Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Frequently Cited Sources
- Introduction
- PART ONE THE NECESSITY OF THE CONSTITUTION
- 1 The Rise of the Righteous Anger
- 2 Madison's Vision: Requisitions and Rights
- 3 The Superiority of the Extended Republic
- 4 Shifting the Foundations from the States to the People
- 5 Partial Losses
- 6 Anti-Federalism
- 7 False Issues: Bill of Rights, Democracy, and Slavery
- PART TWO LESS CONVINCING FACTORS
- PART III THE SPLIT AND THE END OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOVEMENT
- Concluding Summary
- Index
1 - The Rise of the Righteous Anger
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Frequently Cited Sources
- Introduction
- PART ONE THE NECESSITY OF THE CONSTITUTION
- 1 The Rise of the Righteous Anger
- 2 Madison's Vision: Requisitions and Rights
- 3 The Superiority of the Extended Republic
- 4 Shifting the Foundations from the States to the People
- 5 Partial Losses
- 6 Anti-Federalism
- 7 False Issues: Bill of Rights, Democracy, and Slavery
- PART TWO LESS CONVINCING FACTORS
- PART III THE SPLIT AND THE END OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOVEMENT
- Concluding Summary
- Index
Summary
THE FAILURE OF REQUISITIONS
Under the Articles of Confederation, the national-level government could raise funds for the national needs only by requisitions on the states. Each state was required to pay its quota of the total requisition into the federal treasury by raising revenue under its own tax system and collecting it with its own tax officials. Requisitions were mandatory in theory under the Articles – “sacred & obligatory,” as James Madison put it. With the end of the war, however, the state legislatures began treating requisitions as “mere recommendations,” even as “pompous petitions for charity” and they did not pay. In the requisition of 1786 – the last before the Constitution – Congress mandated that states pay $3,800,000, but it collected only $663.
Some states simply ignored the requisitions. Some sent them back to Congress for amendment, more to the states' liking. New Jersey said it had paid enough tax by paying the tariffs or “imposts” on goods imported through New York or Philadelphia and it repudiated the requisition in full. Congress's Board of Treasury had concluded in June 1786 that there was “no reasonable hope” that the requisitions would yield enough to allow Congress to make payments on the foreign debts, even assuming that nothing would be paid on the domestic war debt. George Washington reported,
Requisitions are a perfect nihility, where thirteen sovereign independent disunited States are in the habit of discussion and refusing compliance with them at their option. Requisitions are actually little better than a jest and a bye word throughout the land.
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked StatesThe Meaning of the Founders' Constitution, pp. 15 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005