Lecture 13: The Road to the Constitution Convention

The Good Times The 1780s promised to be a time of peace and prosperity for the United States. Having declared and won their independence from Great Britain, Americans enjoyed the freedom to establish for themselves state governments based on the principles of liberty, consent of the governed, and protection of natural rights.

The Adorable Times The thirteen states had also entered "into a firm league of friendship with each other" under the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781, in order to promote "their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare."

The Rise of Conflicts Under the AOC Many Americans came to believe that the problems of the 1780s arose largely from defects in the Articles of Confederation, which had given Congress too little power and therefore made it incapable of dealing effectively with national problems, and of keeping the state governments in compliance.

Shays Rebellion Shays’ Rebellion is the name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt. The rebellion took its name from its symbolic leader, Daniel Shays of Massachusetts, a former captain in the Continental army.

Why did this happen? Although farmers took up arms in states from New Hampshire to South Carolina, the rebellion was most serious in Massachusetts, where bad harvests, economic depression, and high taxes threatened farmers with the loss of their farms.

Background of Events in Massachusetts The uprising in Massachusetts began in the summer of 1786. The rebels tried to capture the federal arsenal at Springfield and harassed leading merchants, lawyers, and supporters of the state government. The state militia, commanded by Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, crushed the rebels in several engagements in the winter of 1787. Shays and the other principal figures of the rebellion fled first to Rhode Island and then to Vermont.

The Push to the Constitution Although it never seriously threatened the stability of the United States, Shays’ Rebellion greatly alarmed politicians throughout the nation. Proponents of constitutional reform at the national level cited the rebellion as justification for revision or replacement of the Articles of Confederation, and Shays’ Rebellion figured prominently in the debates over the framing and ratification of the Constitution

An Attempt to Make Things Better In August of 1786, some members of Congress made an attempt to remedy these problems by proposing amendments to the Articles of Confederation, but the attempt failed because of division among Congressional delegates.

In February of 1787, Congress authorized a convention, to be held in Philadelphia in May of that year, for the purpose of recommending changes to the Articles of Confederation.

The Constitution Convention In what has come to be known as the Constitutional Convention of 1787, all of the states—with the exception of Rhode Island—sent delegates to debate how to amend the Articles of Confederation in order to alleviate several problems experienced by the United States after the War for Independence

A New Type of Government Although the Convention eventually decided to scrap the Articles altogether, and recommend instead the adoption of an entirely new plan of government, all of the delegates were initially united by one belief—that something must be done in order to correct the "errors" of the American political system in the 1780s.