UNITED STATES HISTORY I
LECTURE OUTLINE THREE
- EXPERIMENT IN NATIONMAKING--THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
- Overview of Lockean and classical political theory
- differing concepts of liberty; human nature; society; power of central and local governments
- State constitutions
- unresolved clash of Lockean and classical theory
- State constitutions reflected restraints upon governmental power and direct majority rule
- The Articles of Confederation reflected Americans' fear of central government
- characteristics and weaknesses of the Articles
- NATIONALIST MOVEMENT IN THE EARLY 1780s
- executive departments
- impost amendment
- the debt as a "bond of union"
- Robert Morris led the early 1780s Nationalist Movement (these programs appealed to creditors, propertied men, and political conservatives)
- failure of the Nationalist Movement
- postwar economic depression
- attempts to regulate trade (the proposed amendment of 1784)
- Western lands question
- Ordinance of 1784
- The Northwest Ordinance of 1787--the monumental achievement of the Articles
The Articles of Confederation so reflected and aversion to power and so reflected the desire to protect liberty that reform became impossible.
- CHARACTERISTICS OF CONSERVATIVES' FEARS
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- conservatives' perception of a revival of social radicalism in the states (state legislatures were printing paper money and passing debtor relief laws)
- conservatives perceived these actions as evidence of attacks on property and too much Lockean theory and too much devotion to liberty
- Shays's Rebellion in 1787
- EXPERIMENT IN NATIONMAKING--THE CONSTITUTION
- The Constitution was the result of a conservative movement to check democracy and to protect property
- Who Wanted Change?
- an alliance of property-conscious social and political conservatives and nationalists who possessed an idealistic cosmopolitanism? OR
- blatant economic self-interest and those with a profound sense of nationalism?
- PRE-CONVENTION MOVEMENTS
- 1785--Mount Vernon and Alexandria
- 1786--Annapolis
- OVERVIEW OF THE 1787 PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION
- early consensus and type of delegates
- philospohical forces and political theories behind the Constitution
- common economic forces behind the Constitution
- FRAMING THE CONSTITUTION
- Virginia Plan--a truly radical departure from the past
- battlegrounds between large states and small states
- New Jersey Plan
- Connecticut (Great) Compromise
- Sectional Compromises
- representation
- slave trade
- federal regulation of trade
- the return of fugitive slaves
- POLITICAL OVERVIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION
- The Constitution as a political revolution
- the masterful "federal" solution (dual sovereignty)
- THE CONSTITUTION AS THE SOCIAL INSTRUMENT OF CONSERVATIVE POLITICS
- implicit in the checks and balances
- explicit in the powers given to the President and the Senate
- explicit in the methods of election and the terms of office
- contrivances to frustrate popular control (2,4,6)