The Articles of Confederation, Lesson 5: The Crisis Years: Money, Trade, Shays' Rebellion

The Money Problem: Requisitions That Were Not Paid

Lesson 2 read Article VIII, which put the cost of the war and the common defense into a common treasury and then left every state to raise its share by its own taxes. Congress could ask. It could not collect. The practical result shows up in the Journals in a series of reports from the officers who had to find the money, and the numbers in those reports are the plainest evidence of why the Confederation stopped working.

The clearest single document is a committee report that Congress turned into an act on February 15, 1786. The committee had gone through what each state had done with the revenue plan of 1783 and what the whole Confederation had received. From November 1, 1781, when the Superintendent of Finance began keeping the account, to January 1, 1786, the report counted receipts of $2,457,987.25 in the federal treasury. The last fourteen months of that span brought in only $432,897.81, which works out to about $371,000 a year.¹ Against that income the report set the debts that were coming due. The interest owed on the foreign debt to January 1787 came to $577,307.25, and about $1.25 million of foreign principal fell due in 1787. A government that took in $371,000 a year could not meet an interest bill of $577,000 on one class of its debts, let alone the domestic debt, the army's pay or the cost of a single regiment on the frontier.

The act of February 15, 1786 did not hide this. It said that a reliance on the system of requisitions "would be" dangerous "to the welfare and peace of the Union," and it said that the "crisis has arrived."¹ Read in the Journal, it is the voice of a body that had spent five years asking and had run out of ways to ask. The act then did what Congress always did, which was to call on the states again: it urged each of them to pass the impost of 1783 and to pay what it owed.

A word on terms. A requisition was a formal request to the states, apportioned among them by a rule that Congress changed over the years, for a stated sum to be paid by a stated date. The impost was different: it was a proposed duty of five percent on imported goods, to be collected under federal authority and used only to pay the war debt. Congress could not impose it. Under Article XIII the plan became law only if every state legislature agreed. That is where the story of the revenue plan turns, and it is the first of the three failures this lesson follows.

The Impost: Twelve Yes Votes and One No

The first impost plan had been proposed in 1781, and the second, a fuller revenue system, was adopted by Congress in April 1783. Both needed all thirteen legislatures. Most acted. The story of the first plan's death is short, and the Journal tells it in two entries.

On December 12, 1782 Congress heard a letter from Rhode Island, dated November 30, 1782, rejecting the impost. The letter gave three reasons: that the plan would be unequal in its operation among the states, that the officers who collected the duty would not be accountable to the state that paid it, and that Congress would become independent of its constituents. The record states plainly that "The recommendation was rejected."² Twelve days later, on December 24, 1782, Congress was told that Virginia had repealed its own law granting the impost. Madison's notes of the debate say that Virginia acted "in consequence of the final refusal" of Rhode Island.³ A plan that twelve states had accepted died because one would not, and because a second state then decided that it could not be bound alone.

The 1783 plan followed. For several years the Journal records the legislatures acting on it one at a time. By January 1786 the Secretary of Congress could report, state by state, what each had done, and the committee report of February 15, 1786 summed it up. Seven states had granted the impost without conditions that the plan did not allow: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Pennsylvania and Delaware had granted it with provisos. Rhode Island, New York, Maryland and Georgia had not decided.⁴ The report lists Delaware and North Carolina among the states that had complied fully with the whole 1783 revenue plan.

The record on New York is the most detailed, and it shows how an entire plan can die on a technicality that is also a principle. In the summer of 1786 every state but New York had by then granted the impost in some form. On August 11 and August 23 Congress dealt with New York's reply. Governor George Clinton wrote on August 16, 1786 that he would not convene the legislature to reconsider. A committee of the Journal examined the act that New York had passed on May 4, 1786 and found that it varied from the plan in three ways that mattered. Collection stayed in the hands of New York officers, who could be removed only by New York's own courts. And the act allowed the duties to be paid in the paper money that New York had issued under an act of April 18, 1786, a loan of £200,000 in bills of credit. That meant Congress would receive for its debts the paper that its own creditors would not take at par.⁵ The New York delegates moved to postpone and lost. Clinton wrote again on August 26 declining to act, according to the editor's note in the Journal. The impost was dead, and it had been killed by the legislature of the state through whose port much of the continent's imports came.

The point is not that New York acted in bad faith. Clinton and the legislature held a view of state revenue that many Americans shared, that the power of the purse belonged to the people nearest to it. The point is that Article XIII turned that view into a veto. A state that thought a federal duty unwise or unfair had no need to argue the matter; it needed only to leave the plan alone, or to adopt a version that varied. One legislature's silence outweighed twelve votes. The men who sat down in Philadelphia the next year did not have to be told that the amendment rule was a problem. They had read the Journal.

The Board of Treasury Appeals to the States, 1786

With the impost stalled, the only revenue left was what the states would pay on requisition, and in August 1786 the Board of Treasury put the results before Congress in a document that it called an appeal. Samuel Osgood and Arthur Lee signed it. Congress read it on August 31, 1786 and sent it to the states.⁶ The document gave the figures that the board had gathered.

The requisition of 1785 had asked for $3 million, of which $1 million was to be paid in gold and silver and the other $2 million could be paid in interest certificates at a discount. Of that sum the board called $840,000 "indispensably necessary" for the year. Eight of the thirteen states had passed acts that appeared to comply, and no more than $100,000 in actual specie had been paid. The board noted that several states received paper currency "as Specie," so that a tax law that looked like compliance might bring nothing that could buy anything abroad. It said that American navigation was "nearly annihilated," a reference to the trade restrictions described below. It reported that $1,723,626 would be needed in hard money. And it called the whole paper "An Appeal, (and too probably a last one)."⁶

A revised address on October 6, 1786 worked through the states one by one. Massachusetts, the report said, had assessed £300,439 in taxes, of which £145,665, or 485,550 dollars, was meant for the federal specie quota, but more than half of the tax was for the state's own purposes. Rhode Island had made its paper money receivable for taxes. New York's paper was receivable as well. Connecticut and New Jersey had passed no act at all. North Carolina had done nothing.⁷

These two documents explain a feature of the Shays period that is easy to miss. The farmers in western Massachusetts were being taxed to pay the state's share of a national debt and also the state's own debts, at a time when the state demanded payment in coin. Congress's inability to raise money did not relieve them. It meant the state raised the money in its place, and it raised it in the form that the state's own creditors insisted on.

Paper Money and the Fight Over Debts

The word "paper money" in the Journals does not mean the Continental dollars of the war, which had collapsed by 1781. It means the bills of credit that individual states issued after the war, usually by lending newly printed currency to landowners on the security of their land, and sometimes by making it a legal tender for private debts. Debtors favored it, because a rising supply of money pushes prices up and makes old debts easier to pay. Creditors opposed it for the same reason.

By 1786 the states had made different choices. New York issued a loan of £200,000 in bills of credit in April 1786, as the Journal shows in its discussion of the impost. Rhode Island's legislature went much further, passing its paper money acts in the spring and summer of 1786 and making the currency receivable for taxes, as the Treasury's October address recorded. According to secondary accounts, Rhode Island's later acts forced creditors to accept the paper at face value, and in August 1786 a law subjected refusers to trial "without any jury." That last point, and the case of Trevett v. Weeden in September 1786, in which a Rhode Island court was reported to have declined to enforce the law, come from secondary sources only in this lesson; the primary records are in the Rhode Island archives and were not read for it.⁸

Massachusetts chose differently, and the choice mattered a great deal. The May 1786 session of its legislature, which adjourned on July 8, took up demands for paper money and for a tender law. Minot, the contemporary historian of the period, counted the votes: only 19 of 118 members supported paper money, and only 35 of 124 supported a tender at appraisement. The legislature instead passed a retaliation law against its neighbors' paper.⁹ The result was a state that kept to a hard-money policy while its farmers were short of coin and its courts were full of suits for debt.

Whether paper money was good policy is a question for economists, and the Journals do not settle it. What the Journals do show is that Congress had no say. The Articles gave Congress the power to "emit bills" on the credit of the United States, but no power to forbid a state from doing the same, and no way to make the money of one state good in another. A traveler, a merchant or a creditor crossing from Connecticut to Rhode Island found that the same word, "dollar," meant different things on either side of the line. The Constitution answered with two clauses of Article I, section 10, which Module 2 covers: no state may "emit Bills of Credit" or make "any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts."¹⁰

Trade Wars Among the States and With Britain

The second failure was in trade. Under the Articles, Congress could make treaties of commerce but could not regulate commerce, and it could not stop states from regulating it. After the peace of 1783, British ports closed to American ships in the West Indies trade and imposed new burdens elsewhere, and the states began to answer with laws of their own.

The Journals show the problem in a report that John Jay, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, made on October 10, 1785. Massachusetts had passed a navigation act on June 23, 1785, effective August 1, 1785, and New Hampshire had passed one as well. These acts burdened British shipping in those states' ports. The state laws raised a legal problem under the French treaty, which gave French ships the same treatment as the most favored nation. Jay wrote that "the Commerce of the United States, must suffer from partial and discordant Regulations."¹¹ A second report on January 31, 1786, about letters that John Adams had sent from London in October 1785, said that Congress needed "general and full Powers to regulate the Trade" of the country.¹² The same Journal volume contains Jay's letter about a South Carolina bill discriminating among foreign vessels, which raised the same problem in a different state.

Congress did try the straightforward remedy. On April 30, 1784 it had recommended that the states give it power to prohibit foreign ships from carrying goods into the country when there was no commercial treaty with the nation concerned, and to regulate commerce for fifteen years. The Secretary's report of January 4, 1786 lists the states' answers.¹³ The amendment did not reach the unanimous ratification that Article XIII required. By 1786 the states had effectively written thirteen different commercial codes. Each state's duty on goods coming through its ports was a tax on its neighbors' consumers: those living in Connecticut and New Jersey paid duties collected in New York and Philadelphia. That is the background to the Annapolis meeting in the next lesson, which was called to talk about trade.

The States and the Treaty With Britain

The third trouble was with treaties. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 bound the United States to several things, among them that creditors on either side should meet "no lawful impediment" to the recovery of debts owed to them, and that Congress should "earnestly recommend" the return of property seized from Loyalists. Congress could make the treaty. Only the states could carry it out, since the courts and the legislatures that could remove the impediments were theirs. Some states passed laws that stood in the way, and Britain answered by holding on to frontier posts it had promised to leave.

On October 13, 1786 John Jay reported to Congress on the infractions of the treaty, a long document that fills a large part of the Journal for that fall. It quotes, among others, a resolution of the Virginia legislature that linked the repayment of British debts to Britain's own compliance.¹⁴ On March 21, 1787 Congress took the step it could take, which was to state the law as it saw it. It resolved, unanimously, that the legislatures of the several states "cannot of right pass any act" for "interpreting, explaining or construing a national treaty," that treaties are "part of the law of the land," and that the states should repeal any acts repugnant to the treaty.¹⁵

It is easy to read that resolution as a plain statement of the Supremacy Clause, and the sentiment is the same. But note what Congress did and did not have. It had a resolution, not a statute; the Articles gave it no federal court to enforce a treaty against a state and no executive to bring a suit. The resolution says what Congress thought the law was and asks the states to conform. Module 15 follows what the Constitution added: Article VI makes treaties "the supreme Law of the Land" and binds "the Judges in every State" to follow them.

Jay, Gardoqui and the Mississippi, 1785 to 1786

A fourth failure divided the country by region. After the war, Spain held the mouth of the Mississippi and both banks of the river below the thirty-first parallel. Western settlers, in Kentucky and the back country of the Carolinas and Virginia, needed to float their produce down the river to the sea. Eastern merchants wanted a commercial treaty with Spain.

Congress commissioned John Jay on July 20, 1785 to negotiate with Don Diego de Gardoqui, the Spanish envoy, and on August 25, 1785 it gave him an instruction. The text appears in the Journal for August 29, 1786, where it was read again. Jay was to stipulate "the free navigation of the Mississippi, from the source to the Ocean," and he was told to "neither conclude nor sign any treaty" until he had "previously communicated it to Congress."¹⁶ Jay did not get that stipulation. Gardoqui wrote in May 1786 that the King of Spain would not allow any nation to sail between the two banks. On May 29, 1786 Jay put a proposal to Congress for a commercial treaty of twenty-five or thirty years, under which the United States would forbear to use the Mississippi below its own territory during that period. Jay appeared before Congress on August 3, 1786 to explain.¹⁷

The fight was about whether to change the instruction. On August 29, 1786, after a motion from the Virginia delegates, a committee of the whole reported and Congress voted on repealing the part of the instruction that required Jay to insist on the Mississippi. As read from the scan, the repeal passed seven states to five. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania voted aye. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia voted no.¹⁸ The roll is scrambled in the scan, so this account gives the result and the division of the states and does not rely on the individual names.

The Virginia delegates objected that only seven states had acted when the Articles required nine to make a treaty. On August 30 Charles Pinckney, seconded by Monroe, moved a resolution to the same effect, and the motion to take it up lost on a roll call. That day a resolution containing the treaty terms, as amended, was lost, with the seven northern states in favor as read from the scan.¹⁹ Jay's treaty never came to a vote of nine states. The proposal had split the country along a line that ran between the sections, and the Articles' requirement of nine states, in a body of thirteen, could not be met by a vote that was seven to five.

On September 28, 1786, Charles Pinckney and Edward Carrington moved a statement that the record of the August 29 vote "is not a true account." An appeal from the chair was lost, and a motion to lift the injunction of secrecy was also made.²⁰ Jay's negotiation stalled, and the treaty was not made. The point to carry forward is that the matter was dealt with by a vote that shifted a power over the Mississippi from nine states to seven. The Constitution's answer, in Article II, section 2, is that treaties need two thirds of the senators present in place of the nine states of the Articles.

Massachusetts in 1786: Debt, Taxes and the Courts

The crisis that gave the period its best-known name came in Massachusetts, and our best contemporary account is George Richards Minot's History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts, published in 1788. Minot wrote as a supporter of the government and of order. His account is a source for what the government and its supporters knew and believed, and for the documents he printed, and it should be checked against others where a point is in doubt. The dates and figures in this lesson come from his text unless stated otherwise.²¹

The background was a double burden. Minot gives the state's own private debt as about £1.3 million, with another £250,000 owed to the army, and the federal share of the debt that Massachusetts had agreed to carry at about £1.5 million. About 90,000 ratable polls bore a third of the taxes. In 1784 the state laid a tax of £140,000 and in 1786 one of £100,000 for the redemption of army notes. And in 1786, as shown above, it assessed £300,439 in taxes, more than half of it for state purposes. The farmers of the western counties, who had less hard money than the merchants of Boston, were being sued for the debts they could not pay, and the courts of common pleas were the places where the suits were heard. Minot also records earlier disturbances: a Tender Act of July 3, 1782, disturbances in Hampshire County in April 1782, and the episode of Samuel Ely in 1782.

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 had given the people two rights that matter in what follows. Part I, article XIX says the people have a right "in an orderly and peaceable manner, to assemble to consult upon the common good." And Part II, chapter VI, article VII provides that the writ of habeas corpus "shall not be suspended by the legislature, except upon the most urgent and pressing occasions, and for a limited time not exceeding twelve months."²² The first protected the conventions that came in the summer of 1786. The second governed the legislature's response to them.

Conventions and Closed Courts, August to October 1786

The grievances were first handled in the way the Massachusetts constitution contemplated, by county conventions. The one that mattered most met at Hatfield from August 22 to 25, 1786, with delegates from fifty towns. It passed twenty-five resolves, which Minot prints in full. They dealt with the Senate, with court fees, with the General Court sitting somewhere other than Boston, and with paper currency. And the twenty-first resolve condemned mobs and called on the people to keep the peace.²³ The convention, in other words, did not call for a rebellion. It called for redress and tried to keep the crowds from closing the courts.

The crowds closed them anyway. On the last Tuesday of August 1786, which was August 29, about 1,500 men gathered at Northampton and kept the court of common pleas from sitting. A week later 300 men did the same at Worcester. At Concord, in Middlesex, a crowd led by Job Shattuck prevented the court from meeting, and at Great Barrington 800 men did the same. On September 20, 1786 about 400 armed men surrounded the legislature of New Hampshire.²⁴

The test came at Springfield, in the last week of September. The state supreme court was to sit there on the Tuesday, September 26, and the town held the arsenal of the United States. Minot says that General William Shepard held the courthouse with 600 men and that a force of more than 2,000 under Daniel Shays and others assembled, and the court adjourned on the third day without hearing cases. Henry Knox, the Secretary at War, wrote to Congress after visiting the town. His letter of October 3, 1786 describes a court that sat from Tuesday, with Shepard commanding 900 men and a leader he called "a Captain Shays of the militia." Knox reported that "The granting of the supplementary funds to the United States appears to have been the immediate cause" of the unrest, a reference to the Massachusetts legislature's grant of revenue to Congress.²⁵ The discrepancy between Minot's 600 and Knox's 900 is not resolved here; both accounts are shown as the writers gave them.

The arsenal mattered because it was federal property. Knox had reported to Congress on September 20, 1786 that "lawless people" in Massachusetts intended to seize it, and the arsenal held about 7,000 arms and more than 1,300 barrels of powder. On September 28 he wrote again.²⁶ The United States thus had a stake in the dispute, a stake that grew in January 1787, and it had no army to protect that stake with.

The General Court Responds, Fall 1786

The Governor, James Bowdoin, called the General Court into session on September 27, earlier than its original date of October 18. What it did over the next seven weeks was a mix of repression and relief, and the combination is worth reading closely. Minot's account puts the acts in this order.²⁷

The legislature passed a riot act. It authorized trial of offenders in any county. It suspended habeas corpus: the committee made its proposal, and the Governor's message of November 7 pressed the point, and the suspension passed in the week of November 7 to 18. The suspension was limited, as the constitution required, to a period that ended on July 1, 1787. The date of the act is inferred, since Minot gives only the range of dates. The legislature also offered indemnity to those who had taken part in the disturbances and took the oath of allegiance by January 1, 1787.

Alongside these measures it passed relief laws. Arrears of taxes could be paid in specific articles of produce. A tender act, limited to eight months, allowed payment of private debts in certain goods. A law made the process of suing for debt cheaper. And one third of the impost and excise was appropriated to help pay the state's own debts. The General Court rose on November 18. On October 28 the Governor had told it of the resolve of Congress calling for 660 Massachusetts troops, which is the subject of a later section.

The pairing is the point. A state government that faced armed crowds both suspended a basic liberty and conceded some of the crowds' demands. Historians of the rebellion argue about which part of the program did the work. The Journals do not decide that question. They do show that a state with a working legislature and a working militia could do both, and that Congress could do neither.

The Winter Campaign, November 1786 to February 1787

The crowds did not disperse. A convention at Worcester issued an address on November 23, and on November 21 about 150 men blocked the Worcester Court of Sessions. On November 29 and 30 a mounted expedition from the government's side seized two of the leaders, Parker and Page, and wounded and captured Job Shattuck. In early December insurgents gathered at Worcester, joined on December 3 to 9 by Shays with 350 men from Rutland, and on December 7 a letter signed Thomas Grover went out urging the legislature to hear the people. Minot records that it said the supplementary funds grant had passed by a majority of seven. On December 26 the Springfield courts were stopped again.²⁸

The state then raised a force. On January 4, 1787 the Council advised raising 4,400 men for thirty days, to be commanded by Major General Benjamin Lincoln. The Governor's address was dated January 12 and the orders to Lincoln January 19. The legislature had adjourned and the treasury had no money. The Council advised drawing up to £6,000 from a private loan.²⁹ Lincoln reached Worcester on January 22.

The climax came at Springfield on January 25, 1787, at about four in the afternoon. Shays's column advanced on the arsenal, and Shepard, who had about 900 men plus 200 more, fired on it. Luke Day's force of 400 and Eli Parsons's of 400 were nearby. Minot says three of the insurgents were killed and one wounded. Secondary accounts, including Wikipedia, say four were killed and twenty wounded, and the difference is not resolved here.³⁰ The column broke. Lincoln arrived on January 27. On January 30 he wrote to Shays, and Shays replied from Pelham, signing himself "Captain." A "committee for reconciliation" chaired by Francis Stone asked for terms.

The General Court reached a quorum on February 3 and on February 4 declared that a rebellion existed. That night Lincoln marched about thirty miles in a snowstorm to Petersham, where the remaining insurgents were camped, and took about 150 prisoners with little resistance. On February 8 the General Court offered a reward of £150 for the leaders. Other states helped: Rhode Island's governor answered on February 15, Connecticut on February 20, Vermont issued a proclamation on February 27, and Pennsylvania offered a reward on March 1. Massachusetts asked New York for help on March 8. A last skirmish came at Stockbridge and Sheffield on February 26 and 27, when militia under Colonel John Ashley took more than fifty prisoners, with two government dead, two rebels dead and more than thirty wounded.³¹

Congress Raises Troops, and Says They Are For Something Else

All this time the Confederation Congress was watching, and the Journal for October 1786 shows the dilemma it faced. The unrest was in a state, and the Articles gave Congress no right to send troops into a state against its people. Congress could not interfere unless the state asked it to. But the arsenal at Springfield belonged to Congress, and the western Indian war was a legitimate reason to raise more.

On October 18, 1786 Knox wrote to Congress again. His letter spoke of "an armed tyranny," and it said there were "great numbers of people" in the state "who avow the principle of annihilating all debts public and private." On October 20 Congress resolved unanimously to raise a force of 1,340 men for three years, as a legionary corps of 2,040 when joined by cavalry. The quotas were New Hampshire 260, Massachusetts 660, Rhode Island 120 and Connecticut 180, with cavalry from Maryland and Virginia.³²

On October 21, 1786 Congress passed three more acts. It requisitioned $530,000 in specie, due by June 1, 1787, of which Massachusetts's share was 79,288. It authorized a loan of $500,000 at six percent, with the first half million acres of western land pledged as security. And it adopted, unanimously, a secret committee report declaring that a "dangerous insurrection" existed in Massachusetts, but that a formal application from the state "would undoubtedly defeat the object" of the whole plan, and that the troops would be justified in public as a force for the Indian war. The report added that Congress would not "put arms into the hands of men" unless it had confidence that the lenders would fill the loan.³³

The cover story deserves a plain description. A national legislature, without power to act within a state, raised an army for one purpose and told the public a different purpose, because the real purpose was one it had no authority to name. It is difficult to find a sharper illustration of the gap between what the Confederation Congress needed to do and what its charter let it do. By February 12, 1787 Knox could write that the rebellion "is in a fair train of being speedily and effectually suppressed," with about 180 recruits gathered in Massachusetts.³⁴ The state had put down the rising itself, with a private loan and its own militia. The federal troops never marched against the insurgents.

Aftermath: Trials, Pardons and an Election

The legislature moved to punish and then to pardon. On February 16, 1787 it passed the Disqualification Act, which barred participants for three years from sitting on juries, holding office or voting, with some exceptions. Special sessions of the courts were held on February 26 and March 10, and a commission of Lincoln, Phillips and Otis was empowered to grant pardons to those who came forward. Some 790 people took that route. Juries convicted a smaller number of treason: six in Berkshire, six in Hampshire, one in Worcester and one in Middlesex. Fourteen were sentenced to death. On April 30 eight were pardoned, with reprieves for the rest on May 17 and June 16.³⁵

The voters answered in April 1787. John Hancock replaced Bowdoin as governor, and about a quarter of the House of Representatives was returned. On June 14 a motion in the legislature to repeal the habeas corpus law failed, and the 800 troops that the legislature had authorized were kept; the indemnity vote of July 7 followed. In February 1788 Shays and Parsons petitioned for pardon, and on June 13, 1788 the legislature passed a resolution of indemnity for others.³⁵ Secondary sources say Shays was pardoned in 1788 and died in 1825.

One conflict among the sources should be named. Minot says the rebellion was put down "without the shedding of blood by the hand of the civil magistrate," meaning no one was executed by judicial sentence. Secondary accounts say John Bly and Charles Rose were hanged at Lenox on December 6, 1787, and that the charge was burglary for seizing guns and powder from houses, not treason. Minot's own count of treason convictions lists no execution, so the two accounts can both be right, but his closing sentence does not mention these hangings. This lesson did not read the Massachusetts court records of that case, so the hangings and the burglary charge rest on secondary accounts and are flagged in the sources.

What the Crisis Years Showed About the Articles

Everything above can be told as a story about particular men and the particular winter of 1786 and 1787. It can also be told as a series of tests that the Articles failed because of how they were built, and the Journals support that reading.

The first test was money. Congress could not tax, and could not collect from states that would not pay. The impost, the one device that could have given it a revenue, needed thirteen votes and died of one refusal and one variation. The second test was trade. Congress could not regulate commerce, and thirteen states did it badly, each for itself. The third was the treaty power. Congress could make a treaty, and its own resolution said that treaties were the law of the land, but it could not make a state obey. The fourth was a question that divided the sections, which the nine-state rule could not resolve. And the fifth was force. A state faced with a violent challenge raised its own army and paid for it with private loans, and Congress, which held the arsenal at stake, could act only in secret and under a cover story.

These were not accidents. They followed from decisions in the text of the Articles, which Lesson 2 read: a Congress of states and not of people, a requirement of unanimity for amendment, and no executive and no courts. The delegates who met in Philadelphia in May 1787 had these same records before them, and many of them had sat in Congress. Randolph's opening speech on May 29, according to Madison's notes, cited the Massachusetts disorder, the paper money and the violated treaties among the reasons for change. The next lesson turns to how those delegates were chosen and how they decided to write something new.

Key Documents

Each document was read in the text cited. The Journal page numbers in the scans are sometimes off by a few pages, so the citations give ranges.

Why This Matters to Idaho Officials and Voters

Idaho's constitution carries both of the Massachusetts provisions that mattered in 1786 and 1787, in plainer words. Article I, section 5 says the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus "shall not be suspended, unless in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety requires it, and then only in such manner as shall be prescribed by law." Article I, section 10 says the people "shall have the right to assemble in a peaceable manner, to consult for their common good; to instruct their representatives, and to petition the legislature for the redress of grievances."³⁶ The second echoes article XIX of the Massachusetts declaration.

A resident who reads a county convention's resolves, a petition to a legislature or a legislative response to unrest is reading in the same tradition. The Hatfield convention of 1786 claimed exactly that right. The Massachusetts legislature's suspension of habeas corpus is also a useful comparison: it lasted for a limited time, followed a message from the executive and was passed by the legislature, and Idaho's text leaves the manner to be prescribed by law.

Using This in Reporting and Civic Life

Checking a claim that the Confederation "worked"

Some speakers say the Articles got the country through the war and the Northwest Ordinance, and that the crisis was exaggerated by men who wanted power. The Journals support the first half and test the second. The receipts figures of the February 1786 act and the Treasury's appeal of August 1786 were written by officers of the Confederation, to Congress, before the Convention was called. They are not the words of later critics.

Reading a casualty or vote count

Two items in this lesson show the care that is needed. The Springfield casualty figures differ between Minot and later accounts, and the roll calls printed in the Journal scans are scrambled. A good reporter gives the result, names the source, and says what could not be confirmed.

Telling emergency powers from ordinary ones

Massachusetts suspended habeas corpus for a limited time by act of its legislature, under a constitution that set a limit. Congress raised troops under a stated pretext because it had no clear power to name the real purpose. When a government today invokes an emergency, the useful questions are the 1786 ones: who authorized it, for how long, and was the stated purpose the real one.

Where to find the records

The Journals are free in full text at the Internet Archive. Madison's Notes are at the Avalon Project. Minot's history is on the Internet Archive, and the Idaho Constitution is posted by the Idaho Legislature. The sources list links each of them.

Related Lessons

Earlier in this series: Lesson 2, The Thirteen Articles, which reads Articles VIII and XIII, Lesson 3, Congress at Work, and Lesson 4, The Ordinances and the Western Lands. Next: Lesson 6, From Annapolis to Philadelphia. Forward in the course: Module 1, From the Charters to Philadelphia; Module 2, Article I: Congress (the taxing, commerce and money clauses); Module 15, Article VI: Supremacy (treaties and the Supremacy Clause); and Module 6, Amending the Constitution.

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 23 (1782): Rhode Island's rejection and Virginia's repeal of the impost
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 29 (July to December 1785): Jay's report on state navigation acts
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 30 (January to July 1786): the revenue report and act of Feb. 15, 1786
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 31 (August to December 1786): the New York impost, the Treasury address, Jay-Gardoqui, Knox's letters and the troop resolves
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 32 (January to July 1787): the treaty resolutions of Mar. 21, 1787 and Knox's reports
• George R. Minot, History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts (1810 reprint of the 1788 work)
• Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (printed edition)
• Avalon Project, Articles of Confederation
• Avalon Project, Madison's Notes, May 29, 1787
• Idaho Constitution, art. I, section 5
• Idaho Constitution, art. I, section 10

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• Wikipedia, Shays' Rebellion (used only for the casualty figure at Springfield, the Dec. 6, 1787 hangings and Shays's pardon; verify against Massachusetts records and Szatmary's study)
• Wikipedia, Trevett v. Weeden (used for the case only; verify against Rhode Island records)

Footnotes

1. Committee report on state compliance with the revenue plan of 1783, and the act of Feb. 15, 1786 on revenue and requisitions, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 30, pp. 61 to 76 (Feb. 15, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-30-jan-2-jul-31-1786. The receipts of $2,457,987.25 from Nov. 1, 1781 to Jan. 1, 1786, the $432,897.81 of the last fourteen months, the foreign interest of $577,307.25 due to Jan. 1787 and the $1.25 million of principal due in 1787 are read from the report. The words "dangerous to the welfare and peace of the Union" and "crisis has arrived" are in the act. The figure of about $371,000 a year is the report's own rate.
2. Letter from Rhode Island of Nov. 30, 1782, read Dec. 12, 1782, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 788 to 789 (Dec. 12, 1782), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit. The three reasons are paraphrased from the letter. The Journal states "The recommendation was rejected."
3. Virginia's repeal of its 1781 impost law, reported Dec. 24, 1782, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 831 and 871 to 872 (Dec. 24, 1782), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit. Madison's notes record that Virginia acted "in consequence of the final refusal of R. I." Page numbers in the OCR are off by a few pages.
4. Secretary of Congress, report of Jan. 4, 1786 on the states' action on the 1783 revenue system and the Apr. 30, 1784 commerce recommendation, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 30, pp. 7 to 10 (Jan. 4, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-30-jan-2-jul-31-1786. State-by-state results of the 1784 commerce amendment are at p. 10; the committee report on compliance with the 1783 plan is at pp. 61 to 64.
5. Resolutions of Aug. 11 and 23, 1786 on New York, with Governor Clinton's letter of Aug. 16, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 553 to 561 (Aug. 11 to 23, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. The committee found New York's act of May 4, 1786 varied from the plan; the act of Apr. 18, 1786 issued £200,000 in bills of credit. The editor's note says Clinton wrote again on Aug. 26 declining. The roll call on the motion to postpone is scrambled in the scan, so only the result is reported.
6. Board of Treasury, address to the states, Aug. 31, 1786, signed by Samuel Osgood and Arthur Lee, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 613 to 619 (Aug. 31, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. The figures are read from the text: the $3 million requisition of 1785 ($1 million in specie, $2 million in interest discounts), $840,000 called "indispensably necessary," eight of thirteen states with apparently complying acts, no more than $100,000 in specie, navigation "nearly annihilated," and $1,723,626 needed in specie.
7. Revised address of Oct. 6, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 747 to 752 (Oct. 6, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. Massachusetts figures: £300,439 assessed, £145,665 (485,550 dollars) for the federal specie quota, more than half for state purposes.
8. Rhode Island paper money acts of May and June 1786, the August 1786 act providing trial "without any jury," and the case of Trevett v. Weeden, Sept. 25 to 26, 1786: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevett_v._Weeden. Secondary source only; the Rhode Island records were not read.
9. George R. Minot, History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts (1788), https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min, account of the May 1786 session. The votes of 19 of 118 and 35 of 124 are Minot's counts.
10. U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript. See Module 2.
11. Jay's report of Oct. 10, 1785 on the New Hampshire and Massachusetts navigation acts and the French treaty, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 29, pp. 817 to 820 (Oct. 10, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-29-jul-1-dec-30-1785. Massachusetts's act passed June 23, 1785 and took effect Aug. 1, 1785.
12. Jay's report of Jan. 31, 1786 on John Adams's letters of Oct. 15 to 27, 1785, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 30, pp. 38 to 40 (Jan. 31, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-30-jan-2-jul-31-1786. The report says Congress needs "general and full Powers to regulate the Trade." Jay's letter of Sept. 19, 1785 on a South Carolina bill is in vol. 29.
13. Recommendation of Apr. 30, 1784 on commerce and the states' answers, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 30, p. 10 (Jan. 4, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-30-jan-2-jul-31-1786. The Secretary's report gives the state-by-state results.
14. Jay's report on infractions of the treaty of peace, Oct. 13, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 781 to 874 (Oct. 13, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. The report quotes a resolution of Virginia.
15. Resolutions of Mar. 21, 1787 on state acts and treaties, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. 124 to 125 (Mar. 21, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787. The resolutions passed unanimously.
16. Commission of July 20, 1785 and instruction of Aug. 25, 1785 to Jay, quoted in the Journal entry of Aug. 29, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 574 to 596 (Aug. 29, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
17. Jay before Congress, Aug. 3, 1786, with Gardoqui's letter of May 25 and 26 and Jay's letter of May 29, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 467 to 483 (Aug. 3, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. Gardoqui wrote that the King would not permit any nation to sail between the two banks. Jay proposed a treaty of 25 or 30 years.
18. Votes of Aug. 29, 1786 on the Mississippi instruction, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 574 to 596 (Aug. 29, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. The roll calls are scrambled in the scan, so the lesson reports the result (seven states to five) and which states voted each way, as read from the scan. The Virginia delegates objected that only seven states had acted when nine were needed. The Journal for August 30 prints Pinckney's resolution to that effect, moved with Monroe seconding, and records that the motion to take it up lost on a roll call.
19. Resolution on treaty terms, Aug. 30, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 597 to 607 (Aug. 30, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. Lost, with the seven northern states in favor, as read from the scan.
20. Motion of Pinckney and Carrington, Sept. 28, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 694 to 697 (Sept. 28, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. An appeal from the chair was lost, and a motion to lift the injunction of secrecy was made.
21. George R. Minot, History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts (Worcester, 1788; 1810 reprint), https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min. Minot was a participant on the government side. His figures and dates are used as a contemporary account and flagged where secondary sources differ.
22. Constitution of Massachusetts (1780), pt. I art. XIX and pt. II ch. VI art. VII, https://archive.org/details/constitutionofco00mass. Read from a printed edition, not an official text.
23. Minot, account of the Hatfield convention of Aug. 22 to 25, 1786, fifty towns and twenty-five resolves, with the resolves printed in full, https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min
24. Minot, account of the closing of the courts at Northampton, Worcester, Concord and Great Barrington, and of the New Hampshire legislature on Sept. 20, 1786, https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min
25. Knox to Congress, Springfield, Oct. 3, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 751 to 753 (Oct. 3, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. Knox gives Shepard's force as 900 men; Minot gives 600. The two are shown as reported.
26. Knox's report of Sept. 20, 1786 and letter of Sept. 28, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 675 to 676 and 698 to 700 (Sept. 20 and 28, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
27. Minot, account of the General Court after Sept. 27, 1786, https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min. The date of the habeas corpus act is inferred from Minot's range of Nov. 7 to 18, 1786.
28. Minot, account of Nov. 1786 to Jan. 1787, https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min. The Thomas Grover letter is dated Dec. 7, 1786.
29. Minot, account of the raising of the force under Lincoln, Jan. 4 to 22, 1787, https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min
30. Minot, account of Jan. 25, 1787; compare Wikipedia, Shays' Rebellion, which gives four dead and twenty wounded. Not resolved here.
31. Minot, account of Jan. 27 to Mar. 10, 1787, https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min
32. Knox's letter of Oct. 18, 1786, and the resolve of Oct. 20, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 886 to 888 and 891 to 893 (Oct. 18 and 20, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. The resolve was unanimous.
33. Resolves and secret committee report of Oct. 21, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 893 to 897 (Oct. 21, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. The requisition of $530,000 was due by June 1, 1787. The loan of $500,000 at six percent pledged the first half million acres of western land.
34. Knox's letters of Jan. 29, Feb. 1 and Feb. 12, 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. 24 and 39 to 40 (Jan. to Feb. 1787), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787.
35. Minot, account of the pardons, trials and election, Feb. 1787 to June 1788, https://archive.org/details/historyofinsurre00min. Compare Wikipedia, Shays' Rebellion, for the Dec. 6, 1787 hangings of John Bly and Charles Rose, which Minot's phrase about blood does not mention; the charge of burglary rather than treason comes from the blog Executed Today, https://www.executedtoday.com/tag/lenox/, which cites a broadside of their last words. Wikipedia also says eighteen men were sentenced to death, against the fourteen in Minot's count. Not resolved here.
36. Idaho Constitution, art. I, sec. 5 (https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtI/Sect5/) and sec. 10 (https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtI/Sect10/).