Week 6 · Chapter

Chapter 6 — Confederation & Constitution

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~55–65 minutes · Objectives 1, 4, and 5 · Read it first this week, before the lecture and the slide deck.

In plain language

This week is about how the new United States wrote the rules for governing itself, twice. The first set of rules, the Articles of Confederation, gave each state one vote and gave Congress no power to tax. The second set, the Constitution, built a stronger national government and was signed in 1787. You will see the bargains the Constitution's writers made, including the clauses that protected slavery, and the fight over whether to approve it, which is called ratification (the formal approval that makes a plan take effect). You will finish with the Bill of Rights: the first ten changes to the Constitution, approved in 1791.

Why you already care about this

Picture four roommates who share one apartment fund. They agree to split the bills. Every roommate gets one vote on every decision. But nobody can make a roommate pay. Then the heating bill arrives, and one roommate says, "Not this month."

You have probably lived some version of that story, in a shared house, a club, or a group project. A group that cannot collect what it needs soon stops working. That is the problem the United States faced in the 1780s, and it is the week in miniature. The country's first frame of government asked the states to pay but could not make them.

So in 1787 delegates met and wrote a new frame. They argued over power, over representation, and over slavery. Then the country argued over whether to accept what they wrote. You will read five dated documents from those years, one short pinned passage at a time.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to: explain what the Articles of Confederation allowed and did not allow; read the Northwest Ordinance for what it barred and what it kept; explain the Great Compromise over representation; state the Constitution's slavery clauses plainly; tell Federalists from Anti-Federalists; source and close-read The Federalist No. 10; explain the Bill of Rights; and order the week's years.

Hook to keep: a government that can only ask is not the same as one that can collect.

Carry-line: a government that asks is not a government that collects.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 built the four moves of sourcing, contextualization, close reading, and corroboration. Weeks 2 and 3 traced the colonies and how colonial law built hereditary racial slavery. Weeks 4 and 5 followed the break with Britain, the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the Treaty of Paris (1783).
This week: the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, the Constitutional Convention and its compromises, the Constitution's provisions on slavery, the ratification debate and The Federalist No. 10, and the Bill of Rights.
How they connect: the Revolution's ideals and limits did not end in 1783. This week shows the new country writing them into frames of government.
Where we're going next: Week 7, The New Republic, follows the new government into its first years and its first political parties.

Week 3 gave you the term frame of government: a written plan that sets out who holds power and how it is to be governed. This week you meet two frames for a whole country. Week 5 gave you the Declaration. Keep it apart from the Constitution. The Declaration of 1776 announced independence; the Constitution of 1787 framed a government. Five documents is a heavy load, and the course is built to be supportive of that. Each section reads one document, one move at a time.

1. Read the Articles of Confederation: one vote, no power to tax

Think back to the roommates. They wrote their rules in a hurry, during a crisis, and they wanted no roommate to boss the others. Their rules kept everyone equal. They also kept the fund empty.

The Articles of Confederation were the first frame of government of the United States. The Continental Congress adopted them in 1777. They took effect in 1781, when Maryland ratified. The Congress that met under them is often called the Confederation Congress.

Three rules matter most for you to remember:

Each state had one vote in Congress, whatever its size.
Each state kept every power not expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.
Congress had no power to tax.

The pinned fragment you will quote, from the Articles as the Avalon Project prints them, reads:

"each State shall have one vote"

Worked example — dating the Articles. The Avalon Project's heading gives one date, and the record gives another.

Adopted by the Continental Congress: 1777.
In force, the date in Avalon's heading: 1781.
Gap: 1781 − 1777 = 4 years from adoption to effect.

In words: the date at the top of Avalon's page is the day the Articles took effect, not the day Congress adopted them. This is the Week 5 lesson again. Name which date you mean and where it comes from.

Misconception check. Students often think the Articles gave Congress the power to tax, because every government you know collects taxes. That is tempting. But the Articles gave Congress no power to tax; Congress could not collect a tax on its own authority. The cure is to name the rule exactly: one vote per state, no power to tax.

Caveat: "weak" is a judgment, not a fact. The Articles kept power with the states on purpose, after a war fought against a distant government's taxes.

2. Read the Northwest Ordinance: a path to statehood and a bar on slavery

Imagine a city that owns a large empty lot. Before anyone builds, the council writes rules: how the lot becomes a neighborhood, what may be built, and what may not. Those rules shape the place for generations, long after you and the council are gone.

The Northwest Ordinance was rules of that kind for a whole region. The Confederation Congress passed it on 13 July 1787, under the Articles. It covered the territory northwest of the Ohio River. It set a path from territory to statehood. Its sixth article barred slavery in that territory. The pinned fragment reads:

"There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory"

Worked example — the four moves on the Northwest Ordinance. You take the moves in order.

Sourcing: the Confederation Congress made it; it is an ordinance, a law of that Congress; the Avalon Project keeps the text, dated 1787.
Contextualization: Congress passed it about two months before the Constitution was signed, while the Articles were still the law.
Close reading: the sixth article barred slavery and involuntary servitude in the territory. The same article provided for the return of people escaping labor or service, so it barred slavery in one territory without freeing anyone who fled there.
Close reading, continued: the third article, in paraphrase, promised good faith toward Native nations and said their lands would not be taken without their consent. The land the ordinance organized was land where Native nations lived.
Corroboration: later weeks show what happened to that promise. Week 9 takes up removal.

The reading in one plain sentence: the Northwest Ordinance shows that the Confederation Congress barred slavery in one territory and promised good faith to Native nations; it is evidence of what Congress wrote, not of how those promises were kept.

Misconception check. Students often think the Northwest Ordinance ended slavery in the United States. That is tempting, because its sixth article says "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude". But the bar covered one territory, and the same article provided for returning people who escaped there. The cure is close reading: ask where a rule applies and what else the same article says.

3. Bargain over representation: the Great Compromise

Picture two towns that must share one water board. The bigger town says seats should follow population. The smaller town says each town should get an equal voice, or the big town will decide everything. Both arguments sound fair from where each town stands. Which would you pick if you lived in the small town?

The delegates at the Constitutional Convention, the meeting at Philadelphia in 1787 that wrote the Constitution, faced the same argument between large and small states. Their answer is the Great (Connecticut) Compromise: the House of Representatives got seats by population, and the Senate got two members per state.

Worked example — an illustrative small state and large state. These two states are made up for practice. Suppose a House gives one seat for every 10,000 people.

Small state: 20,000 people ÷ 10,000 = 2 House seats.
Large state: 80,000 people ÷ 10,000 = 8 House seats.
House total: 2 + 8 = 10 seats, so the large state holds 8 of 10.
Senate: two members per state, so each holds 2 of 4.

In words: the large state leads 8 versus 2 in the House, a fourfold edge, and the two states are equal in the Senate. Neither side got everything, which is why it is called a compromise.

The Constitution that came out of the Convention was signed in convention on 17 September 1787, the date its own text gives. Its opening is the second pinned fragment of the week:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union"

From the Articles taking effect to the Constitution's signing: 1787 − 1781 = 6 years.

Misconception check. Students often think the Constitution wiped the slate clean, as if the Articles had shaped nothing in it. That is tempting, because the Constitution is the document everyone remembers. But the equal Senate kept part of the Articles' one-state, one-voice idea. The cure is change and continuity: ask what the new frame changed and what it kept.

Pause and choose one: (a) Write two sentences arguing why a small state might have accepted seats by population in the House. (b) Write two sentences on what the phrase "We the People" claims about who made the Constitution, and whom you would check it against.

4. State the Constitution's slavery clauses plainly

Think about a contract that never uses an uncomfortable word but is written around it on every page. A careful reader notices the gap between what the words say and what they do. The Constitution's clauses on slavery work that way. The word slave does not appear in them, yet three clauses protected slavery.

Here they are, stated plainly, so you can name each one:

The three-fifths clause counted "three fifths of all other Persons" when dividing House seats and direct taxes among the states. The "other Persons" were enslaved people. The same clause counted free persons in full, including servants bound for a term of years, and left out Native people who were not taxed.
The slave-trade clause, a rule about the trade in captive people, barred Congress from prohibiting the importation of enslaved people before 1808. It shielded the Atlantic slave trade from a federal ban until that year.
The fugitive clause, in Article IV, said, in paraphrase, that a person held to service or labor in one state who escaped into another was not freed by that state's laws. That person was to be delivered up to whoever claimed the labor.

Worked example — what the three-fifths clause did to a count. This state is made up for practice. It holds 50,000 free people and 30,000 enslaved people.

Free people counted in full: 50,000.
Enslaved people counted at three fifths: 3 ⁄ 5 × 30,000 = 18,000.
Total counted for House seats: 50,000 + 18,000 = 68,000.

In words: the enslaved people added 18,000 to the count that set the state's power in the House. The clause raised the power of the state that held them; it gave the people counted no voice in choosing who used it.

Contextualization explains where these clauses came from: like the Great Compromise, they were bargains struck at the Convention. It never excuses what the clauses protected. These clauses wrote protection for slavery into the frame of the national government.

Misconception check. Students often think the three-fifths clause counted free Black people as three-fifths of a person. That is tempting, because the clause is often retold loosely. But it counted free persons in full and applied three fifths to "all other Persons", the enslaved. The cure is close reading: you read whom the clause names, and whom it counts in full.

Honesty note: the clauses avoid the word slave, but that silence is part of the close reading. What a text leaves out can be as telling as what it says.

5. Weigh ratification: Federalists and Anti-Federalists

Imagine your apartment building votes on new bylaws. One neighbor says the old rules failed and the new ones will finally get the roof fixed. Another says the new rules give the board too much power and protect no one's rights. You have to decide which argument to trust, and your vote counts the same as your neighbor's.

That was the choice in the ratification debate of 1787 and 1788. Ratification is the formal approval that makes a proposed constitution or amendment take effect. Two sides formed:

Federalists supported the proposed Constitution.
Anti-Federalists opposed it or demanded changes, above all a bill of rights.

Worked example — a citizen weighing ratification. An illustrative citizen, a shopkeeper in a port town, sorts the arguments she hears.

For: under the Articles, Congress had no power to tax, so it could not collect what it needed. A Federalist argument.
Against: the new frame names no list of protected rights. An Anti-Federalist argument.
A middle path she weighs: ratify, but press for amendments that protect rights.

In words: the debate you would have joined was not only yes or no. It was also about what a government owes the people it governs.

Misconception check. Students often think the Federalists of 1787 and 1788 are the Federalist Party of the 1790s. That is tempting, because the names match. But the ratification-era Federalists were supporters of the Constitution, while the Federalist Party formed later, around Hamilton and Adams. The cure is to attach a year to the word. Week 7 takes up that party.

6. Read The Federalist No. 10: Madison as Publius

Think about an op-ed signed with a made-up name. You can still ask who wrote it, why, and for whom. Your sourcing questions do not change because the name is invented. A pen name changes how readers meet an argument; it does not hide that someone is arguing.

The Federalist No. 10 is a newspaper essay by James Madison, published under the pen name Publius. A pen name is a chosen public name used in place of the author's own. Founders Online keeps the text. It prints the date in square brackets, [22 November 1787]. That bracketed date is the editors' date: a date the document's modern editors supply, because the essay itself does not state it in its text. This is the week's Primary Source Workshop document.

Worked example — the four moves on The Federalist No. 10. You take the moves in order, as you did with the ordinance.

Sourcing: James Madison wrote it, as Publius; it is a newspaper essay; Founders Online keeps it, with the editors' date of 22 November 1787. Its purpose was to persuade readers to ratify.
Contextualization: its editors' date falls about two months after the Constitution was signed, in the middle of the ratification debate.
Close reading: Madison defines a faction, in paraphrase, as a group of citizens united by a shared interest or passion that works against the rights of others or the good of the whole. He argues that a large republic controls the effects of faction. The pinned fragment names the main cause:

"the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property"

Close reading, continued: the essay lists divisions of property and interest, such as debtors and creditors, but it never names slavery among them, and the word slave does not appear in it.
Corroboration: set it beside Section 5. The essay answers the fear that a strong national government would crush liberty. The Anti-Federalists' demand for a bill of rights is the other side.

The reading in one plain sentence: The Federalist No. 10 shows Madison's argument, as Publius, that a large republic can control the effects of faction; it is evidence of one side of the ratification debate, not of how the voters decided.

Misconception check. Students often think the bracketed date is the date Madison wrote at the top of his essay. That is tempting, because it sits where a date usually sits. But the square brackets mark the editors' date, supplied by the modern editors. The cure is sourcing: say whose date it is, every time.

Pause and choose one: (a) Explain in two sentences why an argument for a large republic might persuade a reader who feared one state's majority. (b) Explain in two sentences why an essay written to persuade is strong evidence of an argument but weak evidence of what voters believed.

7. Read the Bill of Rights: ten of twelve

Imagine a club that adopts its bylaws, then promises members it will add a list of protections at its first meeting. Members watch to see whether the promise is kept. You would too. Some proposals pass; some do not.

An amendment is a formal change or addition to a constitution, which takes effect only after it is ratified. Congress proposed twelve amendments in 1789. Ten of them were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures in 1791 and became the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.

Worked example — counting the amendments. You count what Congress proposed and what the states approved.

Proposed by Congress in 1789: 12.
Ratified in 1791: 10.
Not ratified then: 12 − 10 = 2.

In words: the Bill of Rights is not everything Congress proposed; it is the ten amendments the states approved.

The pinned fragment, from the first of those ten, reads:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

A sourcing detail from the National Archives' transcript rewards your close look. In Congress's list of twelve, this text was the third article. It became the First Amendment because the first two proposals were not ratified in 1791.

Corroboration ties this section to Section 5. The Bill of Rights answers the Anti-Federalists' central demand. Ratification and the amendments belong to one story.

Misconception check. Students often think the Bill of Rights was written into the Constitution at the Convention in 1787. That is tempting, because the amendments are printed with the Constitution. But they were proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1791, after the debate over ratification. The cure is to date them: 1787 for the Constitution, 1791 for the Bill of Rights.

8. Order the week's years and the documents of 1787

Picture a shelf of folders, each with a year on the spine. Before you read any one of them, you put them in order. Then the story has a shape you can follow.

Worked example — ordering the week's years. Put five years from the course chronology in order and measure the gaps.

Order, earliest to latest: 1776 (the Declaration of Independence), 1781 (the Articles of Confederation take effect), 1783 (the Treaty of Paris ends the War of Independence), 1787 (the Constitution signed), and 1791 (the Bill of Rights ratified).
Gaps: 1781 − 1776 = 5 years; 1783 − 1781 = 2 years; 1787 − 1783 = 4 years; 1791 − 1787 = 4 years.
Span: 1791 − 1776 = 15 years.
Check: the four gaps add back to the span, 5 + 2 + 4 + 4 = 15 years.

In words: the country went from declaring independence to ratifying the Bill of Rights in 15 years, and it used two frames of government along the way.

Three of the week's documents share one year, 1787, so the day decides their order. The Northwest Ordinance came on 13 July 1787. The Constitution was signed on 17 September 1787. The Federalist No. 10 carries the editors' date of 22 November 1787. So the Confederation Congress passed the ordinance before the signing, under the Articles, and Madison's essay is dated after the signing, during ratification.

Misconception check. Students often think the Declaration of Independence is the Constitution, because both are founding documents kept by the National Archives. That is tempting. But the Declaration of 1776 announced independence and listed grievances; the Constitution of 1787 framed a government. The cure is the dates: 1776 for the Declaration, 1787 for the Constitution, with a war and the Articles between them.

Key terms

Articles of Confederation — the first frame of government of the United States, adopted in 1777 and in force from 1781, with one vote per state and no congressional power to tax. (first used: 1. Read the Articles of Confederation: one vote, no power to tax)
Confederation Congress — the Congress of the United States as it met under the Articles of Confederation. (first used: 1. Read the Articles of Confederation: one vote, no power to tax)
Northwest Ordinance — a law of the Confederation Congress, passed in 1787, that set a path to statehood northwest of the Ohio River and barred slavery in that territory. (first used: 2. Read the Northwest Ordinance: a path to statehood and a bar on slavery)
Constitutional Convention — the meeting of state delegates at Philadelphia in 1787 that wrote the Constitution. (first used: 3. Bargain over representation: the Great Compromise)
Great (Connecticut) Compromise — the bargain that gave the House seats by population and the Senate two members per state. (first used: 3. Bargain over representation: the Great Compromise)
Three-fifths clause — the clause that counted "three fifths of all other Persons", meaning enslaved people, when dividing House seats and direct taxes. (first used: 4. State the Constitution's slavery clauses plainly)
Slave-trade clause — the clause that barred Congress from prohibiting the importation of enslaved people before 1808. (first used: 4. State the Constitution's slavery clauses plainly)
Fugitive clause — the clause in Article IV that required a person escaping from service or labor in one state to be delivered up to whoever claimed the labor. (first used: 4. State the Constitution's slavery clauses plainly)
Ratification — the formal approval that makes a proposed constitution or amendment take effect. (first used: 5. Weigh ratification: Federalists and Anti-Federalists)
Federalists — in the ratification debate of 1787 and 1788, the people who supported the proposed Constitution. (first used: 5. Weigh ratification: Federalists and Anti-Federalists)
Anti-Federalists — in the ratification debate, the people who opposed the Constitution or demanded changes, above all a bill of rights. (first used: 5. Weigh ratification: Federalists and Anti-Federalists)
The Federalist No. 10 — Madison's newspaper essay, published as Publius and dated by the editors to 22 November 1787, arguing that a large republic controls the effects of faction. (first used: 6. Read The Federalist No. 10: Madison as Publius)
Publius — the pen name under which Madison published The Federalist No. 10. (first used: 6. Read The Federalist No. 10: Madison as Publius)
Editors' date — a date a document's modern editors supply in square brackets because the text does not state it. (first used: 6. Read The Federalist No. 10: Madison as Publius)
Faction — in The Federalist No. 10, a group of citizens united by a shared interest or passion that works against the rights of others or the good of the whole. (first used: 6. Read The Federalist No. 10: Madison as Publius)
Amendment — a formal change or addition to a constitution, which takes effect only after it is ratified. (first used: 7. Read the Bill of Rights: ten of twelve)
Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments: ten of the twelve Congress proposed in 1789, ratified in 1791. (first used: 7. Read the Bill of Rights: ten of twelve)

Summary

The Articles of Confederation gave each state one vote and gave Congress no power to tax.
The Northwest Ordinance barred slavery in one territory and provided for returning people who escaped there.
The Great Compromise: seats by population in the House, two members per state in the Senate.
The three-fifths, slave-trade, and fugitive clauses protected slavery without using the word.
Federalists supported ratification; Anti-Federalists opposed it or demanded a bill of rights.
The Federalist No. 10 is Madison's essay as Publius; its bracketed date is the editors' date.
The Bill of Rights is ten of twelve proposed amendments, ratified in 1791.
The Declaration (1776) announced independence; the Constitution (1787) framed a government.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative student club writes bylaws in 1964, puts them into effect in 1966, and replaces them in 1973. How many years passed from adoption to effect, and how long did the bylaws stay in effect?
An illustrative county has 40,000 free people and 10,000 enslaved people. Using the three-fifths clause, what count would it report for House seats?
A classmate says, "The Federalists who backed the Constitution were the same party that Adams led in the 1790s." Correct the claim in two sentences.
An illustrative town council proposes eight new bylaws, and voters approve five. How many were not approved, and why does this resemble the Bill of Rights?

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Adoption to effect: 1966 − 1964 = 2 years. Time in effect: 1973 − 1966 = 7 years. As with the Articles, the adoption date and the date a frame takes effect are different dates, so name which one you mean.
Free people count in full: 40,000. Enslaved people count at three fifths: 3 ⁄ 5 × 10,000 = 6,000. Total: 40,000 + 6,000 = 46,000. The clause applied three fifths only to enslaved people, so it raised the county's count without giving those people any voice.
The Federalists of 1787 and 1788 were supporters of the proposed Constitution in the ratification debate. The Federalist Party formed later, in the 1790s, around Hamilton and Adams, so the shared name hides two different groups.
Not approved: 8 − 5 = 3. Like the Bill of Rights, what took effect is only the part that was ratified; Congress proposed twelve amendments and the states ratified ten.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week The New Republic follows the Constitution into its first years, when a different set of Federalists formed a party.

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