Furthermore, many Americans believed prosperity would come quickly after the war; trade did resume, but efforts to fund the debt at the national and state levels caused problems.
Establishing sovereignty over territory ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris proved difficult. First, the British excluded American ships from their ports, which impacted the trade of timber, wheat, and other goods. They also did not evacuate all of their trading posts in the Northwest. Merchants found other markets and they also engaged in smuggling, but the Confederation Congress lacked the power to do more to secure a commercial treaty or to force the British to evacuate American land.
They also closed the Mississippi River to American traffic, which significantly affected the ability of southerners to conduct their international trade through New Orleans. Congress sent John Jay, the secretary of foreign affairs, to negotiate with Spain and instructed him to stand up for American rights in the Southwest. When it became clear his Spanish counterpart would not budge, Jay deviated from his instructions.
He sacrificed navigation on the Mississippi for a commercial treaty. However, southerners in Congress blocked the measure. Many states did not want Congress to negotiate on their behalf; they wanted to make their own commercial arrangements. Thus, issues with Great Britain and Spain continued to fester. During the war, the Confederation Congress struggled to meet its financial obligations, and this pattern continued in the postwar years because the central government lacked a dedicated source of revenue.
Early in the conflict, Congress issued paper currency to finance the war; the currency lost value almost immediately and so the government printed more money. Large amounts of paper currency in circulation, which could not be exchanged for specie or coin, did not bode well for the financial health of the new country.
He suggested imposing a five percent tax on all foreign imports. However, Rhode Island and Virginia opposed the measure, and since the vote needed to be unanimous, that effort to raise revenue failed. Morris also proposed the creation of a national bank but could not convince enough members of Congress of the importance of a bank.
After Morris left the government, some members of Congress tried again to win support for the import tax in They again failed, after which they simply let the states choose how to pay their portion of the debt.
Just as the Confederation Congress struggled to meet its financial obligations, so too did many states. They resorted to high taxes to fund their debt.
In doing so, they angered the people who could not afford to pay those taxes. As frustration mounted, nationally-minded leaders looked for ways to address the weakness of the central government. In December , leaders from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia met in Annapolis, Maryland to discuss the possibility that the states would grant Congress the right to regulate commerce. The New Jersey delegation, along with delegates from other states like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, hoped for greater change.
However, those present could do little to enact change because so few states participated in the Annapolis Convention. The fear of the republican experiment failing had not yet reached crisis proportions. Added to the financial woes was the fact that American artisans were demanding new supplies of paper money and creditors to be paid in gold or silver. By the demand for paper money had become so insistent that seven states began issuing what would become worthless paper.
Despite the overwhelming problems the Confederation Congress faced, it did in fact create two long-lasting pieces of legislation that addressed the Northwest Territory, ceded by Britain to the United States at the end of the Revolutionary War.
The Land Ordinance of divided the area north of the Ohio River Valley and west of the Appalachians into townships, six miles squared. The townships were in turn divided into thirty-six sections: thirty-five were to be sold, and one was to be set aside for schools.
Settlers and speculators began to pour into the region, paving the way for a series of conflicts as the Americans insisted on taking land from the Indians, who had not acquiesced to the Treaty of Paris and considered the land rightfully theirs. The Northwest Ordinance, which followed in , set out the process by which a territory could become a state. It specified that if a territory had fewer than 5, white adult males, it would be governed by a governor and a three-judge panel, all of whom were to be appointed by the Confederation Congress.
When a territory held 5, to 60, white male inhabitants, a legislature could be elected by all white males, but the governor was still appointed by Congress. When the population of a territory exceeded 60,, it could adopt a constitution—which must forbid slavery and protect religious freedom—and apply for statehood, which would be gra. The measure gave Congress greater control over the settlement of the western territories; self-government came only with statehood.
And finally, the Northwest Ordinance barred slavery, except as punishment for a crime in the territory, though it did provide for the return of fugitive or runaway slaves. Like farmers in many states, those of western Massachusetts suffered from high taxes, crushing debt, and widespread foreclosures.
These farmers, in an effort to influence the legislature and governor in Boston and forestall foreclosures on their lands, drafted a list of grievances, among which were the following:. Taxes and the fees charged by lawyers and the courts were too high.
By fall, , resistance to the policies of the Massachusetts state government had escalated to the point of an insurrection led by Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran. Marching through the countryside of Massachusetts, Shays and his men succeeded in taking over the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton, Massachusetts in an effort to prevent the trials of indebted farmers.
The Governor of Massachusetts, with help from bankers and merchants in the eastern part of the state, raised troops and quickly crushed the rebellion.
According to many, mob rule was at hand. The federal government could not levy taxes. Kept the States together: Even though the Articles of Confederation was a failure, the good thing was it kept the states united, even if it was a loose unity.
It kept them united just long enough to give birth to a new Constitution. Treaty of Paris, : This was the treaty that ended the American Revolution legally recognizing that the United States was a sovereign nation, removing British influence. Federal Aid to Education Northwest Ordinance : This ordinance set aside one fraction of each piece of land sold by the government to be used to fund a public education system. No National Currency: Once again, no regulation of interstate commerce.
The states could print whatever paper money they desired and the money was usually worthless, especially in other states. Members often failed to show up to Congress : Congress was quite broken if nobody wanted to show up for multiple reasons from laziness to the threat of protests from soldiers.
Inability to protect Settlers from Indians : The Indian threat was still there and may have gotten worse now that a new struggling nation is vulnerable to attack. Barbary Pirates from the North African Coast would come up, plunder ships, and capture the sailors. Fighting the war made it worse. The Americans borrowed from the French and could not pay back either for there were also financial problems in the United States. Also because they were not happy with the breakaway states. You are commenting using your WordPress.
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