The Articles of Confederation, Lesson 2: The Thirteen Articles, Clause by Clause

How to Read the Text

The Articles of Confederation are short. Printed in full, with the preamble and the closing ratification, they run about 3,400 words. Thirteen numbered articles and a signature block are all there is. Nothing in them is hidden, and most of it is plain English. What makes the text hard is that nearly every clause was written against a worry, and the worry is seldom stated. A reader who sees "No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties" learns little until he knows that Congress, in 1776, had drafted treaty proposals for France and Spain and wanted no state tariff to spoil them.

This lesson reads the text one article at a time and asks two questions of each. What changed on the way from the 1776 draft to the 1777 text? And what happened when Congress and the states tried to live under the clause? The answers come mostly from the Journals of the Continental Congress, the day-by-day record kept by Charles Thomson, the secretary, and printed in thirty-four volumes by the Government Printing Office between 1904 and 1937.¹ The Journals are not a clean source. The printed text is a transcription from manuscripts, the scanned copies this lesson used contain optical-reading errors, and the editors say in their notes that some entries were written up after the fact. Page numbers are given here as ranges for that reason. Each is a place to start reading, not a place to stop.

The preamble comes first. It greets "all to whom these Presents shall come" on behalf of "the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names," and it names the thirteen states one at a time, from "New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" down to Georgia.² Two features of that opening matter later. The document is a compact among named states, and a state that was not named could not join without an amendment. And the closing paragraph has the delegates ratify "in the name and in behalf of our respective constituents," who were the state legislatures. The people of the United States appear in the Constitution's first three words. They do not appear in the Articles as a party.

The quoted text follows the Avalon Project transcription, checked against the National Archives page. Avalon's text has a few typing slips ("powerreserved," "attendence"), which this lesson corrects when it quotes. Eighteenth-century spelling ("cloath," "judgement," "stile") is kept where the clause is quoted.³

One more thing before the text. Congress adopted the Articles on November 15, 1777, the delegates signed in stages from July 9, 1778, and the document took effect when Maryland signed on March 1, 1781. Lesson 1 of this series tells that story. By the time any article had to work as law, Congress had been running a war for nearly six years under rules that were close to, but not the same as, the ones in the document. Some clauses were tested the day they took effect. Others, as the Journals show, were barely tested at all.

Articles I and II: A Name and a Rule of Construction

Article I: "The Stile of this Confederacy"

Article I says that "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'." Dickinson's draft of July 12, 1776 had used the word "Name" and the word "Colonies," and the printed report of August 20, 1776 already says "States."⁴ The change from "Name" to "Stile" is small, and "stile" meant style or title. The article gave the thirteen a shared title that Congress could use in its treaties, its commissions and its laws.

It is worth noticing what the first article leaves out. It does not call the confederation a nation or a government. The words that carry the idea come later: "league of friendship" in Article III, "the Union shall be perpetual" in Article XIII, and "perpetual Union" in the title of the whole. Whether the thing the document created was a league of sovereign states or something closer to a country was the question Americans argued over for the next eleven years, and a good deal longer after that.

Article II: "expressly delegated"

Article II reads: "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."²

The key word is "expressly." Dickinson's draft had a weaker rule. Its Article III let each colony keep "as much of its present Laws, Rights and Customs, as it may think fit," and reserve to itself "the sole and exclusive Regulation and Government of its internal Police." Thomas Burke of North Carolina saw the gap. He wrote to his governor that the draft's wording "left it in the power of the future Congress or General Council to explain away every right belonging to the States." His amendment held that sovereign power belonged to the states, and that powers they handed to Congress had to be "expressly enumerated." Congress adopted it by a large majority, a vote Lesson 1 sets out.⁵

The article holds two rules that pull against each other in practice. The first is a statement of state sovereignty, meant as a limit on Congress. The second is a rule of construction. A power not "expressly delegated" stayed with the state. A reader asking whether Congress could charter a bank, regulate trade between the states, tax imports, or hold a state to a treaty had to find words in the text, and the words were not always there.

The Constitution does not contain the word "expressly." When the House took up the amendment that became the Tenth on August 18, 1789, Thomas Tucker of South Carolina moved to insert "expressly" before "delegated," so that the amendment would read as Article II did. James Madison objected. As the record has him, he said "it was impossible to confine a government to the exercise of express powers; there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication, unless the Constitution descended to recount every minutia." The House rejected the motion.⁶ Whatever the Tenth Amendment means, its drafters knew the wording of Article II, considered it, and chose not to repeat it.

Article II in practice: the Bank of North America

The cleanest test of "expressly" came on the last day of 1781. Robert Morris, the Superintendent of Finance, wanted a national bank. Congress had approved a plan for one in May 1781, and by December Morris had a charter in mind but no body to grant it. A bank needs a legal personality: a corporation that can own property, sue and be sued. Pennsylvania's legislature was the body that normally issued charters, and it would not act before spring. Congress was not a state and had no express power to create corporations.

On December 31, 1781 a committee reported that Pennsylvania's charter was not expected before the middle of March, and that "the Bank cannot operate without an act of incorporation from Congress itself." The ordinance Congress passed that day recites that "the exigencies of the United States render it indispensably necessary that such an act be immediately passed." It incorporated the Bank of North America. On the same day Congress recommended that the state legislatures pass laws to support the bank, as the May 26 resolution had asked.⁷

The ordinance shows a pattern that returns again and again in the Journals. Congress, with no express power to do a thing it thought the war required, did the thing, said why, and asked the states to confirm it by their own laws. The recital justified the act by necessity and cited no clause. A reader who thinks the Articles barred every action not spelled out has to explain this ordinance. A reader who thinks Congress did whatever it pleased has to explain why it bothered to ask the states for supporting laws.

Articles III and IV: A League of Friendship and the Rights of Travelers

Article III

Article III is the promise at the center of the Confederation. "The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever."²

The wording is close to Franklin's 1775 sketch, which also called the union a "firm League of Friendship," and to Dickinson's draft.⁸ Dickinson wrote a question in the margin of his draft beside this article: should the first article "provide for a Toleration and agt Establishments hereafter to be made?"⁹ Nothing came of it. The final Article III says nothing about religion except that an attack made "on account of religion" would trigger the duty to help.

The duty to assist has an unusual feature. It binds the states "severally," each to each. Congress is not named as the party who enforces the promise. Article VI later gives Congress control over any state's decision to make war, but Article III gives Congress no stated way to compel a state to help a neighbor. That gap mattered in 1786 and 1787, when Massachusetts faced an armed rising of its own citizens. Lesson 5 takes up the episode.

Article IV, first paragraph: "privileges and immunities"

Article IV was meant to make the thirteen states one country for the people who lived in them. Its first paragraph says: "the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively."²

Three details deserve attention. The first is the phrase "free inhabitants." Enslaved people were not free inhabitants. The Constitution's Article IV, section 2 uses a different phrase, "the Citizens of each State," and the question of who counted as one fell later to the courts. In June 1778, when states offered amendments to the text, South Carolina moved to insert the word "white" before "free inhabitants." The motion lost, with two states for it, eight against and one divided.¹⁰ The ratified text left the question of who counted as "free" to each state.

The second detail is the list of exceptions. "Paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice" could be shut out. The clause let a state keep people it considered a burden or a danger from claiming the benefits of the article.

The third is the equal-treatment rule. An inhabitant of another state pays "the same duties, impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants" of the state he visits. The article then adds two limits. A restriction may not stop a person from removing property he imported into one state to another state "of which the owner is an inhabitant," and no state may tax the property of the United States. The first limit would have mattered to a New Jersey merchant who landed goods at a New York wharf for his own use at home.

Article IV, second paragraph: fugitives from justice

"If any person guilty of, or charged with, treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the United States, he shall, upon demand of the Governor or executive power of the State from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the State having jurisdiction of his offense."²

The clause was meant to stop a state line from sheltering a fugitive. It is the ancestor of the Constitution's Article IV, section 2, which reaches a person charged with "Treason, Felony, or other Crime," a wider phrase than "other high misdemeanor." The drafting history appears in the Journal for November 8, 1777. A committee brought in four new articles, and the third was a fugitive clause that sent a suspect back "upon Application of the Governor or Chief Justice of the former State." The Journal's notes record that this paragraph was struck out in Congress. The text that took its place is the second paragraph of Article IV.¹¹

The Journals show how the clause worked, and where it left Congress out of the picture, in a case that came before Congress in September 1787. A Captain Reily had sailed from Dublin for Baltimore on March 17, 1787 with more than a hundred people aboard, passengers and redemptioners. By the Massachusetts governor's account, some of them died of cruel treatment during the passage, and on July 14 Reily put about ninety ashore at a harbor near Machias, where only one family lived, and kept some of their property. The governor asked Congress to step in.

John Jay, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reported on September 28. He wrote that Reily's conduct was "judicially cognizable by the United States," since a felony, "if not Murder," on the high seas was within federal jurisdiction, and that Congress's ordinance of April 5, 1781 "provided, though perhaps imperfectly" for such cases. Massachusetts, he said, could use Article IV: "they have by the 4th Article of the Confederation a Right to demand the Offender from any of the States in which he may be found." He added that "it does not appear to your Secretary that Congress can pass any authoritative Act on the Subject." He proposed that the papers go to the Massachusetts delegates, who would pass them to Maryland's executive with a request that Reily be seized and delivered up as soon as a formal demand arrived.¹² The clause worked as a rule between governors. Congress could carry the papers.

Article IV, third paragraph: full faith and credit

The last paragraph is a single sentence. "Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State."²

Congress added it on November 8, 1777, in the same report, and the Journal prints it as "Agreed." The committee's version had a second half, which would have let a creditor sue on another state's judgment if he posted bond against a later reversal. Congress struck that half.¹¹ The Constitution's version, Article IV, section 1, repeats the first sentence and adds that "Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

The addition answers a problem that the Confederation Congress identified within months of the Articles taking effect. On August 22, 1781 a committee reported that the Confederation "requires execution" in several places, among them "declaring the method of exemplifying records and the operation of the Acts and judicial proceedings of the Courts of one State" in the others.¹³ This lesson found no later act of Congress supplying a method. The first federal statute that did so is the Act of May 26, 1790, which set the way each state's acts and court records are authenticated so that they receive in every court the faith and credit they have at home.¹⁴

Article V: Delegates and the Vote

Article V is the Confederation's constitution in miniature. It says who sits in Congress, for how long, who pays them, how they vote and what protects them. It has five paragraphs.

Appointment and recall

"For the most convenient management of the general interests of the United States, delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislatures of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress on the first Monday in November, in every year, with a power reserved to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead for the remainder of the year."²

Congress was the creature of the legislatures. A legislature chose how to pick its delegates and could take any of them back. The first Monday of November began the "federal year," and that is why the Journals record the election of a President in November: John Hanson on November 5, 1781, Elias Boudinot on November 4, 1782, Thomas Mifflin in November 1783, Richard Henry Lee on November 30, 1784, John Hancock on November 23, 1785, Nathaniel Gorham on June 6, 1786, Arthur St. Clair on February 2, 1787 and Cyrus Griffin on January 22, 1788.¹⁵ The dates drift from the first Monday in November, and the drift tells its own story. In 1784 Congress did not have enough states present to elect a President until November 30. In 1785 Hancock was elected on November 23 but was not present, and David Ramsay was chosen to preside in his place. Gorham's election came in June 1786 and St. Clair's in February 1787. Lesson 3 returns to those months.

Delegation size and the three-in-six rule

"No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor more than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the United States, for which he, or another for his benefit, receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind."²

Three rules sit in one sentence. A state could send two to seven delegates. A delegate could serve no more than three years in any six. And a delegate who held a paid federal office was disqualified. Lesson 1 gives the drafting history: Dickinson's draft had no such limits, and Congress adopted the term limit on October 14, 1777. The rule that every state must send at least two did not describe how the states behaved. A state with one delegate present, as North Carolina had in February 1777, still voted.

The three-in-six rule had its test in 1784. Samuel Osgood of Massachusetts had been appointed on February 14, 1781, took his seat on June 12, 1781, and was reappointed for one-year terms in 1781, 1782 and 1783. In March 1784 a committee of Roger Sherman, Thomas Jefferson, John Beatty, Jeremiah Townley Chase and Hugh Williamson reported that, since the Articles were ratified on March 1, 1781, Osgood had sat his three years and was "incapable of being a delegate in Congress" until a period had passed. Elbridge Gerry moved a substitute. It argued that members who sat in 1781 were appointed "previous to and not under the Articles," and that the first federal year began on the first Monday of November 1781, which would leave Osgood eligible until the first Monday of November 1784. Congress voted, on the yeas and nays, not to postpone for the substitute. It then voted on the committee's report and the report failed too: by this lesson's count of the printed roll call, six states voted aye, two no and two were divided, and a question needed the votes of seven states. Congress then resolved to recommend that the states conform their appointments to Article V.¹⁶ Neither side won. The Journal records no ruling on Osgood.

Delegates are paid by their states

"Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the States, and while they act as members of the committee of the States." Congress had no treasury from which to pay its own members. A state that sent no money for its delegates had few members at the table, and a delegate who ran out of funds went home. In a debate of February 7, 1777 a North Carolina delegate said that his state had appointed three men but "had not Funds to support a greater Number" than the one or two who were in service.¹⁷

"each State shall have one vote"

"In determining questions in the United States in Congress assembled, each State shall have one vote."² Dickinson's draft had the same rule in its Article XVII. The debate that kept it is told in Lesson 1, with the roll calls of October 7, 1777, in which the proposals for proportional voting lost.¹⁸

The rule left open what happened when a state's delegation split, or when a state had only one delegate present. A debate on February 7, 1777 shows that Congress faced the question at the start. The motion was that the President write to the states asking for fuller representation. One side wanted to add that he write whenever a state had fewer than three delegates, on the argument that "no state ought to be permitted to Commit a Vote in the General Council of the States to less than three." The other side answered that requiring three would leave states without any vote, "because if any Accident prevented the attendance of one, the Vote was Necessarily lost, and any state would prefer a Vote by one of her Delegates rather than No Vote at all." The amendment to require three was rejected, and the question on the whole, as amended, lost: by Burke's note, five noes, four ayes and one divided.¹⁷ The result left each state free to decide how many delegates to keep in service.

A state with two delegates who disagreed was recorded as "divided," and a divided state counted for nothing on the question. That is how a question that needed seven states could fail with six in favor, five against and two divided.

A quorum, in practice, was seven states. Article IX required nine states for the major questions and "the votes of the majority of the United States in Congress assembled" for the rest. A majority of thirteen is seven. The editor of the 1787 volume of the Journals counted that year's attendance. No quorum assembled until January 17, 1787, when seven states were present. From then until October 27, 1787, the last day with a quorum, there were 112 days of business. Eleven states were fully represented on four of them, ten on six, nine on thirty-nine, eight on thirty-five and seven on twenty-eight. Only two days saw a delegate from each of the thirteen states. The Journal records the attendance of six states or fewer on 102 days.¹⁹

Speech and debate

The last paragraph borrows from English parliamentary privilege. "Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Congress, and the members of Congress shall be protected in their persons from arrests or imprisonments, during the time of their going to and from, and attendance on Congress, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace."²

It reached its form by the same report of November 8, 1777 that supplied the fugitive and full-faith clauses. The committee's first new article read "Freedom of Speech and Debate in Congress Shall not be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Congress," and the Journal marks it "Agreed." The second, which gave Congress power "to censure and to fine any of their Members, the better to enforce Obedience to the Rules and Orders of the House," was marked "Expunged."¹¹ Congress adopted the whole text a week later, on November 15.²⁰

The Constitution kept the idea and made it more exact. Article I, section 6 protects senators and representatives from arrest "during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses" except for "Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace," and provides that "for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."

Article VI: Foreign Affairs, Treaties Among States, and State Forces

Article VI is a list of things no state may do without Congress's consent. It has five paragraphs, and they fall into four groups: embassies and gifts, treaties between states, tariffs that might upset a treaty, and military forces.

Embassies, gifts and titles

"No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility."²

The first clause kept foreign policy in one hand. A state could not talk to a king. The second kept American officers from taking money from foreign courts, and the third banned titles of nobility. The Constitution carries both ideas into Article I, section 9, which bars the United States from granting titles and forbids any officeholder to accept a "present, Emolument, Office, or Title" from a foreign state without the consent of Congress, and into section 10, which bars the states from making treaties or alliances.

Franklin's 1775 sketch had given Congress power over "ambassadors" and "alliances" but had not said in so many words that no colony could act alone.⁸ The Articles added the prohibition.

Treaties among the states

"No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue."²

The clause that this paragraph left behind is the Compact Clause, Article I, section 10, clause 3 of the Constitution, which says that "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State." Two boundary settlements that reached the Journals in 1787 show the kind of agreement the Articles had in mind, though both were reached by a route Article IX supplied. New York and Massachusetts had a dispute over western territory, and Congress had begun the steps to name a court. Commissioners of the two states met at Hartford on November 30, 1786 and signed an agreement on December 16 in which Massachusetts ceded jurisdiction and New York ceded certain rights in land. On April 23, 1787 the delegates of both states told Congress that, "the Controversy between the said two States respecting Territory having ceased," it was "unnecessary that the Federal Court ... should convene." The Journal prints the agreement under October 1787.²¹ South Carolina and Georgia reached their own agreement at Beaufort on April 28, 1787, which South Carolina's delegates laid before Congress on August 9, 1787. A motion to ratify and confirm it was referred to a committee on that day.²²

The lesson of those two cases is a point about method. The Confederation's own process for settling a dispute between states, which Article IX describes in detail, pushed the states toward settling by agreement. Congress's role was to hold the machinery ready. Whether Congress formally consented to either agreement under this paragraph of Article VI is a separate question that this lesson did not run down in the Journals.

Treaty obligations and state duties

"No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress assembled, with any King, Prince or State, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain."²

This paragraph is dated by its own wording. "Treaties already proposed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain" refers to the Plan of Treaties that a committee of Dickinson, Franklin, John Adams, Benjamin Harrison and Robert Morris drew up in June and July 1776. Congress named that committee on June 12, 1776, the same day it named the committee on a confederation, and the committee reported a model treaty with "Lewis the Sixteenth" on July 17.²³ The treaty with France that Congress made in 1778 had that model behind it. The paragraph says that if the United States promised something in a treaty about duties, a state could not undercut the promise with its own tariff. It was a narrow ban, limited to the stipulations of treaties made "in pursuance of" the 1776 proposals.

The wording is narrow. A treaty with a power other than France or Spain was not covered by it. When Congress faced state laws that conflicted with the 1783 treaty with Britain, it did not rest on this paragraph. On March 21, 1787 it resolved unanimously that treaties "on being constitutionally made ratified and published ... become in virtue of the confederation part of the law of the land," and, in the resolution's words, are "independent of the will and power of such legislatures" and "binding and obligatory on them." Its letter to the states a few weeks later argued that treaties "derive their obligation from being compacts between the Sovereign of this, and the Sovereign of another Nation," and that state legislatures were not "competent" to construe them.²⁴ Lesson 3 returns to that dispute. The point here is where Congress found its authority: in Article IX's treaty power and in the nature of a treaty, since Article VI's own words reached only part of the way.

State forces

"No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress assembled, for the defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgement of the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defense of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage."²

The Journals contain one clear application of the garrison rule. On May 13, 1784 the legislature of New York asked Congress to say, under this article, how many troops the state might keep to garrison its frontier posts, and proposed five hundred. Congress did not answer with a number for one state. On June 3, 1784 it recommended instead that four states, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, furnish 700 militia for twelve months: 165 each from Connecticut and New York, 110 from New Jersey and 260 from Pennsylvania. They were to form one regiment of eight infantry companies and two of artillery.²⁵ The state's request and Congress's answer arrived within three weeks of each other.

The same clause kept state navies out of the peace. Congress also let go of its own. On April 4, 1785 a motion by David Howell that the Commissioners of the Treasury sell the frigate Alliance at public auction was referred to a committee. On June 3, on that committee's report, Congress authorized the Board of Treasury to sell her "for specie or public securities, at public or private sale," and on August 5, 1785 the Board reported the sale for $26,000 in public securities.²⁶ The Constitution drew the opposite lesson, and in Article I, section 8 gave Congress the power "to provide and maintain a Navy."

Making war

"No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted."²

The clause recognized the right to defend against invasion, and it added a case that existed nowhere in Europe: a state could act on "certain advice" that Indian nations were preparing an attack. The Constitution's Article I, section 10 repeats the idea in shorter words, forbidding a state to "engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." The exception for Indian nations mattered. In September 1786 Arthur St. Clair offered a draft resolution, printed in the Journal from the papers, that told Virginia to abstain from hostilities against Indian nations at peace with the United States and to disband any troops raised for the purpose. The preamble called it "contrary to the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union" for any state, "in their separate and individual Capacity," to "levy War against or make Reprisals upon" such a nation. It asked states with complaints to bring them to Congress. The Journal prints it as a motion, and this lesson did not find that Congress adopted it.²⁷

Articles VII and VIII: Officers and Money

Article VII: who appoints the officers

"When land forces are raised by any State for the common defense, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each State respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by the State which first made the appointment."²

The clause decided that the army would be, in its body, a collection of state "lines." Congress appointed generals under Article IX. The states appointed everyone from colonel down. Congress could call out a state's quota and the legislature chose the regimental officers. One result was that officers' pay and promotions became state matters. In August 1786 Congress passed a motion on the claim of Captain John Stevens, a captain in the Connecticut line, by "recommending" that Connecticut settle his pay and depreciation, as an act of Congress of May 25, 1781 provided. It could recommend. It could not pay him itself.²⁸

A fight over half pay in 1783 and 1784 shows how this system could strain the Union. Congress had promised its officers half pay for life, later commuted to a lump sum, and Connecticut's House of Representatives asked in November 1783 whether the Confederation gave Congress the power. In February 1784 a committee of Jefferson, Arthur Lee and Hugh Williamson answered that "the wages of the Army are clearly a part of the public expence, and to ascertain what these shall be, as well as to appropriate and apply money to the same is as clearly and explicitly vested in them as any other power they exercise." It conceded, too, that the right of each state "to consider whether their Requisitions are founded in the Confederation" was "essential to and inalienable from a free Community." And it ended with the sentence that is the best short summary of the whole system: "Congress cannot possibly conduct the business of the Union unless the minority of the States shall, in important cases, conform to the opinion of the majority and promote the execution of their measures."²⁹

The plea is the argument of a body that had a power on paper and no way to make a state obey. Lesson 3 returns to half pay and the army's grievances in 1783.

Article VIII: the common treasury

"All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint. The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled."²

The article does two things. It sets a rule for dividing the cost: each state's share follows the value of its land. And it sets a rule for collecting: Congress decides the amount and the date, and the state legislatures "lay and levy" the taxes. Congress was never given power to tax. This is the fiscal heart of the Confederation, and the Journals show it failing in a way the drafters could have foreseen.

Lesson 1 told how the land-value rule replaced Dickinson's population rule on October 14, 1777. The rule needed a valuation of every acre in thirteen states, and nobody ever did it. On November 20, 1782 Congress named a committee of Rutledge, Osgood, Nash, Madison and Duane to devise a way. Debates ran through January 1783. James Madison's notes of a grand committee meeting on January 14, 1783 record its finding of "extreme difficulty & inequality if not impracticability" in carrying out the article, and on February 6, 1783 the committee's report would have required each state to value its land by the first of January 1784.³⁰

The solution was an amendment. In March 1783 Congress took up a replacement for the land-value rule, a count of people: "the whole number of white and other free citizens and inhabitants of every age, sex and condition, including those bound to servitude for a term of years, and three-fifths of all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description, except Indians, not paying taxes." The vote came on March 28 and March 31, 1783, and the Journal records the final one as "So it was resolved in the affirmative."³¹ This is the three-fifths ratio that returns in the Constitution four years later. Here it divides a tax bill, and nothing in it concerns seats in a legislature. The amendment needed every state's consent, and it never took effect. The Articles were never amended.

The Journals show how the rule worked while the amendment waited. In 1785 a committee that wrote a requisition for $3,000,000 reported that it "had not been able to obtain information how many States have complied with" the resolutions of February 17 and April 18, 1783 on a rule for adjusting quotas, and so it proposed that the quotas be adjusted "agreeably to the best information Congress may, from time to time, have obtained upon the subject."³² The proposed shares, read on July 18, 1785, are in Figure 1. Virginia's share, $512,974, was the largest at 17.1 percent, and Georgia's, $32,060, the smallest at 1.1 percent.³³ Congress had a table. It did not have a rule that the states had accepted.

Two further points about money bear on every other article. The first is that "allowed by the United States in Congress assembled" gave Congress only the right to say what the expense was, with no way to compel payment. The second is that the clause about taxes names state legislatures, so a state's refusal to tax was lawful in the Articles' own terms. The record of what the states paid is in Lesson 3. The dollar figures there are the real answer to the question of how Article VIII worked.

Article IX, Part One: War, Treaties and the Nine-State Rule

Article IX is the longest article, and it is where the Confederation's actual powers sit. It has seven paragraphs. This lesson takes them in the order they come, in four parts, and it adds one rule of reading. The paragraph that governs the others is the next-to-last, the long sentence that lists matters on which "the United States in Congress assembled shall never" act "unless nine States assent." That sentence is the nine-state rule, and it controls the powers the article gives.

War, peace, treaties and captures

"The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the sixth article -- of sending and receiving ambassadors -- entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made whereby the legislative power of the respective States shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners, as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatsoever."²

The first half is a plain grant of the war and treaty powers to Congress, with the exception for a state that is invaded (Article VI). The proviso is the sting. By its terms the United States could not make a commercial treaty that tied the states' hands on what they charged foreigners or on whether they banned imports and exports. A foreign government that wanted a trade bargain with all thirteen states could not get one from Congress alone.

The treaty with Britain and the seven-state problem

The Treaty of Paris gave the nine-state rule its hardest test. The definitive treaty was signed at Paris on September 3, 1783, and it said ratifications were to be exchanged within six months, by March 3, 1784. Congress then sat at Annapolis, having moved from Princeton that fall, in the dead of winter, with too few states. On January 3, 1784 a committee of Jefferson, Hugh Williamson, Jacob Read, Elbridge Gerry and David Howell reported that Congress "consisting at present but of 7 states," the members "differ in opinion, some of them considering 9 as requisite under the Confederation to the establishment of every treaty, while others are of opinion, that 9 having ratified the Provisional treaty and instructed their Ministers to enter into a Definitive one, conformable thereto, which is accordingly done, seven may under these particular circumstances ratify." The draft would have had the states then present declare "their approbation and so far as they have power their ratification," with a request to Britain for three more months, and a promise of a second ratification by nine states. A note on the manuscript says it was "rendered useless" on January 14 by the ratification "this day by 9 states."³⁴

That day came. On Wednesday, January 14, 1784, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina were present (Richard Beresford of South Carolina had that day taken his seat), with single delegates from New Hampshire and New Jersey. Congress resolved, "unanimously, nine states being present, that the said definitive treaty be, and the same is hereby ratified."³⁴ The rule had worked. It had also forced the most important act of the war's end to wait for the weather, the roads and the arrival of two delegates. The nine-state rule is the cleanest example in the Journals of how a rule that looked prudent on paper produced a delay that could have cost the country a treaty.

After the treaty: who enforces it?

The question that followed was whether a state legislature could pass laws that conflicted with a ratified treaty. John Jay, as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reported to Congress on October 13, 1786 on the state laws that the British complained of, in a long report that runs nearly a hundred Journal pages.³⁵ On March 21, 1787, Congress resolved unanimously that state legislatures "cannot of right pass any act or acts for interpreting, explaining or construing a national treaty," and that treaties, "on being constitutionally made ratified and published ... become in virtue of the confederation part of the law of the land," and, in the resolution's words, are "independent of the will and power of such legislatures" and "binding and obligatory on them." Acts repugnant to a treaty, it said, "ought to be forthwith repealed," and it recommended that each state pass an act repealing them, with its courts to decide according to the treaty.²⁴

The resolution is a statement, with nothing behind it. Congress could recommend a repealing act. It could not itself repeal anything. It could not take a state law to a court. The Constitution's Article VI, which makes treaties "the supreme Law of the Land" and binds "the Judges in every State," supplies the enforcement that the Confederation lacked. Lesson 5 covers the dispute with Britain at length. The text of the resolution belongs here because the claim it makes, that a treaty is law in every state "in virtue of the confederation," rests on Article IX.

Letters of marque, and the courts for piracy

"-- of establishing rules for deciding in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the United States shall be divided or appropriated -- of granting letters of marque and reprisal in times of peace -- appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies commited on the high seas and establishing courts for receiving and determining finally appeals in all cases of captures, provided that no member of Congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts."²

These clauses cover the law of prizes at sea. The first, rules about captures, was the working part of the navy and of privateering. A privateer was a privately owned warship licensed by a letter of marque to take enemy merchant ships, and whether the taking was legal was decided in a court that condemned the "prize." Article IX gave the United States power over the rules and over the appeals. It did not take the first-level courts from the states. Each state ran its own admiralty courts. A resolution of November 25, 1775 had recommended that the states set them up, with an appeal to Congress "in all cases."³⁶

Congress's own court is the one federal court the Confederation had. For three years Congress had heard appeals through committees, a standing committee from January 30, 1777. The Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture replaced it in January 1780. A committee brought in a plan, which Congress debated on January 5 to 7, 1780, including where the judges should sit: Philadelphia, Williamsburg in Virginia and Hartford in Connecticut were named in one motion, with a provision for sitting elsewhere. On January 22, 1780 Congress elected three judges, George Wythe, William Paca and Titus Hosmer, and the Journal notes that Hosmer and Paca "having an equal number of votes."³⁷ The article's closing words bar any member of Congress from serving as a judge of those courts.

The case that tested the court: the brigantine Lusanna

The Court of Appeals reached into the states, and the states noticed. The case was a prize. In November 1777 the McClary, a privateer owned by John Penhallow and other New Hampshire citizens, captured the brigantine Lusanna on the high seas and carried her into Piscataqua, New Hampshire. The state's maritime court condemned her. The claimants, Elisha Doane and others, asked to appeal to Congress and were refused, because New Hampshire's 1776 act gave an appeal to Congress only for captures by vessels fitted out at the United States' expense and reserved other appeals to the state's own supreme court. The state's supreme court confirmed the sentence, a second request for an appeal to Congress was refused, and the vessel and cargo were sold and the proceeds divided. On October 9, 1778 Doane petitioned Congress for a revision, and Congress's committee on appeals summoned the other side in May 1779. On September 17, 1783 the Court of Appeals reversed the New Hampshire sentence.³⁶

New Hampshire's legislature wrote to Congress on November 6, 1783 to protest. A committee that included Jefferson reported in January 1784 and proposed a resolution: that the capture was made before the Confederation was complete, at a time when New Hampshire refused appeals to Congress, so that "neither Congress, nor any persons deriving authority from them, had jurisdiction in the said case." In other words, the committee would have undone the court's judgment. Congress did not adopt the report. It debated the matter on the yeas and nays in January and March, postponed it more than once, and voted down a motion on March 19 to refer the petition to the court's judges for a final decree. The Journal shows no resolution.³⁶

The Supreme Court of the United States settled the point in 1795, in Penhallow v. Doane's Administrators, holding that Congress had power to set up the appellate court even before the Articles were ratified and that its decrees were final against state admiralty courts.³⁸ The sequence is worth setting out. Under the Confederation a state legislature could publicly refuse a ruling of the Confederation's only federal court, and Congress, voting on the yeas and nays across ten weeks, would not tell it otherwise. That is what the lesson means by the phrase that Article IX gave Congress an appellate power it could not always enforce.

Article IX, Part Two: Disputes Between States

The second paragraph of Article IX makes Congress "the last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences now subsisting or that hereafter may arise between two or more States concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any other causes whatever." It then lays out, in one very long sentence, the machinery. This was a plan for a lawsuit between sovereigns, and it is the part of the Articles that most resembles a modern rule of procedure.

The procedure

The steps were these. A state's legislative or executive authority, or its "lawful agent," petitions Congress, "stating the matter in question and praying for a hearing." Congress gives notice to the other state and assigns a day. On that day the two sets of agents are "directed to appoint by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court." If they cannot agree, Congress names "three persons out of each of the United States," thirty-nine in all, and the parties alternately strike names, "the petitioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen." From the thirteen, "not less than seven, nor more than nine names as Congress shall direct, shall in the presence of Congress be drawn out by lot," and "the persons whose names shall be so drawn or any five of them, shall be commissioners or judges, to hear and finally determine the controversy." If a party refuses to attend or to strike, "the secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party absent or refusing." And if a party refuses to submit, "the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence, or judgement, which shall in like manner be final and decisive."²

Each commissioner takes an oath to judge "without favor, affection or hope of reward." And the paragraph ends with a limit that Lesson 1 traced to the western-lands fight of 1777: "no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States." A third paragraph extends the same process to disputes about "the private right of soil claimed under different grants of two or more States," when jurisdiction has been adjusted.²

The design has an elegance. It is a jury of the states' peers, picked by a lottery after each side has crossed off its least favorite names. It makes the decision final, and it lets the court go on even if one state walks out. It does not say how the sentence is to be carried out. The text says only that the judgment is "transmitted to Congress, and lodged among the acts of Congress for the security of the parties concerned." There was nothing to enforce it with except the states' honor.

Pennsylvania against Connecticut, Trenton, 1782

The process was used once to a judgment. The case was a dispute between Pennsylvania and Connecticut over "their respective claims and possessions" of land. The two states' agents, meeting in August 1782, took the first path the article offers, joint consent. They had first hoped for General Nathanael Greene and John Rutledge as commissioners, and when neither could serve they agreed on seven names and asked Congress to commission them "or any five or more of them" at ten dollars a day, with the two states splitting the cost. The agents signing for Pennsylvania were William Bradford, Joseph Reed, James Wilson and Jonathan D. Sargeant, and for Connecticut Eliphalet Dyer and Jesse Root. The seven were William Whipple, Welcome Arnold, David Brearley, William Churchill Houston, Cyrus Griffin, Joseph Jones and Thomas Neilson. They sat at Trenton, New Jersey, from November 12, 1782. On December 30, 1782 the commissioners gave their sentence: Connecticut "has no right to the lands in controversy," and jurisdiction and pre-emption belong to Pennsylvania. It was signed by Whipple, Arnold, Houston, Griffin and Brearley, five of the seven, as the article allows.³⁹

The point for this lesson is the process. It had a petition, a notice, a panel, a hearing with counsel for both sides, and a judgment signed by five commissioners. It was a court between two states, set up from scratch by a body that had no court of its own, and it took seven weeks from first sitting to sentence.

Georgia against South Carolina, and New York against Massachusetts

The second use of the machinery did not reach judgment. South Carolina petitioned Congress about territory it claimed against Georgia. By Georgia's own later recital, Congress on June 1, 1785 notified Georgia and assigned the second Monday of May for the agents of the two states to appear. In September 1786 the Journal prints Georgia's act appointing agents (William Houstoun, George Walton and William Few) and South Carolina's (John Kean, Charles Pinckney and John Bull). The two sides had not agreed on commissioners, so on September 13, 1786 Congress took the second path. It named three persons from each of the thirteen states, and the two parties struck names alternately, South Carolina as petitioner beginning, until thirteen were left. Nine names were then "drawn out by lot" in the presence of Congress: Alexander Contee Hanson, James Madison, Robert Goldsborough, James Duane, Philemon Dickinson, John Dickinson, Thomas McKean, Egbert Benson and William Pynchon. The next day, after a roll call in which South Carolina's motion for a November date lost, Congress summoned the court to meet at New York on the third Monday in June 1787. By February 3, 1787 seven of the nine had accepted.⁴⁰ Madison was one of the men drawn to decide the boundary between South Carolina and Georgia. The two states settled it themselves, at Beaufort, South Carolina, on April 28, 1787.²²

The dispute between New York and Massachusetts over western territory, discussed above under Article VI, followed the same arc. Congress had begun the steps to name a federal court, and the commissioners of the two states, meeting at Hartford, signed an agreement on December 16, 1786. On April 23, 1787 their delegates told Congress it was "unnecessary that the Federal Court ... should convene."²¹

So the record has one judgment and two cases settled on the eve of judgment. It is a better record than the one the Confederation is usually credited with. The machinery was clumsy, but states used it and the threat of it helped them agree. That fits the argument of Article III, which called the union a league of friendship, and it fits the limit of the clause. It worked between states that wanted a settlement. It had no answer for a state that did not.

Article IX, Part Three: Coin, Indians, the Post and the Army

The fourth paragraph of Article IX gives Congress six more powers, joined by dashes. "The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective States -- fixing the standards of weights and measures throughout the United States -- regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States, provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated -- establishing or regulating post offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office -- appointing all officers of the land forces, in the service of the United States, excepting regimental officers -- appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States -- making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations."²

Each of the six had its own history.

Coin and weights and measures

The coinage power covered "the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective States." It did not give Congress a monopoly on minting. States could coin, subject to Congress's rules on alloy and value. Among Congress's acts under it are resolutions of August 8, 1786 on the standard of coins and an ordinance of October 16, 1786 for establishing a mint.⁴¹ On weights and measures, the August 22, 1781 report counted the standard among the items the Confederation "requires execution" for, and on August 19, 1785 Congress ordered, on a motion by Rufus King, that the Board of Treasury report an ordinance fixing the standard of weights and measures. This lesson found the order. It did not find an adopted standard.⁴²

Indian affairs

Two phrases in the Indian-affairs clause invite dispute. It covered "Indians, not members of any of the States," and it said "the legislative right of any State within its own limits" was not to be "infringed or violated." Who counted as a member of a state, and where a state's limits ran, were questions the clause did not answer. Congress's ordinance for regulating Indian affairs, passed on August 7, 1786, recited the whole clause in its preamble: "the United States in Congress assembled, under the 9th of the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the trade, and managing all affairs with the Indians not members of any of the states; provided that the legislative right of any state within its own limits be not infringed or violated." It then divided the Indian department into a Southern district, "all the Nations in the territory of the United States, who reside southward of the river Ohio," and a Northern one, with a superintendent for each who reported through the Secretary at War. No one could trade among Indian nations without a license, which cost fifty dollars, on a penalty of five hundred dollars.⁴³

The post office

The post office was the one power Dickinson's 1776 draft gave Congress outright, as the single exception to its ban on taxes, and the Articles kept it. An ordinance of October 18, 1782 reorganized the post, and its preamble cited "the sole and exclusive right and power of establishing and regulating post offices."⁴⁴ Two later acts show the post at work. On September 4, 1786 Congress authorized the Postmaster General to contract for the carriage of the mail in stage carriages, if possible, from Portland to Savannah, for the year 1787.⁴⁵ On September 20, 1786, noting that "the paper currencies of the several States" had a limited circulation and probable depreciation, it resolved that the post office would accept only specie.⁴⁶ The clause itself let Congress collect "such postage ... as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office," which made the post the one federal service with a revenue of its own.

Officers and rules for the army

The last three powers put army and navy officers in Congress's hands, except "regimental officers," whom Article VII gave to the states, and let Congress write the rules for both services and direct their operations. Under these clauses Congress adopted Articles of War, named generals and set pay. It never had the power to raise an army directly. For that it had to make "requisitions" on the states, a mechanism the later paragraphs describe.

Article IX, Part Four: Committees, Money, Troops and the Nine-State List

Committees and officers

"The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority to appoint a committee, to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denominated 'A Committee of the States', and to consist of one delegate from each State; and to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States under their direction -- to appoint one of their members to preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year in any term of three years."²

That sentence is the whole constitutional basis for the Confederation's executive. There was no executive department in the text. Congress could name "civil officers," and from 1781 it named a Superintendent of Finance, a Secretary at War and a Secretary for Foreign Affairs, which Lesson 3 covers. It named a presiding member, who had the title "President of the United States in Congress Assembled" and no powers except to chair. The one-year-in-three limit meant that the presidents were short-term chairmen, as the list in the section on Article V shows. And the Committee of the States, the body "to sit in the recess," had its one trial in the summer of 1784, which is told below under Article X.

Money, loans and the navy

"-- to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses -- to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmitting every half-year to the respective States an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted -- to build and equip a navy."²

Congress could decide what sum it needed, spend it and borrow. It could print money, and it had printed a good deal of it before 1781. It could not collect anything. The half-yearly report of sums borrowed or issued was a duty to inform the states, and the states were the ones who would pay. The February 1784 committee reply to Connecticut, quoted above, cited this clause as the power under which Congress had granted army pay.²⁹

Requisitions for troops

"-- to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which requisition shall be binding, and thereupon the legislature of each State shall appoint the regimental officers, raise the men and cloath, arm and equip them in a solid-like manner, at the expense of the United States."²

The word "binding" is the one that critics of the Confederation seize on, and the clause leaves out any way to make it bind. The quota for men follows "white inhabitants," so that the army's burden fell by population, with enslaved people excluded, while the money's burden was to follow land. South Carolina and Pennsylvania offered motions in June 1778 to change the word in each of those articles: South Carolina's motion to insert "white" in Article IV lost, as noted above, and Pennsylvania's motion to strike "white" from this clause in Article IX failed by three ayes to seven noes, with one state divided.¹⁰

The clause also let Congress ask a state for fewer men than its quota, or for more, and the state's legislature could decide that it could not "safely spare" the extra. It is a surprisingly flexible clause, and it explains how an army whose quotas were set in Philadelphia ended up as a set of state lines.

The nine-state list

"The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque or reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defense and welfare of the United States, or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war, to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine States assent to the same: nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day be determined, unless by the votes of the majority of the United States in Congress assembled."²

The sentence names twelve decisions that required nine states: making war, granting letters of marque in peacetime, treaties and alliances, coining money, regulating the value of coin, setting the sums needed for defense and welfare, emitting bills, borrowing, appropriating money, fixing the number of vessels of war, fixing the number of land or sea forces, and naming a commander in chief. Every other question could pass by "the votes of the majority," which meant seven of thirteen. Adjournment from day to day, alone, took any number.

The rule meant two different things at two different times. In the war years, nine states was a high bar met with some difficulty but met. After 1783 it often could not be met. Because a divided state counted as no vote and because states that sent too few delegates could not vote, nine of thirteen meant that a few absent or divided states could block a requisition. The January 1784 treaty ratification came when nine states turned up. In November 1784 only eight states could be mustered at Trenton to elect a President, and the editor's count for 1787 shows nine or more states present on 49 of 112 days. A question that needed nine states could therefore be taken up on fewer than half the days Congress sat that year.¹⁹

That arithmetic is the core of the Confederation's difficulty. Nine of thirteen is 69 percent. The Constitution's thresholds for its major supermajorities, two-thirds of each house to override a veto and three-fourths of the states for an amendment, run between 67 and 75 percent, so the Articles' threshold was not out of line. The difference lay in the other side of the rule: Congress had few powers, those it had needed supermajorities, and its members were rarely all there.

Adjournment and the Journal

"The Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any time within the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as in their judgement require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State on any question shall be entered on the journal, when it is desired by any delegates of a State, or any of them, at his or their request shall be furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several States."²

This is the origin of two ideas that survive in the Constitution. Congress had to publish a journal, with the exception of secret matters, and it had to record yeas and nays at the request of a single delegate. Article I, section 5 of the Constitution keeps both: "Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any Question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal." The Articles let one delegate demand the roll call. The Constitution raised the bar to one fifth of those present.

The power to adjourn "to any place within the United States" was used as often as any in the Articles. Congress moved from Philadelphia to Princeton in June 1783, to Annapolis in November 1783, to Trenton in November 1784 and to New York in January 1785. Lesson 3 follows those moves. They were the result of an event at Philadelphia in June 1783 that the Journals call a mutiny.

Article X: The Committee of the States

"The Committee of the States, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as the United States in Congress assembled, by the consent of the nine States, shall from time to time think expedient to vest them with; provided that no power be delegated to the said Committee, for the exercise of which, by the Articles of Confederation, the voice of nine States in the Congress of the United States assembled be requisite."²

Article X is the Confederation's attempt at a standing executive, and it is hedged on every side. The committee is made up of one member from each state. It acts only when nine of them are present. It can exercise only those powers that nine states in Congress have chosen to hand it. And it cannot touch any power that Article IX says needs nine states, which is the entire list in the nine-state paragraph. A committee that needed nine members to act, and could be given only powers that did not need nine states, could do very little by design. Dickinson's draft of 1776 had called it a "Council of State," and had given it power to open letters addressed to the United States, to "direct military Operations by Sea and Land" within limits, to draw on the treasurers for sums Congress had appropriated and to "controul or suspend" officers. The final text kept a committee and took nearly all of that away.⁹

The summer of 1784

The committee sat once, in the summer of 1784. On May 29, 1784, on the report of a committee of Jefferson, Osgood and Sherman, Congress resolved that the Committee of the States, "pursuant to the ninth of the Articles," would "possess all the powers which may be exercised by seven states in Congress assembled," with a list of exceptions: sending ambassadors, ministers or consuls abroad; making rules for captures and prizes; establishing courts of appeal in capture cases; "constituting courts for deciding disputes and differences arising between two or more states"; "fixing the standard of weights and measures"; "changing the rate of postage"; and "repealing or contravening any Ordinance or act passed by Congress." Nine members were required to proceed to business, no question except adjourning from day to day could be decided without nine states, and the committee was to keep a journal, published monthly, with the yeas and nays entered on request. The same day Congress directed the committee to prepare an ordinance rearranging the treasury and defining the powers of the Board of Treasury.⁴⁷

The members, one for each of eleven states, were Jonathan Blanchard of New Hampshire, Francis Dana of Massachusetts, William Ellery of Rhode Island, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Charles De Witt of New York, Samuel Dick of New Jersey, Edward Hand of Pennsylvania, Jeremiah Townley Chase of Maryland, Samuel Hardy of Virginia, Richard Dobbs Spaight of North Carolina and Jacob Read of South Carolina. Georgia's William Houstoun attended later in June, and Delaware never sent a member. All eleven named members were present at Annapolis on June 4, 1784, and elected Hardy chairman.⁴⁷

The Journal then shows the members assembling from June 26 with "not a sufficient number to proceed to business," and the entries for July 1, 2 and 3 repeat that line. On Monday, July 5, nine states answered the roll: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. This lesson's count from the daily entries, which is approximate, is nine states present on about twenty days between July 5 and August 9, eight on about ten, seven on August 11 and six on August 12 and 13.⁴⁷ Among the business done were a letter of August 3 to the governor of Virginia, signed by Hardy, warning that settlers entering lands west of the Ohio under Virginia grants before an Indian treaty was made could bring on "an immediate war," and the drafting of a proclamation for a day of thanksgiving on the exchange of the ratifications of the Treaty of Paris at Passy on May 12, 1784.⁴⁷

The end came in a series of recorded votes. On August 3 Francis Dana moved that the committee adjourn to meet at Trenton on the second Monday of September, reciting that "there has not been more than nine states represented in the Committee of the States since their meeting on the 26th day of June last," that "no act, except that of adjourning from day to day, can be passed but by their unanimous consent," and that delegates from two states were about to leave. Edward Hand moved to postpone Dana's motion in order to take up a resolution to prepare the treasury ordinance. The postponement lost, and so did Dana's motion. On August 9 Hand moved a long resolution reciting that Congress had directed the committee to prepare the treasury ordinance, that "there is reason to apprehend a war with the Indians," that word was expected from the British commander in Canada about evacuating the western posts, and that the New Hampshire and Massachusetts members meant to leave and "expose the Foederal Government to every danger that may result from the want of a foederal head." It directed the chairman to write to the executives of the unrepresented states. The Journal prints it as resolved, and New Hampshire's member then withdrew. On August 11 the members from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New Jersey left Annapolis. On August 19 six members, Hardy, Hand, Chase, Spaight, Read and Houstoun, signed a paper stating that the committee had been "reduced to a number insufficient to do any manner of business," and recommended that the Secretary of Congress remove the papers and records to Philadelphia until offices were ready at Trenton.⁴⁷

The committee that was supposed to hold the Confederation together between sessions had nine states for about twenty working days and then fell below nine. The causes were the ones the Articles built in: it needed nine of the thirteen states, each state paid its own delegates, and members had families and offices to go home to. Congress itself met again at Trenton on November 1, 1784, and this lesson found no later sitting of a Committee of the States in the Journals it read. When the Constitution's drafters came to the executive, they put one person in charge, who did not need the votes of nine colleagues to act.

Article XI: Canada and the Admission of New States

"Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States."²

The article is a relic of 1775 and 1776, when the Continental Congress hoped Canada would join the American cause. Franklin's 1775 sketch had invited Ireland, the West Indies, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Bermuda and the Floridas to join, and Dickinson's 1776 draft kept a special place for Canada while requiring nine colonies to admit any other.⁸ Canada never acceded. The article stayed in the text, and the only new-state question that Article XI had to meet was a different one: what to do with a place that was a part of a state, or a disputed claim, or a self-declared republic, and so did not fit the word "colony."

Vermont

The first test was Vermont. The people living on the "New Hampshire Grants" west of the Connecticut River claimed to be an independent state and asked to be admitted to the Union, while New York and New Hampshire each claimed the land. On August 7, 1781 Congress resolved to appoint a committee of five to confer with agents of the Vermont people "respecting their claim to be an independent State, and on what terms it may be proper to admit them into the federal union of these states, in case the United States in Congress assembled shall determine to recognize their independence." The committee met the Vermont agents, Jonas Fay, Ira Allen and Bezaleel Woodward, on August 18, and Congress took up its report on August 20 and the next day, on reconsideration, altered and agreed to a resolution that was the Confederation's last word on the matter. It was "the fixed purpose of Congress to adhere to the guarantee to the states of New Hampshire and New York" made on August 7, and it was "an indispensible preliminary to the recognition of the independence of the people inhabiting the territory called Vermont and their admission into the federal Union, that they explicitly relinquish all demands of lands or jurisdiction" east of the west bank of the Connecticut River and west of a line running twenty miles east of the Hudson.⁴⁸ Vermont was not admitted during the Confederation. It entered the Union on March 4, 1791 under an act of Congress approved February 18, 1791.⁴⁹

Kentucky

The second test was Kentucky, then a district of Virginia. Virginia passed two acts, in October 1785 and October 1786, for erecting the district into an independent state, and a convention in the district accepted the terms on September 22, 1787. On February 29, 1788 the Virginia delegates moved in Congress that the United States "do approve and ratify of the Compact solemnly entered into between the State of Virginia and the District of Kentucky for the erection of the said District into a Seperate and Independent Member of the federal Union." Congress referred the motion and the address from Kentucky to a committee.⁵⁰ Kentucky, too, was admitted under the Constitution, by an act approved February 4, 1791 that took effect on June 1, 1792.⁵¹

The two cases show how Article XI handled the question and where it did not. It set the vote at nine states and said nothing about when a territory became a state, who drew its lines, or what its people could claim. Those matters were taken up by the ordinances of 1784, 1785 and 1787 that Lesson 4 covers, with the equal-footing promise of October 10, 1780 that Lesson 1 described.

Article XII: The Public Debt

"All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed, and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby solemnly pleged."²

Article XII does one thing. It takes the obligations Congress had incurred since 1775, the paper money, the loans and the contracts, and makes them debts of the United States under the new government, with "the public faith" pledged. It was a promise to creditors, and nothing in it said how the debts would be paid. It was a promise that the Confederation Congress, which had no tax power, kept as well as it could.

The Journals give a snapshot of what the promise covered. In July and again in September 1785, committees prepared estimates for the year's requisition. The foreign debt included 10,000,000 livres borrowed in Holland and guaranteed by France, a French public loan of 24,000,000 livres, a Spanish loan of 174,000 dollars, a first Dutch loan of 5,000,000 florins and a second of 2,000,000 florins, plus a debt of 846,710 livres to the farmers general of France. The domestic debt included $10,517,380.60 of liquidated debt, on which a year's interest at six percent was $631,042.60, and loan-office certificates of several vintages, some of them subject to a scale of depreciation, and an estimated $4,823,724 in certificates issued, and still to be issued, to the lines of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.⁵² The committee's July estimate came to $3,708,452, less $708,452 already in hand, which left $3,000,000 to ask of the states. The requisition Congress adopted on September 27 used a total of $3,649,880 less $649,880 of Dutch loan money, and again asked the states for $3,000,000.⁵²

What happened to the interest on the domestic part is the clearest measure of how Article XII worked, and Lesson 3 gives the full record. The Board of Treasury's report of September 29, 1787 added up four requisitions for domestic interest, made in 1782, 1784, 1785 and 1786. They asked for $6,279,376.27 in all. By March 31, 1787, "the Aggregate Payments" did "not appear ... to exceed" $1,003,725.57, almost all of it in indents of interest, the paper certificates the states could use to pay their shares. That is about 16 percent.⁵³

The Constitution answered Article XII in its own Article VI: "All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation." The sentence has the same purpose as Article XII, and it was backed by a government that could tax.

Article XIII: "Perpetual" and the Rule of Unanimity

"Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State."²

The article makes three promises. States will abide by Congress's decisions on matters the Articles give it. The Articles will be "inviolably observed." And the union is "perpetual," with change possible only when Congress proposes it and "every State" confirms. The delegates who signed in 1778 repeated all three in the closing paragraph, pledging that their states "shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled" and that "the Union shall be perpetual." The last promise has the most weight, because a state that wanted to leave would have had to break a clause that calls the union perpetual. Nothing in the text says what a state may do if another state breaks the Articles first.

How the rule of unanimity worked

Article XIII's amendment rule was tested three times before 1787.

The first was the five percent import duty of February 3, 1781. It needed every state's consent. Rhode Island's lower house refused it. Its speaker, William Bradford, wrote to Congress on November 30, 1782 that the duty would be unequal in its operation, would introduce officers "unknown and unaccountable" to the state, and would make Congress "independent of their constituents." Congress had voted to send a deputation to urge the state to comply. On December 12 it set the trip aside until further order, after Madison read a private letter reporting that Virginia's legislature, because of Rhode Island's "final refusal," had repealed Virginia's own law for the impost. The plan failed on one state, and then lost a second.⁵⁴

The second was a larger plan of 1783. On April 18, 1783 Congress recommended to the states a revenue system of import duties for twenty-five years, collectors appointed by the states but removable by Congress, and $1,500,000 a year in supplementary funds, together with the Article VIII amendment on counting people. An address to the states, drafted by Madison, Ellsworth and Hamilton, went out on April 26. By February 1786 every state but New York and Georgia had complied, "in some degree," with the impost, and Congress urged those two to act. By August 1786 Georgia had moved, and a committee reported that "all the States, except New York" had granted the impost, though several had attached conditions, among them that the grant would not take effect until all thirteen had acted. New York had passed an act, but it reserved to the state "the sole power of levying and collecting" the duties, made the collectors removable only on conviction in New York's own courts, and took New York's paper money in payment. On August 23, 1786 Congress resolved that it "is not, and cannot be considered as a compliance," and asked New York's governor to convene the legislature. The plan failed on one state.⁵⁵

The third was a set of seven amendments reported on August 7, 1786 by a grand committee of Congress, Livermore, Dane, Manning, Johnson, Smith, Symmes, Pettit, Henry, Lee, Bloodworth, Pinckney and Houstoun, "appointed to report such amendments to the confederation ... as will render the federal government adequate to the ends for which it was instituted." They numbered the new articles 14 through 20. They would have given Congress "the sole and exclusive power of regulating the trade of the States as well with foreign Nations as with each other," with nine states needed to pass any such act; charged a state that fell behind on a requisition ten percent a year on the sum owed, and twelve percent on the cost of troops it failed to furnish; let Congress levy the money itself, by the state's own tax machinery, from a state that neglected a requisition for ten months once a majority of the states had complied; allowed new revenue systems of up to fifteen years if eleven legislatures confirmed them; given Congress power to define treason and piracy; and created a federal court of seven judges with appeals from state courts in cases about treaties, the law of nations, trade regulation and federal revenue, with "the trial of the fact by Jury" kept "sacred." The last article would have required each state to elect delegates early and to send them on time, and to punish an absent delegate by disqualification from office.⁵⁶ The Journal shows the report read on August 7 and assigned for August 14. This lesson found no vote adopting it, and none of the seven became part of the Articles. Read beside the Constitution, they are a short list of the problems the delegates at Philadelphia solved: a commerce power, a way to enforce requisitions, a federal court and the treaty power.

Congress calls a convention

The Constitution was written under Article XIII's own terms in one respect and not in another. On February 21, 1787 Congress resolved, "in the opinion of Congress it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a Convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several States be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government and the preservation of the Union." The original motion recited that "provision is made for making alterations in it by the Consent of a Congress of the United States and the legislatures of all the States."⁵⁷ That is Article XIII's route: Congress proposes, every state confirms. The Convention's finished draft, as Lesson 6 recounts, departed from the route. Its Article VII provided for ratification by conventions of nine states, and for taking effect among the states that ratified. That departure is the subject of Module 16, and the first 13 articles of the old text stand as the document the delegates were told to revise and did not.

What the Articles Left Out

The Confederation's critics at the time did not have to guess at its gaps. Congress listed them itself, in August 1781, five months after the Articles took effect.

On August 22, 1781, a committee of Randolph, Ellsworth and Varnum, "appointed to prepare an Exposition of the Confederation, a plan for its complete execution and supplemental articles," made its report. It asked to be discharged from writing an exposition, for a reason that bears on the whole text: such a comment would be "voluminous if coextensive with the subject, the omission to enumerate any Congressional powers become an argument against their existence, and it will be early enough to insist upon them, when they shall be exercised and disputed." The committee thought that to list every power would suggest that anything unlisted had no existence.

It then listed twenty-one places where "the Confederation requires execution." They were: the mode and proportions of militia aid to a state under invasion; a description of the privileges and immunities of each state's citizens in the others; the conditions on which a criminal is delivered up; the method of exemplifying records and the effect of other states' court proceedings; the form for notifying the appointment of delegates; an oath for delegates against receiving secret salaries; the privileges of delegates; an oath against foreign presents; a plan for the militia; a scheme for valuing land; rules about captures; territorial jurisdiction; a mint; weights and measures; a committee on Indian affairs; the post office; a census of white inhabitants; the monthly publication of the Journal; the registering of seamen; the liquidation of old accounts; and "providing means of animadverting on delinquent States."

The committee also proposed that the states be asked to give Congress seven supplemental powers. They were a power to lay embargoes; rules for impressing supplies; power to appoint collectors of the taxes laid by requisition; the admission of part of a state with its consent; a power to stipulate for consuls in treaties; a power to "destrain the property of a State delinquent in its assigned proportion of Men and Money"; and a power to vary the rules of suffrage in Congress, so that on a listed set of war questions (letters of marque in peacetime, alliances, coining money, bills of credit, borrowing, fixing the size of the forces and naming a commander in chief) "at least two thirds of the U. S. shall agree." The report closed by proposing that a committee prepare a representation to the states. This lesson did not find a vote adopting the supplemental powers, and none of them reached the states as an amendment.¹³

The list is useful to a reader for two reasons. First, it shows how much of the Confederation was understood by its own Congress as unfinished on the day it began: half the clauses covered in this lesson, from fugitives to the post office, appear on it. Second, it names a power, to seize a delinquent state's property, that no Confederation Congress ever held. The Constitution does not contain it. It solved the problem differently, by giving the government power to tax individuals directly.

The Thirteen Articles at a Glance

The table sets the article's main rule beside what the Journals show about how it worked. Page ranges are in the footnotes in the sections above.

Myths and Misreadings

"The Articles gave Congress no power to do anything."

Congress had real powers: war and peace, treaties, the army and navy, the post, coin, Indian trade and the final appeal in prize cases. It used them. It ratified the peace, ran a post office that paid its way, set up an appeals court, and held a court between two states to judgment. The difficulty was enforcement. Congress could ask for money and men and had no way to collect either.

"The Articles were never amended because the delegates did not notice the problems."

They noticed at once. In August 1781, five months after the Articles took effect, a committee of Congress listed twenty-one provisions that needed "execution" and seven powers it would like to add. In March 1783 Congress proposed to change the tax formula, and in April 1783 it proposed a revenue system. In August 1786 a grand committee reported seven amendments. The rule of unanimity, which required every legislature to confirm, killed each of them.

"A state could ignore the Articles without consequence."

In law, the Articles were a pledge among states, and Congress's resolutions that a state follow them were recommendations. Congress could, and did, name the offenders in its Journal and write the states a letter. It could not seize property, send troops against a state, or sue in a court. That is the most plain statement of what the Confederation could not do.

"The Constitution's Article V on amendment was copied from the Articles."

The Constitution's rule is nearer to Franklin's 1775 sketch than to the Articles. Franklin's article let a majority of the colonial assemblies bind the rest; the Articles required every state; the Constitution requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress, or a convention called by two-thirds of the states, and ratification by three-fourths. Module 6 covers it.

"The Articles had a president."

The President of the United States in Congress Assembled was the presiding officer of Congress, chosen for a term of one year with no executive power, and Article IX barred anyone from serving more than one year in any three. The presidents under the Articles after March 1, 1781 are listed in the discussion of Article V above.

Key Documents

Each document was read in the text cited. Primary sources are listed in the Sources section below.

Why This Matters to Idaho Officials and Voters

Idaho's constitution and statutes carry answers to several of the problems the Articles left open. Three are easy to see in the clauses read above.

The first is speech and debate. Article V of the Articles gave delegates a protection for what they said in Congress: "Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Congress."² Idaho's constitution, Article III, section 7, gives its legislators a similar one: "nor shall a member, for words uttered in debate in either house, be questioned in any other place."⁵⁸ The same section also protects a member from arrest during the session, in going to and returning from it, except for treason, felony or breach of the peace, a protection that Article V had also included. Section 11 adds a rule the Articles never needed to state, since the delegates were appointed and recalled by their legislatures: either house may expel a member "for good cause shown, with the concurrence of two-thirds of all the members."⁵⁹

The second is open doors. Article IX let Congress keep secret "such parts" of its Journal "relating to treaties, alliances or military operations" that "in their judgement require secrecy," and it required the yeas and nays to be entered when any delegate asked.² Idaho's constitution, Article III, section 12, says the business of each house and of the committee of the whole "shall be transacted openly and not in secret session."⁶⁰ A reporter who wants to know how a bill was decided can start from that sentence. The Confederation's Journal, with its roll calls by state, is the source for most of this lesson because it was printed and kept.

The third is disputes between states. Under Article IX, Congress was the last resort for disputes over boundaries and "any other cause whatever," through a court of commissioners picked by a process of striking names. The process worked at Trenton in 1782 and was started again for Georgia and South Carolina in 1786. The Constitution moved such cases to the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction. Idaho has lived under that arrangement for rivers and fish. The Snake River Compact, signed at Cheyenne on October 10, 1949 by Idaho and Wyoming under an act of Congress of June 3, 1948, is in the Idaho Code at section 42-3401 as a compact the legislature ratified.⁶¹ In Idaho ex rel. Evans v. Oregon and Washington, argued November 26, 1979 and decided January 21, 1980, Idaho sued two other states directly in the Supreme Court to seek an equitable apportionment of the anadromous fish runs between its spawning grounds and the Pacific.⁶² Both routes, a compact approved by Congress and a suit between states, are descendants of Article IX's attempt to give states a way to settle quarrels without force.

The lesson for a voter is plain. When Idaho officials describe what a body of government can and cannot do, the Articles show what it looks like when a governing body has duties and no way to collect on them. A constitution that gives a legislature a duty, as Idaho's does with open sessions and the two-thirds rule, also needs a means of enforcing it, and the Confederation shows what the lack of one cost.

Using This in Reporting and Civic Life

Testing the claim that "the Articles gave Congress no power"

A speaker at a county meeting says the Articles gave Congress no power at all. Read Article IX with the speaker. It lists powers over war, treaties, prize appeals, boundaries between states, coin, weights and measures, the post, Indian affairs and the army, and it says twelve kinds of act need nine states. Then check the record for what happened under each: the treaty was ratified on January 14, 1784, the post office ran, the Court of Appeals decided cases, and one state-boundary court gave a judgment. The accurate claim is narrower. Congress had powers it could vote on and no way to enforce the ones that needed money or men from the states.

Reading a requisition like a budget

The requisition of September 27, 1785 asked for $3,000,000. Figure 1 shows each state's share. A reporter who wants to understand what a state "owed" can do the arithmetic from the quota table in the Journal. The Treasury's own total for 1782 to 1786 domestic interest is $6,279,376.27, and its own count of payments by March 31, 1787 is $1,003,725.57. Whenever a politician cites a number for what the Confederation "collected," the question to ask is which requisition, which year and in what form, since most of the payments counted in that report were in paper certificates, not coin.

Checking a quotation from the Journal

The printed Journals of the Continental Congress carry the editors' notes and give the page of the original paper. Quoted passages in this lesson were read in that printing at the Internet Archive. A claim like "Congress ordered X" needs a date and a page range. When the Journal prints a text as a motion or a draft, as it does with several documents cited here, the entry does not show Congress adopted it. Look for the words "Resolved" or "Ordered," and for a roll call.

Reading a rule for what it excludes

Article II said Congress held only the powers "expressly delegated." The Constitution's Tenth Amendment omitted "expressly" after Madison objected in 1789. The choice of one word is a good exercise for any reader of a statute, charter or ordinance: look for the adverb, and ask what the drafters did when someone proposed adding or removing it.

Where to find the records

The Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774 to 1789, are in thirty-four volumes at the Internet Archive. The National Archives hold the engrossed Articles and Avalon at Yale hosts the text. The Idaho Legislature's website carries the Idaho Constitution and Code at the sections cited in this lesson.

Related Lessons

Before this lesson: Lesson 1, Drafting and Ratification, which tells how the text was written and why Maryland held out until March 1, 1781. Next in the series: Lesson 3, Congress at Work, on how Congress met, voted and raised money. Forward in the course: Module 1, From the Charters to Philadelphia (the constitutional background); Module 6, Amending the Constitution (how the unanimity rule of Article XIII became the three-fourths rule of Article V); Module 14, Article IV: The States and the Union (the descendants of the Articles' fourth article and of the Article IX court for disputes between states); and Module 16, Article VII: Ratification (how the Constitution replaced the Articles without the consent of every state). Also in this series: Lesson 4, Lesson 5 and Lesson 6.

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• Avalon Project, Articles of Confederation (March 1, 1781)
• National Archives, Milestone Documents: Articles of Confederation
• Avalon Project, Franklin's Articles of Confederation (July 21, 1775)
• Avalon Project, Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (Dickinson draft, July 12, 1776)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 3 (September to December 1775)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 5 (June to October 1776)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 7 (January to May 1777)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 9 (October to December 1777)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 11 (May to September 1778)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 12 (September to December 1778)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 21 (January to December 1781)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 23 (1782)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 24 (January to May 1783)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 25 (June to December 1783)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 26 (January to May 1784)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 27 (May to October 1784)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 28 (January to June 1785)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 29 (July to December 1785)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 30 (January to July 1786)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 31 (August to December 1786)
• Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 32 (January to July 1787)
• Teaching American History, Debate on Amendments to the Constitution (August 18, 1789)
• 1 Stat. 122 (Act of May 26, 1790, authentication of state records)
• 1 Stat. 189 (Act of February 4, 1791, admission of Kentucky)
• 1 Stat. 191 (Act of February 18, 1791, admission of Vermont)
• Idaho Constitution, art. III, section 7
• Idaho Constitution, art. III, section 11
• Idaho Constitution, art. III, section 12
• Idaho Code section 42-3401 (Snake River Compact)
• Idaho ex rel. Evans v. Oregon and Washington, 444 U.S. 380 (1980), Legal Information Institute

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• Penhallow v. Doane's Administrators, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 54 (1795), Justia (verify the text against the United States Reports)

Footnotes

1. The Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774 to 1789, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), thirty-four volumes, are on the Internet Archive, volume by volume, with links in each note below. Page ranges in these notes were located in the Archive's text layer and can be off by a page or two; the volume, date and quoted words are the reliable guide. Where an entry prints a text from the papers as a motion or draft, the notes say so.
2. Articles of Confederation (1781), Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp. Text also at the National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-confederation. Spelling is kept where the clause is quoted; the Avalon text has a few typing slips, which are corrected here.
3. National Archives, Milestone Documents, Articles of Confederation, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-confederation.
4. Dickinson's draft of July 12, 1776 used "Name" and "Colonies," Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 5, pp. 546 to 554 (July 12, 1776), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit. The report of the committee of the whole of August 20, 1776, printed as the second form, says "States," Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 5, pp. 674 to 689 (Aug. 20, 1776), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit.
5. Thomas Burke to Governor Richard Caswell, April 29, 1777, quoted in a note in Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 7, p. 123 (Feb. 15, 1777 (note)), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin07unit. Lesson 1 sets out the vote.
6. Debate on Amendments to the Constitution, House of Representatives, August 18, 1789, Teaching American History, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/debate-on-amendments-to-the-constitution/. The record has Thomas Tudor Tucker extending his motion to add the word "expressly" and Madison objecting that "it was impossible to confine a government to the exercise of express powers; there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication, unless the Constitution descended to recount every minutia." The House rejected the addition.
7. Ordinance to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of North America, December 31, 1781, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 21, pp. 1187 to 1190 (Dec. 31, 1781), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin21unit. The recital that "the exigencies of the United States render it indispensably necessary that such an act be immediately passed" is in the ordinance; the committee report of the same day says the bank "cannot operate without an act of incorporation from Congress itself." Congress also recommended that the state legislatures pass supporting laws.
8. Franklin's Articles of Confederation, July 21, 1775, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 2, pp. 195 to 199 (July 21, 1775), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin02unit. Avalon text at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_07-21-75.asp.
9. Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, reported July 12, 1776, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 5, pp. 546 to 554 (July 12, 1776), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit. Avalon text at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_07-12-76.asp. Dickinson's Article XIX gave the Council of State power "to receive and open all Letters directed to the United States," to "direct military Operations by Sea and Land," to "draw upon the Treasurers for such Sums as may be appropriated" and to "superintend and controul or suspend all Officers civil" and military; the passage is quoted in part and the last clause is continued in the text. Article XX names Canada and requires nine colonies to admit any other.
10. Amendments proposed by the states in Congress, June 26, 1778, with the roll calls, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 11, pp. 648 to 656 (June 26, 1778), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin11unit. South Carolina's motion to insert "white" in Article IV drew two ayes, eight noes and one divided.
11. Report of four new articles, November 8, 1777, with the Journal's notations "Agreed," "Expunged" and the note that the fugitive paragraph was struck in Congress, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 9, pp. 886 to 888 (Nov. 8, 1777), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin09unit.
12. Report of John Jay on the case of Captain Reily, September 28, 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 33, pp. 553 to 554 (Sept. 28, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin33unit.
13. Report of the committee appointed to prepare an exposition of the Confederation, August 22, 1781, in Varnum's hand, committee Randolph, Ellsworth and Varnum, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 21, pp. 894 to 896 (Aug. 22, 1781), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin21unit. The quoted phrases are from the report. Its closing resolution to appoint a committee to prepare a representation to the states is part of the report as printed; this lesson found no vote adopting the supplemental powers.
14. Act of May 26, 1790, 1 Stat. 122, ch. XI, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-1/pdf/STATUTE-1-Pg122.pdf.
15. Elections of presidents of Congress: Hanson, Nov. 5, 1781, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 21, pp. 1098 to 1100 (Nov. 5, 1781), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin21unit. Boudinot, Nov. 4, 1782, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 706 to 708 (Nov. 4, 1782), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit. Mifflin, Nov. 3, 1783, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 25, pp. 796 to 800 (Nov. 3, 1783), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin25unit. Lee, Nov. 30, 1784, only eight states present, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 27, pp. 646 to 648 (Nov. 30, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin27unit. Hancock, Nov. 23, 1785, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 29, pp. 880 to 884 (Nov. 23, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-29-jul-1-dec-30-1785. Gorham, June 6, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 30, pp. 328 to 332 (June 6, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-30-jan-2-jul-31-1786. St. Clair, Feb. 2, 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. 8 to 14 (Feb. 2, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787. Griffin, Jan. 22, 1788, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 34, pp. 8 to 10 (Jan. 22, 1788), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-34-jan-21-1788-mar-2-1789.
16. The Osgood question, March 23, 1784, the report of the committee on qualifications, the substitute and the roll calls, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 26, pp. 156 to 160 (Mar. 23, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin26unit. The count of the printed roll call on the committee's report is this lesson's reading of a garbled table.
17. Debate on the President writing to states with fewer than three delegates, February 7, 1777, in Burke's abstract, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 7, p. 98 (Feb. 7, 1777), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin07unit. Burke's note reads "Nos 5 Ayes 4 1 Divided."
18. Roll calls on proportional voting, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 9, pp. 778 to 780 (Oct. 7, 1777), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin09unit.
19. Prefatory note by the editors, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. vii to viii (1787 (prefatory note)), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787. The note reports 112 days of business from January 17, 1787, when a quorum of seven states was first present, to October 27, and a table of days by state.
20. Articles as agreed to, November 15, 1777, and the circular letter of November 17, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 9, pp. 907 to 934 (Nov. 15 and 17, 1777), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin09unit.
21. The delegates' representation of April 23, 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. 228 to 230 (Apr. 23, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787. The agreement of December 16, 1786, signed at Hartford by commissioners, is printed in Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 33, pp. 622 to 626 (Oct. 1787), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin33unit. The commissioners met on November 30, 1786.
22. Convention of Beaufort, April 28, 1787, laid before Congress August 9, 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 33, pp. 466 to 472 (Aug. 9, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin33unit.
23. Plan of Treaties: committee named June 12, 1776, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 5, p. 433 (June 12, 1776), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit. report of July 17, 1776, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 5, pp. 576 to 589 (July 17, 1776), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit.
24. Resolution of March 21, 1787 on state acts and treaties, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. 124 to 125 (Mar. 21, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787. and the letter to the states of April 13, 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. 177 to 184 (Apr. 13, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787.
25. New York's representation of May 13, 1784 asking how many troops it might keep, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 27, pp. 379 to 381 (May 13, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin27unit. and the resolution of June 3, 1784 on 700 militia, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 27, pp. 530 to 531 (June 3, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin27unit.
26. Howell's motion referred April 4, 1785, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 28, p. 228 (Apr. 4, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-28-jan-11-jun-30-1785. the resolution to sell for specie or public securities, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 28, pp. 422 to 424 (June 3, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-28-jan-11-jun-30-1785. and the Board of Treasury's report of the sale for $26,000 in public securities, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 29, p. 614 (Aug. 5, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-29-jul-1-dec-30-1785.
27. Motion printed under September 14, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 652 to 656 (Sept. 14, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. The entry prints the text from the papers as a motion; this lesson did not find a vote adopting it.
28. Resolution on the claim of Captain John Stevens, August 7, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, p. 494 (Aug. 7, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
29. Reply of Congress to Connecticut, February 26, 1784, by a committee of Jefferson, Lee and Williamson, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 26, pp. 96 to 102 (Feb. 26, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin26unit. The sentence quoted is on the page that begins the reply's last paragraph.
30. Committee on valuing land, February 6, 1783, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 24, pp. 112 to 115 (Feb. 6, 1783), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin24unit. and Madison's notes of the grand committee of January 14, 1783, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 25, pp. 854 to 855 (Jan. 14, 1783 (notes of debates)), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin25unit.
31. Amendment to Article VIII, March 28 and 31, 1783, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 24, pp. 214 to 215 and 222 to 224 (Mar. 28 and 31, 1783), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin24unit.
32. The committee's report on the requisition read July 18, 1785 and the requisition of September 27, 1785, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 29, pp. 542 to 544 and 765 to 768 (July 18 and Sept. 27, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-29-jul-1-dec-30-1785.
33. Quota table in the report read July 18, 1785, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 29, pp. 542 to 544 (July 18, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-29-jul-1-dec-30-1785. The shares printed are New Hampshire $105,416 (3.5 percent), Massachusetts $448,854 (15.0), Rhode Island $64,636 (2.2), Connecticut $264,182 (8.8), New York $256,486 (8.5), New Jersey $166,716 (5.6), Pennsylvania $410,378 (13.7), Delaware $44,886 (1.5), Maryland $283,034 (9.4), Virginia $512,974 (17.1), North Carolina $218,012 (7.3), South Carolina $192,366 (6.4) and Georgia $32,060 (1.1), which sum to $3,000,000.
34. Draft of January 3, 1784, printed from the papers and endorsed "rendered useless" by the ratification of January 14 by nine states, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 26, pp. 4 to 8 (Jan. 3, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin26unit. and the ratification of January 14, 1784, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 26, pp. 22 to 26 (Jan. 14, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin26unit.
35. Report of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs on state laws and the treaty of peace, October 13, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 781 to 874 (Oct. 13, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
36. Resolution of November 25, 1775 recommending state prize courts, with the appeal to Congress "in all cases," Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 3, pp. 371 to 376 (Nov. 25, 1775), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin03unit. The Doane petition of October 9, 1778, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 12, p. 992 (Oct. 9, 1778), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin12unit. The Court of Appeals' decree of September 17, 1783, the committee report that would have undone it, and the roll calls of January 13 and 21, 1784 are in Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 26, pp. 18 to 20 and 38 to 40 (Jan. 13 and 21, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin26unit. and the motion of March 19, 1784 is at Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 26, p. 150 (Mar. 19, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin26unit. The Journal spells the vessel "Lusannah" and "Liisanna"; the Supreme Court reporter and Justia use "Susanna."
37. The plan for a Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture and the debate of January 5 to 7, 1780, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 16, pp. 12 to 25 (Jan. 5 to 7, 1780), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin16unit. and the election of judges of January 22, 1780, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 16, pp. 78 to 80 (Jan. 22, 1780), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin16unit.
38. Penhallow v. Doane's Administrators, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 54 (1795), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/3/54/. The text was read through a Justia page that carries a note on AI-assisted summaries; verify the holding against the United States Reports.
39. Agreement of the agents of Pennsylvania and Connecticut for the court, August 21 to 23, 1782, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 528 to 529 (Aug. 21 to 23, 1782), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit. and the sentence of December 30, 1782, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 832 to 836 (Dec. 30, 1782), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit. The Pennsylvania agents were William Bradford Jr., Joseph Reed, James Wilson and Jonathan D. Sargeant, and Connecticut's were Eliphalet Dyer and Jesse Root.
40. Georgia and South Carolina, the striking of the court by lot, September 13, 1786, and the summons for the third Monday in June 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 650 to 654 (Sept. 13 and 14, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. Acceptances by February 3, 1787 are in a note to the Journal of that date, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. 14 to 18 (Feb. 3, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787.
41. Resolutions on coin of August 8, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, p. 502 (Aug. 8, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. and the ordinance for a mint of October 16, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 876 to 890 (Oct. 16, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
42. Order of August 19, 1785 on a motion of Rufus King, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 29, p. 636 (Aug. 19, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-29-jul-1-dec-30-1785.
43. Ordinance for the regulation of Indian affairs, August 7, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 490 to 493 (Aug. 7, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
44. Ordinance for regulating the post office, October 18, 1782, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 670 to 676 (Oct. 18, 1782), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit.
45. Resolution of September 4, 1786 on carrying the mail in stage carriages, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, p. 628 (Sept. 4, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
46. Resolution of September 20, 1786 that the post office take specie only, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, p. 672 (Sept. 20, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
47. Resolution on the powers of the Committee of the States, May 29, 1784, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 27, pp. 474 to 477 (May 29, 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin27unit. The Journal of the Committee of the States, June 4 to August 19, 1784, is Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 27, pp. 559 to 638 (June to Aug. 1784), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin27unit. The daily counts of states present, which this lesson made by reading the entries, are approximate. The members present on June 4 and the resolutions of August 3 and 9 and the paper of August 19 are in that Journal.
48. Resolutions on Vermont, August 7, 1781, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 21, pp. 836 to 838 (Aug. 7, 1781), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin21unit. the committee report of August 18 to 20, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 21, pp. 884 to 888 (Aug. 20, 1781), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin21unit. and the altered resolution of August 21, 1781, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 21, pp. 892 to 893 (Aug. 21, 1781), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin21unit.
49. Act of February 18, 1791, 1 Stat. 191, ch. VII (Vermont admitted March 4, 1791), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-1/pdf/STATUTE-1-Pg191.pdf.
50. Motion of the Virginia delegates, February 29, 1788, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 34, pp. 72 to 74 (Feb. 29, 1788), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-34-jan-21-1788-mar-2-1789. The Virginia acts of October 1785 and October 1786 and the Kentucky convention of September 22, 1787 are recited in the papers printed there.
51. Act of February 4, 1791, 1 Stat. 189, ch. IV (Kentucky admitted June 1, 1792), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-1/pdf/STATUTE-1-Pg189.pdf.
52. Estimate for the year, with the foreign and domestic debts, in the committee report read July 18, 1785, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 29, pp. 542 to 544 (July 18, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-29-jul-1-dec-30-1785. and the final estimate and requisition of September 27, 1785, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 29, pp. 765 to 768 (Sept. 27, 1785), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-29-jul-1-dec-30-1785. The liquidated domestic debt is $10,517,380.60, with a year's interest of $631,042.60.
53. Report of the Board of Treasury, September 29, 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 33, pp. 570 to 572 (Sept. 29, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin33unit. The report totals requisitions of 1782 ($1,200,000), 1784 ($667,744.43), 1785 ($2,805,071.09) and 1786 ($1,606,560.65) at $6,279,376.27 and counts payments to March 31, 1787 of $1,003,725.57. The text of the 1784 line is printed with a worded sum that does not match the figure; the figures are used here.
54. Rhode Island's letter of November 30, 1782, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 787 to 790 (Dec. 12, 1782), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit. the committee reply of Hamilton, Madison and Fitzsimmons, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 797 to 800 (Dec. 1782), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit. and Madison's notes on the deputation and on Virginia's repeal, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 23, pp. 864 to 872 (Dec. 1782 (notes of debates)), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin23unit. The Journal index also lists the repeal of the impost in Virginia at p. 831. Congress's reply of Jan. 30, 1783 to the Pennsylvania memorials, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 24, pp. 100 to 104 (Jan. 30, 1783), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin24unit. confirms that Virginia had repealed its act.
55. Committee reports of February 3 and 7, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 30, pp. 48 to 52 (Feb. 3 and 7, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-30-jan-2-jul-31-1786. and the resolutions on New York's act, August 23, 1786, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 558 to 561 (Aug. 23, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786.
56. Report of the grand committee, read August 7, 1786 and assigned for August 14, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 31, pp. 494 to 498 (Aug. 7, 1786), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-31-aug-1-dec-31-1786. The Journal prints the text from the papers in the hand of Edward Carrington; this lesson found no vote adopting it.
57. Resolution of February 21, 1787, Journals of the Continental Congress, ed. Worthington C. Ford and others (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904 to 1937), vol. 32, pp. 71 to 74 (Feb. 21, 1787), https://archive.org/details/journals-of-the-continental-congress-1774-1789-vol-32-jan-17-jul-20-1787.
58. Idaho Constitution, art. III, section 7 ("Privilege from arrest"), read October 18, 2026, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIII/Sect7/.
59. Idaho Constitution, art. III, section 11 ("Expulsion of members"), read October 18, 2026, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIII/Sect11/.
60. Idaho Constitution, art. III, section 12 ("Secret sessions prohibited"), read October 18, 2026, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIII/Sect12/.
61. Idaho Code section 42-3401, "Snake River Compact ratified," read October 18, 2026, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title42/T42CH34/SECT42-3401/. The section gives the compact as signed at Cheyenne on October 10, 1949 and as concluded "as authorized by the Act of June 3, 1948 (62 Stat. 294)."
62. Idaho ex rel. Evans v. Oregon and Washington, 444 U.S. 380 (1980), No. 67, Orig., argued Nov. 26, 1979, decided Jan. 21, 1980, Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/444/380. The syllabus describes an action to secure equitable apportionment of anadromous fish runs between spawning grounds in Idaho and the Pacific Ocean.