You are not currently logged in. Please create an account or log in to view the full course.
The US in 1783
- About
- Transcript
- Cite
US Constitution – Background and Constitutional Convention, 1783-87
This course offers an in-depth exploration of the historical background to the US Constitution, up to and including the Constitutional Convention of 1787. In the first lecture, we consider the US in 1783, at the end of the War of Independence, focusing on the internal and external problems facing the country as a post-colonial state. We look in-depth at the Declaration of Independence and consider its implications as the ‘mission statement’ of the new United States. In the second lecture, we explore the strengths and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation in enabling a form of proto-federal government. Then, in the third lecture, we explore in-depth the problems facing the United States under the Articles of Confederation and the movement to replace the Articles of Confederation with a more robust constitution. In the fourth lecture, we explore the key problems and compromises reached during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. This leads us to our fifth and final lecture, in which we consider the document of the Constitution itself.
The US in 1783
In this module, we consider the US at the end of the War of Independence, focusing in particular on: (i) the internal and external problems facing the country as a post-colonial state; (ii) the Declaration of Independence and its implications as the ‘mission statement’ of the new United States; (iii) the questions remained over how much authority "the people" could exercise in practice; (iv) the distinction between populist and elitist attitudes to the nature of political authority; (v) the US in historical context as a fragile power with a newly vast area of territory to govern.
I'm Frank Galeano,
00:00:05and I'm professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh.
00:00:07Today I'll be discussing the origins of the American
00:00:10Constitution and the drafting of the American Constitution.
00:00:14So I have to begin.
00:00:18If we're going to understand the American Constitution in this first section,
00:00:19I wanna provide the context for the movement
00:00:23for Constitutional Reform in the United States,
00:00:26and in order to do that,
00:00:28we really have to go back to 17 76
00:00:29and the adoption of the American Declaration of Independence.
00:00:32So in 17 76 right after the outbreak of the War of American Independence,
00:00:35the Congress in the United States,
00:00:40which was then the only national government in the country,
00:00:43issued a declaration declaring
00:00:45the United States to be independent of Great Britain.
00:00:47They had to win their independence. Declaring independence was one thing.
00:00:51Winning independence was another,
00:00:53and they had to win their independence in the course of a very long and prolonged war,
00:00:55about which I'll say something in a minute.
00:00:58But that declaration of independence is really important
00:01:00is the foundational document of the United States,
00:01:02and in many respects, in order to understand the Constitution of 17 87.
00:01:06We have to take a minute to just consider that declaration.
00:01:10So I'm going to read just a very brief passage from that to you.
00:01:13This will probably be familiar to you.
00:01:16This is the mission statement of the United States.
00:01:18In many respects,
00:01:20this is This is the foundational cradle document of of the New American Republic.
00:01:21So some of these phrases will be familiar to you. But we need to, uh, begin here.
00:01:26I think so. The Declaration of Independence begins with an assertion.
00:01:31We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,
00:01:35that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
00:01:39That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
00:01:43So that's the tagline for the United States.
00:01:45That's the That's the line everybody knows.
00:01:48And to a certain extent,
00:01:50the history of the United States is a is a dialogue with that statement.
00:01:51That assertion of universal equality and an
00:01:56assessment of the degree to which the United
00:01:58States has lived up to or unfortunately in many cases failed to live up to
00:02:00that statement.
00:02:04What frequently doesn't get as much attention are the next
00:02:06couple of sentences that follow that statement of universal equality.
00:02:09And these are important, I think, in understanding the constitutional
00:02:13developments we'll be talking about today that to secure these rights,
00:02:16governments are instituted among men
00:02:20deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that
00:02:22whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends,
00:02:27it is the right of the people to alter
00:02:30or to abolish it and to institute new government,
00:02:32laying its foundation on such principles,
00:02:36and organising its powers in such form as to them them
00:02:39shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
00:02:42So in many respects, I would argue to you today I suggest I want to suggest to you
00:02:46that those
00:02:50that second phrase is as important as
00:02:52that more famous assertion of universal equality.
00:02:54Because this is the nuts and bolts of what the American
00:02:57Revolution will be about and what the Constitution will be about.
00:02:59The United States begins with a statement of universal equality,
00:03:02at least for men.
00:03:07Uh, but it then says in its in its Declaration of Independence,
00:03:08if your government doesn't guarantee those rights of life,
00:03:12liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
00:03:16you have a right or even an obligation to change your government.
00:03:18And it's the changing of the government that the American Revolution is all about.
00:03:22And that's crucial to understanding the story of the American Constitution.
00:03:27The Americans,
00:03:31those British Americans who rebelled in 17 75 declared independence in 17 76
00:03:33could have created any government they wanted. They could have remained.
00:03:38They could have continued to be a monarchy under a different monarch,
00:03:42King George the third.
00:03:45But they chose, as the Declaration of Independence states,
00:03:46to embrace Republicanism and by a by Republicanism.
00:03:49What I mean is the American Republic would be a polity, a political entity
00:03:53in which
00:04:00sovereignty, political power derived from the people.
00:04:01So no longer would sovereignty come from from a crown or from a monarch.
00:04:05No longer a political authority come from a monarch.
00:04:08But it would originate with the people.
00:04:10And the people, according to the Declaration of Independence,
00:04:12have the right and indeed the obligation to
00:04:15ensure that they create a government that guarantees,
00:04:19as the declaration says,
00:04:21their safety and happiness and to some extent the American revolution can be seen,
00:04:22and the drafting of the US Constitution which we're going to
00:04:27examined today can be seen simply as a debate about just how you
00:04:30create a government that guarantees the safety and happiness of your citizens.
00:04:35And that's the fundamental political and constitutional and an illegal
00:04:40question that confronted the citizens of this New Republic in
00:04:4417 83. So the Americans, of course, began their war in 17 7.
00:04:49The War of Independence in 17 75 declared independence in
00:04:5317 76 but they didn't actually win the war.
00:04:56Britain didn't acknowledge their independence until 17 83 and the peace of Paris,
00:04:59which ended the War of American independence.
00:05:04And that kind of signals the moment when Americans will really begin to think about,
00:05:06um, how to govern themselves.
00:05:11They've had lots of experiments during the war itself.
00:05:14As I said,
00:05:17that Declaration of Independence necessitated creating new constitutions,
00:05:17but they didn't really seriously engaged with the question of
00:05:21a national constitution until after the peace of 17 83.
00:05:26Now it should be said the
00:05:31American revolutionaries were divided over a number of issues.
00:05:35But on this political and constitutional question,
00:05:38we might think of them and these are broad categories, and I wouldn't want.
00:05:40I wouldn't want to overstate the significance of these categories,
00:05:44but we might put the revolutionaries in two camps.
00:05:47When it comes to constitutional questions,
00:05:49there are kind of populists who believe that sovereignty both.
00:05:52Sorry, I should say both groups believe sovereignty derives from the people,
00:05:56the questions they confront,
00:06:00our who are the people and how
00:06:01much authorities should the people actually exercise.
00:06:03And I think one group we can consider populists
00:06:06want to create political institutions that are closer to
00:06:08the people in which the people and again this
00:06:11is the people themselves are a contestant term.
00:06:14We're talking about white male property holders.
00:06:16In most cases, uh,
00:06:18the people should exercise as much political authority as possible.
00:06:20Another group, which we might think of as elitists, have a more elite
00:06:24oriented conception of the republic,
00:06:28whereby the people might exercise their
00:06:30sovereignty or should exercise their sovereignty,
00:06:32say, through the franchise through voting.
00:06:34But basically they'll select among their betters the
00:06:37people who are going to rule them,
00:06:39and then they should step aside and just let them get on with ruling them.
00:06:40And so there's a difference of opinion between and among the revolutionaries
00:06:43about the nature of politics and the nature of political authority.
00:06:47And that's an important background, I think, to understanding
00:06:51the debate over the U. S.
00:06:54Constitution as it emerges in the over the course of the 17 eighties,
00:06:56which is our main focus today.
00:06:59The other thing to bear in mind is that in 17
00:07:0183 when the War of Independence comes to an end,
00:07:03the United States is confronted by a number of challenges.
00:07:07One is it has massive debts as a result of the war.
00:07:09And there's a great deal of political sorry,
00:07:13financial and economic instability which, as we'll see,
00:07:15will lead to some political instability.
00:07:18It's also got, uh,
00:07:21quite broad borders.
00:07:24The British were incredibly generous to the United States during the
00:07:25peace negotiations in Paris in 17 82 in 17 83.
00:07:28This was not because the British for
00:07:31being magnanimous towards their former subjects.
00:07:34Quite the contrary.
00:07:36The British believed that the American Republic would fail,
00:07:37and the reason it gave it such generous borders was because it was assumed
00:07:40that within a year or two it would be getting it all back,
00:07:44and it didn't want free answer Spain to get that territory,
00:07:47so Britain's kindness to the colonies was not really kindness.
00:07:49However, this means that the New American Republic has this vast expanse.
00:07:53Its borders extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and north,
00:07:57basically from the Great Lakes from the modern
00:08:02border between the United States and Canada,
00:08:04south to the border between the borders the northern border of Florida.
00:08:06Today. So it's it's most of the eastern third of North America today.
00:08:11Uh, what was the where the the new American Republican compass?
00:08:16That vast territory,
00:08:21which means the government has a vast amount of territory to govern its got A.
00:08:22It doesn't have a lot of money to do so,
00:08:27and it's facing internal and external pressures.
00:08:29And it's against that backdrop that we need to look at the, um,
00:08:32American experiments with Constitution making.
00:08:35Because this context is important for understanding
00:08:37the debates.
00:08:40Americans have those elitists and populist that I mentioned
00:08:40a moment ago about the nature of government.
00:08:43So they're doing this not an abstract way. These aren't philosophers considering
00:08:45abstract questions,
00:08:50but they're doing so in the context of as pragmatic politicians seeking to address
00:08:52some of the problems I just mentioned
00:08:57
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Cogliano, F. (2022, January 05). US Constitution – Background and Constitutional Convention, 1783-87 - The US in 1783 [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/us-constitution-background-and-constitutional-convention-1783-87
MLA style
Cogliano, F. "US Constitution – Background and Constitutional Convention, 1783-87 – The US in 1783." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 05 Jan 2022, https://massolit.io/courses/us-constitution-background-and-constitutional-convention-1783-87