We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution

About this book

In 1783 as the Revolutionary War came to a close Alexander Hamilton resigned in disgust from the Continental Congress after it refused to consider a fundamental reform of the Articles of Confederation. Just four years later that same government collapsed and Congress grudgingly agreed to support the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention which altered the Articles beyond recognition. What occurred during this remarkably brief interval to cause the Confederation to lose public confidence and inspire Americans to replace it with a dramatically more flexible and powerful government? We Have Not a Government is the story of this contentious moment in American history. In George William Van Cleves book we encounter a sharply divided America. The Confederation faced massive war debts with virtually no authority to compel its members to pay them. It experienced punishing trade restrictions and strong resistance to American territorial expansion from powerful European governments. Bitter sectional divisions that deadlocked the Continental Congress arose from exploding western settlement. And a deep long-lasting recession led to sharp controversies and social unrest across the country amid roiling debates over greatly increased taxes debt relief and paper money. Van Cleve shows how these remarkable stresses transformed the Confederation into a stalemate government and eventually led previously conflicting states sections and interest groups to advocate for a union powerful enough to govern a continental empire. Touching on the stories of a wide-ranging cast of charactersincluding John Adams Patrick Henry Daniel Shays George Washington and ThayendanegeaVan Cleve makes clear that it was the Confederations failures that created a political crisis and led to the 1787 Constitution. Clearly argued and superbly written We Have Not a Government is a must-read history of this crucial period in our nations early life.