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By Root 1807 0

Articles of Confederation to begin operation as the country’s first national constitution. Maryland’s opposition was based on the failure of the Articles to empower Congress to limit the extravagant land claims of states like Virginia, which relied on its original seventeenth-century charter to claim much of the territory west of Pennsylvania and north of the Ohio River. Nevertheless, by 1780 a movement was afoot to give Congress jurisdiction over this same territory, not by amending the Articles, but through the voluntary cessions of individual states. This movement began with New York. Its own claims in the Ohio Valley rested on the dubious theory that the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were both overlords of other Indian nations further west and legally dependent on New York through previous treaties negotiated with the former colonial government as long ago as 1701. What New York leaders like Philip Schuyler and Governor George Clinton really wanted was to assert their state’s jurisdiction over the area between Lake Ontario and the northern boundary of Pennsylvania. At the same time, they hoped that a cession by New York would induce other states to follow suit. By early 1781 there was good reason to think that Virginia would cede its claims as well, and this was a factor in Maryland’s decision to ratify the Confederation.

Even as the Articles neared ratification, however, criticisms of their potential shortcomings were being voiced. Three years of war had exposed serious gaps between the assumptions of 1776 and 1777 and the difficulties Congress now faced. Under the Articles, Congress had no authority to raise its own revenue, but had to rely instead on the contributions of the states. It had the authority to direct the war, but lacked the resources to keep its army fully manned and provisioned. Its shortcomings were painfully evident to the of ficer corps of the Continental Army, including the young artillery officer Alexander Hamilton, who was serving as General Washington’s aide-de-camp when he provided the New York delegate James Duane with a sweeping critique of the Articles.

As soon as the Confederation was ratified in the winter of 1781, Congress asked the states to approve its first amendment: a proposal to grant Congress a 5 percent impost (duty) on foreign imports. Opposition from Rhode Island doomed this amendment to rejection. In 1782 Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris issued a major report on public credit, which he hoped would persuade Congress to propose a new set of amendments to the Articles. But the delegates were deeply divided on Morris’s plan, and instead finally adopted a compromise set of amendments over his objections. These were sent to the states in April 1783. A year later Congress proposed two further amendments, designed to give it limited authority to regulate foreign commerce. None of these proposals ever overcame the hurdle of unanimous state ratification. Congress briefly considered one last set of amendments in 1786. But by then, reformers like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were beginning to think about a different strategy of constitutional reform.

One significant change to the Articles of Confederation did take place, however, outside the rules for its amendment. This involved the creation of a national domain, north of the Ohio River, through the voluntary cessions of states with claims to this territory. That process began with the New York cession of 1780, but the key development was the decision by the Virginia legislature in 1781 to cede its claims as well. Another three years passed before the terms of the Virginia cession were fully accepted by Congress, but when they were, the federal union was vested with the authority and responsibility to regulate the development of the trans-Appalachian West. This substantial expansion of its authority had occurred through the actions of individual states, but without the unanimous approval of the thirteen legislatures that the Articles required.

Once this national domain existed, Congress had to ask how it would