Articles of Confederation

Sharing

The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, 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 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, provided that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any State, to any other State, of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any State, on the property of the United States, or either of them.

First paragraph of Article IV of the “Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.” The articles were written up by a committee of the Second Continental Congress, which commenced on July 12, 1776; an approved version was sent to the states for ratification on November 15, 1777. The Articles of Confederation came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 states. Its signatories, by state, were

Connecticut:

Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
Oliver Wolcott
Titus Hosmer
Andrew Adams

Delaware:

Thomas McKean
John Dickinson
Nicholas Van Dyke

Georgia:

John Walton
Edward Telfair
Edward Langworthy

Maryland:

John Hanson
Daniel Carroll

Massachusetts Bay:

John Hancock
Samuel Adams
Elbridge Gerry
Francis Dana
James Lovell
Samuel Holten

New Hampshire:

Josiah Bartlett
John Wentworth Jr.

New Jersey:

John Witherspoon
Nathaniel Scudder

New York:

James Duane
Francis Lewis
William Duer
Gouverneur Morris

North Carolina:

John Penn
Cornelius Harnett
John Williams

Pennsylvania:

Robert Morris
Daniel Roberdeau
Jonathan Bayard Smith
William Clingan
Joseph Reed

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations:

William Ellery
Henry Marchant
John Collins

South Carolina:

Henry Laurens
William Henry Drayton
John Mathews
Richard Hutson
Thomas Heyward Jr.

Virginia:

Richard Henry Lee
John Banister
Thomas Adams
John Harvie
Francis Lightfoot Lee

This passage shows a central feature of the union from its inception: the mutual recognition by the states of the status as, and freedom of, their citizens. It also more-than-implicitly defended the institution of chattel slavery.