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Articles of Confederation still a source of pride for York
By MARC LEVY
The Associated Press
11/15/02 9:03 AM

YORK, Pa. (AP) -- When the first words of the United States government included, "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence," the blueprint for a swift and utter national failure was inevitably and unwittingly rolled out.

That document, the Articles of Confederation, was adopted 225 years ago Friday, and pre-empted 10 years later by the U.S. Constitution when it became painfully clear that individual states were falling into financial ruin.

While the government created by the 13 Articles flopped, the document has been a source of enormous civic pride to York, the central Pennsylvania city where it was drawn up, and an enduring lesson for the country, experts say, that state powers must be balanced with federal powers.

"That's something we have to hang a lantern on and remind people of," said York Mayor John Brenner. "There's some people who chide us, `Well you're not really the first capital of the United States,' but the reality is that the Articles of Confederation were born here."

Establishing the 13 Articles of Confederation was no easy thing.

The wartime Continental Congress had already fled a British advance on Philadelphia, the colonial capital, 85 miles west to York Town, where they felt safe on the other side of the Susquehanna River.

Then came the arguing.

Excerpts from Thomas Jefferson's autobiography, posted on the Yale Law School Web site, reveal the deep divisions among politicians from 13 states from Georgia to New Hampshire as they debated how to establish the country's first government.

"All men admit that a confederacy is necessary," Jefferson wrote, quoting the argument of John Witherspoon, a delegate from New Jersey. "Should the idea get abroad that there is likely to be no union among us, it will damp the minds of the people, diminish the glory of our struggle, and lessen its importance because it will open to our view future prospects of war and dissension among ourselves."

One sensitive issue for the state's delegates was the dominance that Great Britain had exercised over the colonies. The delegates did not want to recreate a similar kind of big brother, and thus established a weak national government composed of one house of legislature with no judicial or executive branches.

Politicians soon realized that, individually, each state did not have money to survive alone when its duties included expensive propositions, such as raising an army. Conversely, the national government could not enforce taxes or interstate commerce.

The U.S. Constitution of 1787 corrected those failings.

"Had the Articles not failed they way they did, we would have never had the Constitution," said John Altman, an assistant political science professor at York College.

In defense of the Articles, the Constitution adopted many portions of language from its forerunner, Altman noted.

And the failure of the Articles' weak national government taught delegates that compromise was needed between states' rights and a strong national government -- albeit one with three branches checking each other.

"If you could say anything about the Articles of Confederation in terms of the legacy or impact upon the Constitution, it was the protection of the states and integrity of state's rights, and the fear that a strong national government could be dangerous," said Joseph DiSarro, chairman of the political science department at Washington Jefferson College in Washington, Pa.

The Articles also have meant a lot to community leaders in York, a city wrestling with the upheaval caused by the ongoing prosecution of 12 men, both black and white, in the murders of a young black woman and a white rookie police officer during its 1969 race riots.

The fact that the Continental Congress was seated in York for nine months has been the subject of a countywide education drive and celebration begun this year, called "Nine Months in York Town."

To kick off the program, Brenner in September dressed up in period garb, and rode in a horse-drawn carriage several blocks to greet students at the restored Colonial Courthouse, the red brick structure where the Congress met.

"I think it's meant something to the York fathers and it's beginning to become something that we talk about no matter where we go," said Wm. Lee Smallwood, a city council member for 21 years. "Everyone wants to say that York was the first capital."

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