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United States, history of the


Many peoples have contributed to the development of the United States of
America, a vast nation that arose from a scattering of British colonial
outposts in the New World. The first humans to inhabit the North American
continent were migrants from northeast Asia who established settlements in
North America as early as 8000 BC and possibly much earlier (see NORTH
AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY). By about AD 1500 the native peoples of the areas
north of the Rio Grande had developed a variety of different cultures (see
INDIANS, AMERICAN). The vast region stretching eastward from the Rocky
Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean was relatively sparsely populated by tribes
whose economies were generally based on hunting and gathering, fishing, and
farming.

VIKINGS explored the North American mainland in the 10th and 11th centuries
and settled there briefly (see VINLAND). Of more lasting importance,
however, was the first voyage (1492-93) of Christopher COLUMBUS, which
inaugurated an age of great European EXPLORATION of the Western Hemisphere.
Various European states (including Spain, France, England, the Netherlands,
and Portugal) and their trading companies sent out expeditions to explore
the New World during the century and a half that followed.

The Spanish claimed vast areas, including Florida, Mexico, and the region
west of the Mississippi River, although they concentrated their settlement
south of the Rio Grande. The French explored much of the area that became
Canada and established several settlements there. Of most significance,
however, for the subsequent development of the United States, was the
English colonization of the region along the Atlantic coast.


 BRITISH COLONIES IN NORTH AMERICA


At the end of the period of turmoil associated with the Protestant
Reformation in England, the English people became free to turn their
attention to some other matters and to seek new opportunities outside their
tiny island. Internal stability under Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) and an
expanding economy combined with a bold intellectual ferment to produce a
soaring self-confidence. Ireland experienced the first impact: by the
beginning of the 17th century it had been wholly subjugated by the English.
Scottish and English Protestants were dispatched to "colonize" where the
savage Irish, as they were called, had been expelled, especially in the
northern provinces. Then, entrepreneurs began to look to North America,
claimed by England on the basis of the voyages of discovery of John CABOT
(1497-99).


 The Chesapeake Colonies


The English had failed in their attempts in the 1580s to found a colony at
ROANOKE on the Virginia coast. In 1606, however, the LONDON COMPANY,
established to exploit North American resources, sent settlers to what in
1607 became JAMESTOWN, the first permanent English colony in the New World.
The colonists suffered extreme hardships, and by 1622, of the more than
10,000 who had immigrated, only 2,000 remained alive. In 1624 control of
the failing company passed to the crown, making Virginia a royal colony.
Soon the tobacco trade was flourishing, the death rate had fallen, and with
a legislature (the House of Burgesses, established in 1619) and an
abundance of land, the colony entered a period of prosperity. Individual
farms, available at low cost, were worked primarily by white indentured
servants (laborers who were bound to work for a number of years to pay for
their passage before receiving full freedom). The Chesapeake Bay area
became a land of opportunity for poor English people.

In 1632, Maryland was granted to the CALVERT family as a personal
possession, to serve as a refuge for Roman Catholics. Protestants, as well,
flooded into the colony, and in 1649 the Toleration Act was issued,
guaranteeing freedom of worship in Maryland to all Trinitarian Christians.


 The New England Colonies


In 1620, Puritan Separatists, later called PILGRIMS, sailed on the
MAYFLOWER to New England, establishing PLYMOUTH COLONY, the first permanent
settlement there. They were followed in 1629 by other Puritans (see
PURITANISM), under the auspices of the MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY, who
settled the area around Boston. During the Great Puritan Migration that
followed (1629-42), about 16,000 settlers arrived in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. The Puritans set out to build a "city on a hill" intended to
provide a model of godly living for the world. Strict Calvinists, strongly
communal, and living in closely bound villages, they envisioned a God
angered at human transgressions, who chose, purely according to his
inscrutable will, a mere "righteous fragment" for salvation. Dissidents of
a Baptist orientation founded Rhode Island (chartered 1644). In 1639,
Puritans on what was then the frontier established the Fundamental Orders
of Connecticut, the first written constitution in North America; the colony
was chartered in 1662. The settlements in New Hampshire that sprang up in
the 1620s were finally proclaimed a separate royal colony in 1679. Plymouth
later became (1691) part of the royal colony of Massachusetts.

 The Restoration Colonies

A long era (1642-60) of turmoil in England, which included the Civil War,
Oliver Cromwell's republican Commonwealth, and the Protectorate, ended with
the restoration of the Stuarts in the person of Charles II. An amazing
period ensued, during which colonies were founded and other acquisitions
were made. In 1663, Carolina was chartered; settlement began in 1670, and
from the start the colony flourished. The territory later came under royal
control as South Carolina (1721) and North Carolina (1729).

In 1664 an English fleet arrived to claim by right of prior discovery the
land along the Hudson and Delaware rivers that had been settled and
occupied by the Dutch since 1624. Most of NEW NETHERLAND now became New
York colony and its principal settlement, New Amsterdam, became the city of
New York. New York colony, already multiethnic and strongly commercial in
spirit, came under control of the crown in 1685. New Jersey, sparsely
settled by the Dutch, Swedes, and others, was also part of this English
claim. Its proprietors divided it into East and West Jersey in 1676, but
the colony was reunited as a royal province in 1702.

In 1681, Pennsylvania, and in 1682, what eventually became (1776) Delaware,
were granted to William PENN, who founded a great Quaker settlement in and
around Philadelphia. Quaker theology differed widely from that of the New
England Puritans. Believing in a loving God who speaks directly to each
penitent soul and offers salvation freely, Quakers found elaborate church
organizations and ordained clerics unnecessary.


 Indian Wars


In 1675 disease-ridden and poverty-stricken Indians in New England set off
against the whites. Almost every Massachusetts town experienced the horror
of Indian warfare; thousands on both sides were slaughtered before King
Philip, the Wampanoag chief, was killed in 1676 and the war ended.
Virginians, appalled at this event, in 1676 began attacking the
Occaneechees despite the disapproval of the royal governor, Sir William
BERKELEY. Then, under Nathaniel Bacon, dissatisfied and angry colonists
expelled Berkeley from Jamestown and proclaimed Bacon's Laws, which gave
the right to vote to all freedmen. Royal troops soon arrived to put down
the uprising, known as.

Along the Mohawk River in New York, the Five Nations of the IROQUOIS LEAGUE
maintained their powerful confederacy with its sophisticated governing
structure and strong religious faith. Allies of the English against the
French along the Saint Lawrence River, they dominated a vast region
westward to Lake Superior with their powerful and well-organized armies.
The FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS, a series of great wars between the two European
powers and their Indian allies, ended in 1763 when French rule was
eradicated from North America and Canada was placed under the British
crown.

 18th-Century Social and Economic Developments

In the 1700s the British colonies grew rapidly in population and wealth. A
formerly crude society acquired a polished and numerous elite. Trade and
cities flourished. The 250,000 settlers who had lived in the mainland
colonies to the south of Canada in 1700 became 2,250,000 by 1775 and would
grow to 5,300,000 by 1800. Settlement expanded widely from the coastal
beachheads of the 17th century into back-country regions with profoundly
divergent ways of life.

Several non-English ethnic groups migrated to the British colonies in large
numbers during the 18th century. By 1775, Germans, who settled primarily in
the Middle Colonies but also in the back-country South, numbered about
250,000. They were members of the Lutheran and German Reformed (Calvinist)
churches or of pietist sects (Moravians, Mennonites, Amish, and the like);
the pietists, in particular, tended to live separately, avoiding English-
speaking peoples. From the 1730s waves of Scots-Irish immigrants, numbering
perhaps 250,000 by the time of the Revolution, swelled the ranks of the non-
 English group. Forming dense settlements in Pennsylvania, as well as in
New York's Hudson Valley and in the back-country South, they brought with
them the Presbyterian church, which was to become widely prominent in
American life. Many of these immigrants were indentured servants; a small
percentage were criminals, transported from the jails of England, where
they had been imprisoned for debt or for more serious crimes. The colony of
Georgia was granted in 1732 to reformers, led by James OGLETHORPE, who
envisioned it as an asylum for English debtors, as well as a buffer against
Spanish Florida. Georgia, too, was colonized by many non-English people.


 The Growth of Slavery


Slaves from Africa were used in small numbers in the colonies from about
1619 (see BLACK AMERICANS; SLAVERY). After British merchants joined the
Dutch in the slave trade later in the 17th century, prices tumbled and
increasing numbers of black people were transported into the southern
colonies to be used for plantation labor. Slaves were also used in the
northern colonies, but in far fewer numbers. The survival rates as well as
birthrates tended to be high for slaves brought to the North American
mainland colonies--in contrast to those transported to the West Indies or
to South America.

The expansion of slavery was the most fateful event of the pre-
Revolutionary years. Virginia had only about 16,000 slaves in 1700; by 1770
it held more than 187,000, or almost half the population of the colony. In
low country South Carolina, with its rice and indigo plantations, only
25,000 out of a total population of 100,000 were white in 1775. Fearful
whites mounted slave patrols and exacted savage penalties upon
transgression in order to maintain black passivity.

Meanwhile, on the basis of abundant slave labor, the world of great
plantations emerged, creating sharp distinctions in wealth among whites.
Southern society was dominated by the aristocracy; however, whites of all
classes were united in their fear of blacks. Miscegenation was common,
especially where slaves were most numerous, and mulattos were regarded as
black, not white. An almost total absence of government in this sparsely
settled, rural southern environment resulted in complete license on the
part of owners in the treatment of their slaves. Paradoxically, the ideal
of liberty--of freedom from all restraints--was powerful in the southern
white mind.


 Religious Trends


As transatlantic trade increased, communication between the colonies and
England became closer, and English customs and institutions exerted a
stronger influence on the Americans. The aristocracy aped London fashions,
and colonials participated in British cultural movements. The Church of
England, the established church in the southern colonies and in the four
counties in and around New York City, grew in status and influence. At the
same time, in both Britain and America, an increasingly rationalistic and
scientific outlook, born in the science of Sir Isaac NEWTON and the
philosophy of John LOCKE, made religious observance more logical and of
this world. Deism and so-called natural religion scoffed at Christianity
and the Bible as a collection of ancient superstitions.

Then from England came an upsurge of evangelical Protestantism, led by John
Wesley (the eventual founder of the Methodist church; see WESLEY family)
and George WHITEFIELD. It sought to combat the new rationalism and foster a
revival of enthusiasm in Christian faith and worship. Beginning in 1738,
with Whitefield's arrival in the colonies, a movement known as the GREAT
AWAKENING swept the colonials, gaining strength from an earlier outbreak of
revivalism in Massachusetts (1734-35) led by Jonathan EDWARDS. Intensely
democratic in spirit, the Great Awakening was the first intercolonial
cultural movement. It vastly reenergized a Puritanism that, since the mid-
1600s, had lost its vigor. All churches were electrified by its power--
either in support or in opposition. The movement also revived the earlier
Puritan notion that America was to be a "city on a hill," a special place
of God's work, to stand in sharp contrast to what was regarded as corrupt
and irreligious England.


 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION


By the middle of the 18th century the wave of American expansion was
beginning to top the Appalachian rise and move into the valley of the Ohio.
Colonial land companies looked covetously to that frontier. The French,
foreseeing a serious threat to their fur trade with the Indians, acted
decisively. In 1749 they sent an expedition to reinforce their claim to the
Ohio Valley and subsequently established a string of forts there. The
British and the colonists were forced to respond to the move or suffer the
loss of the vast interior, long claimed by both British and French. The
French and Indian War (1754-63) that resulted became a worldwide conflict,
called the SEVEN YEARS' WAR in Europe. At its end, the British had taken
over most of France's colonial empire as well as Spanish Florida and had
become dominant in North America except for Spain's possessions west of the
Mississippi River.


 Rising Tensions


A delirious pride over the victory swept the colonies and equaled that of
the British at home. Outbursts of patriotic celebration and cries of
loyalty to the crown infused the Americans. The tremendous cost of the war
itself and the huge responsibility accompanying the new possessions,
however, left Britain with an immense war debt and heavy administrative
costs. At the same time the elimination of French rule in North America
lifted the burden of fear of that power from the colonists, inducing them
to be more independent-minded. The war effort itself had contributed to a
new sense of pride and confidence in their own military prowess. In
addition, the rapid growth rate of the mid-18th century had compelled
colonial governments to become far more active than that of old,
established England. Because most male colonists possessed property and the
right to vote, the result was the emergence of a turbulent world of
democratic politics.

London authorities attempted to meet the costs of imperial administration
by levying a tax on the colonials; the STAMP ACT of 1765 required a tax on
all public documents, newspapers, notes and bonds, and almost every other
printed paper. A raging controversy that brought business practically to a
standstill erupted in the colonies. A Stamp Act Congress, a gathering of
representatives from nine colonies, met in New York in October 1765 to
issue a solemn protest. It held that the colonials possessed the same
rights and liberties as did the British at home, among which was the
principle that "no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent,
given personally or by their representatives." In March 1766, Parliament
repealed the Stamp Act; it passed the Declaratory Act, asserting its
complete sovereignty over the colonies.

Thereafter the transatlantic controversy was rarely quiet. The colonists
regarded the standing army of about 6,000 troops maintained by London in
the colonies after 1763 with great suspicion--such a peacetime force had
never been present before. British authorities defended the force as
necessary to preserve peace on the frontier, especially after PONTIAC'S
REBELLION (1763-65), which had been launched by the brilliant Indian leader
Pontiac to expel the British from the interior and restore French rule. In
another attempt to quell Indian unrest, London established the Proclamation
Line of 1763. Set along the crest of the Appalachians, the line represented
a limit imposed on colonial movement west until a more effective Indian
program could be developed. The colonists were much angered by the
prohibition. Historical memories of the use of standing armies by European
kings to override liberty caused widespread suspicion among the colonists
that the soldiers stationed on the Line of 1763 were to be employed not
against the Indians, but against the colonials themselves should they prove
difficult to govern.

Indeed, for many years colonists had been reading the radical British
press, which argued the existence of a Tory plot in England to crush
liberty throughout the empire. Surviving from the English Civil War of the
previous century was a profound distrust of monarchy among a small fringe
of radical members of Britain's Whig party, primarily Scots and Irish and
English Dissenters--that is, Protestants who were not members of the Church
of England. As members of the minority out-groups in British life, they had
suffered many political and economic disadvantages. Radical Whigs insisted
that a corrupt network of Church of England bishops, great landlords, and
financiers had combined with the royal government to exploit the community
at large, and that--frightened of criticism--this Tory conspiracy sought to
destroy liberty and freedom.

In the cultural politics of the British Empire, American colonists were
also an out-group; they bitterly resented the disdain and derision shown
them by the metropolitan English. Furthermore, most free colonists were
either Dissenters (the Congregationalists in New England and the
Presbyterians and Baptists in New York and the South); or non-English
peoples with ancient reasons for hating the English (the Scots-Irish); or
outsiders in a British-dominated society (Germans and Dutch); or
slaveowners sharply conscious of the distaste with which they were regarded
by the British at home.

A divisive controversy racked the colonies in the mid-18th century
concerning the privileges of the Church of England. Many believed in the
existence of an Anglican plot against religious liberty. In New England it
was widely asserted that the colonial tie to immoral, affluent, Anglican-
dominated Britain was endangering the soul of America. Many southerners
also disapproved of the ostentatious plantation living that grew out of the
tobacco trade--as well as the widespread bankruptcies resulting from
dropping tobacco prices--and urged separation from Britain.

The current ideology among many colonists was that of republicanism. The
radicalism of the 18th century, it called for grounding government in the
people, giving them the vote, holding frequent elections, abolishing
established churches, and separating the powers of government to guard
against tyranny. Republicans also advocated that most offices be elective
and that government be kept simple, limited, and respectful of the rights
of citizens.


 Deterioration of Imperial Ties


In this prickly atmosphere London's heavy-handedness caused angry reactions
on the part of Americans. The Quartering Act of 1765 ordered colonial
assemblies to house the standing army; to override the resulting protests
in America, London suspended the New York assembly until it capitulated. In
1767 the TOWNSHEND ACTS levied tariffs on many articles imported into the
colonies. These imports were designed to raise funds to pay wages to the
army as well as to the royal governors and judges, who had formerly been
dependent on colonial assemblies for their salaries. Nonimportation
associations immediately sprang up in the colonies to boycott British
goods. When mob attacks prevented commissioners from enforcing the revenue
laws, part of the army was placed (1768) in Boston to protect the
commissioners. This action confirmed the colonists' suspicion that the
troops were maintained in the colonies to deprive them of their liberty. In
March 1770 a group of soldiers fired into a crowd that was harassing them,
killing five persons; news of the BOSTON MASSACRE spread through the
colonies.

The chastened ministry in London now repealed all the Townshend duties
except for that on tea. Nonetheless, the economic centralization long
reflected in the NAVIGATION ACTS--which compelled much of the colonial
trade to pass through Britain on its way to the European continent--served
to remind colonials of the heavy price exacted from them for membership in
the empire. The Sugar Act of 1764, latest in a long line of such
restrictive measures, produced by its taxes a huge revenue for the crown.
By 1776 it drained from the colonies about 600,000 pounds sterling, an
enormous sum. The colonial balance of trade with England was always
unfavorable for the Americans, who found it difficult to retain enough cash
to purchase necessary goods.

In 1772 the crown, having earlier declared its right to dismiss colonial
judges at its pleasure, stated its intention to pay directly the salaries
of governors and judges in Massachusetts. Samuel ADAMS, for many years a
passionate republican, immediately created the intercolonial Committee of
Correspondence. Revolutionary sentiment mounted. In December 1773 swarms of
colonials disguised as Mohawks boarded recently arrived tea ships in Boston
harbor, flinging their cargo into the water. The furious royal government
responded to this BOSTON TEA PARTY by the so-called INTOLERABLE ACTS of
1774, practically eliminating self-government in Massachusetts and closing
Boston's port.

Virginia moved to support Massachusetts by convening the First CONTINENTAL
CONGRESS in Philadelphia in the fall of 1774. It drew up declarations of
rights and grievances and called for nonimportation of British goods.
Colonial militia began drilling in the Massachusetts countryside. New
Englanders were convinced that they were soon to have their churches placed
under the jurisdiction of Anglican bishops. They believed, as well, that
the landowning British aristocracy was determined, through the levying of
ruinous taxes, to reduce the freeholding yeomanry of New England to the
status of tenants. The word "slavery" was constantly on their lips.


 The War for Independence


In April 1775, Gen. Thomas GAGE in Boston was instructed to take the
offensive against the Massachusetts troublemakers, now declared traitors to
the crown. Charged with bringing an end to the training of militia and
gathering up all arms and ammunition in colonial hands, on April 19, Gage
sent a body of 800 soldiers to Concord to commandeer arms. On that day, the
Battles of LEXINGTON AND CONCORD took place, royal troops fled back to
Boston, and American campfires began burning around the city. The war of
the AMERICAN REVOLUTION had begun.

It soon became a world war, with England's European enemies gladly joining
in opposing England in order to gain revenge for past humiliations. British
forces were engaged in battle from the Caribbean and the American colonies
to the coasts of India. Furthermore, the United Colonies, as the
Continental Congress called the rebelling 13 colonies, were widely
scattered in a huge wilderness and were occupied by a people most of whom
were in arms. The dispersion of the American population meant that the
small (by modern standards) cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
could be taken and held for long periods without affecting the outcome.

LOYALISTS numbered about 60,000, living predominantly along the coast where
people of English ethnic background and anglicized culture were most
numerous, but they were widely separated and weak. Pennsylvania's Quakers
had looked to the crown as their protector against the Scots-Irish and
other militant groups in Pennsylvania. The Quakers were appalled at the
rebellion, aggressively led in the Middle Colonies by the Presbyterian
Scots-Irish, and refused to lend it support. London deluded itself,
however, with the belief that the Loyalists represented a majority that
would soon resume control and end the conflict.

Within a brief period after the Battle of Concord, practically all royal
authority disappeared from the 13 colonies. Rebel governments were
established in each colony, and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia
provided a rudimentary national government. The task now before the British
was to fight their way back onto the continent, reestablish royal
governments in each colony, and defeat the colonial army. By March 1776 the
British evacuated Boston, moving to take and hold New York City. Within
days of the British arrival in New York, however, the Congress in
Philadelphia issued (July 4) the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. In December
1776, Gen. George WASHINGTON reversed the early trend of American defeats
by a stunning victory at Trenton, N.J. (see TRENTON, BATTLE OF).
Thereafter, as the fighting wore on and the cause survived, Washington
became in America and abroad a symbol of strength and great bravery.

In February 1778 the French joined the conflict by signing an alliance with
the Continental Congress. With the aid of the French fleet the British army
in the north was reduced to a bridgehead at New York City. Shifting its
efforts to the south, the royal army campaigned through Georgia and the
Carolinas between 1778 and 1780, marching to the James Peninsula, in
Virginia, in 1781. Here, in the YORKTOWN CAMPAIGN, by the combined efforts
of Washington's troops and the French army and navy, Lord CORNWALLIS was
forced to surrender on Oct. 19, 1781. The fighting, effectively, was over.
In September 1783 the Treaty of Paris secured American independence on
generous terms. The new nation was given an immense domain that ran
westward to the Mississippi River (except for Britain's Canadian colonies
and East and West Florida, which reverted to Spanish rule).


 A NEW NATION


The first federal constitution of the new American republic was the
ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION.  With ratification of that document in 1781, the
nation had adopted its formal name, the United States of America.


 Government under the Articles of Confederation


Under the Articles the only national institution was the Confederation
Congress, with limited powers not unlike those of the United Nations. The
states retained their sovereignty, with each state government selecting
representatives to sit in the Congress. No national executive or judiciary
had been established. Each state delegation received an equal vote on all
issues. Congress was charged with carrying on the foreign relations of the
United States, but because it had no taxing powers (it could only request
funds from the states), it had no strength to back up its diplomacy. In
addition, it had no jurisdiction over interstate commerce; each state could
erect tariffs against its neighbors.

The Confederation Congress, however, achieved one great victory: it
succeeded in bringing all 13 of the states to agree on a plan for
organizing and governing the western territories (the "public lands")
beyond the Appalachians. Each state ceded its western claims to the
Congress, which in three ordinances dealing with the Northwest (1784, 1785,
and 1787) provided that new states established in the western regions would
be equal in status to the older ones. After a territorial stage of quasi
self-government, they would pass to full statehood. The land in the
NORTHWEST TERRITORY (the Old Northwest, that is, the area north of the Ohio
River) would be surveyed in square parcels, 6 mi (9.7 km) on a side,
divided into 36 sections, and sold to settlers at low cost; one plot would
be reserved for the support of public schools. Furthermore, slavery was
declared illegal in the Northwest Territory. (The Southwest Territory,
below the Ohio, was organized by the later federal Congress in 1790 as
slave country.)

The Confederation Congress, however, did not survive. Because of its lack
of taxing power, its currency was of little value; widespread social
turbulence in the separate states led many Americans to despair of the new
nation. The republic--regarded as a highly precarious form of government in
a world of monarchies--was founded with the conviction that the people
would exercise the virtue and self-denial required under self- government.
Soon, however, that assumption seemed widely discredited. SHAYS'S REBELLION
in Massachusetts (1786-87) was an attempt to aid debtors by forcibly
closing the court system; mobs terrorized legislators and judges to achieve
this end. The new state legislatures, which had assumed all powers when
royal governors were expelled, confiscated property, overturned judicial
decisions, issued floods of unsecured paper money, and enacted torrents of
legislation, some of it ex post facto (effective retroactively).

The established social and political elite (as distinct from the rough new
antiauthoritarian politicians who had begun to invade the state
legislatures, talking aggressively of "democracy" and "liberty") urgently
asserted the need for a strong national government. The influence that the
London authorities had formerly provided as a balance to local government
was absent. Minorities that had been protected by the crown, such as the
Baptists in Massachusetts and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, were now
defenseless. The wealthy classes maintained that they were at the mercy of
the masses. The new United States was so weak that it was regarded
contemptuously all over the world and its diplomats ignored.


 The Constitutional Convention of 1787


A chain of meetings, beginning with one between Virginia and Maryland in
1786 to solve mutual commercial problems and including the larger ANNAPOLIS
CONVENTION later that year, led to the CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION in
Philadelphia in 1787. Deciding to start afresh and fashion a new national
government independent of, and superior to, the states, the delegates made
a crucial decision: the nation's source of sovereignty was to lie in the
people directly, not in the existing states. Using the British Parliament
as a model, they provided for a CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES that would
have two houses to check and balance one another. One house would be
elected directly by the people of each state, with representation
proportionate to population; the other would provide equal representation
for each state (two senators each), to be chosen by the state legislatures.


The powers of the national government were to be those previously exercised
by London: regulation of interstate and foreign commerce, foreign affairs
and defense, and Indian affairs; control of the national domain; and
promotion of "the general welfare." Most important, the Congress was
empowered to levy "taxes, duties, imposts, and excises." The states were
prohibited from carrying on foreign relations, coining money, passing ex
post facto laws, impairing the obligations of contracts, and establishing
tariffs. Furthermore, if social turbulence within a state became serious,
the federal government, following invitation by the legislature or the
executive of that state, could bring in troops to insure "a republican form
of government."

A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES with powers much like those of the British
king, except that the office would be elective, was created. Chosen by a
special body (an ELECTORAL COLLEGE), the president would be an independent
and powerful national leader, effectively in command of the government.
Recalling the assaults on judicial power that had been rampant in the
states, the Constitutional Convention also created a fully independent
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, members of which could be removed only
if they committed a crime. Then, most important, the document that was
drawn up at Philadelphia stated that the Constitution, as well as laws and
treaties made under the authority of the U.S. government, "shall be the
supreme Law of the Land."

The proposed constitution was to be ratified by specially elected ratifying
conventions in each state and to become operative after nine states had
ratified it. In the national debate that arose over ratification, ANTI-
FEDERALISTS opposed the concentration of power in the national government
under the document; a key question was the absence of a BILL OF RIGHTS.
Many Americans thought that a bill of rights was necessary to preserve
individual liberties, and to accommodate this view proponents of the
Constitution promised to add such a bill to the document after
ratification. With the clear understanding that amendments would be added,
ratification by nine states was completed (1788) and the CONSTITUTION OF
THE UNITED STATES became operative. The Bill of Rights was then drafted by
the first Congress and became the first ten amendments to the Constitution.



Diverging Visions of the American Republic


In the first elections for the new federal Congress (1789), those favoring
the new system won a huge majority. George Washington was unanimously
elected to be chief executive, the only president so honored. He was
inaugurated in the temporary capital, New York City, on Apr. 30, 1789. The
American experiment in republican self-government now began again. The
unanimity expressed in Washington's election would prove short- lived.

Under the leadership of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander HAMILTON,
Congress pledged (1790) the revenues of the federal government to pay off
all the outstanding debt of the old Articles of Confederation government as
well as the state debts. Much of the domestic debt was in currency that had
badly depreciated in value, but Congress agreed to fund it at its higher
face value; at one stroke, the financial credit of the new government was
assured. Southerners, however, mistrusted the plan, claiming that it served
only to enrich northern speculators because the southern states had largely
paid off their debts. Many southerners feared, too, that the new nation
would be dominated by New Englanders, whose criticism of southern slavery
and living styles offended them. Before assenting to the funding proposal,
the southerners had obtained agreement that the national capital (after 10
years in Philadelphia) would be placed in the South, on the Potomac River.

In 1791, Hamilton persuaded Congress to charter the BANK OF THE UNITED
STATES, modeled after the Bank of England. Primarily private (some of its
trustees would be federally appointed), it would receive and hold the
government's revenues, issue currency and regulate that of state-chartered
banks, and be free to invest as it saw fit the federal tax moneys in