Lecture: Confederation & Constitution
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 6
Opening
Think about the bylaws of a business partnership, a vote in a nurses' union, or a student senate arguing over how seats are shared. Each of those groups has to write rules that bind its members. And each set of rules leaves someone out. That's the question at the center of this lecture. How did the new United States write the rules for governing itself, and whom did those rules leave out?
In Week 1 you learned the four moves for reading any source. In Weeks 2 and 3 you followed the colonies and watched colonial law build slavery for life. In Weeks 4 and 5 you followed the break with Britain, the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the peace of 1783. In this lecture I'll take that new country and watch it write a frame of government, twice. First the Articles of Confederation. Then the Constitution of 1787.
We'll read five dated documents, one short passage at a time. That's a heavy load, and I'll take it slowly. Next, in Week 7, The New Republic, the course follows the new government into its first years.
1. One vote, no power to tax: the Articles of Confederation
Picture four roommates who share one apartment fund. Every roommate gets one vote. Nobody can make a roommate pay. It feels fair, right up until the heating bill arrives and one roommate says, "Not this month."
That's close to how the first government of the United States worked. The Articles of Confederation were 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. The Continental Congress adopted them in 1777. They took effect in 1781, when Maryland ratified. The Congress that met under them is called the Confederation Congress.
Here's the passage the course quotes, from the Articles as the Avalon Project prints them: "each State shall have one vote". A small state and a large state had the same voice. Each state also kept every power not expressly delegated to Congress. And Congress had no power to tax.
Notice the dates. The Avalon Project's heading gives 1781, the year the Articles took effect. That's not the year Congress adopted them. From adoption in 1777 to effect in 1781 is 4 years. You met this lesson in Week 5: always say whose date you're giving.
Pause and try this. A friend says the Articles let Congress tax the states to pay its bills. What's wrong with that?
Think about the roommates and their empty fund.
Here's the answer. The Articles gave Congress no power to tax, so it could not collect a tax on its own authority.
That limit is the hook to carry through this lecture. A government that asks is not a government that collects.
2. A path to statehood and a bar on slavery: the Northwest Ordinance
Imagine a city that owns a large empty lot. Before anyone builds, the council writes the rules for what can go there and what can't. Those rules shape the neighborhood for generations.
The Northwest Ordinance was rules like that for a whole region. It was 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. Congress passed it on 13 July 1787, under the Articles, about two months before the Constitution was signed.
Its sixth article reads: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory". That's a real bar on slavery, and it matters. But read the rest of the same article. It provided for the return of people escaping labor or service. So the ordinance barred slavery in one territory without freeing anyone who fled there.
There's one more passage worth your close reading. 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. Week 9 shows what happened to that promise.
Pause and try this. Did the Northwest Ordinance end slavery in the United States?
Ask where the rule applied.
Here's the answer. No. It barred slavery in one territory, and the same article provided for returning people who escaped there.
So the reading in one plain sentence: the ordinance shows what Congress wrote, not how those promises were kept.
3. Seats by population, two per state: 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. Both arguments sound fair from where each town stands.
The delegates at the Constitutional Convention, the meeting of state delegates at Philadelphia in 1787 that wrote the Constitution, had the same fight between large and small states. Their answer is the Great (Connecticut) Compromise: the bargain that gave the House seats by population and the Senate two members per state.
Let me use the chapter's made-up pair of states. Say a House gives one seat for every 10,000 people. A small state with 20,000 people gets 2 seats. A large state with 80,000 people gets 8. In the House the large state leads, 8 seats to 2. In the Senate each state has 2 members, so they're equal there. Neither side got everything, and that's why it's called a compromise.
The Constitution that came out of the Convention was signed in convention on 17 September 1787. That's the date its own text gives. Its opening words are the week's second quoted passage: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union". From the Articles taking effect in 1781 to that signing is 6 years.
Pause and try this. Under the Great Compromise, which chamber gave every state an equal voice?
Picture the two states sitting side by side.
Here's the answer. The Senate, because it gave every state two members, whatever its population.
And notice the continuity. The equal Senate kept a piece of the Articles' idea of one state, one voice.
4. Three clauses, one silence: the Constitution and slavery
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 doesn't appear in them. Yet three clauses protected slavery. I'm going to state them plainly.
The three-fifths clause counted "three fifths of all other Persons", meaning enslaved people, when dividing House seats and direct taxes. Free persons were counted in full, including servants bound for a term of years, the same servants you met in Week 3. Native people who were not taxed were left out. The slave-trade clause barred Congress from prohibiting the importation of enslaved people before 1808. And the fugitive clause, in Article IV, said, in paraphrase, that a person escaping from service or labor in one state was not freed by another state's laws, and was to be delivered up to whoever claimed the labor.
Here's what the three-fifths clause did to a count, using the chapter's made-up state. It holds 50,000 free people and 30,000 enslaved people. Three fifths of 30,000 is 18,000. So the state counts 68,000 for House seats. The enslaved people raised the power of the state that held them. They got no voice in how that power was used.
Contextualization explains where these clauses came from. Like the Great Compromise, they were bargains struck at the Convention. It never excuses what they protected.
Pause and try this. A classmate says the three-fifths clause counted free Black people as three-fifths of a person. How would you correct that?
Read whom the clause names.
Here's the answer. It counted free persons in full and applied three fifths to "all other Persons", meaning enslaved people.
The silence is part of the reading. What a text leaves out can be as telling as what it says.
5. For and against: 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 nobody's rights. You have to choose.
That was the choice in 1787 and 1788. Ratification is the formal approval that makes a proposed constitution or amendment take effect. Two sides formed. Federalists, in the ratification debate of 1787 and 1788, were the people who supported the proposed Constitution. Anti-Federalists were the people who opposed the Constitution or demanded changes, above all a bill of rights.
Picture a shopkeeper in a port town, weighing it. On one side, under the Articles Congress had no power to tax, so it couldn't collect what it needed. That's a Federalist argument. On the other side, the new frame names no list of protected rights. That's an Anti-Federalist argument. And there's a middle path she weighs: ratify, but press for amendments that protect rights.
Now a warning I want you to hear early. These Federalists are not the Federalist Party. That party formed later, in the 1790s, around Hamilton and Adams. Same word, different group. Week 7 takes up that party.
Pause and try this. If someone says "the Federalists" about 1788, are they talking about a political party?
Attach a year to the word.
Here's the answer. No. In 1788 the Federalists were the supporters of the Constitution; the Federalist Party formed in the 1790s.
So when you see the word, ask for the year before you ask anything else.
6. An essay under a pen name: The Federalist No. 10
Think about an op-ed signed with a made-up name. You can still ask who wrote it, why, and for whom. A pen name changes how readers meet an argument. It doesn't hide that someone is arguing.
The Federalist No. 10 is 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. Publius is the pen name under which Madison published it. Founders Online keeps the text. It prints the date in square brackets. That's the editors' date: a date a document's modern editors supply in square brackets because the text does not state it.
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. And he names the main cause. Here's the passage: "the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property". His cure is size. In a large republic, he argues, it's harder for one faction to take over.
Now read for what's missing. The essay lists divisions of property, such as debtors and creditors. It never names slavery among them. The word slave doesn't appear in it.
Pause and try this. Is the bracketed date the date Madison wrote at the top of his essay?
Look for who supplied it.
Here's the answer. No. The square brackets mark the editors' date, supplied by the modern editors of his papers.
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.
7. Ten of 12: the Bill of Rights
Imagine a club that adopts its bylaws and then promises members a list of protections. Members watch to see whether the promise is kept. Some proposals pass. Some don't.
An amendment is a formal change or addition to a constitution, which takes effect only after it is ratified. Congress proposed 12 amendments in 1789. Ten of them were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures in 1791. Those ten are the Bill of Rights: the first ten amendments, ten of the 12 Congress proposed in 1789, ratified in 1791. So 2 of the proposals weren't ratified then.
The passage the course quotes comes from the first of those ten: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Here's a sourcing detail I love. In Congress's list of 12, that text was the third article. It became the First Amendment because the first two proposals weren't ratified in 1791.
Now corroborate. The Anti-Federalists' central demand was a bill of rights. The amendments answer it. Ratification and the Bill of Rights belong to one story.
Pause and try this. Was the Bill of Rights written into the Constitution at the Convention in 1787?
Put a year on each.
Here's the answer. No. The amendments were proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1791, after the ratification debate.
So the Constitution is 1787, and the Bill of Rights is 1791.
8. Putting the years in order
Picture a shelf of folders, each with a year on the spine. Before you open one, you line them up. Then the story has a shape.
Here are five years from the course chronology, in order. 1776, the Declaration of Independence. 1781, the Articles take effect. 1783, the Treaty of Paris ends the War of Independence. 1787, the Constitution signed. And 1791, the Bill of Rights ratified. The gaps run 5 years, then 2, then 4, then 4. Add them and you get the whole span, 15 years.
Three of the week's documents share 1787, so the day decides their order. The Northwest Ordinance came on 13 July 1787. The Constitution was signed on 17 September 1787. And The Federalist No. 10 carries the editors' date of 22 November 1787. So the ordinance came before the signing, under the Articles, and Madison's essay came after it, during ratification.
Pause and try this. Which came first, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and what did each one do?
Find both years on the shelf.
Here's the answer. The Declaration came first, in 1776, and announced independence; the Constitution, in 1787, framed a government.
Keep those two documents apart, and the rest of the course gets easier.
Closing
Let me pull it together. 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 gave the House seats by population and the Senate two members per state. The three-fifths, slave-trade, and fugitive clauses protected slavery without using the word. Federalists supported ratification, and Anti-Federalists opposed it or demanded a bill of rights. The Federalist No. 10 is Madison's argument as Publius, and its bracketed date is the editors' date. The Bill of Rights is ten of the 12 proposed amendments, ratified in 1791. And the Declaration of 1776 is not the Constitution of 1787.
Next in this module, open the slide deck and the Readings & Resources page, then work the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz, and join the discussion. In Week 7, The New Republic, a different set of Federalists forms a party, and the new government faces its first fights.
Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com