The first draft of the Articles of Confederation between the States was prepared by John Dickinson in the early summer of 1776 and was reported. Owing to the pressure of war it was then laid aside until the autumn of 1777. By that time the feeling in favour of State sovereignty had so increased that the impossibility of securing assent to the articles in any form had begun to be feared. But the document was completed and submitted to the States in November 1777, when all were encouraged by the news of Bur goyne's surrender. The system for which provision was made in this document was a "confederacy," or "firm league of friend ship" between the States. The Congress was to be continued, and was to consist of delegates annually appointed by the legislature of each State and paid by their States. No attempt was made to create an executive for the confederacy, though authority was given to Congress to appoint a council of State which should manage general affairs, especially during recesses of Congress. To Congress various general powers were entrusted, as deciding on peace and war and superintending the conduct of the same, build ing a navy, controlling diplomatic relations, coining money and emitting bills of credit, establishing post offices, regulating Indian trade, adjusting boundary disputes between the States. The finan cial powers entrusted to Congress included those of borrowing money and determining necessary expenditures, but not the power to tax. For supplies the general government had to depend on requisitions from the States. The same system also had to suffice for the raising and equipment of troops. Congress could not make its laws or orders effective in any matter of importance. This was simply a continuation of the policy under which the revolution was being conducted. The control of trade was prac tically left with the States, the Americans in this matter failing, to live up to the requirements of the British system. The pre dominance of the States was further ensured by the provision that no votes, except those for daily adjournment, could be carried without the assent of a majority of all the States, and no im portant measure without the consent of nine States. But a com mon citizenship was declared to exist, and Congress received authority to establish a court of appeal which might pass finally on all disputes between States. Taken as a whole, the Articles of Confederation would bear favourable comparison with other schemes of their kind, and they fairly represented the stage of development to which the American States had then attained.
The West.—We have seen that, on the whole, the attitude of Great Britain, after the peace of 1763, was not favourable to the colonization of the Mississippi valley. To the colonists the Quebec Act gained in offensiveness by seeming to imply that it was intended to exclude them from the West. But all such plans were swept away by the outbreak of the War of Independence. Already, before the beginning of hostilities, emigrants had begun to flock across the mountains. Plans were on foot for the establishment of a number of commonwealths, or proprietary provinces, as the case might be. Daniel Boone and his associates pushed farther west into the Kentucky region, and there it was proposed to estab lish the commonwealth of Transylvania. Other similar projects were started, all repeating in one form or another the political methods which were used when the seaboard colonies were first settled. The backwoodsmen who managed these enterprises were extreme individualists, believed in the propriety of resistance to governments, and were in full sympathy with the War of Inde pendence. The States which had claims in the West opposed the founding of independent settlements there and, if possible, induced the settlers to be content with the status of counties within some one of the eastern States. After the beginning of the War of Inde
pendence, the British from Detroit incited Indian raids for the purpose of destroying or driving out the settlers, especially in Kentucky. These provoked the important expeditions of George Rogers Clark in 1778 and 1779. With a force of Virginians he seized Kaskaskia and later, after a long march, captured Vincennes and compelled General Henry Hamilton, who had come with a relief force from Detroit, to surrender. This secured to the Americans a permanent hold upon the north-west. But Spain, after she entered upon the war, was determined, if possible, to wrest the valley of the Mississippi from the British and to keep all, or the larger part of it, for herself. To that end, operating from New Orleans, her troops took possession of Natchez, and other posts on the lower Mississippi, and occupied Mobile and Pensacola.
Within the Con federacy a fundamental line of cleavage was that between the large and small States. It was jealousy on the part of the small ones, their fear lest they might be absorbed by their larger neigh bours, which had necessitated the adoption of the plan that in the Congress the delegates should vote by States. When the articles were referred to the States for ratification, the difficulty reappeared. Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, with Virginia and the three States to the south of it, had large claims to territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, which were without hope of westward extension, hesitated to enter the Confederacy, if the large States were to be still further in creased by additions to their areas of vast stretches of western country. They insisted that before ratification the States which had claims to western lands should surrender these for the com mon benefit of the United States. Maryland insisted upon this until, in the end, the cause of State equality and of nationality triumphed. Congress declared that the ceded lands should be formed into States, which should become members of the union with the same rights as other States. When in 1781 the course of action had become possible, Maryland ratified the articles and they came into effect.
So far as the north American continent was concerned, the character of the last stage of the struggle with Great Britain was determined by the fact that the British re solved to transfer the main seat of war to the southern States, in the hope that Georgia and South Carolina might be detached from the union. At the close of 1778 Savannah was captured. In Sep tember 1779 D'Estaing returned and assaulted Savannah, but, failing to capture it, sailed for France. In 178o Clinton sailed from New York, besieged Charleston with a force much su perior to that of Lincoln, and captured it (May 12). State gov ernment in South Carolina ceased. But the chance of detaching those States from the union and of bringing the war in that re gion to an end was finally lost by the British. This was chiefly due to an order which recalled the paroles of many of those who had surrendered at Charleston and required that they should per form military service under the British. The attempt to enforce this order, with the barbarities of Colonel Banastre Tarleton and certain Tory bands, provoked a bloody partisan conflict in the upper districts, especially of South Carolina, which contributed more than any other cause to run the scale against the British in the remote south. By the winter of 1781 they were forced back to Charleston and Savannah.