‘Vested with full power to preserve the republic from harm’
The new nation tasked Congress with the power to fulfil the service misÂsions that nations, from their founding, were obliged to fulfil in order to buttress their claim to international recognition.
As Madison and HamilÂton reasoned, this proposition was implied by the axiom that a nation preÂserves its existence at all costs and resists against all threats mounted against it, whether of internal or external origin. ‘The manner in which Congress was appointed would warrant, and the public good required’, Hamilton reasoned, ‘that they should have considered themselves as vested with full power to preserve the republic from harm’.18Madison took the lead in guiding his fellow committee members through the following step-by-step analysis. State legislatures must fulfil their obligations
as stakeholders in Congress by abandoning resistance to the evolution of national government. The committee’s draft of 12 March 1781 made the leap from the government’s duty to preserve itself down to the level at which serÂvice missions are funded. A ‘general and implied power is vested in the United States in Congress assembled’, Madison declared, ‘to enforce and carry into effect all the Articles of the said Confederation’. Moreover, he continued, every ‘State shall abide by the determinations of the United States’. MadiÂson’s approach echoed the reasoning Hamilton offered to Duane, referenced above, in Hamilton’s letter dated 3 September 1780.
On 16 March, Duane, Madison and Varnum brought in their report. Congress took up their recommendations on 2 May 1781, approving MadiÂson’s declaration that Congress enjoyed a ‘general and implied power... to enforce’ its laws over state objections.19 Congress then appointed a grand committee (one delegate from every state) to lay out the necessary details.
Congress instructed this committee to consider new laws and constitutional amendments to fortify Constitution I from state interference.Rule 19 of the 4 May 1781 procedural rules authorised Congress to serve as the supreme adjudicative body for the purpose of resolving disÂputes between the national government and individual state legislatures. The new procedure tasked a grand committee to hear and report possible enforcement action against a recalcitrant state. Congress would publicise this indictment of a state’s disobedience, if only to isolate the malefactor and discourage that state’s legislators from soliciting support from other legislatures.
One may trace the developments of 4 May backwards to 16 March, the date on which the Continental Congress approved the doctrine of implied powers. This came to the assembly from Madison’s report and, via Duane, Hamilton’s letter of 3 September 1780.
Bold action was the order of the day. On 26 May 1781, the Continental Congress chartered the Bank of North America. This was the first of AlexÂander Hamilton’s projects to be enacted into law.20 The former Captain of Artillery departed George Washington’s staff in February 1781 and, in his leisure hours, wrote the bill chartering America’s first national bank. His allies managed the bill through the Continental Congress. Constitution I did not authorise banking legislation as a national service mission. Resistance to Hamilton’s bank crumbled, even if Madison voted against the idea in the Virginia delegation, as noted. After this exertion Hamilton returned to soldiering, leading the night-time charge on Redoubt No. 10 at Yorktown.
Congress did not hesitate, on other occasions, to depart from the arrangeÂments and settlements expressed in the text of Constitution I. On 2 JanuÂary 1781, Virginia ceded its claims north of the Ohio River to Congress; Governor Thomas Jefferson signed the transmittal.21 The lands Virginia ceded became known as the Northwest Territory.
This concession to the national interest - and the threat posed by the Royal Navy’s incursion into Chesapeake Bay - inspired state legislators in Annapolis to approve‘The eternal rules of justice and reason’ 57 Maryland’s ratification of the Articles of Confederation. It was the last state to do so. Congress committed itself, by accepting Maryland’s conditional ratification, to settle America’s new western ‘back country’ and exploit the frontier land acquired as the nation’s patrimony.22
These events capped a lengthy progress of state-by-state settlements: states with extravagant claims to western lands, in some cases transcontiÂnental in dimension, ceded these claims to the national government. This process was barely underway as of 1781. Congress did not wrap up these boundary adjustments and cessions until 1800.23
Through these events - beginning with state cessions of claims to western lands - the transactional nature of the First War for American IndepenÂdence made itself evident. Congress promised to use the western lands (it acquired by cession) to purchase the manpower required to win the war. This lessened demands on state fiscs. In any event, if the United States lost the war, each province - on recolonisation - would find its existing royal charters replaced or seriously modified. Ceding western lands gave nothing away that was not already seriously at risk when provincial delegations at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia declared state independence from the homeland.
Congress first promised the Continental Army that it would ‘make proÂvision for granting lands’ to ranks and officers on 16 September 1776.24 Another three years would transpire before Congress urged states to cede western lands, their ‘back’ countries. These cessions enabled Congress to fulfil promises previously made.25 The running theme for the primitive phase of the national government may be summarized: act like a nation today and fill in the details tomorrow. In this manner, Congress motivated men to risk limb and life to claim scrip that entitled the soldier-claimant to stake (at least) a 100-acre estate anywhere rivers flowed westward into the MisÂsissippi. Then, as now, 100 acres to have and to hold was something worth fighting for.26