One problem was the threat of government bankruptcy. The nation owed $160 million in war debts and the Congress had no power to tax and the states rarely sent in more than half of Congress's requisitions. The national currency was worthless. To help pay the government's debt, several members of Congress proposed the imposition of a five percent duty on imports. But because the Articles of Confederation required unanimous approval of legislation, a single state, Rhode Island, was able to block the measure.
The country also faced grave foreign policy problems. Spain closed the Mississippi River to American commerce in 1784 and secretly conspired with Westerners (including the famous frontiersman Daniel Boone) to acquire the area that would eventually become Kentucky and Tennessee. Britain retained military posts in the Northwest, in violation of the peace treaty ending the Revolution, and tried to persuade Vermont to become a Canadian province.
The economy also posed serious problems. The Revolution had a disruptive impact especially on the South's economy. Planters lost about 60,000 slaves (including about 25,000 slaves in South Carolina and 5,000 in Georgia). New British trade regulations--the Orders in Council of 1783--prohibited the sale of many American agricultural products in the British West Indians, one of the country's leading markets, and required commodities to be shipped on British vessels. Massachusetts shipbuilders, who had constructed about 125 ships a year before the war, built only 25 ships a year after the war. Merchants, who had purchased large quantities of British goods after the war, found it difficult to sell these commodities to hard-pressed Americans. States protected local interests by imposing tariffs on interstate commerce.
...
That's a fuller and fairer view of things than Trask's. He sees the importance of navigation laws, but leaves out the reason why they were regarded as important. Britain had already imposed crippling restrictions on US shipping. Here's what this Trask writes about the motivation for new federal navigation laws: In 1784, northern legislatures began penalizing British shipping by laying additional duties upon goods imported in British bottoms. That's it. Nothing about the prior British measures that had led to real economic hardship in the Northeastern states. You can see his basic distortion -- abuse Americans who wanted greater unity as statists while ignoring the real threats and dangers that they were responding too. That's just not honest. Someone who writes that way forfeits all credibility.
Trask's writing about the tariff twists things as well: There is ample evidence that northern manufactures supported the federal Constitution because they hoped through uniform national tariffs to capture the southern market. It would be nice if he showed us the evidence. If the products of the whole country could be excluded by other powers, it was natural to abolish internal trade restrictions and respond in kind against foreign goods. But industry was at a relatively rudimentary stage in the 1780s. Handicrafts and home production were the norm, not modern industry. Even if production were more advanced in one part of the country, it wasn't like the North had any crushing advantage that couldn't be overcome.
In the 1790s New Englanders did like Hamilton's Federalist Party which followed a protectionist policy, but when Madison got protective tariffs in the 1810s Southerners supported him, and New Englanders were opposed for fear that protection would hurt their shipping interests. Trask attributes later conditions to the 1780s. There was some desire to protect domestic production, but it wasn't a matter of large scale industry and it wasn't more dominant in any particular region of the country. The great cotton boom hadn't yet distorted regional development, so a Virginian like Washington had no problem favoring protection for American industry in anticipation that his own region would benefit.
Nor was the desire for federal tariffs one of the most important factors leading to the Constitution. I don't see any footnotes here, but Trask's references to Sumner may be to a polemical set of lectures on the history of the tariff. If Sumner was looking at the Constitution through the narrow window of protectionism, he would naturally choose to view the making of the Constitution as a function of tariff history. It's the same way that these guys look at the Civil War -- they cut passages out of books on protectionism and economic history and paste them together, and ignore other sources and issues. Real scholars are bound to look at things differently.
Obviously, the nationalists wanted to scare the country into supporting a more vigorous government. George Washington was terrified. "We are fast verging toward anarchy and confusion," he wrote. His nationalist friends did their best to heighten his terror.
This is why I hate these guys. They decide the answers beforehand and then assume those who disagree are liars and manipulators. That there might have been legitimate cause for concern in the 1780s is simply dismissed out of hand. If Shay's Rebellion was limited in its ends and means, the next uprising might not be. The country had just seen a massive upheaval a decade before and even those who'd led the last revolution doubted whether it could survive another one. If you put yourself in the shoes of Washington and others the fears aren't so exaggerated.
Years ago I might have gotten taken in by a hack like Trask. But the same Internet that makes it possible for all of us to read his article at the same time provides plenty of sources that we can use to verify his claims. So far as I can tell, they don't hold up.
Antifederalist No. 7 - Adoption of the Constitution Will Lead To Civil War
The AntiFederalist Papers ^ | December 6, 1787 | Philanthropos
Posted on 05/15/2005 4:32:57 PM PDT by Remember_Salamis
Antifederalist No. 7 - Adoption of the Constitution Will Lead To Civil War Philanthropos December 6, 1787
The time in which the constitution or government of a nation undergoes any particular change, is always interesting and critical. Enemies are vigilant, allies are in suspense, friends hesitating between hope and fear; and all men are in eager expectation to see what such a change may produce. But the state of our affairs at present, is of such moment, as even to arouse the dead ... [A certain defender of the Constitution has stated that objections to it] are more calculated to alarm the fears of the people than to answer any valuable end.
Was that the case, as it is not, will any man in his sober senses say, that the least infringement or appearance of infringement on our liberty -that liberty which has lately cost so much blood and treasure, together with anxious days and sleepless nights-ought not both to rouse our fears and awaken our jealousy? ... The new constitution in its present form is calculated to produce despotism, thralldom and confusion, and if the United States do swallow it, they will find it a bolus, that will create convulsions to their utmost extremities. Were they mine enemies, the worst imprecation I could devise would be, may they adopt it.
For tyranny, where it has been chained (as for a few years past) is always more cursed, and sticks its teeth in deeper than before. Were Col. [George] Mason's objections obviated, the improvement would be very considerable, though even then, not so complete as might be. The Congress's having power without control-to borrow money on the credit of the United States; their having power to appoint their own salaries, and their being paid out of the treasury of the United States, thereby, in some measure, rendering them independent of the individual states; their being judges of the qualification and election of their own members, by which means they can get men to suit any purpose; together with Col. Mason's wise and judicious objections-are grievances, the very idea of which is enough to make every honest citizen exclaim in the language of Cato, 0 Liberty, 0 my country!
Our present constitution, with a few additional powers to Congress, seems better calculated to preserve the rights and defend the liberties of our citizens, than the one proposed, without proper amendments. Let us therefore, for once, show our judgment and solidity by continuing it, and prove the opinion to be erroneous, that levity and fickleness are not only the foibles of our tempers, but the reigning principles in these states. There are men amongst us, of such dissatisfied tempers, that place them in Heaven, they would find something to blame; and so restless and self- sufficient, that they must be eternally reforming the state. But the misfortune is, they always leave affairs worse than they find them.
A change of government is at all times dangerous, but at present may be fatal, without the utmost caution, just after emerging out of a tedious and expensive war. Feeble in our nature, and complicated in our form, we are little able to bear the rough Posting of civil dissensions which are likely to ensue. Even now, discontent and opposition distract our councils. Division and despondency affect our people. Is it then a time to alter our government, that government which even now totters on its foundation, and will, without tender care, produce ruin by its fall? Beware my countrymen! Our enemies- -uncontrolled as they are in their ambitious schemes, fretted with losses, and perplexed with disappointments-will exert their whole power and policy to increase and continue our confusion. And while we are destroying one another, they will be repairing their losses, and ruining our trade.
Of all the plagues that infest a nation, a civil war is the worst. Famine is severe, pestilence is dreadful; but in these, though men die, they die in peace. The father expires without the guilt of the son; and the son, if he survives, enjoys the inheritance of his father. Cities may be thinned, but they neither plundered nor burnt. But when a civil war is kindled, there is then forth no security of property nor protection from any law. Life and fortune become precarious. And all that is dear to men is at the discretion of profligate soldiery, doubly licentious on such an occasion. Cities are exhausted by heavy contributions, or sacked because they cannot answer exorbitant demand. Countries are eaten up by the parties they favor, and ravaged by the one they oppose. Fathers and sons, sheath their swords in anothers bowels in the field, and their wives and daughters are exposed to rudeness and lust of ruffians at home. And when the sword has decided quarrel, the scene is closed with banishments, forfeitures, and barbarous executions that entail distress on children then unborn. May Heaven avert the dreadful catastrophe!
In the most limited governments, what wranglings, animosities, factions, partiality, and all other evils that tend to embroil a nation and weaken a state, are constantly practised by legislators. What then may we expect if the new constitution be adopted as it now stands? The great will struggle for power, honor and wealth; the poor become a prey to avarice, insolence and oppression. And while some are studying to supplant their neighbors, and others striving to keep their stations, one villain will wink at the oppression of another, the people be fleeced, and the public business neglected. From despotism and tyranny good Lord deliver us.
PHILANTHROPOS
"PHILANTHROPOS," (an anonymous Virginia Antifederalist) appeared in The Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser, December 6, 1787, writing his version of history under the proposed new Constitution.