This chapter examines the threats posed by the dangerous world surrounding the new nation: the continuing imperial ambitions of England and France in North America; Congress's inability to pay off the foreign-held war debt; the states' failure to join together in prying open foreign ports to American commerce; and continuing restrictions on free navigation of the Mississippi River, deemed essential to the development of the nation's interior. Chapter 7 also discusses an array of domestic issues that troubled the nation's affairs. Disputes over taxation and paper money, slavery and the separation of church and state, and the extent of democratic political reform generated turmoil in the states, in some cases leading discontented citizens to openly challenge public authority. By 1786, Timothy Bloodworth, like countless other Americans, was caught up in an escalating debate between Federalists, who believed that the Articles of Confederation were fatally deficient and must be replaced by a stronger national government, and the Anti-Federalists, who were deeply troubled by what they perceived to be the dangers to individual liberty posed by governmental power. That debate over the future of America's republican experiment, which constitutes the chapter's final topic, came to a head in the momentous Philadelphia convention of 1787, with its proposal for dramatic changes in the national government. With ratification of the new Constitution, the American people opened a portentous new era in their history and launched a dialogue over the very nature of American politics.
|
|
