Nevertheless it took a week more of haggling and lobbying before acceptable terms of sale could be agreed upon. Another company composed of "principal characters" in the city had to be taken into the deal in a "profound secret." Arthur St. Clair, the president of the Congress, had to be accepted by the Associators as the governor of the territory, in order to gain his support. Cutler had to finesse by threatening to buy from some of the States which had land for sale within their borders. It is unfortunate for those who believe that our fathers were actuated entirely by disinterested motives and utterly devoid of political guile that the parson lobbyist kept such a candid diary. Day by day the business proceeded, Cutler even making a side visit to Philadelphia while his leaven was working. At last even "that stubborn mule of a Kearney," as the disgusted agent called him, was "left alone," a sufficient number of votes was secured, and Cutler was receiving congratulations on the prospects of the Ohio Company.

"By this Ordinance," he wrote, "we obtained the grant of near 5,000,000 of acres of land, amounting to three millions and a half of dollars; one million and a half of acres for the Ohio Company and the remainder for a private speculation in which many of the principal characters in America are concerned."

The importance of this transaction lies not only in the fact that it was the first sale of public lands in the United States, but that the government established for the territory formed many precedents for later Territories and States. Some of its provisions deserve a close examination. The changes made in the Johnson ordinance to satisfy the Ohio Company are found chiefly in the appended six articles of the Ordinance of 1787. These formed a guarantee that citizens in the territory deprived of the protection of their States would have the same personal rights which they enjoyed before leaving the States. The United States, later destined to become a protector, was feared lest it might be an oppressor. Such individual rights as habeas corpus, trial by jury, freedom of conscience, possession of property, and similar birthrights of Englishmen, had been secured in the States by incorporating them in the various State Constitutions under the general name of "declaration of rights" or "bill of rights." Without such specific title, they were placed in the Ordinance of 1787. The sixth article, no doubt also demanded by Cutler, incorporated the very wording of Jefferson's rejected anti-slavery clause of three years before, except making it immediate instead of after 1800. The New England Associators were unwilling to offer their free labour in competition with slave labour in their new home. The idea was general. "The total exclusion of slavery from the State" had been a prominent provision in a transitory association in Connecticut four years before.

[Illustration: NATHAN DANE'S DRAFT OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CLAUSE IN THE ORDINANCE OF 1787. The authorship of this article of the Ordinance has been in much dispute. Benton attributed it to a similar provision, drafted by Jefferson, which was struck out of the Ordinance of 1784. Northern men gave the credit to Nathan Dane, a Massachusetts jurist, who was in Congress in 1787. During the sectional feeling aroused over the admission of Missouri in 1820, a dispute arose in Congress over the respective claims of Jefferson and of Dane. Of this, Dane himself said: "In April, 1820, search was made for the original manuscript of the Ordinance of 1787. Daniel Bent's answer was 'that no written draft could be found'; but there was found attached to the printed Ordinance in my handwriting the sixth article, as it now is, that is, the slave article." The original is now in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. The signature of Chas. Thomson, Jr., calls attention to the faithful secretary of the Continental Congress during its entire existence.]

The century contest over slavery in the United States made that factor so prominent in national history that it overshadows matters of equal importance in many transactions. The anti-slavery provision of the Ordinance of 1787 has been extravagantly praised ever since the oratory of Daniel Webster first called general attention to it. Sectional partisans have exhausted logic in trying to trace the authorship to Jefferson, a Southern man, or to Dane, a Northern man. The North has credited it to the persistence of New England; the South, pointing to the five Southern affirmative votes out of the eight, has attributed it to the indulgence of their section. In recognising this first anti-slavery action of the National Government, Northern orators have overlooked an attendant clause, the first national fugitive slave law. It paved the way for a similar provision in the Constitution and led to the obnoxious slave rendition laws of later years. In praising the indulgence of the South, the eulogists of that section have failed to consider the price the New England Associators paid in this first slavery compromise of the nation.

When the blinding passion of the slavery question is eliminated from a consideration of this ordinance some other beneficent provisions, added through the desire to satisfy the New England purchasers, begin to appear. They are taken largely from the "bill of rights" placed in the first constitution of the State of Virginia by George Mason, and copied in many of the later constitutions, including that of the United States. They seek to guarantee the rights of the individual against the encroachments of the Government; to embody the principles which the English barons secured at Runnymede; to secure the inheritances left to the English-speaking people by Hampden and Pym. Although many of the early State Constitutions contained a guarantee of religious freedom, habeas corpus, trial by jury, rights to property, and regard for contracts, as has just been stated, these principles had not been expressed in the Articles of Confederation and the General Government was not bound in any manner to grant them in the western territory. But their incorporation in the ordinance gave assurance that their benefits were not to be confined to the original States.

Equally important is the clause providing for equal division of the property of people dying intestate. This first legislation of the National Government on the subject of real property dealt a death-blow to primogeniture, and to the last of the inherited feudal customs of the Middle Ages. It prevented the accumulation of large estates, and insured the individual ownership of thousands of homes. No system of foreign landlordism was possible under it. The people were to become their own lords paramount of all socage lands. Quit-rents were to be converted into bank accounts. The individual title derived from the National Government involves all the elements necessary for a transfer of the soil. Indeed, this principle of the Ordinance of 1787 not only became a pattern for future State Constitutions, but reacted in similar provisions for those already created.

Another clause of the ordinance has often been the subject of eulogy. "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged." Yet this is simply the statement of a principle and precisely such a principle as would be held by the New England Associators where learning had been almost a fetich and where education at the public expense had its inception in the guise of charity schools. The principle only is expressed here, since the land ordinance of two years before promised an endowment for public education as long as enough land remained to lay out a county. The Associators carried out this principle in their own tract by donating lands for a university and for the support of the gospel.

Immediately following the bargain of Dr. Cutler with Congress, the Associators prepared to migrate en masse to their purchase. What the hardy spirits among the country people of the South Atlantic States had been able to accomplish by individual initiative and sheer endurance, the town-dwellers of the North Atlantic States did more systematically and rapidly by concerted action. Organisation and government protection saved the Ohio Associators from such experiments of colonisation as had frequently led to Indian captivities and abandoned settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky. The project of a line of forts along the frontier settlements, conceived during the Indian and Revolutionary wars, assumed shape after the first sale of public lands had really been consummated. Forts McIntosh, Steuben, Washington, Harmar, Vincennes and Massac, were speedily erected or garrisoned, thus guarding the length of the Ohio River, the pathway to the North-west. By subsequent Indian treaties, additional reservations were secured and forts scattered throughout the territory at portages and along the river highways. Under this protection, the Ohio Company sent out its band of artificers to erect dwellings and a stockade for the first settlement. Scarcely a year was allowed to elapse after the purchase until Marietta was founded on the Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum by the veterans of the Revolutionary War and their friends. It was 170 miles down the Ohio beyond the outpost of civilisation at Pittsburg. Similar settlements were speedily founded on other purchases and on the military lands.



The national governor and judges for the Northwest territory in due time created a set of laws, established courts, and erected local governments. The latter was effected by applying the county system, familiar to the people of the Central and Southern States, to the land survey county, and by giving to the township, a unit in the survey system, some of the functions of the New England town. By this happy combination, settlers from any part of the old States would find a local government with whose forms they were to some extent familiar. The Symmes purchase on the Ohio below the Ohio Company's grant was opened to settlement, as was the Virginia Military tract lying between the two. Through Pittsburg, "the gateway of the west," came a throng of pioneers to float down the Ohio to the land of promise. The United States forts protected them on the northern or "Indian side" of the river. In 1786, no less than 117 boats were counted passing Fort Harmar.

So rapidly did the people take possession of this heritage of the Revolutionary struggle that within fifteen years the eastern part was ready to claim the promise of statehood. Eight years later, this new State, Ohio, had passed in rank of population the older trans-Alleghanian States of Kentucky and Tennessee. Blessed with contiguous waterways lying in the line of travel, forming the gateway into the West by the down-thrusting arm of Canada, the first State to be created out of the public domain, with definite land surveys instead of tomahawk marks, with an endowed system of public schools, Ohio gained a political pre-eminence among the newer States and a national prestige which has scarcely yet been rivalled.

The solution of the problem of the frontier was thus so easily and permanently solved by the Central Government in its home-making policy that one scarcely appreciates the fear of Washington and others interested in the back country lest it become a refuge for outlaws and banditti. Mingling with the savages, it was feared that these outcasts would create a constant menace to the advance of civilisation. Colonial governors had much difficulty in controlling the "lawless banditti of the borders." The first settlers across the mountains were considered in England as "uncultivated banditti" and as "fanatical and hungry republicans" and the "overplus of Ireland's population." So late as 1835, De Tocqueville, the French commentator on America, declared that Americans who quit the posts of the Atlantic to plunge into the western wilderness were adventurers, impatient of restraint, greedy of wealth, and frequently men expelled from the State in which they were born. But he had no doubt that in time society would assume as much stability and regularity in the remote West as it had done upon the coast of the Atlantic ocean.

At the time, the action of Congress called fresh attention to the attractiveness of the back country and the possibilities there when population should warrant the erection of States. Stanzas of Philip Freneau represent the feeling of the day:

"What wonders there shall Freedom show, What mighty States successive grow. What charming scenes attract the eye On wild Ohio's savage stream. Here Nature reigns, whose works outvie The boldest pattern art can frame. The East is half to slaves consigned, And half to slavery more refined."



CHAPTER IV

FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERACY



Scarcely a failure of the Confederation Government can be found which does not lead in the last analysis to the financial situation both during and following the war. Suddenly plunged into the Revolutionary War, drained of ready money by the colonial system, possessed of no mines, mints, nor any resource for securing a medium of exchange except an undependable paper promise to pay, the people of the United States emerged from the war broken in purse and overwhelmed with debt. According to Jefferson's estimate made at the time, they owed at least sixty-eight millions of dollars. To this fruit of the war he added the four hundred millions of paper money issued by the Federal and State Governments, estimated, in its depreciated condition, at about seventy-two millions more of debt. The ragged Continental soldiers, frequently reduced to seven-tenths of a pound rations, their arrearages of wages paid in Continental currency worth four pence on the dollar, were now about to be discharged to return to their needy families carrying only paper promises of the United States to pay. These certificates could be disposed of only to brokers and that at ruinous rates. What was to become of a veteran who was disabled? Congress had already authorised the several States to look up needy soldiers of the Continental service and pay them five dollars a month, such sums to be deducted from the quotas assessed on the several States to meet the general expenses. Seven States only had complied, and in these the lists of needy ex-soldiers had been incompletely compiled.

Some soldiers held certificates entitling them to bounty lands in the back country under the acts of 1776 and 1780, but had no means of journeying thither. Small wonder that mutiny threatened.

"Can you consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution," asked the insurrectionary Newburg addresses, the work of those unwilling to see the army disbanded before being assured of receiving justice, "and, retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt? If you can—go—and carry with you the jest of Tories and the scorn of Whigs—the ridicule and, what is worse, the pity of the world. Go—starve —and be forgotten."

Eulogy has exhausted itself in praise of these Revolutionary veterans, who eventually permitted their ranks to be disbanded, instead of joining themselves together illegally to obtain justice, or subsisting themselves upon the country at large. Praise has not been withheld from their general, the Virginia soldier-farmer, who, instead of taking advantage of the dissatisfaction to put himself at the head of an insurrectionary force, chose rather to quiet rebellion and to inspire confidence by his hopefulness.

No sooner had the war ceased and the army melted away, than it was found that peace had its dangers no less than war. Released from the menace of war, the States felt no necessity for paying their respective quotas of expenses to the Central Government, as they had done in varying degrees since the beginning of hostilities. The year following the peace, they paid less than a million and a half of the eleven million asked in previous assessments. Three States, it was claimed, had paid comparatively nothing. Rhode Island and New Jersey, as if to add insult to injury, attempted to pay their quotas in their paper money, which was not received at par outside the States. Congress had no power of coercion. According to the second of the Articles, each State in the Confederation retained its sovereignty, freedom, and independence. Congress could only make impotent appeals. Governor Randolph, of Virginia, pictured the Congress as saying to his State: "May it please your high mightinesses of Virginia to pay your just proportionate quota of the national debt; we humbly supplicate that it may please you to comply with your federal duties. We implore, we beg your obedience."



The financial confusion was increased because of the lack of a circulating medium. A mongrel collection of coins could be found, passing at varying rates in the different States—English pounds, shillings and pence, Spanish dollars, joes, half-joes, pistoles and moidores, French guineas, carolins and chequins—but no United States coins. Even this money was soon drawn off to Europe, because British exporters demanded cash until the Revolutionary debts had been settled. That this cash would return to the States was unlikely if one judged from the first year of the peace, during which the United States purchased 1,700,000 pounds worth of goods in England and sent in return only 700,000 worth. In order to secure some kind of money to conduct business, seven of the States began to issue paper money. The troubles arising from a depreciated paper during the Revolution were neither ignored nor forgotten; but no other method presented itself. Congress had power to issue only "bills on the credit of the United States," which were not likely to be more acceptable than other kinds of paper.

The hopelessness of managing a bankrupt nation, no doubt, was largely responsible for the deterioration which the membership of Congress suffered. Names prominent at the inception of the rebellion had disappeared from the rolls, and mediocrity ruled. The members personally experienced the financial stringency in the failure of their State Legislatures to pay their salaries. Many were dependent upon the patriotic purse of Haym Salomon, "a Jew broker of Philadelphia," as Madison termed him. There should have been a higher standard of membership in the Confederation Congress than in later times, because it comprised not only the usual legislative functions of the nation, but the executive and judicial as well. The machinery itself was largely to blame. Like many of the devices, that governing the Congress was too strongly set against centralisation to allow free play of the parts. No delegate, for instance, was allowed to serve more than three years out of any six lest his influence grow too great or he become unduly attached to the central power. It frequently happened that good men were thus cast out of service just when their experience made them valuable. Certain States forbade a man to serve two consecutive terms in Congress. Madison was debarred by such a provision in 1784.

Delegates were appointed by the State Legislatures usually for a term of one year to begin with the session on the first Monday of the following November. The term would frequently expire when the State Legislature was not in session, and the State would thus go unrepresented for some time. If a delegate pleaded the emergency of the case and asked that the rule be waived, as those from Rhode Island did at one time, Congress refused to sanction such a palpable infraction of the Articles. Cases actually occurred where delegates elect did not arrive at the seat of Government until after the expiration of their term of appointment.

Absenteeism was the drag paramount upon Congressional action. No State could be represented by less than two members and retain its power of voting. If only one representative were present, he had no vote. If only two were present, they might differ, in which case the State was counted as "divided," and the vote was lost. Congress once sent a plea to the States urging the necessity of having more than two delegates present. It showed that if each State had only two representatives in Congress, five out of the twenty-six delegates, being only one-fifth, could negative any vote requiring the consent of nine States. Eleven States were represented at the time, nine by two delegates only, and thus it was possible, continued the report, for three men out of the twenty-five, being only one-eighth, to block all action. If three attended from each State, it would require ten, or one-third of the whole, to have as much power.

The derelictness in attendance on some occasions was humiliating and even alarming. When Washington appeared at Annapolis to resign his commission as commander-in-chief, only seven States were represented by the least required number. He faced twenty-one delegates instead of the ninety-one from the thirteen States, who should have graced this memorable occasion. The definitive treaty of peace lay on the table at the time. Nine States were required by the Articles to be present when a treaty was ratified. Unless ratified within six months after it had been signed in Paris, it would be null and void. More than half the precious time had already elapsed. With the greatest difficulty, the required number was secured. Four years later, there was no quorum for a period of three months, the representation at times falling to two States. During the first eleven months of the year 1788, a quorum was present only 129 days. Much of this delinquency was due to the expense of maintaining the delegates which fell upon the individual States. To make the burden as light as possible, two delegates only were commonly sent. They were likely to disagree. Manifestly the State in which the Congress sat avoided this difficulty, because it could maintain a larger number of delegates at less expense. To avoid this draft upon the needy treasuries, some of the States adopted the expedient of choosing as representative a resident of the city wherein was located for the moment the seat of government, or some man who had the means and the willingness to serve without pay. During quite a long period, Delaware was represented by three delegates, only one of whom was a resident of the State. This was in accord with the custom of British representation. It is interesting to imagine the results if it had ever become fixed in the United States.

It may be truly said that the framers of the Articles could not have expected a successful continuous sitting of so large a body of men. They had not so planned it. The Articles provided that a Committee of States could be appointed at any time, whenever the Congress as a whole might wish to adjourn, by the delegates from each State naming one of their number to serve in this capacity. This was the method of forming a "grand committee" on any important business in Congress. The attempt to give over national affairs to a Committee of States was made in the spring of 1784, after the peace. One trial of the expedient was sufficient. Only eleven States were represented at the time. From these, eleven delegates were selected. According to Monroe, "their powers are confined so that no injury can be effected." He referred to the manner in which the Articles restricted the Committee. The eleven celebrated the beginning of their administration by adjourning for three weeks, "for the benefit of the health of the members." At the end of this vacation, nearly two weeks were consumed in getting nine of the Committee together. A month of regular sessions followed, when suddenly the ever-present dissension concerning the place of meeting broke out. The Southern members of the committee wished to remain at Annapolis. The Northern members wished to adjourn to the cooler climate of New Jersey.

The strife increased until, at the end of two months, the members from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New Jersey withdrew. Being left without a quorum, the remaining members signed a manifesto, placing the blame on the seceders and departed for their several homes. Franklin compared the action of the Committee to two lighthouse keepers who quarrelled about the task of filling the lamp until the light went out. "There will be an entire interregnum of the federal government for some time against the intention of Congress, I apprehend, as well as against every rule of decorum," wrote the indignant Madison. During this interregnum, a chief clerk was acting as Secretary of Foreign Affairs and General Knox was serving as Secretary of War. They were the only visible parts of the National Government. Madison at first thought that the Committee of States should be censured when Congress reassembled, but, recognising discretion as the better part, suggested that "we had also better keep this affair out of sight." It was so done. The complete failure of this Committee of States scheme as an executive makeshift was in the end fortunate since it demonstrated clearly the need of a trustworthy and permanent head to the General Government. If it had been even a partial success, it might have been tried again and correction thereby delayed.

The provincialism of the day was well illustrated in the strife of the Committee over the place of sitting. A similar controversy characterised well-nigh the entire life of the Congress. Never a session could close or an adjournment be had without this Banquo's ghost appearing. It was feared that the State in which Congress met would in some way get an undue influence and ascendency. At one time, to satisfy sectional jealousy, it was compelled to provide two places of meeting, Annapolis and Philadelphia, by turns. Cities were even projected in the country far removed from State capital influence. In this unsettled condition, the Congress wandered from place to place with insufficient accommodation. Van Berckel, arriving as minister from Holland, could find no house for rent at Princeton and was obliged to live at a tavern in Philadelphia. He contrasted his reception with that given by his Government to John Adams a few years previously. He reported that he hoped in time to locate the new Government and present his credentials. "Vagabondising from one paltry village to another," as Reed, one of their number, put it, the members became a legitimate prey of boarding-house keepers and stablemen. Small wonder that service in the State Governments was considered not only more dignified, but more agreeable in these days of paramount State rights.



That the capital of the United States to-day occupies a territory independent of a State is the result of sad experience in these early days. When Congress, in 1783, was driven from Philadelphia by some rebellious State troops, who threatened force unless they received their back pay, the village of Princeton was the refuge to which the members fled. Some faithful Continental troops stationed there would protect them. The citizens of the village, grateful for this gift of the gods, prepared a list of families and the number of guests each could accommodate. They also adopted a long set of resolutions, deprecating the "gross indignities" offered to the Congress at Philadelphia, and pledging with the utmost cheerfulness their lives and fortunes to the Government of the United States. They promised to protect Congress "in whatever way our services may be required, whether in resisting Foreign Invasion or in quelling intestine Tumults." That the National Government of the United States of America should be offered protection by a small New Jersey village is indicative of the progress which nationality had thus far made. Sentiment would in time demand a permanent, independent home. Notwithstanding the prevalent financial depression, small tendency toward economy was manifest among the people or its officials. As long as credit held out, extravagance would prevail. The war had been successfully closed, political freedom had been won, and individual ease and affluence presumably secured. Short-sighted fashion viewed her immediate gratification as the concomitant of independence. Even the members of Congress were not exempt from temptation. A Rhode Island delegate reported from Congress sitting at Annapolis to the governor of his State:

"The horse races were attended here the week before last, and are all over, as are also the balls, routs, fandangoes, and plays. I assure you there has been a merry Winter in this place, according, at least, to accounts for I have seen but little of their diversions. I did not even look upon the horse races, although they were to be seen from the windows in the back room of the State House: nor have I attended a single play, although the theatre has been open twice a week the chief part of the Winter, and the playhouse adjoins the house where I lodge."

Despite this virtuous conduct he did not escape a challenge sent by a fellow-delegate from North Carolina and another from a Virginia delegate. He promptly laid both communications before Congress and was further ostracised.

The Congress was a close corporation. The public was not admitted to its sessions, the debates were never published, and the proceedings rarely appeared in the public prints. Its adjournment of both time and place was so frequent and the beginning of new sessions so delayed that news concerning it rarely found a place in the newspapers. This was in marked contrast with its early history, when the assembling of delegates at Philadelphia was described in great detail for those days. Internal dissensions marked the sessions, as indicated by the experience of Howell, of Rhode Island, described by himself above. Members bore their obligations lightly. It was said that at one time when a delegation of Indians arrived at Princeton to make a treaty, a member left for Philadelphia to be married, thus breaking the quorum, and almost precipitating an Indian war.

It is worthy of note that this experience with an executive-legislative- judicial combination of National Government was sufficient to last for all time. Amidst the many changes suggested for the Constitution of the United States since it has been in effect, none has ever been proposed which would hand over the powers of the president to a Congress. Even Jefferson, alarmed by the growth of the executive authority before 1800, never suggested a return to the method whereby the whole administration was at the mercy of a quorum of Congress. The Confederate States in 1861, exasperated into secession by the abuse of the central power, retained the tripartite form in the Government which they planned. Posterity learns by reading the lessons of history.

In the light of a later survey, one may discover many additional defects in the ill-devised Articles of Confederation. Madison once summed up their vices in the failure of the States to comply with the constitutional requirements, in State encroachments of Federal authority, in State violations of national law and treaties, in States trespassing on the rights of each other, in want of concerted action, in a lack of national guarantee against internal violence, in a want of coercive power in the National Government and the omission of the ratification of the Articles by the people. To these he added the multiplicity, the mutability, and the injustice of many of the State laws. Jefferson, separated by his residence at the court of France from actual contact with the worst days of the Confederation, thought the remaining States had a right to coerce a recalcitrant member "by a naval force, as being easy, less dangerous to liberty, and less likely to produce bloodshed." Yet a suggestion in 1781 for an amendment, giving power to Congress to employ force in compelling States to obey the Articles, met with no favour.

Monroe thought that the Articles were practicable and, with a few alterations, the best plan that could be devised. Hamilton, on the contrary, regarded them as hopeless. Even before they were adopted, he predicted a speedy failure. They were "neither fit for war nor peace," he declared. "They show chiefly a want of power in Congress." Washington attributed the defects made in framing the Government to too good an opinion of human nature. "Experience has taught us," he said, "that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power." He declared that requisitions made upon the States by the central power became a perfect nullity when thirteen sovereign, independent, disunited States were in the habit of discussing and refusing compliance with them at their option.

"To vest legislative, judicial and executive powers in one and the same body of men and that, too, in a body daily changing its members can never three great departments of sovereignty should be for ever separated and so distributed as to serve as checks on each other."

He would even go farther in giving power to the Central Government. "As to the separate Legislatures, I would have them considered with relation to the Confederacy in the same light in which counties stand to the State of which they are parts, viz., merely as districts to facilitate the purposes of domestic order and good government." Hamilton shared with Jay a willingness to take such liberties with local rights to secure a more effective National Government.

Such sentiment among public men should have brought about a speedy amendment of the defective parts of the Articles. But, as Washington once said, the people were not yet sufficiently misled. Attempt after attempt was made to secure the necessary unanimous consent to an amendment. Congress begged the States to give over to it the collection of an impost or duty for a limited number of years or for a limited per cent.; to give to it authority to regulate foreign vessels in American ports; and to refrain from levying discriminating duties among themselves. The unanimous consent required by the Articles to make any amendment blocked these and all other proposed reforms. Sometimes twelve States would agree, but before the thirteenth could be won over, another would withdraw its consent. On one occasion, when Rhode Island alone held out, her delegates in Congress wrote to the governor of the State that their "reasonable and firm stand against the all-grasping hand of power in the case of duties had saved the United States!" Connecticut protested that such an addition to the functions of Congress as the collection of an impost would at one stroke vest that body with the power of the sword and the purse, and leave nothing of the individual States but an empty name. Others argued that with 320 million acres of land, which would bring an average of at least one dollar an acre, the General Government needed no other source of revenue. Unanimous consent to an amendment could never be secured. This was the lesson taught by the attempts.

Aside from the difficulties arising from the defects of the Confederation experiment, the disorders in the national body were simply reflections of the turbulent spirit prevalent at the time. Suddenly emerged from the restraining hand of a mother country, misinterpreting the meaning of independence, confounding liberty with license, having lost the law-abiding sense in the treatment of the Tories, grown only too accustomed to the pleasures of mob law, the people were passing through the reassembling period which always follows a civil war. Peace is the normal condition of a people; war is the abnormal. Restraint, taxation, and obedience, it was supposed, had passed away with royalty and kingly prerogative. "Taxes and relaxed government agree but ill," observed the laconic Jay. From South Carolina, Edward Rutledge wrote to him, "It is really very curious to observe how the people of this world are made the dupes of a word. 'Liberty' is the motto; every attempt to restrain licentiousness or give efficacy to government is charged audaciously on the real advocates of freedom as an attack on liberty."

Visionists indulged their hopes of universal happiness. The rebellion which Captain Daniel Shays, officer in the late Revolutionary army, headed in Massachusetts was aimed directly at closing the courts and preventing the issuing of writs to sell mortgaged farms. But Knox wrote Washington that the creed of the insurgents was that the property of the United States had been saved from Britain by the exertions of all the people and therefore ought to be the common property of all; and that they were determined to annihilate all debts, public and private, and to have agrarian laws, which could be easily effected by the means of unfunded paper money; and that this money should be a legal tender in all cases whatever. The madness had spread to New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, according to Knox, embracing a total of twelve or fifteen thousand "desperate and unprincipled men." Wild-eyed enthusiasts in Rhode Island secured the passage of an "iron-clad oath" to the effect that paper money was as good as gold or silver coin—"compelling people to embrace the doctrine of political transubstantiation of paper into gold and silver," as Jay put it. The militia had to be called out in New Hampshire to disperse a mob besieging the State Legislature at Exeter. "The mob clamoured," said a contemporary, "some for paper money, some equal distribution of property, some annihilation of debts, some rebate of all taxes, and all clamoured against law and government." The disorder spread to Virginia. "In several counties the prisons and court houses and clerks' offices have been wilfully burnt. In Green Briar, the course of justice has been mutinously stopped and associations are entered into against the payment of taxes," wrote Madison to Jefferson in France.

Neither those who caused these troubles, nor those who wept over them, as did Mrs. John Adams in France when news of Shays's Rebellion reached her, could foresee the blessings which would follow; that these eight years of individualism were to form an argument for nationalism to be handed down by intuition to future generations. At the time it seemed that nothing but a miracle could save the Union. "Our affairs seem to lead to some crisis, some revolution—something I cannot foresee or conjecture—I am uneasy and apprehensive; more so than during the war." Jay was never given to exaggeration of thought or expression; he must have been deeply impressed to write those words to Washington. "What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves," replied the equally conservative farmer of Mt. Vernon, "and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious." To Jefferson in France, Washington confessed that the General Government, if it could be called a government, was shaken to its foundation, and that unless a remedy were soon applied anarchy would inevitably ensue. "The question whether it be possible and worth while to preserve the union of the States must be speedily decided some way or other." said Madison. "If some strong props are not applied, it will quickly tumble to the ground." He thought he detected a propensity to return to monarchy in some leading minds; but he thought that "the bulk of the people would probably prefer the lesser evil of a partition of the union into three more practicable and energetic governments." Monroe, always inclined to be suspicious of the Northern section, was "certain" that conferences were held in New York between New Englanders and New Yorkers upon the subject of the separation of the States east of the Hudson and their erection into a separate government.

Franklin, appearing in the midst of these disorders from his nine years' residence in France, felt the necessity of counteracting the despairing feeling among the friends of America in Europe and of checking the rejoicing among her enemies. He, therefore, filled his letters with descriptions of American prosperity, crops, prices, and happiness. "In short," he wrote, "all among us may be happy, who have happy dispositions, such being necessary to happiness even in Paradise." At the same time, acting in his new station as president of the State of Pennsylvania, he was endeavouring to arrest "a number of disorderly people" who had collected near the line separating Pennsylvania and New York. "They are impatient of regular government," he wrote in seeking the co-operation of the governor of New York, "and seize upon and presume to dispose of lands contrary to and in defiance of the laws. Their number is recruited daily by vagabonds from all quarters." The disorder arose from the long-standing controversy between Pennsylvania and Connecticut over possession of the Wyoming valley—a dispute which the Federal Government had been unable to settle.

The general public had long since lost respect for the National Government and its Congress. Even Washington referred to it as the half-starved, limping Government, that appears always moving upon crutches and tottering at every step. The chief difficulty was not to ascertain the remedies needed, but how to apply them. As early as 1780, Hamilton had thought Congress had the right to reassume the powers of sovereignty it had appropriated with the silent consent of the States during the pressing times of the war; or, if the application must be external, that the people might meet in a convention of delegates empowered and instructed to conclude a new and effective federation. Few were ready to go as far as the impetuous Hamilton in thus virtually overthrowing the "Articles of perpetual union" which were legally binding although inefficient. To amend them according to their own provisions would be legitimate if it could be accomplished.



This was considered by the majority of people the proper method; but when the experiment was tried at Annapolis in 1786 of a meeting of commissioners to devise a uniform regulation of trade and to report such an amendment to their States for ratification, only twelve delegates could be gotten together representing five States. Even the State of Maryland, in which the meeting was held, failed to send a representation. Each of the delinquent States had an excuse. The commissioners who did go to Annapolis, headed by Hamilton, Dickinson, and Madison, could only issue an appeal for another meeting of delegates from the several States the following year in the more central city of Philadelphia, empowered to consider not only the commercial troubles but to "devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union."

It can scarcely be said that the failure at Annapolis was either a surprise or a disappointment, because few had expected success. "The expedient is no doubt liable to objections," said Madison, one of the Virginia delegates, "and will probably miscarry. I think, however, it is better than nothing." The object was unfortunately limited to considering the commercial friction between the States and to regulating their foreign relations. The conviction had become general that only an extended amendment of the frame of National Government could correct the difficulties in the commercial functions and in many other needed particulars. The thought that the proposed convention, if the proposition should be generally taken up, would include such a revision of the Articles of Confederation, served also to soften the blow of the Annapolis failure.



CHAPTER V

REFORMING THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT



The suggestion, emanating from the unsuccessful gathering at Annapolis, that a convention of delegates be called from the several States to meet at Philadelphia the following year to devise means for rendering the National Government adequate to its task, was supported most admirably by the condition of the times. The Shays Rebellion in Massachusetts, its support in the neighbouring States, and the disorder in Virginia and New Jersey, were moving arguments for immediate action. Even Washington was forced to admit that the people were at last sufficiently misled. The National Government, helpless to invade a sovereign State to suppress domestic insurrection, was compelled to finesse in taking some steps to mobilise the militia by imagining an outbreak of Indians in Massachusetts.

Led by the alarming situation, Congress, with unusual dispatch, took up the Annapolis suggestion within five months after its receipt. But the feeling that the initiative should come from the Congress itself rather than from an irregular convention led to the substitution of a motion from the Massachusetts delegates in Congress that a convention of delegates should be held at Philadelphia on the second Monday of the following May "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation" and reporting its suggestions to Congress and the several State Legislatures.

During the spring of 1787, State after State took up the idea of a convention of the people to correct the errors in the national frame. With rare discrimination, they chose, through their State Legislatures, their leading men as delegates. All hope became centred in this apparently last resort. The convention "will either recover us from our present embarrassments or complete our ruin," said Monroe. That radical changes were necessary, many felt assured. Madison likened the Government at this time to a ship which Congress kept from sinking by standing constantly at the pumps instead of stopping the leaks which endangered her. He began to talk about "a new system" before the convention assembled. In sending to Washington an outline study of all prior confederated governments, he wrote, "Radical attempts, although unsuccessful, will at least justify the authors of them."

Such sentiments were found to prevail generally among the delegates when, on May 25, 1787, a majority of the States was represented and sessions begun in the Independence Hall in the city of Philadelphia. Within five days it was decided to cast aside the deficient Articles, to exceed instructions, and to frame a new National Government with separate legislative, judiciary, and executive functions. To put new wine into old bottles was felt to be useless. No small task confronted the convention in carrying out this resolution. Independence and the other steps thus far leading toward nationality had been taken, as George Mason, of Virginia, said, under a certain enthusiasm which inspired and supported its advocates; but to sit down calmly to consider a project which might bring happiness or misery to millions yet unborn was an action, which, he confessed, absorbed and in a measure suspended the human understanding. Robert Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania, begged his sons in France to offer a prayer for the success of the meeting since so much of their future happiness depended upon it.

The lack of information on the work of the convention, which sat from May 25 to September 17, 1787, is frequently deplored. The deficiency is due not to indifference on the part of those concerned, but largely to the lack of information given out to the public at the time and since. In apologising to Jefferson for not sending a full account of the proceedings during the sessions, Madison said: "It was thought expedient, in order to secure unbiassed discussion within doors, and to prevent misconceptions and misconstructions without, to establish some rules of caution." These rules, adopted early in the proceedings, forbade the inspection of the minutes by any one not a member, prohibited the copying of any part of them, and enjoined the members against disclosing anything said in the sessions. Dr. Manasseh Cutler, who visited Philadelphia during the summer, went to the State House, but found "sentries planted without and within—to prevent any person from approaching near—who appear to be very alert in the performance of their duty." When he went to pay his respects to Dr. Franklin, a member of the convention from Pennsylvania, the philosopher showed him a curiosity in the shape of a two-headed snake and fell to speculating upon what it would do if, on meeting the stem of a bush, the heads should choose to go one on each side of it. "He was then going to mention," wrote Cutler in his journal, "a humorous matter that had that day taken place in convention, in consequence of his comparing the snake to America; but the secrecy of the convention matters was suggested to him, which stopped him."



This secrecy was felt to be binding perpetually by many of the members. The secretary of the convention, Major Jackson, who came to Philadelphia as private secretary to General Washington, kept the official minutes. This book, by one of the final motions of the convention, was entrusted to Washington, who had presided so conscientiously over the sessions that he did not allow himself even the privilege of debating. In 1796, he deposited it among the public archives. Until the year 1837, these minutes, with a few letters submitted by some of the seceding delegates justifying their action, and the gleanings from eighty-odd private letters written by members of the convention, constituted all public knowledge of the details of the meeting. But in the year mentioned above, Madison's papers were purchased by the National Government, and among them was found a number of little home-made books containing his priceless "Notes on the Convention." In the introductory pages, Madison tells how he carried out his determination to preserve a record of the debates for the benefit of posterity.

"I chose a seat," he says, "in front of the presiding member, with the other members on my right and left hands. In this favourable position for hearing all that passed, I noted, in terms legible and in abbreviations and marks intelligible to myself, what was read from the Chair or spoken by the members; and, losing not a moment unnecessarily between the adjournment and re-assembling of the convention, I was enabled to write out my daily notes during the session or within a few finishing days after its close, in the extent and form preserved in my own hand on my files."

The changes made from day to day in the drafts of the Constitution, as recorded in the minutes, are cleared up by the light of Madison's notes and become a series of compromises. They were concessions made by superior to inferior factions, or sacrifices made by one section to satisfy and quiet another. That the equal State representation in the Continental Congress, for instance, had been one of the most pernicious parts of the Confederation machinery no one doubted. The practice had been inaugurated in the first Continental Congress, as the minutes under Sept. 6, 1774, explain, because the relative importance of the colonies represented could not be determined at the time. It was continued by default. But the arrangement bore no respect to proportional representation. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia could combine and make a majority of the States and yet contain not one-third of the people. New York and Connecticut might be added, making nine of the thirteen States, but representing less than one-half the total population.

Notwithstanding this inconsistency in the old method, so strong was the fear of the smaller States that their large neighbours would absorb or oppress them, that they took a decided stand in the convention against all propositions to change to proportional representation. The Delaware representatives were authorised to withdraw rather than submit to any arrangement depriving the State of an equal vote with the other States. On the other hand, the large States, especially Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts, insisted upon changing to representation based on wealth or population. As a way out of the deadlock, after weeks of debate, two branches of Congress were determined upon, in one of which membership and voting should be proportionate. Franklin then proposed as a compromise that in one branch all bills for revenue should originate and in the other branch the States should have equal vote. This adjustment between the large and small States was considered the grand compromise, and its acceptance was a matter for common rejoicing.

The solution of this problem immediately raised another. What was meant by "population," which had been substituted for wealth as a basis of apportioning delegates in the popular branch? Did it include slaves? The Continental Congress had long been accustomed in assessing the expenses of the war to add to the quotas of the States a sum equal to three-fifths of the number of slaves in each, on the ground that the labour of five slaves was equivalent to that of three free men. This proportion was now taken both for determining representatives in Congress and for assessing direct taxes. The States which continued to hold slaves would consequently have the benefits of three-fifths of their slaves represented by additional congressmen; but they must bear three-fifths additional of a direct tax, whenever one might be levied by the National Government.

The questionable value of slave labour had already divided the Southern States into two economic classes. Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, because of the exhausting effects of tobacco upon the soil, had attempted to restrict its cultivation by forbidding more slaves to be brought in. The two Carolinas and Georgia, requiring fresh slave labour for their rice and indigo fields, would not consent to any diminution of the supply. A compromise was at last effected in the convention which permitted the importation of new slaves into the United States for the coming twenty years. This was done by the votes of the New England States, where the slave-trading vessels were generally built, added to those from the three Southern States. Against these were New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia. For some reason, the Maryland delegates voted with the majority to keep the trade open. This compromise was strongly opposed by Gouverneur Morris, a Northern man, who confessed that he would sooner submit himself to a tax for buying all the negroes in the United States than saddle posterity with such a slavery constitution, and by Madison, a Southerner, who declared that these twenty years would bring as much mischief as an unlimited trade could produce. In accord with the practice of the old Congress, the delegates decided to eliminate the word "slave" from the Constitution, lest it might cause offence and beget opposition toward the new government they were about to propose. Milder terms, like "such persons" or "persons legally held to service or labour," were substituted.

Many other adjustments were necessary to settle the Continental differences. By one of these, the nation was given full control of commerce. By another, the matter of choosing a chief executive was entrusted not to the people directly, because, as was said, they would be likely to be misled by designing men; nor to the national Congress, because of the inequality of the Senate and House representation; nor yet to the State Legislatures, because of the unequal sizes of the States; but to a set of electors to be chosen by the States, a kind of substitute for these various plans. The term of the presidential office was, after many debates, fixed at four years, although an urgent minority wanted him to serve seven years and not be eligible for a second term. In very truth it may be said that the entire document is made up of a series of compromises.

The twenty-three resolutions offered by Governor Randolph, of Virginia, are commonly considered as forming the groundwork of the Constitution. With them were incorporated apparently six provisions taken from the plan devised in a conference of the small States and offered by Paterson, of New Jersey, together with twenty suggestions emanating from an individual member, Pinckney, of South Carolina. Even the Virginia resolutions, although commonly ascribed to Madison and winning for him the title, "Father of the Constitution," are modestly ascribed by him to the series of conferences held by the Virginia delegates during the ten days they waited for a quorum. "The resolutions," said he later, "were the result of a consultation among the deputies of the State; the whole number, seven, being present. Mr. Randolph was made the organ of the occasion, being the governor of the State, of distinguished talents, and in the habit of public speaking."

Turning over the pages of Madison's "Notes," one may follow through committee and general session, the slow evolution of the Constitution of the United States. The eager hands of the experienced workers turned over the materials of old forms, rejecting parts hitherto tried and found wanting, welding together familiar pieces brought from monarchical or colonial precedent, and constructing a machine noted for practicability rather than for novelty. They were forced to use careful workmanship because of the great variety of opinions. They were hindered constantly from rash action by inherited prejudices and climatic differences. And they were conscious at the end of having wrought, not perfectly, but as well as conditions would permit.

Experience was the fountain from which the Constitution-makers drew their "inspiration." A novel creation, as a certain narrow provincialism in the United States is sometimes fond of claiming for the Constitution, would have been an assembling of theoretical machinery, of untried experiments, which could not have met the shock of being suddenly put into motion to replace a broken down system. It could not have won back, solely on its merits, the confidence of the discouraged people. If it had been "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," it could scarcely have withstood the vicissitudes of a growing people for over a century, with amendment in four particulars only. More experiments and less experience might have required the adoption of more of the fifteen hundred amendments which have been proposed to the Constitution in these hundred years. Experience is a safe ground upon which to build. Gouverneur Morris demolished a vast amount of eulogy when he wrote to a correspondent in France that some boasted the Constitution as a work from Heaven, while others gave it a less righteous origin. "I have many reasons to believe," said this matter-of-fact man, who bore such a large part in recasting the phraseology of the document, "that it was the work of plain, honest men."

As matter is not created in any of its forms, but simply assumes new combinations by its own laws or under the guidance of man, so apparently new models in statecraft may be resolved by analysis into old ideas in new combinations. The American Constitution is the English system of government adapted to American soil through the intervening colonial and state governments. The president is the king through the royal governor, but shorn of his prerogative, descent, and perpetuity in the transition. The Senate is the House of Lords, with its permanency changed into a long tenure of office by passing through the colonial council. To the same intermediate State is due the power of appointment to office and of treaty-making which the Senate shares with the executive, thus reviving the relation of the privy council, chosen from the House of Lords, to the King. The House of Representatives is copied directly from the popular assembly of the colonial government, which in turn was modelled after the British Commons. The right of originating bills of revenue, which the Representatives possess, was preserved in many a contest between colonial assemblies and royal governors. It is the birthright of Englishmen, dating from the Petition of Right granted by Charles I., which substituted fixed taxes for forced loans and gifts. The national supreme judiciary, the most novel of the three divisions of the National Government, embodies in its appellate principles the Privy Council of England, to which all colonists could appeal, and the later admiralty committees of the Continental Congress, to which all cases of prizes seized in the war might be referred. The theory of a state court of last resort had already found place in nine of the State constitutions and the convention simply placed the capstone of a national Supreme Court on the top of the column. Some parts of the colonial government were rejected as unfitted to the national frame. An advisory council for the President, such as nearly every colony gave to its governor, was desired by many but finally omitted. The present Cabinet really takes its place.

In like manner, it is possible to find British and colonial precedent, tried and proved, for almost every provision of the National Government. The ruling class at the time it was framed was composed of English and Scotch, trained in British forms of government. The Dutch in New York and the Germans of Pennsylvania took almost no part in the Philadelphia Convention. It is as useless to deny an English parentage for the American Constitution as to deny that there were English colonies in America. So did the heirs of the ages avoid the mistakes of the past by seeking the results of the law of the survival of the fittest. They form a strong contrast with another people, less fitted by inheritance for self-government, who were at about the same time entering upon the task of constitution-making. "It is somewhat singular that we should be engaged in the same project for the same purpose," Franklin wrote to Chastellux, referring to the Assembly of Notables in France and the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. "I hope both assemblies will be blessed with success and that their deliberations and councils may promote the happiness of both nations."

It so chanced that the very day the convention in Philadelphia had a quorum, the Assembly in France, initiatory of the French Revolution, was dismissed. Both had met in the spirit of reform; but to what different ends did the two movements eventually come! The Americans had in no case attempted the impossible; had not hoped for the immediate dawn of the millennium; had not even attempted to put into practice the loftiest sentiments of the Declaration of Independence; and had carefully distinguished between the State as an agency for political and for social rights. Very similar moderate sentiments on government had been carried to France by Lafayette, the Lameths, Viscount de Noailles, the Prince de Broglie, and others who came to America to take part in the Revolutionary War. Their influence produced the moderate French constitution of 1791, which shows a marked resemblance to the American frame. That these principles were suited to the American people is demonstrated by the rapidity with which peace and order were established under them. That they were ill qualified for the French people was shown by the early overthrow of the constitution of 1791.

The French constitution of 1793 and those which followed bore little resemblance to the American frame. The influence which the American Revolution exerted upon the French Revolution had passed, and the two movements bore no further resemblance to each other. The Americans had been content with a rebellion against authority and a revolution which substituted old forms, or combinations of forms, with new officials. The French revolutionists were not satisfied until they had tried to change all existing forms and institutions. They would annihilate society, the church, Christianity, even Deity itself. Precedent became a crime. The accepted system of weights and measures, the calendar—nothing was too well tried to compete with innovation. In America, the rights of man were eventually tacked on to the tail of the American Constitution as an afterthought to conciliate the timorous, "a tub thrown to the whale," as the first ten amendments have been called. In France, the rights of man overshadowed the working part of the constitution, delaying essential details by their incorporation, and ultimately furnishing a pretext for interfering with other peoples. When once the Americans had secured a constitution, they desired nothing so much as to be left alone to work out their own destiny. When once the French had evolved a system, with true propagandist spirit they wished to foist it on others. "With cannon for treaties and millions of freemen as ambassadors," they demanded that the feet of all nations should keep step with the march of what they deemed liberty. Hamilton, as usual, had proven a seer when he wrote to Lafayette in France at the very beginning of the French movement, "I fear much the final success of the attempt, for the fate of those I esteem who are engaged in it, and for the danger in case of success, of innovations greater than will consist with the felicity of your nation."

The people of America seemed to wait with bated breath the conclusion of the deliberations of the wise men of the nation met in convention at Philadelphia. Rebellion stood with hesitating step, and warring factions tacitly declared a truce. The crisis was at hand.

"The names of the members will satisfy you that the states have been serious in this matter," wrote Madison to Jefferson from Philadelphia. "The attendance of General Washington is a proof of the light in which he regards it. The whole community is big with expectation and there can be no doubt that the result will in some way or other have a powerful effect on our destiny."

Even stronger conviction of the critical situation may be gleaned from the private correspondence of the other members, bound by the pledge of secrecy from describing the turbulent scenes attending the sessions. Daily had they seen the difficulty of reconciling the inherited animosity between the Puritan and the Cavalier transplanted to America; between the Established Church and the Dissenter; between commercial and agricultural interests; between a slave system and free labour; between an urban population, accustomed to abide by majority rule, and a rural people, bred to individual freedom and absolute home rule. They had to evolve a system satisfactory to people scattered through thirteen degrees of latitude, with climatic differences arising from a mean average temperature of forty degrees in the north and sixty degrees in the south. Such decentralising tendencies were met with nowhere in Europe save under the strong hand of a monarch in Russia. These climatic differences produced the frugal Northerner, who had to provide in advance for the winter season, and the hospitable planter of the South, in whom prodigality was induced by the very lavishness of nature about him. It was not strange that by contrast, and seen through the haze of distance, the frugality of the North should appear to be avarice to the South; while the hospitality upon which that section prided itself should seem to be prodigality in Northern eyes. These bask differences could be reconciled by compromise, and that only temporarily. Washington had summed up the situation when he declared that there must be reciprocity or no union; that the whole matter could be reduced to a single question—whether it was best for the States to unite.

Although Washington, as presiding officer, took no part in the debates, his influence in favour of effective government must have had weight in the convention. Madison and Gouverneur Morris bore the brunt of objections to a national system. Franklin, a victim of old age and ill health, was allowed to read his speeches from his seat. Hamilton pleaded for a more effective system early in the sessions, but his radical views undoubtedly militated against any plan he had to offer. Two of the most influential members from the Southern States, Randolph and Mason, of Virginia, refused to countenance the proceedings by their signatures to the document. Another member, Gerry, of Massachusetts, followed their example. Luther Martin, a prominent lawyer of Maryland, returned to his constituency to write a letter of protest against the assumption of power by the convention in framing a new government when called together solely for the purpose of correcting the old. Yates and Lansing, two of the three delegates from the prominent State of New York, went home for the same reason. The third, Alexander Hamilton, withdrew for a time in disgust because his efforts for an efficient central power produced apparently little results. The sessions had, for the most part, representatives from eleven States only, Rhode Island having failed to send delegates. Her refusal was caused by a conviction that the convention would recommend taking away from the States the power to issue money and to collect duties. Her fears proved true.

Outside the closed doors of the convention the public clamoured, declaring Star-Chamber sessions an insult to the American people. All kinds of rumours prevailed concerning the probable action of the convention. Some newspapers declared that three republics, an eastern, a middle, and a southern, had been agreed upon, under the conviction that so numerous a people and so large a territory could not be incorporated under one government. Still others passed the news that the plan of the royal electorate of Poland had been adopted, and the second son of George III., Bishop of Osnaburgh, had been chosen king of the United States. An unofficial denial of this rumour appeared in a Philadelphia paper. "We never once thought of a king," it said. "Benny the Roofer" appeared in the prints in ridicule of Benjamin Franklin, who, it was said, was endeavouring to construct a roof over the entire United States.

At last the only body, which has ever been called together in the United States to consider a frame of national government, was ready to report and to adjourn. A new plan of government lay on the table signed by thirty-nine of the fifty-five men attending the convention. They admitted its defects, but agreed that it was the best frame that could be obtained at the time, and resolved to throw themselves on the indulgence of their constituents. As much was confessed in the explanatory and conciliatory circular, which they prepared to accompany the document to the Congress and thence, they hoped, to the States.

"Individuals entering society," so the circular argued, "must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered and those which may be reserved; and, on the present occasion, this difficulty was increased by a difference among the several states as to their situation, extent, habits, and particular rights. The Constitution which we now present is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable."

Here was the voice of compromise, and of that conciliatory spirit, which alone can make union possible. If the people at large would show the same indulgence toward each other, the experiment would be given a trial. Assuredly, the members of the convention set them a good example of toleration. "No man's ideas," said Hamilton, "are more remote from the plan than my own are known to be; but is it possible to deliberate between anarchy and convulsion on the one side and the chance of good to be expected from the plan on the other?" "I consent, sir, to this Constitution," said the aged Franklin, in a paper read by his confrere, Wilson, "because I expect no better, and because I am not sure it is not the best." He advised that opinions on the errors of the document should never be carried beyond the walls of the convention.

"If every one of us here," said he, "in returning to our constituents, were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavour to gain partisans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects and great advantages resulting naturally in our favour among foreign nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity."

Gouverneur Morris confessed that the present plan had many objections, but, considering it the best that could be obtained, he would take it with all its faults. The moment it went forth, the great question, in his opinion, would be whether there should be a national government, or not, and a negative reply would mean a general anarchy.

Washington, after his return to Mt. Vernon, sent a copy of the document to Patrick Henry, saying, "I wish the Constitution, which is offered, had been more perfect; but I sincerely believe it is the best that could be obtained at this time." The Revolutionary orator had refused to attend the convention as a delegate from Virginia. He preferred the Articles with their imperfections to an experiment. To Washington he replied that he could not bring his mind to accord with the proposed Constitution. He would prefer to bear the ills they had than fly to others that they knew not of. Harrison, a Virginia neighbour with whom Washington had also been associated since the Revolutionary times, replied to the General in acknowledging the receipt of a copy of the Constitution that he feared the remedy would be worse than the disease. Such sentiments were not confined to these Virginia statesmen. It was evident that the victory for the new government had been only half won in its formation and adoption by the convention. It had yet to be accepted by the Congress and to be adopted by nine of the States before going into effect. Great opportunity for a renewal of insurrection and faction would be offered by undue delay.



CHAPTER VI

ADOPTING A NATIONAL CONSTITUTION



The statesmen who had won the fight for a new form of national government in the Philadelphia Convention lost no time in following it up through the various stages leading practically to a plebiscite of the people. Madison returned immediately to New York to resume his seat in Congress, where the first stand must be made. That body had been engaged during the summer with the Ordinance of 1787, and the question of the navigation of the lower Mississippi. It was feared that Richard Henry Lee, who had refused to be a delegate to the convention, might make the Congress hostile to the new plan, or delay it until after the fall meetings of the State Legislatures. Fortunately there was a quorum when Madison arrived from Philadelphia. Through his personal efforts and private letters from influential men, the Congress in little more than a week had accepted the report of the convention and transmitted it to the several State Legislatures for their consideration. The members of the Legislatures in each State were requested to call a popular convention to pass upon the new document, rather than to consider it themselves. The Legislature is created to make laws and not to judge of constitutions. The Articles had not observed this canon of political science, but had been adopted by the State Legislatures. Less haste and more regularity were to characterise the consideration of the Constitution.

During the nine months following the submission of the Constitution to the States, while the necessary nine ratifications were being obtained, hope and fear alternated in the minds of its friends. To Hamilton, success seemed so assured that he wished they had made the Constitution "higher toned." Yet the struggle was likely to be arduous enough under existing conditions. Since the word "Federal" had by common usage been applied to the national in contradistinction to the State governments, the new frame was known as "A plan for a new Federal Government," and those who favoured it styled themselves "Federalists." Men were known as "warm Federalists" before the discussion was a month old. On the other hand, Richard Henry Lee had attacked the new idea under the pseudonym, "The Federal Farmer." His use of the word was entirely consistent with the desire of the opposition to continue a federated instead of running the risk of a consolidated government. As Gerry, an Anti-Federalist, complained later, an injustice was done them by fastening upon them the word "Anti," when they were in favour of retaining the Federal Government and the others wished to cast it aside and to establish a National Government. The Federalists, in the light of the present day, would be called "Unionists"; but, being largely city dwellers and having control of the presses, they were able to assume the less alarming name of "Federalist," and to put upon their opponents the name "Anti-Federalist."



The war between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists was waged chiefly in the public press. Sixteen editions of the Constitution in pamphlet form have survived to this day, in addition to those officially struck off. An edition appeared in London. Another was printed in Albany, New York, in the Dutch language. Pamphlets without number poured from the presses. Correspondents occupied columns in the newspapers. When Governor Clinton, of New York, opened his opposition batteries under the pen name of "Cato," Hamilton replied vigorously in defence of the new proposition under the name "Caesar." When George Mason addressed his fellow-citizens of Virginia in a pamphlet against the Constitution, he was answered by James Iredell as "Marcus." In other publications, "Cassius," "Agrippa," "Sidney," and "Civis" filled columns, while "Plain Dealer," "A Columbian Patriot," and "An American Citizen" withheld not their pens. Much of the rapid increase in the number of newspapers and the betterment of printing facilities in the United States near the close of the century may be attributed directly to these debates on the proposed Constitution. The religious controversial literature of colonial days had now been replaced by political composition.

Not only in the public press and in private letters did the Federalists further their cause, but they did not hesitate at more cogent arguments. When seventeen country members of the Pennsylvania Legislature ran from the Assembly in order to break the quorum and so prevent the call for a State convention to consider the Constitution, the remaining members brought back two of them by force. "When perceiving the other side to have an advantage, they play truant," said Noah Webster, a New England pedagogue, who had gone to Philadelphia at this time to lecture and to sell his new Grammatical Institute. "An officer or a mob hunts the absconding members in all the streets and alleys in town." To be held in their seats and counted as voting affirmatively, the recalcitrant members declared an outrage. The Federalists thought they deserved more punishment. When the State convention, thus called, met in Philadelphia, two of its members, Wilson and McKean, made such eloquent appeals for a trial of the new form that the auditors broke into applause. The Anti-Federalist papers said the incident was pre-arranged to influence the convention and reported that "the gallery was filled with a rabble, who shouted their applause; and these heroes of aristocracy were not ashamed, though modesty is their national virtue, to vindicate such a violation of decency." The final vote of the Pennsylvania State Convention, forty-six to twenty-three in favour of the Constitution, was looked upon by the Federalists as a vindication of their actions. In the Maryland Convention, a majority of sixty-three refused to hear any compulsory amendments proposed by a minority of eleven, on the grounds that they had been instructed by their constituents to ratify or reject a constitution, not to make one.

The "Antis" soon found out, as "Antis" are wont to do, that opposing a popular movement was an ungrateful, as well as an unpleasant task. Pamphlets issued by the other side called them a junto of debtors, knaves, and worthless-moneyists. The Anti-Federalist members of the Massachusetts Convention complained that they were pointed out and abused upon the streets. They also charged that the moneyed interests of New York were trying to bribe the convention with large sums of money sent to Boston.

"These lawyers and men of learning and moneyed interests," cried a country delegate in the Boston Convention, "that talk so finely and gloss over matters so smoothly to make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pill, expect to get into Congress themselves; they expect to be the managers of this Constitution and get all the power and the money into their own hands; and they will swallow up all of us little folk like the great Leviathan, Mr. President, yes, just as the whale swallowed up Jonah."

When four hundred mechanics, or tradesmen, of Boston, in a set of resolutions, demanded a favourable vote on the Constitution, and when Paul Revere marshalled them at the Green Dragon tavern to shout for the new frame, the Anti-Federalists called out "Intimidation!" but the Federalists disclaimed such intention.

Concerted action usually wins over individualism. The Anti-Federalists showed no such capacity for united efforts as the Federalists displayed. For instance, Hamilton, with the aid of Madison and Jay, wrote a series of articles for the New York press, calculated to explain the new government, to enlighten the people, and to quiet their fears. Collected into the Federalist, they form the best commentary yet written on the Constitution. Copies of the numbers, as they appeared, were forwarded from city to city to be reprinted in Federal newspapers. Nothing was omitted likely to impress the people favourably. Impressive ceremonies marked the ratification in each State as the news was received. In Baltimore, a vessel, fifteen feet long, representing the new frame, fully equipped and rigged, was drawn on wheels through the streets, then launched on Chesapeake Bay, and navigated to Mt. Vernon, where Washington received it "as a specimen of American ingenuity."

Even the muse of the Rev. Timothy Dwight was invoked to aid the Federal cause by begging that all petty views be lost in a national horizon. Some of his couplets run:

"Each party-view, each private good, disclaim, Each petty maxim, each colonial aim; Let all Columbia's weal your views expand A mighty system rule a mighty land; Yourselves her genuine sons let Europe own Not the small agents of a paltry town."

It was a unique warfare. Where a people of different inheritance might have appealed to arms, the appeal here was to intelligence, argument, and the ballot. For nine months the struggle went on among the citizens of the different States to determine whether they should abide by the National Government they had legally adopted seven years before, or whether they would exercise the right of peaceful revolution and cast it aside for another. It was a true revolutionary movement, a turning upside down, in comparison with which the Revolution of 1776 becomes a revolt against the King. Recognising the revolutionary action of annulling one frame of national government by adopting another, a wag wrote this stanza:

"Here, too, I saw some mighty pretty shows, A revolution, without blood or blows; For as I understood the cunning elves, The people all revolted—from themselves!"

The opposition to a change in the national form of government, as shown in the debates in the various State conventions, was based upon expediency among the masses and constitutionality among the few. In the light of the dangers which have confronted the people during a century of experience, some of the objections to the Constitution seem ridiculous. But the objectors were sincere in their apprehensions, being just emerged from a despotic government, and jealous of their hard-earned liberty. It was the old story of individualism fearing to trust its welfare to the general body. That liberty is gained by entrusting liberty to an efficient government is a truism which it has taken many years of self-rule to demonstrate.

There was a general cry among the opposition that the convention had exceeded its powers in casting aside the Articles which it had been called to correct. In examining the details of the new frame, some deprecated the large number of Federal officers thus created, who would form a body independent of the States and fattening on the general treasury. Others feared the concentration of power in the President, who would have control of the army, the navy, and the treasury; others thought the number of terms he could serve should be restricted. Still others criticised the six years allowed a senator. The saying was general among the opposition that the individual had no protection from the General Government; no assurance that his property might not be seized by it, his worship interfered with, and himself robbed of all those privileges for which his English forebears had contended.