The Articles of Confederation were finally ratified in 1781. Maryland was slow to ratify, and unanimous consent of all thirteen states was required. Under provisions of the Articles, the Confederation Congress, a continuation of the Continental Congress, had managed to achieve victory in the Revolutionary War, but only with difficulty and inefficiency. Wartime problems had been huge, and the Confederation was cumbersome and inefficient. The colonies had never really gotten along very well, and once the war was over, the states became even more suspicious of federal power and of each other. Thus government under the Articles had less power than Parliament and Crown had held over the colonies. There was no executive, and no courts were provided for. Government was operated by scores of committees, notoriously inefficient in executing policy.
During the 1780s, many Americans feared, as the glow of victory began to fade, that their Revolution could still fail if not grounded in a virtuous republican government—they were not willing to continue under the status quo of a top-down monarchial system. Ordinary folk, influenced by the experience of the colonial era, expected the Revolution to preserve the individual liberties they had enjoyed, and to give them a voice in government. They expected progress founded on fairness and equity. At the same time, more conservative elements feared that too much liberty might lead to democratic excesses and emphasized the need for order. At issue was the debate over liberty versus order: The two ideas were not necessarily compatible.
Republicanism in the 18th century was as radical for its time as Marxism was later, even though the concept had its origins in Greece and Rome. Since ancient times only brief experiments in republican forms of government had been tried, and all had failed. Still, the concept began to spread throughout Europe in the 18th century, finally coming together in revolutionary America to set a precedent that would spread around the world.
Republicanism was a social as well as political construct, and the simplicity and plainness of American life were now considered virtues. The evils of the Old World were seen as rooted in restrictive government and rigid class structures, but in order for republican government to succeed, the citizens had to be virtuous, patriotic, and willing to serve the interests of their country.
Property ownership was seen as requisite to participation in republican government because people needed to have a measurable stake in their political society and be independent. Jefferson saw dependency as an evil—"it begets subservience and venality"—so he proposed that Virginia give fifty acres of land to every citizen who did not own that much. At the heart of the American experiment was the idea of equality. In all states, more of "the people's men" began to participate in government. The new American aristocracy would be based on merit, not birth—leaders would be strong men who could set aside personal interests in favor of the greater good. The theory of a born aristocracy was inconsistent with the inbred individualism of the former American colonists, now citizens of their own nation.
As the need for a stronger central government became more apparent after 1783, the United States could easily have become a monarchy, with George Washington as King George I of America. The American states under the Articles were independent republics, and the feeling was that viable republics were of necessity small. Many were skeptical of attempts to create a larger, unmanageable republic. Thus the Americans still faced many difficulties in shaping a new republican government. They had closed "but the first act of the great dra-great drama," but much hard work remained to be done. Without the completion of the task of creating a viable government, the experiment still might have foundered.
World History
