American Revolutionary Ideals: Constitution vs. Articles of Confederation

The United States Constitution better fulfils the ideals of the American Revolution by providing a system which allows people to have the basic rights of involvement of their government which cannot be removed or changed by state legislatures, and sets in place a necessary system of checks and balances to prevent tyranny, thereby again helping to preserve the original ideals of the American Revolution. The Constitution guaranteed individual state inhabitants voting rights for their representatives, thereby expanding the role of the people in choosing who would represent them. By establishing separated powers of the legislative, executive and judiciary branches, the Constitution was able to balance different powers and make sure that no one branch could become too powerful. Finally, the Constitution created a stronger sense of unity between the states, allowing them to fight as needed in order to preserve their liberties.

The issue of voting rights were a key place in which the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution differed greatly, and the Constitution was able to gain the upper hand in allowing the people to choose their representatives. By the articles of Confederation, although the people had rights to choose their local governments, “delegates” were “annually appointed in such manner as the legislature of each state” directed (“Articles of Confederation,” 2). Each state therefore had the power to have different levels of participation of the people in the election of delegates. Some states could have people who voted legislatures in for longer periods of time, and these legislatures in turn could vote more delegates (since there were more years) into Congress – without the direct approval from the people for the delegates who were representing the state. Even though the Constitution was not able to completely abandon the idea of each state choosing who could vote for legislatures – and how long these terms were – they were able to establish a system by which the people could directly vote for their representatives in the House of Representatives. In addition to this, senators were elected by the state legislatures themselves, but allowing the people to directly elect representatives in Congress was a large step towards the ideals of the American Revolution – in which the people in power had consent of the governed. This can be seen in Section 1 of Article I of the Constitution, which states that “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.” By directly allowing the people to choose their representatives on a national level with a fixed voting schedule which was the same for all states across the nation, the Constitution was able to bring the new nation closer to the American Revolution ideal of popular sovereignty than the Articles of Confederation.

While the Articles of Confederation did limit decisions of war and peace to Congress, individual state legislatures could independently decide on most other issues and there was not always a strict set of checks and balances in place – meaning that Congress had no power in order to oppose states which were descending into tyranny. The Constitution established a set of checks and balances through careful separation of powers, preventing any one branch in the central government from seizing power, and also keeping the federal and state governments in check such that none of them became too powerful. In the Articles of Confederation, “each state” retained “its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right” (“Articles of Confederation,” 1), and the only true powers of Congress were to rule on interstate relations, wars and treaties. Even though it did have some decision-making powers, Congress had no powers to enforce any decisions. By the Articles of Confederation, Congress could not force the individual states to fund a war, so the repayment of debts after the revolution became impossible with this agreement. This stark difference between the powers in the hands of state legislatures and Congress meant that there was little separation of powers – and regulation over individual liberties. If a state decided to exert tyrannic powers over its citizens, Congress could neither force it to stop nor could it (if it were able to declare that the state should not do it) enforce its actions. To add to this, each state legislature was able to retain its own structure, so different states had different amounts of power in different branches of its legislature, meaning that some branches dominated others – and the lack of regulation in individual state legislature branches and the balance between the power of state legislations and Congress meant that branches of state legislatures could easily go against the ideals of the American Revolution with little opposition from the less powerful branches and from the central government. On the other hand, the Constitution was able to minimise the potential of one branch becoming too powerful (and thereby limit the possibility of tyranny) by balancing the power of the federal government with that of state legislatures, and by balancing powers within the federal government itself. In the Constitution, individual state legislatures retained several powers the federal government now had the power to make many more decisions such as the right “to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin” (“Constitution,” 2). The federal government also gained the power of being able to enforce their regulations – which in turn allowed them to have enough power to balance that of the individual states. Through this system, the states could limit the federal government (to an extent) from becoming tyrannical, whilst the federal government could limit the states from becoming tyrannical, thereby helping sustain the individual liberties which had been so essential to the fight for independence. To add to this, the separation of the federal government into the judiciary, legislative and executive branches allowed no one branch of the government to become more powerful than the others. Each branch relied on the other branches, and if one tried to become too powerful the other two branches could stop this. These checks and balances within the federal government and between the federal and state governments, established by the Constitution, allowed the United States to preserve its values of individual liberties for the people.

The abilities to fight for liberty were an essential value of the American Revolution, in which the states came together to fight for their rights, but the Articles of Confederation in many ways loosened this essential bond, thereby also loosening its emphasis on liberty and unity between the new nation, a bond and emphasis which was again rebuilt by the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation specified that “no state shall engage in any war without the consent of the united States in congress assembled” (“Articles of Confederation,” 3), but the lack of the ability of the central government to enforce this meant that conflicts were often not dealt with properly. Since the central government could not raise taxes or force states to provide it with funds, it could neither enforce a state not to engage in war, nor fund any essential wars, thereby diminishing the nation’s ability to fight for its liberty. It is likely that, had a large war occurred during this time and the government had not been switched, there would have been drastic consequences for the nation. By not giving the central government any way to enforce its policies (and no way to raise funds to enforce them), the Articles of Confederation created an un-united collection of states and made it difficult to preserve liberty on the battlefront. On the other hand, the Constitution established the central government as a uniting force between the states. Now, the states were part of one larger union which could work together. The ability of the Congress “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States” (“Constitution,” 2), meant that it could unite the nation quickly and allow the nation to preserve its liberty and independence. By doing this, the Constitution was able to keep to its values if individual liberties, independence and unity as one nation.

In conclusion, the policies of the Constitution wer able to uphold some of the key values of the American Revolution – among which were the ideas of individual liberties, independence, the separation of powers and unity – in a way which could not be done by the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution was able to preserve the liberty of the people within the new nation by allowing for direct vote from the people of their representatives, separation of powers to prevent tyranny, and a strong central government which enabled the nation to fight for its liberty and independence as was needed. While the Articles of Confederation did allow the states rights, they failed to carefully regulate the rights and the lack of checks and balances made abuses of power from the states difficult to prevent – something which the strong central government established by the Constitution could fight against.