13 D. Reading: Creating and Ratifying the Constitution
13 D. Reading: Creating and Ratifying the Constitution
Learning Objectives
After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What was Shays’s Rebellion?
- What was the Constitutional Convention?
- What were the three cross-cutting divides at the Constitutional Convention?
- What were the main compromises at the Constitutional Convention?
- Who were the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists?
- What factors explain ratification of the Constitution?
The Constitution was a reaction against the limitations of the Articles of Confederation and the democratic experiments begun by the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.
The Case against the Articles of Confederation
The Articles could not address serious foreign threats. In the late 1780s, Britain denied American ships access to British ports in a trade war. Spain threatened to close the Mississippi River to American vessels. Pirates in the Mediterranean captured American ships and sailors and demanded ransom. The national government had few tools to carry out its assigned task of foreign policy.[1]
There was domestic ferment as well. Millions of dollars in paper money issued by state governments to fund the Revolutionary War lost their value after the war.[2] Financial interests were unable to collect on debts they were owed. They appealed to state governments, where they faced resistance and even brief armed rebellions.
Newspapers played up Shays’s Rebellion, an armed insurrection by debt-ridden farmers to prevent county courts from foreclosing mortgages on their farms.[3] Led by Captain Daniel Shays, it began in 1786, culminated with a march on the federal arsenal in Springfield, Massachusetts, and wound down in 1787.
The Continental Congress voted unanimously to raise an army to put down Shays’s Rebellion but could not coax the states to provide the necessary funds. The army was never assembled.[4]
Link: Shay’s Rebellion
To learn more about Shays’s Rebellion, visit the National Park Service online.
Leaders who supported national government portrayed Shays’s Rebellion as a vivid symbol of state governments running wild and proof of the inability of the Articles of Confederation to protect financial interests. Ordinary Americans, who were experiencing a relatively prosperous time, were less concerned and did not see a need to eliminate the Articles.
Calling a Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention was convened in 1787 to propose limited reforms to the Articles of Confederation. Instead, however, the Articles would be replaced by a new, far more powerful national government.
Twelve state legislatures sent delegates to Philadelphia (Rhode Island did not attend). Each delegation would cast a single vote.
Who Were the Delegates?
The delegates were not representative of the American people. They were well-educated property owners, many of them wealthy, who came mainly from prosperous seaboard cities, including Boston and New York. Most had served