How the Constitution addressed weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation

¶ … thirteen colonies that drafted and announced the Declaration of Independence stating their intention to separate from England shortly thereafter wrote the first governing document, the Articles of Confederation. The Articles set forth and defined the relationship between the various colonies and how the relationship between such colonies would serve to form one entity. The Articles served to provide the colonies with a form of unification while the Revolution was being fought but as the nation attempted to recover from the War and build a new nation the Articles proved too weak to be effective. The Articles failed to grant Congress the power to raise funds, regulate trade, or conduct foreign policy without the voluntary agreement of the states. There were attempts to alter the Articles in order to increase the powers of the Congress but these efforts failed and a Constitutional Convention was convened to attempt to revise the Articles but what emerged instead was a new Constitution which allowed for the formation of a stronger national government.

The main difference between the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution was the fact that the Constitution actually provided the legal framework for a new national government while the Articles was designed more like a treaty setting forth a relationship between thirteen separate colonies. Under the Articles there was no President and each state had individual sovereignty. The new Constitution addressed this deficiency by creating a three level government with separate Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary branches. The new Constitution granted the central government the power to make treaties, establish tariffs, impose embargoes, and negotiate trade agreements. It also granted Congress the power to tax and obtain additional land for the new nation.

While the Articles equalized the power between the states by granting each state, regardless of physical size or population, the same voting rights the Constitution took a totally different approach. The larger states such as New York and Virginia were dissatisfied with the Articles and the fact that there was equality between the states. The larger states felt that voting should be based on a proportional basis while the smaller states supported the one-state, one-vote approach. Two different plans, the Virginia plan and the New Jersye Plan, were offered for the Constitutional Convention to consider. After considerable debate the Virginia Plan was accepted as the basis for further discussion but, after further discussion, only the three branch portion of the Virginia Plan was adopted and the representation issue was resolved based on a compromise offered by delegates from Connecticut. Under the plan offered by Connecticut, representation would be determined by allowing for the lower house, the House of Representatives, to be elected by the general population and representation to be based on population, and the upper house, the Senate, would be comprised of two representatives from each state regardless of population. Representation based on population would be based on the results of a national census taken every ten years. Appropriately, the agreement that was forged and saved the Convention from breaking up became known as the Connecticut Compromise.

There was also a debate between the states as to who would be allowed to vote. Each state had established different rules with most states basing voting rights on the ownership of property. Again, compromise, actually several compromises, was necessary. As to the ownership of property, the delegates agreed to allow all white men to participate in the election of representatives to the House of Representatives but the electing of members to the Senate would be done by the individual state legislatures. An additional compromise between the small and large states resulted in the establishment of the Electoral College as the method of electing the President.

A third compromise between the states involved a divisive issue that would ultimately lead to the Civil War. Some of the delegates looked upon the institution of slavery as evil while a number of states, the Southern states, looked upon it differently. There was some sentiment to have slavery declared illegal but two states, Georgia and South Carolina, threatened to leave the Convention if this was done. Because of the strong position adopted by these two states it quickly became apparent that a compromise regarding the slavery issue, in general, and how to treat slaves as voters, in particular, was necessary. The various delegates determined that the establishment of a national government was more important than the ideal of equality that had been proposed in the Declaration of Independence and so the delegates set about to hammer out a compromise. What was proposed and ratified was the three-fifths formula that established how representation would be determined for the lower house. The inhuman compromise that was approved was that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a free person for the sake of calculating the number of representatives that each state could elect to the House of Representatives. Further, the fugitive clause was added to the Constitution which required that all states help recapture runaway slaves that had escaped. Many delegates were greatly distressed by these two compromises but the general consensus was that without them the Constitution would have never become a reality.