals • Yet visibly based on popular assent

18. New, strengthened central government vis a vis states • How to protect people? 1. New concept of separation of powers: checks and balances • John Jay: “the framers had not only determined that the new government should be erected by, and depend on the people; but remembering the many instances in which governments vested solely in one man, or one body of men had degenerated into tyrannies, they judged it most prudent that the three great branches of power should be committed to different hands.”

19. New, strengthened federal government: how to protect People? • 2. Ensure an “aristocracy of merit” via new representation scheme large district method of determining representation • sift for “the best men in the country” Filtration of talent and the electoral college

20. Broadening the interest of representatives Federalist no 51, James Madison It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority . . .; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security. . . The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. 

21. Antifederalist response:A new tyranny afoot The Centinel, Oct 1, 1787 . . . the people are too apt to yield an implicit assent to the opinions of those characters, whose abilities are held in the highest esteem, and to those in whose integrity and patriotism they can confide, not considering that the love of domination is generally in proportion to talents, abilities, and superior acquirements, and that the men of the greatest purity of intention may be made instruments of despotism in the hands of the artful and designing. If it were not for the stability and attachment which time and habit gives to forms of government, it would be in the power of the enlightened and aspiring few if they should combine at any time to destroy the best establishments, and even make the people the instruments of their own subjugation. . . [The people] must not be permitted to consider themselves as a groveling, distinct species, uninterested in the general welfare.

22. Contested Meanings of the Revolution – its greatest legacy • Revolution as ongoing conflict and negotiation between competing social forces over who should have power and voice • Those in power need to accommodate dissident interests to stay in power • Shays’ Rebellion: • Was a moratorium declared on debt collection • Taxes cut dramatically on land; raised on luxuries