Government in the United States, National, State and Local — A Reader’s Guide

ation was powerless to raise the necessary funds by taxation. In the absence of all power to levy and collect taxes, Congress adopted the policy of apportioning the national expenses among the states. But no state could be compelled to contribute a dollar toward its quota; some of them in fact contributed little, and most of those which did respond to the appeal of Congress did so grudgingly and tardily. Of the $15,000,000 apportioned among the states between 1781 and 1786 less than $2,000,000 was actually paid in. Often there was not a dollar in the treasury of the Confederation to pay the obligations of the government.

Two attempts were made to amend the Articles of Confederation so as to give Congress power to levy a five per cent tariff duty on imported goods, but since it required the assent of each of the thirteen states to adopt an amendment, the scheme fell through, in both cases on account of the opposition of a single state.

_Congress had No Power to Regulate Commerce_, either with foreign countries or among the states themselves. This was a serious defect. Each state had its own tariff system and its own customhouses, and collected its own duties on goods brought into its ports from abroad. As each state was anxious to exploit this source of revenue for itself, it naturally framed its tariff regulations and tonnage laws in such a way as to attract foreign commerce to its own ports. And so it was with regard to commerce among the states themselves. Each framed its trade regulations with its neighbors according to its own selfish interests and without regard to the general good. The result was continual jealousies, dissensions, and sometimes reprisals and retaliations. New York levied an import duty on certain articles brought in from its less fortunate neighbors, Connecticut and New Jersey, and each in turn retaliated as best it could. For purposes of foreign and interstate commerce, each state was a nation itself, and the Confederation was a nonentity.

=The Annapolis Convention.=--The worst evils described above reached a climax in 1786, and the political leaders of America such as Hamilton and Washington were convinced that the government of the Confederation must either be revised or superseded entirely by a new system. In September, 1786, there assembled at Annapolis, Maryland, a convention of delegates from five states, namely, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia, called at the instance of the legislature of Virginia to take into consideration the subject of uniform trade regulation among the states, the lack of which had come to be one of the chief evils of the Confederation. So few states were represented that the convention decided not to enter upon the business for which it had been called, but instead determined to put forth an effort to bring about the assembling of a convention representing all the states and empowered to take into consideration the question of a general revision of the Articles of Confederation so as to render them more adequate to the needs of the nation. Accordingly, a resolution prepared by Alexander Hamilton, one of the delegates from New York, was adopted, calling on the states to appoint delegates to a convention to be held at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next, for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.

=The Constitutional Convention of 1787; Personnel.=--In pursuance of this resolution, all the states except Rhode Island promptly appointed delegates, the failure of Rhode Island being due to her satisfaction with the Confederation, under which she enjoyed larger commercial advantages than she could hope to enjoy if the Articles were amended so as to take away from the states their control over commerce. Altogether fifty-five members sat in the convention at one time or another, though only thirty-nine signed the Constitution. From Virginia came George Washington, Edmund Randolph, and James Madison; from Massachusetts, Rufus King and Elbridge Gerry; from Connecticut, William Samuel Johnson and Roger Sherman; from New Hampshire, John Langdon; from New York, Alexander Hamilton; from New Jersey, William Livingston and William Paterson; from Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, Robert and Gouverneur Morris, Jared Ingersoll, and James Wilson; from Delaware, John Dickinson; and from South Carolina, John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Some of the delegates, as Benjamin Franklin, had been members of the Albany Congress as far back as 1754; some had been members of the Stamp Act Congress of 1765; most of them had served in the Continental or Confederation Congresses; and a number of them were signers of the Declaration of Independence. A great many of them had served in the legislatures of their states, and of the whole number there was not one who had not had some legislative experience.