Second American Republic - 1789-2025
The Founders were faced with a difficult decision — fix the flawed Articles of Confederation or develop a new system. Nationalists, led by James Madison, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Wilson, almost immediately began working toward strengthening the federal government. They turned a series of regional commercial conferences into a national constitutional convention at Philadelphia in 1787.
Delegates to the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 created the instrument of government. When delegates to the Constitutional Convention began to assemble at Philadelphia in May 1787, they quickly resolved to replace rather than merely revise the Articles of Confederation. Five months of debate, compromise, and creative strategies produced a new constitution, adopted on September 17, 1787, creating a federal republic with a strong central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments. The Federalist Papers were a series of eighty-five newspaper essays published anonymously but were in fact written in defense of the Constitution by James Madison, John Jay (1745–1829), and Alexander Hamilton. In lobbying for adoption of the Constitution over the existing Articles of Confederation, the essays explain particular provisions of the Constitution in detail. Rhode Island and North Carolina did not ratify until after the formation of the new government in 1789.
- With his 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle of judicial review, an important addition to the system of “checks and balances” created to prevent any one branch of the Federal Government from becoming too powerful. “A Law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” With these words written by Chief Justice Marshall, the Supreme Court for the first time declared unconstitutional a law passed by Congress and signed by the President. Nothing stated in the Constitution gave the Court this specific power. Marshall, however, believed that the Supreme Court should have a role equal to those of the other two branches of government.
- The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, simplified the process for selecting a President and Vice President from the same political party. Under Article II as originally ratified, the Electoral College did not vote separately for President and Vice President. Instead, each elector voted for two candidates for President. If one candidate received votes from a majority of the electors, he became President, while the candidate with the second-highest number of votes became Vice President. The original system could [and did in the election of 1796], result in the selection of a President and Vice President with different political alignments. Possibly the theory was that the House would be the domain of the populares, while the Senate would preserve the interests of the optimates.
- The 13th Amendment, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, abolished slavery in the United States.
- The 14th Amendment, passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people. Birthright citizenship is a legal principle under which a person is granted citizenship of a country by virtue of being born within its territory. In the United States, this concept was established bythe 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898): The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the principle of birthright citizenship for children of non-citizen parents born on U.S. soil, solidifying the jus soli interpretation.
- The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 marked the beginning of the end of the spoils system. This act established that government jobs should be awarded based on merit, determined through competitive exams, and created the Civil Service Commission to oversee this process. At that time, there were approximately 132,000 federal employees on the U.S. government payroll. The majority of federal employees worked in the postal system. A significant portion of the workforce managed customs duties and internal revenue collection. Over time, the merit-based system replaced patronage in most areas of government employment, though political appointments still exist for high-level positions. The term "spoils system" gained prominence during the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–1837). The spoils system refers to a practice in U.S. politics where a political party, after winning an election, rewards its supporters, friends, and loyalists with government jobs and public positions. The system operates on the principle of "to the victor go the spoils," meaning that the winning party has the right to distribute government positions as political rewards. Jackson openly embraced the practice, arguing that it democratized government by allowing ordinary citizens, not just elite bureaucrats, to hold public office. The spoils system was heavily criticized for fostering corruption, inefficiency, and incompetence in government.
- The Tillman Act of 1907 began efforts to control bad behavior by rich people and corporations. That law explicitly forbade any corporation from making “money contributions in connection with any election to any [federal] political office.” By 1925, the Tillman Act had been incorporated into the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, further limiting money in politics, and in 1938 came got the Hatch Act which limited contributions to $5000 per candidate and $3 million per party.
- The 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, was adopted to address the Court’s 1895 decision in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. holding unconstitutional Congress’s attempt of the previous year to tax incomes uniformly throughout the United States. Article I granted Congress authority to collect taxes, but required direct taxes to be imposed proportional to the population of the states. The 16th Amendment clarified that Congress had the power to collect an income tax without apportionment among the states, and without regard to population.
- The 17th Amendment, passed by Congress on May 13, 1912, and ratified on April 8, 1913, provided for the direct election of Senators by the voting public during elections. Initially, state legislatures selected Senators, rendering the Senates semething of a gathering of ambassadors from quasi-independent states. the year before the 17th Amendment was ratified, at least twenty-nine states were nominating Senators on a popular basis, and, as a consequence, the constitutional discretion of the state legislatures had been reduced to little more than that retained by presidential electors.
- The 19th Amendment, proposed in June 1919, and ratified in August 1920. prohibited the federal and state governments from denying or abridging a U.S. citizen’s right to vote on the basis of sex, thereby recognizing women’s suffrage.
- In 1930, once he realized that he had set in motion a general revision of the tariff, President Hoover urged the House and Senate to exercise restraint. Willis C. Hawley, of Oregon, introduced a bill in the House that ignored the limitations Hoover had suggested. In the upper House, Senator Reed Smoot, of Utah, traded support of higher tariffs on imported industrial goods for increases in agricultural duties. Hoover was none too pleased with the monster this process had created. Having set up the highest general tariff rate structure that the United States had ever experienced, it triggered an angry reaction overseas. One nation after another retaliated by raising its own trade barriers. A monumental international depression had begun, which was destroying the whole fabric of world trade, even while Congress was putting the finishing touches on the SmootHawley Act. Under the impact of higher tariffs, competitive devaluations, and heavy-handed financial controls throughout the world, the flow of international trade shrank drastically in 1931 and 1932, and the U.S. economy staggered toward total paralysis.
- The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 totally altered the process of changing domestic tariffs because it authorized the President to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements with other countries for an initial 3-year period. It thus turned over to the executive branch the power to reduce rates, The new agreements led to the reduction of many tariff rate levels, but because they simultaneously stimulated increased trade, the total amount of the duties collected under the reciprocity agreement's tariff concessions was actually higher than it had been under the original Smoot-Hawley rates of duty. Unfortunately, the total volume of U.S. international trade was not fated to return to its predepression levels for some time.
- The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, limited persons to being elected only twice to the presidency. This followed soon after the people had elected Franklin D. Roosevelt to unprecedented third and fourth terms of office, in 1940 and 1944, respectively. This prohibition would not prevent someone who had twice been elected President from succeeding to the office after having been elected or appointed Vice President.
- Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (19 U.S.C. §1862) authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to conduct comprehensive investigations to determine the effects of imports of any article on the national security of the United States. The President can concur or not with the Secretary’s recommendations, and, if necessary, take action to “adjust the imports of an article and its derivatives.” In addition, the Secretary can recommend, and the President can take, other lawful non-trade related actions necessary to address the threat.
For many years the primary function of the U.S. tariff system was to provide the Federal Government with a regular income adequate to finance its operations. Tariffs or customs duties are fundamentally nothing more than taxes levied on imported goods. The duties, collected at customs houses, are turned over to the US Treasury. The importance of the revenue-raising aspect of tariffs has declined markedly in the period since 1913. Until that time customs duties had accounted for between 50 and 90 percent of the total Federal income. The ratification of the 16th amendment to the Constitution in that year permitted the imposition of direct income taxes, a development that greatly expanded the Government's revenue-collection capabilities. As a consequence, tariffs have declined in importance as revenue measures; in recent years customs duties have accounted for only 1 or 2 percent of the Federal Government's total income.
To prevent or restrict the importation of certain goods from abroad, customs duties had to be set at such a level that the price of imported items (their basic cost after transport plus the import tax) would be higher than the price of similar but domestically produced items. High tariffs were designed to "protect" US industries and producers from foreign competition and to preserve domestic employment levels.
Many businessmen, politicians, and diplomats had argued for years that the Nation's mature industrial economy required increased exports in order to maintain its economic health. One very effective way to encourage other nations to purchase US-produced goods was to offer to buy more of their products, and the reduction of tariff barriers on both sides might bring about this mutually beneficial result.
- The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA) reasserted Congress' power of the purse. Specifically, Title X of the Act – "Impoundment Control" – established procedures to prevent the President and other government officials from unilaterally substituting their own funding decisions for those of the Congress. The Act also created the House and Senate Budget Committees and the Congressional Budget Office. An "impoundment" is any action – or inaction – by an officer or employee of the federal government that precludes federal funds from being obligated[1] or spent, either temporarily or permanently. But the Supreme Court unanimously held in Train v. City of New York that the President does not have unilateral authority to impound funds. Congress has the power of the purse.
If the President wants to spend less money than Congress provided for a particular purpose, he or she must first secure a law providing Congressional approval to rescind the funding in question. The ICA requires that the President send a special message to Congress identifying the amount of the proposed rescission; the reasons for it; and the budgetary, economic, and programmatic effects of the rescission. Upon transmission of such special message, the President may withhold certain funding in the affected accounts for up to 45 legislative session days. If a law approving the rescission is not enacted within the 45 days, any withheld funds must be made available for obligation.
A "deferral" is the withholding, delaying, or – through other Executive action or inaction – effectively precluding funding from being obligated or spent. The ICA prescribes three narrow circumstances in which the President may propose to defer funding for a program: (1) providing for contingencies; (2) achieving budgetary savings made possible through improved operational efficiency; and (3) as specifically provided by law.
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