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12 - The End of the Constitutional Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2009

Calvin H. Johnson
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Summary

The pressing need for which the Constitution was adopted was to re-establish the public credit by making creditable payments on the debts of the Revolutionary War. When war came again, the Congress would need to be able to borrow. The problem of the war debts could not be solved if Rhode Island – and also other miscreant states – were given the veto required by the Articles of Confederation. Given that it was impossible to fix the problem within the context of the Articles, the Framers tore up the Articles and started afresh. Starting afresh, it was easy to conclude with Madison that the confederation form of government always failed for want of power at the center, and so the Constitution created a complete government on the federal level able to operate independent of the states, and supreme over them. Given that new framework, Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury was able to restore the public credit with modest tax on sinful things such as imports and whiskey. With the addition of a tax on whiskey, Hamilton could even go beyond the mandatory restoration of federal credit and assume the war debts of the states.

Ulimately, however, the drive to pay the war debts ended, and honest creditors who supplied the Army were not paid. We can mark the end of the constitutional movement with Georgia's refusal to pay one Robert Farquhar and with the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment in 1795, which backed up and even constitutionalized Georgia's unrighteous refusal to pay its debt.

Type
Chapter
Information
Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
The Meaning of the Founders' Constitution
, pp. 262 - 275
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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