Revisiting the Critical Period before the Constitution was written
In recent years a new Unionist interpretation of the American founding has presented the US Constitution as a compact of union between sovereign states, which allowed them to maintain interstate peace and to act in unison as a single nation vis-à-vis other nations in the international state-system. This excerpt from Max M. Edling’s Perfecting the Union considers the period before the Constitution was written.
Early in the summer of 1783, George Washington concluded that the military and political situation at last allowed him to tender his resignation as commander of the Continental army. After eight long years the American War of Independence was over, and George III had reluctantly acknowledged that his erstwhile colonies were now independent states. As the central leader in the struggle against Britain, Washington felt obliged to add to his letter of resignation a few “sentiments respecting some important subjects which appear[ed] to [him] to be intimately connected with the tranquility of the United States.” Washington’s sentiments offer a snapshot of the political circumstances of the newly independent United States, a nation that from then on had to make its own way in the world. His letter can therefore serve as a useful starting point from which to begin an investigation into the nature of the American union and the challenges that led to the Philadelphia Convention and the creation of the Constitution in 1787.
Washington addressed his letter of resignation neither to Congress nor to the American people but to the governors of the thirteen states, asking them to relay his sentiments to their respective legislatures. This is a poignant reminder of where both formal and de facto power resided in the United States in 1783. Washington served a union of thirteen republics, not a nation- state or an American people. The future of this union and its role in maintaining the liberty and independence of its member- states were the core concerns of his circular. As commander in chief of the American army, Washington had witnessed at close range the defects of the union and its inability to organize and pursue the War of Independence in an efficient manner. “I could demonstrate to every mind open to conviction,” he wrote,
that in less time & with much less expence than has been incurred, the War might have been brought to the same happy, conclusion if the resources of the Continent could have been properly drawn forth — that the distresses and disappointments, which have very often occurred, have in too many instances resulted more from a want of energy in the Continental Government, than a deficiency of means in the particular States — That the inefficacy of measures, arising from the want of an adequate authority in the supreme Power, from a partial compliance with the requisitions of Congress in some of the States and from a failure of punctuality in others, while it tended to damp the Zeal of those which where [sic] more willing to exert themselves, served also to accumulate the expences of the War and to frustrate the best concerted plans.
Washington was describing the administration of union affairs under the Articles of Confederation and the lack of effective power in what contemporaries referred to as the “general” government. No one doubted the need for such a government. It was “indispensible [sic] to the happiness of the individual States that there should be lodged somewhere, a supreme power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the confederated Republic,” Washington wrote. But unless the states would allow Congress “to exercise those prerogatives” invested in it by the confederation articles, “every thing must very rapidly tend to Anarchy and confusion.”
This is a poignant reminder of where both formal and de facto power resided in the United States in 1783.
Washington’s words echoed a growing concern among a group of politicians who had been closely involved in directing the war against Britain that the American union was on the road to dissolution. “Anarchy and confusion” was eighteenth- century shorthand for the civil wars and domestic disturbances many observers foresaw should the union disintegrate into a North American state-system in which thirteen unconnected republics would vie for supremacy and reproduce the interstate tensions and conflicts that were typical of contemporary Europe. Ultimately, disunion spelled the end to both liberty and independence.
Anarchy would compel the people to support any tyrant who promised to restore order, even if the cost were giving up popular liberties. Independence could be maintained only if foreign predatory nations could be kept at bay. But without a strong and effective union the American states would become “the sport of European Politicks.” The great powers of the Old World would “play one State against another” to prevent the “growing importance” of America and “to serve their own interested purposes.”
Despite his anxiety about the union’s future, Washington’s letter fell short of formulating a program for the reform of the Articles of Confederation. He was content to merely highlight two specific concerns. The first was the need to honor the debts to public creditors, army officers, and wounded veterans that the union had incurred fighting the War of Independence. The second was the need to provide for the defense of the United States by setting up an efficient military peace establishment. In addition to an “indissoluble Union of the States under one federal Head,” justice to creditors, officers, and soldiers, and a viable peace establishment, Washington added one more thing that he believed “essential to the well being” and even “to the existence, of the United States as an independent Power”: a readiness of the American people to set aside state interests in favor of the common good of the union. Yet he offered no recipe for cultivating that readiness, but left it “to the good sense and serious consideration of those immediately concerned.” Those most “immediately concerned” were of course the very same state governors and state legislators who were the recipients of Washington’s letter. On their actions the future of the union now depended.
On their actions the future of the union now depended.
Washington’s missive reflected concerns about the needs and shortcomings of the American union that reform politicians would repeatedly identify and air between the conclusion of the War of Independence and the adoption of the Constitution. Although political union was a prerequisite for the preservation of liberty and independence, the union was under constant strain from the fallout of the War of Independence. Common obligations had been incurred during the war, and independence created a range of problems that the American colonies had not faced as dependents of the British Empire. The pressure from common obligations and external forces caused political tension because the United States was a confederation of thirteen heterogeneous republics, each of which reacted differently to the same stimulus. A constant balancing act between the need for union, on the one hand, and the interests of the states, on the other, therefore became the distinctive feature of national politics in the early United States.
Read the full introduction on Oxford Academic, free to access until 31 October 2023.
Max M. Edling is Reader in Early American History at King’s College London. He is the author of A Revolution in Favor of Government: The Origin of the US Constitution and the Making of the American State and A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State, 1783–1867.
