In 1775,Benjamin Franklin had drawn up a plan for “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.” While some delegates, such as Thomas Jefferson, supported Franklin’s proposal, many others were strongly opposed. When Franklin introduced his plan to the Congress on July 21, he stated stated that it should be viewed as a draft proposal should Congress become interested in reaching a more formal proposal.
Congress tabled the plan.
Nearly a year would pass before the Continental Congress world realize that by their declaration of independence from Britain, that some form of governance would need to be instituted. But even then disagreements between the delegates, including whether representation and voting would be proportional or state-by-state. The disagreements delayed final discussions of confederation until October of 1777. By then, the British capture of Philadelphia had made the issue more urgent.
The states essentially declared themselves not only independent of the crown but, in essence, thirteen sovereignties that loosely agreed to form a cooperative method of discussion that really lacked governmental control over these separate sovereignties. Of course even this loose confederation needed the participation of all thirteen of the sovereignties and Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey refused to ratify the Articles.
These smaller states used the excuse that other states relinquish their western land claims before they would ratify the Articles. Of course the actual issue was how does a small state compete with the larger sovereignty.
New Jersey and Delaware eventually agreed to the conditions of the Articles, with New Jersey ratifying on Nov 20, 1778, and Delaware on Feb 1, 1779.
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Article Conclusion:
This left Maryland as the last remaining holdout. Unsatisfied with Maryland’s recalcitrance, several other state governments passed resolutions endorsing the formation of a national government that excluded the state of Maryland, but Congressman Thomas Burke of North Carolina successfully persuaded their governments to refrain from doing so, arguing that without unanimous approval of the new Confederation, the new country would remain open to future foreign intervention and possible intra-state conflicts that could lead to reconquest by manipulating one ot the other state.
Although now nearly forgotten in America’s history pages, Thomas Burke had served in three of the Provincial Congresses in North Carolina, his work in the Fourth Provincial Congress had included working on evaluating “the usurpations and violences attempted and committed by the King and Parliament of Britain against America.” The committee empowered delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to declare independence, and these resolves would be sent to North Carolina’s delegation, in what would come to be known as the “Halifax Resolves” calling for independence and read them allowed to the newly assembled Second Continental Congress.
While individual delegates, like Franklin, had previously spoken of independence, no state had authorized any of its delegates to vote for independence, therefore discussion had prior to the reading of the Halifax Resolves always been tabled. But now one colony brought forth the call for the congress to openly debate and unanimously unite in a declaration of in
dependence. Burke, perhaps with Washington, who was of course not a convention delegate, and Franklin who was a delegate, was a nationalist.
Most of the delegates, including, famously, Thomas Jefferson, were not. They might have desired a national declaration of unity in their rebellion, and they might have supported complete separation from Britain for all of the colonies, but few foresaw a unified country, more than a congressional sounding board committee that would retain thus rights of the individual colonies to become independently free.
One of what I view the misinterpretations of the declaration of independence, is that when Jefferson wrote:
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
He is explaining his philosophical view, that he would mostly maintain throughout his life. For Jefferson, freedom was always the right of rebellion against any existing government. I would propose that Jefferson’s loyalty of rights did include everyone, including the rights of slaves. Now that would always be his belief, up until he became president when he would more or less attempt to preside as a nationalist leader.
Peculiarly (or maybe not), Jefferson, as an authority of power, disagreed with the right to rebel against him, and likewise his lifelong support for freeing slaves would continue to mean everyone’s slaves but his own slaves. This is what I call, the POWER PROBLEM OF REVOLUTIONS.
Everyone who supports the right of people to reject governance, always tends to reject the right to revolt against themselves, if their rebellion leads to their obtaining the power of authority. Revolutions against authority always centered on individual rights become distorted when the revolution is successful, into an assumption that the freedom they called for cannot be transferred to those who may not accept the rights granted (or frequently, not granted) by the new controllers of power. We shall return to this idea.
But for now, let’s return to Thomas Burke. Although not himself a delegate, the Halifax Resolutions gave him a voice of authority via the respect these resolutions granted him and so when he called out against the ostracization of Maryland, his voice was heeded, solely in regards to the respect he had earned by becoming the first to call for a not just a revolution of sovereign states, but a revolution to create a new one state from the unified efforts of those colonies.
{And for those, interested, I shall be posting in my next post, more details about Thomas Burke and the Power Problem of Revolutions which I see as quite contemporaneously an issue that is flaring}
But Maryland remained recalcitrant. They would absolutely not support any national unity that the other 12 states had agreed to with the acceptance of the Articles. (This would later be echoed by Luther Martin’s declaration at the Constitutional Convention that would Maryland would declare if any of the other states attempted to end Maryland’s sovereignty by any Nationalist government that would corrode their complete sovereignty over their citizens.)
And so it would not be until 1780 when British forces began to conduct raids on Maryland communities in the Chesapeake Bay region that Maryland would become alarmed enough to begin to join in the Articles.
At first the state government wrote to the French minister Anne-César De la Luzerne asking for French naval assistance. Luzerne wrote back, urging the government of Maryland to ratify the Articles of Confederation, and so the Maryland legislature finally, but still reluctantly, and from illegitimate sincerity, ratified the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781.
The Articles created a sovereign, national government, and one of its most binding principles of that sovereignty was to limit the rights of the states to conduct their own diplomacy and foreign policy. However, this proved difficult to enforce because the states retained a co-equal status of sovereignty, the national government could be more likened to a treaty between sovereign nations that an actual unified central government.
Thus Georgia would pursue their own independent policy regarding Spanish Florida, attempting to occupy disputed territories and threatening war if Spanish officials did not work to curb Indian attacks or refrain from harboring escaped slaves.
And after the 1783 Treaty of Paris that allowed British creditors to sue debtors for pre-Revolutionary debts the supposedly central authority but had no means to insure state compliance and British forces continued to occupy forts in the Great Lakes region because of that (or claimed it was a reason to not relinquish all of the territory ceded in the Treaty because it was America that was reneging on the terms of the treaty.).