The Critical Period Transition 

In post Revolution America, laborers in New York and Boston form political associations to keep lawyers and men of learning and wealthy men form being allowed “swallow up us little folks”

The number of men in the Legislatures of NH, NY and NJ who were ONLY middle class increased from 17% to 60%  after the revolution

Even the notion of LIBERTY itself was being redefined:

To the old revolutionary generation liberty meant communities had the right to govern themselves

The people who the revolution cast up in the position of power in America defined liberty more broadly… for them libertymeant access for everyone to the political process and many even a restraint on individual wealth and property to ensure economic equality

By 1785 many of the old revolutionary leadership were dead or had followed the logic of their own positions and turned their political energies back to politics in their own states

Springing up around and beside these old revolutionaries was the leading edge of a new generation which remembered little or nothing of the Stamp Act or the French and Indian War. This was a generation born in the mid 1750’s  or the early 1760’s  and for them the great formative experience of the lives was not Committees of Correspondence or the Boston Tea Party, but the Revolutionary War itself and service in the Continental Army

These men that had done the actual fighting, the Nation is what they had fought for!!! They carried out of the Revolution an entirely different perspective of what the United States should be.

These teenagers and young adults from NY, Massachusetts and Virginia they had shared so many common hardships that their varied local identities faded away

They had fought and bled under one national flag whose 13 stars and stripes proclaimed UNION, not division. They marched under the orders of one man George Washington (who they had come to adore) - This generation had learned to think continentally

CASE STUDY:  Alexander Hamilton (1755 to 1804)
Looked at the jealousy and competition of the individual states as a betrayal of the nation he had fought for.  He saw the state legislatures as little better that tiny red necked oligarchies bent on stymieing progress and freezing economic growth. 

 CHART: Weaknesses of the Articles

Moving Pictures "All is not Well" (5:27)

Sooner or later State governments which had hobbled Congress and destabilized the confederation were bound to do hurt people bad enough to  make them wish for a change and by the middle of the 1780’s that time had arrived  WHY?

#1 Most of the state constitutions that had been written in the heat of the Revolution had created state governments with a single legislature (broadly and popularly elected)

#2 These state constitutions created a weakened role for Governors and Judges (elected, not appointed)

Consequence: This satisfied the Revolutionary leaders who wanted the popular majority to lead without obstacle and represent the will of the people…but popularity majorities are not always wise majorities. Timid governors and judges are ineffective

1780  Massachusetts writes a new constitution that divides the state legislature into two houses: one elected by the people and one elected by districts (based on property tax). Each house reviews the others legislation.

1784 New Hampshire writes a new constitution which took the appointment process for judges out of the hands of the legislature and gave it to the Governor

1780’s  Virginia proposes a new state constitution that gives a veto power in the legislature to the senate and created an independent, lifetime judiciary

Experience was yielding a new prudence (exercising sound judgment in practical affairs)

Reform at the state level highlight the need for reform of the Confederation as a whole

1785 Virginia and Maryland signed an agreement regulating use of the Potomac river (which the both share as a boundary). This could have been a model for two other commercially vital shared rivers the Susquehanna River and the Delaware River Why wasn’t this agreement used as a model?

Shays’s Rebellion (summer of 1786) adds the added incentive of fear to the invitation to revise the Articles of Confederation.

America's First Civil War  - Shays's Rebellion (VIDEO 6 mins)

The Horrid specter of Anarchy
Were the United States of  America in danger of falling apart under the Articles of Confederation? Explain

Moving Pictures "The Constitutional Convention"  (3:23)

Snapshot of the Convention in Philadelphia
12 states represent (Rhode Island refuses invite)
Total number of delegates 74 sent to attend

Representing the old revolutionary generation

Only 3 had attended the Stamp Act Congress (1765)
Only 8 had signed the Declaration of Independence (1776)
Only a little more that ½ had served in the Continental Congress (1774-81)

Representing the people who the revolution cast up in the position of power in America 

22 had served in the Continental Army, 3 under GW
55 of the delegates came from the top 5% of the American wealth pyramid (not the artisans and working men that framed state constitutions).

Many of the men were unknown to the old revolutionaries and unknown to state politics. They were men ready to think continentally

Source: from Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 1913

A majority of the members [of the Constitutional convention] were lawyers by profession. 
Most of the members came from towns, on or near the coast... 
Not one member represented in his immediate and personal economic interests the small farming or mechanic [artisan] classes.

The overwhelming majority of the members [of the Constitutional convention], at least five-sixths, were immediately, directly, and personally interested in the outcome of their labors at Philadelphia, and were to a greater or lesser extent economic beneficiaries from the adoption of the Constitution. 
[Of the 54 delegates:] 
 40 were holders of public securities (holders of Continental and state debt) 
 24 were creditors (lenders of money) 
 15 were southern slaveholders 
 14 were involved in land speculation 
 11 were involved in manufacturing, commerce, and shipping

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