Tag: Articles of Confederation

Considering Secession

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An intriguing discussion erupted after a recent post by Connor. I was soon asking what history would have looked like if the South had been allowed to secede rather than fight the Civil War. Later another commenter asked an even better question:

By allowing the South to secede, wouldn’t that be setting up a dangerous precedent? If any state decided to leave just because Congress passed a law they didn’t like, what would have happened to the nation?

Under such an interpretation, what security did the nation have beyond what the Articles of Confederation provided? The Articles weren’t working. That’s why they created a Constitution that gave more expanded powers to a central government.

Considering recent comments regarding Texas choosing to secede and polls that a surprising number of Texans seem open to the concept I’d like to take a crack at answering what might have happened in those circumstances and I would be very interested to know what others think of the question or of my answer. For the sake of this supposition let’s assume that we are talking about an alternate history where the people of the United States accepted the premise that secession was a legal option and not a cause for war. We are also not talking specifically about secession by the southern states – just about a nation in which any state could decide to leave just because Congress passed a law they didn’t like and that the remaining states would not resort to violence to keep them in the union. In other words there might be arguments against secession in general or in specific cases, but no military action. With that background, here is what I believe would happen.

Any state that chose to secede would immediately relegate themselves to a position with all the disadvantages they had faced under the Articles of Confederation as well as the disadvantage of not having between 12 and 49 (depending on when in history this happened) other states upon which to lean for support. They would be required to provide for their own protections (economic and military) without assistance from their neighbor states. In all likelyhood they would very quickly be looking to form alliances with other states and other nations. In some cases they would likely begin very soon to consider the possibility of rejoining the United States. In such cases they would find themselves facing the requirements for joining the union. Having antagonized the other states in the union they would have to convince the congress to allow them back into membership within the United States. That and their experience under the Articles of Confederation would act as a deterrent to states that wanted to secede for light or transient reasons.

Assuming that there are no major holes in my reasoning above I think it is safe to say that there would be few if any cases of individual states seceding. That leaves us to consider the potential of blocks of states seceding such as the southern states in 1860. In this case we can easily see that a block of states seceding together would be inclined to form a union not unlike the one they were leaving. If two similarly structured nations composed of soverign states were to exist in close proximity to each other and to unsettled land waiting for expansion I think it is safe to assume that the two nations would be driven to compete with each other to become more politically and economically powerful and attractive to the settlers of new lands so that new political entities would chose them over their counterpart when they decided to become a member of a larger political entity. I don’t suppose that the nations would exist entirely without animosity, but they could peacefully coexist as the United States and Canada have done for nearly two centuries.

If legal secession were a political reality any number of possibilities might exist. A single state residing outside any other union would be highly unlikely, but North America could be divided into any number of unions made of sovereign states. In fact a policy allowing for legal secession could leave the door open for Canadian provinces or Mexican states joining a union as sovereign states. I believe that eventually legally accepted secession would have resulted in one or two strong unions of states in which the central government was limited more closely to what our Constitution outlined – focusing on foreign relations, military defense, and interstate issues and leaving states to independently tackle other issues and learn from each other. In the case of two stable unions existing I would give better that 50% odds that their relations with each other would be fundamentally peaceful.

The short answer is that I do not believe allowing the secession of the south would have been setting a dangerous precedent (at least from the angle of how viable the central government would remain). That leaves the question – have I missed something?

Tags Articles of Confederation, connections, Constitution, history, questions, secession

National

Annapolis Convention

It was not so long ago that I became aware of the Annapolis Convention of 1786. Though I had started reading the resulting report before I got my pocket Constitution I was very excited to see that it was included there. It was there that I finally sat down and read the report through. I found it interesting that the major theme of the convention proceedings was that a Constitutional Convention should be called precisely because the remedies necessary for the defects in the Articles of Confederation exceeded the scope of authority that had been granted to the delegations from the states that attended the Annapolis Convention (5 state delegations were at the convention, 4 more had been commissioned but were not at the convention, and the final 4 states had not commissioned delegations for such a convention). With that background it becomes very hard to consider the argument that the members of the Constitutional Convention exceeded the bounds of their authority. Having had this report published I would think that every state would have sent delegations to the Constitutional Convention with fairly open-ended authority.

Sometime after reading these proceedings I began to wonder what might come out of a similar convention today. Of course the delegations to the Annapolis Convention were charged with addressing a specific issue (the regulation of commerce) and found that no viable solution was forthcoming which would not affect many other issues as well. I do not imagine a convention charged wtih fixing an issue, only one charged with studying our government and comparing what our government is doing with what was written in the original Constitution, what is written in the succeeding ammendments, and poosibly providing their perspective on where our practices are improvements from what is written and where they should be brought into conformity with our established Constitution.

Because all three branches of government would be under review, the delegations should not include those who are currently holding political office at the federal level (I was at first inclined to think that such a review could be conducted by judges from around the nation). Instead, I think that such a convention should consist of people chosen from the local people from each state – for the sake of variety and balance I would imagine an ideal convention to consist of three Republicans and three Democrats from each state (and probably D.C. as well). Some people might think a convention of 300 participants would be too large to be effective in such an undertaking, but considering that there are over 300 Million people in the country it seems reasonable to have that many representatives. (Besides, it’s still smaller than the House of Representatives.)

Those who argue that the large states are being underrepresented (as some undoubtedly will) should be reminded that the convention would have no power except to study, publish their findings, and possibly make recommendations. I believe that the voters of our nation would be very surprised by the findings of such a convention.

Tags Articles of Confederation, Constitution, documents, history, ideas

General

Federalist Nos. 41 – 43

These papers by Madison cover topics that had previously been addressed by Hamilton in Federalist Nos. 24 – 28, and 30 – 36 (covered here, here, and here).

Federalist No. 41 focuses primarily on the issue of standing armies, Federalist No. 42 concerns issues of foreign relations, law enforcement, and interstate commerce, and Federalist No. 43 addresses further specifics of law enforcement, interstate commerce and other miscellaneous powers specified in the Constitution.

I love this description of the Articles of Confederation from Federalist No. 42:

the articles of Confederation have inconsiderately endeavored to accomplish impossibilities; to reconcile a partial sovereignty in the Union, with complete sovereignty in the States; to subvert a mathematical axiom, by taking away a part, and letting the whole remain.

Federalist No. 43 contains a statement that describes a principle weakness of the United Nations:

Governments of dissimilar principles and forms have been found less adapted to a federal coalition of any sort, than those of a kindred nature.

I do not consider the words of Madison either inferior or superior to Hamilton on these subjects. I do believe that some people would be more swayed by one approach while other people would connect more with the approach of the other.

Tags Articles of Confederation, documents, federalist, history

National

Federalist No. 23

Federalist No. 23 uses the experience of the Articles of Confederation – specifically the experience related to the arrangement whereby the central government could request men and arms for the defense of the nation but did not have the power to enforce those requests on the citizens of the states – to argue that a stronger central government than that provided by the Articles of Confederation was necessary. That experience should prove the necessity of granting sufficient authority to enforce the edicts of the government relating to those tasks which have been delegated to each level of government.

The tasks listed as belonging properly to the central government are "the common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries." In other words

national defense
public peace
interstate commerce
international relations

The principle of having powers sufficient to the duties allotted to each government is illustrated by the following:

Shall the Union be constituted the guardian of the common safety? Are fleets and armies and revenues necessary to this purpose? The government of the Union must be empowered to pass all laws, and to make all regulations which have relation to them. The same must be the case in respect to commerce, and to every other matter to which its jurisdiction is permitted to extend. Is the administration of justice between the citizens of the same State the proper department of the local governments? These must possess all the authorities which are connected with this object, and with every other that may be allotted to their particular cognizance and direction.

Where the federal government enacts laws that are the province of the state governments, the state governments become unable to perform their proper functions in society. That is a problem that has been growing in our nation for decades. As citizens we must come to a consensus again of what the role of the Federal government is and then insist that our representatives at the federal level do not overstep those bounds. We need to allow that the citizens of other states may make choices that we do not agree with, but so long as those choices are not the responsibility of the Federal Government we should not attempt to use the federal powers to force the views of one state on another. The same principle holds true of using state governments to unduly enforce the desires of one county or city on another in those areas that are the proper responsibility of local governments.

Tags Articles of Confederation, defense, documents, federalism, federalist, history

General

Federalist Nos. 21 – 22

Federalist No. 21 and Federalist No. 22 close the enumeration of the deficiencies of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The argument that the federal government was impotent under the articles is well known but I did pick up two important points here. From Federalist 21:

It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed, that is, an extension of the revenue. . . If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. (emphasis added)

This is still true today of taxes on consumption, but especially the part I emphasized can be applied to our income tax (which is not a consumption tax for those who are not familiar with that term). When we look at the lengths that people will go to in their efforts to avoid paying their income taxes it indicates that the rate of taxation, especially at higher levels of income where more efforts are made to elude the taxes, is outside the appropriate bounds. Those who would argue that those rates are necessary (or even insufficient) tofund our government might want to consider the possibility that this truth might be an indication that our government spending itsself is also outside the bounds of moderation or necessity.

In Federalist 22 I see the arguments that lead to the Electoral College and a bicameral legislature taking shape and I also find the less common argument against the Articles of Confederation – namely that the Articles of Confederation did not provide any kind of judiciary system to interpret the laws. Today that would be inconceivable.

After reading about the necessity of forming a new government rather than simply trying to modify the existing confederation I was left to wonder if it might not be time again for us to convene a convention of people representing their fellow citizens for the purpose of examining our Constitution and determining if our government and Constitution as presently constituted are still consistent with the principles of good government and if either or both of them should be reformed. Personally, I would expect an answer from such a convention to be that the Constitution is fine, but might need to be updated for the purpose of bringing the government organization back into alignment with the law that it is designed to support.

Tags Articles of Confederation, documents, federalist

General

Articles of Confederation

Post author By David
Post date June 6, 2008
No Comments on Articles of Confederation

In the midst of my efforts to evaluate all the Federalist Papers, I realized that I had never read the Articles of Confederation which was the basis against which the Constitution was written and against which the Federalist Papers were generally basing their arguments.

The Articles of Confederation were the first attempt by the states at an independent and unified central government. As I have watched the rise of the European Union I have often thought that Europe was trying to recreate the structure of the United States government among their member states. As I read the Articles of Confederation I realize that what they have built looks much more like the Unites States from 1777 to 1788 under those articles than the United States after 1788 under the Constitution.

I will probably do more evaluation in a comparative fashion while reviewing the Federalist Papers and the Constitution, but a few points of interest that struck me as I read include:

- Article 5 – The states determine the size of their congressional delegation (from 2 to 7) but each state has a single vote. Even more interesting were the term limits placed on each delegate – they could serve no more than 3 years out of any 6.
- Article 9 – The congress of the united states, besides being the legislative body of the nation, served as the executive power for the nation (insofar as there was any executive power), and was charged with adjudicating, or establishing a temporary court to adjudicate, any dispute between two states – thus serving as (or controlling) the judicial branch of government.
- Article 11 – Canada was explicitly invited to join the united states if it desired to but no other colony could join without the consent of 9 of the states.

Tags Articles of Confederation, Constitution, documents, European Union, government, history