Anne Soulard, Paul Wenker, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.



THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
IN TWO PARTS
PART I
1783-1830

BY EDWIN ERLE SPARKS, PH. D.




PREFACE



The story of the United States has frequently been told. It has been
told in the spirit of boasting, as a marvel of local accomplishment.
It has been told in the spirit of reverence, as the work of a chosen
people under a special dispensation of Providence. Its glory has been
ascribed now to one political party and now to another. Its success
has been attributed to various statesmen and to different sections.

The Union has been viewed from one point as originally the creature
of the States, whose powers it afterward ungratefully usurped and whose
intent it wilfully perverted to its own aggrandisement. It has been
regarded from another viewpoint as something inherent in the soil of
a new world, manifest in various colonial functions, and brought fully
to life and supremacy at the time of separation from England. An effort
is made in this narrative to find truth in a medium ground; to trace
the gradual evolution of a confederated republic under the laws of
necessity; to acknowledge that radical departures have been made from
first ideals as a result of progress; to take into constant
consideration the underlying forces of heredity and environment. It
will be necessary to omit many of the details commonly found in a
history of the United States for the sake of considering only those
centralising or decentralising factors which have aided or hindered
the unification of the States. In brief, an attempt is made in these
two volumes to tell the story of the _United_ States; to show how the
phrase "The United States is" has been slowly and unconsciously evolved
in the process of time from the early practice of saying "The United
States are."




CONTENTS



CHAPTER

I.     A UNION IN FORM ONLY

II.    THE PROBLEMS OF THE BACK LANDS

III.   THE CARE OF THE PUBLIC LANDS

IV.    FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERACY

V.     REFORMING THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

VI.    ADOPTING A NATIONAL CONSTITUTION

VII.   BEGINNING AN EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT

VIII.  SUMMONING THE GENII OF THE IMPLIED POWERS

IX.    NATIONAL CENTRALISATION

X.     FIRST LESSONS IN NATIONAL OBEDIENCE

XI.    NATIONAL PARTIES ON FOREIGN ISSUES

XII.   SUPPRESSING THE FRENCH SYMPATHISERS

XIII.  THE FIRST STATE PROTESTS

XIV.   THE ADVENT OF DEMOCRACY

XV.    STRICT CONSTRUCTION AN IMPOSSIBILITY

XVI.   AMERICAN NEUTRALITY LOST IN WAR

XVII.  TRANSFER OF PARTY POLICIES

XVIII. SECTIONAL DISCORD OVER TERRITORY

XIX.   ANNOUNCEMENT OF NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY

XX.    FULL FRUITS OF AMERICANISM




ILLUSTRATIONS


SIGNATURES TO THE DEFINITE TREATY OF 1783
Original in the Department of State.

TITLE-PAGE OF A COPY OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
This copy was printed in 1777.

THE OLD BLOCKHOUSE AT MACKINAC, 1780

MAP SHOWING WESTERN LAND

MAP SHOWING THE PROPOSED WESTERN STATES
From Morse's American Gazetteer.

NATHAN DANE'S DRAFT OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CLAUSE IN THE ORDINANCE OF 1787

DR. CUTLER'S CHURCH AND PARSONAGE AT IPSWICH HAMLET, 1787
The place from which the first company started for the Ohio, December 3,
1787.

A PETITION FROM CONGRESS TO THE STATES

SIGNATURES TO AN ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Now in the archives of the Department of State.

SIGNATURES OF DELEGATES TO ANNAPOLIS CONVENTION

MANASSEH CUTLER

COPY OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION AND THE CONSTITUTION IN PARALLEL
COLUMNS
The foot-notes show that it is an Anti-Federal print.

FIRST DRAFT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

LAST PAGE OF THE MINUTES OF THE OLD CONGRESS
Preserved in the archives of the Department of State.

HEADING OF THE FIRST LAW PASSED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION

FEDERAL HALL, NEW YORK CITY

THE PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, FRANKLIN SQUARE, NEW YORK CITY, 1789

CERTIFICATE OF DEBT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES
From the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.

A HALF-PAGE OF THE X Y Z DISPATCHES
From the original in the Department of State.

THE CITY OF WASHINGTON
From a drawing made about 1800, before the site was graded.

WESTERN ARKS AT NEW ORLEANS
From Hall's "Etchings in America."

TAKING POSSESSION OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE

WRITTEN LAW OF THE NORTH-WEST TERRITORY
A law passed at Vincennes, now Indiana, against gambling..

PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS

BLANK COMMISSION FOR PRIVATEER IN WAR OF 1812

DISLOYALTY OF NEW ENGLAND DURING THE WAR

THE PRESIDENT'S TEMPORARY RESIDENCE, 1815

MAP SHOWING ADVANCE OF POPULATION

THE CAPITOL BURNED BY THE BRITISH ARMY
From Torrey's "American Slave Trader."

WASHINGTON IRVING
From the etching by Jacques Reich.

JOHN MARSHALL
Chief Justice of the United States, 1801-1836.

WESTERN END OF THE GREAT ERIE CANAL
Drawn with the Camera Lucida for Hairs "Etchings of the West."




CHAPTER I

A UNION IN FORM ONLY



When did the sovereign nation of the United States begin? From one
point of view, it was called into existence by the motion for
Independence passed by the Continental Congress on the second day of
July, 1776, when the people of the rebelling British colonies in
America, by action of their representatives, assumed a free and
independent position. But a motion is intangible. It is an act, of
which the announcement is the visible result. "A decent respect to the
opinions of mankind" prompted the Congress on July 4, 1776, to "declare
the causes" which impelled it to separation. This date is accepted in
the popular mind, as well as by official action, as the beginning of
national existence. If recognition by other powers be assumed as the
criterion, the sovereignty began in 1778, when treaties of alliance
and commerce were signed with France. But if the actions indicated
above were incidental steps to the commencement of sovereignty, if a
general recognition by nations be necessary, together with the consent
of the former owner, and a restoration of peace and order, then the
real story of the United States begins on September 3, 1783. This
conclusion is reached by considering fact as well as form.

[Illustration: SIGNATURES TO THE DEFINITIVE TREATY OF 1783. Original in
the Department of State Washington. D. Hartey was given power by the King
of England and Adams, Franklin, and Jay by the Congress of the United
States. Individual seals were used.]

A few days after that date, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John
Jay wrote from Paris to the president of the Continental Congress at
Philadelphia:

"On the 3d instant, definite treaties were concluded between all the
late belligerent powers except the Dutch, who the day before settled and
signed preliminary articles of peace with Britain. We most sincerely and
cordially congratulate Congress and our country in general on this happy
event; and we hope that the same kind Providence which has led us
through a vigorous war to an honourable peace will enable us to make a
wise and moderate use of that inestimable blessing."

Thus happily ended more than eight years of warfare and almost two
years of negotiation. The disturbed conditions of war gave way rapidly
to the normal condition of peace. The four European powers, which had
been drawn into war by the American cause, adjusted their disturbed
relations. The King of England, at the next opening of Parliament,
acknowledged the loss of a portion of his American possessions. John
Adams with his family crossed from France to England to represent the
new nation. The archives of the republic showed treaties with France,
the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Sweden, soon to be followed by
similar acknowledgments from Prussia and Morocco. A national frame of
government had been adopted by the new power. Peace prevailed throughout
the land. Local government was established in every State. In external
appearance as well as internal form the career of the independent
republic of the United States had most auspiciously begun.

But the course of events was soon to dispel the illusion; to show that
it was a union in form only and not in affection. Conversion from
provincial colonists into liberal-minded unionists was not to be so
easily effected. A feeling of true nationality must await years of
growth. Confidence in each other had not yet replaced fear and
suspicion. That the first attempt to come into a union could have been
a success, that a sacrifice to the god Provincialism could have been
avoided, seems in retrospect impossible.

This period of fear of centralisation, which began even before the
close of the Revolutionary War, a time of mutual distrust, of paramount
individualism, is little known and rarely dwelt upon at present. Perhaps
the omission is due to a happy nature, which recalls only the pleasant
events of the past. The school-texts dismiss it with a few paragraphs;
statesmen rarely turn to its valuable lessons of experience; and to
the larger number of the American people, the statement that we have
lived since our independence under a national frame of government other
than the Constitution is a matter of surprise. A writer of fiction
somewhere describes two maiden sisters, one of whom had a happy and
the other a melancholy disposition. In recalling the family history,
one could remember all the marriages and the other all the deaths. To
recall only national successes is undoubtedly most pleasant; but
posterity sitting ever at the feet of History gains a more valuable
lesson by including the failures of the past.

Criticism of the Confederation which our fathers framed to take the
place of British rule must be tempered by the reflection that the
action was taken while the land was in the chaos of war. Praise is due
their genius for organisation, inherited from the mother country they
were warring against, which enabled them to contemplate a new form of
government while engaged in dissolving the old. The Government is dead;
long live the Government. According to the intention, there was to be
no interregnum in which Anarchy might rear his ugly head, and destroy
existing forms and instincts of government. Unfortunately a genius for
undertaking a beneficent enterprise may lack opportunity of carrying
it out. The war to secure the permanence of the Government they were
trying to establish produced a delay in completing the frame, and
allowed the individual States to assume a headway and win the people
to an allegiance, which the Union has not yet fully overcome.

In the form of British colonies, the States were well-recognised units
before resistance to authority compelled the people to entrust the
common defence to an irregularly formed Continental Congress. To the
revolutionary central authority thus formed and acknowledged through
necessity, colony after colony had turned for advice as their governors
and other royal officials fled to escape popular vengeance. Over a
year before national Independence was declared, the Congress had advised
the colony of Massachusetts that she owed no fealty to a parliament
attempting to change her charter, or to a governor who would not abide
by the old compact. The people, therefore, were urged to select certain
representatives. They in turn were to choose a council to act until
a governor should be appointed by the King, who would consent to rule
justly. Similar advice given to the other colonies resulted in the
formation of State constitutions and the erection of State governments.
The States, in this peculiar manner, dated their existence from the
suggestion of the Central Government, made at a time when it itself
had not been regularly formed. In turn, the States were now to complete
the Central Government by confederating themselves under a written
document.

Great Britain, the mother country, had never possessed a written
constitution, or frame of government; but the colonies were planted
under written charters. Perhaps this precedent has produced the American
predilection for written constitutions. Many statesmen of the colonial
days had attempted a written plan of union for the colonies. Franklin
had been one of these and, within three weeks after Washington took
command of the American Army, Franklin presented to the Congress certain
Articles of Confederation creating "The United Colonies of North
America." The federation was intended to be temporary in case the
colonial grievances were redressed, but otherwise permanent. The
proposition was unheeded at the time but was recalled nearly a year
later by one part of Richard Henry Lee's famous motion for Independence.
A committee was to be appointed "to prepare and digest the form of a
confederation to be entered into between these colonies." The importance
of the task was indicated by the fact that the committee was composed
of one member from each of the colonies represented, while the
committee, appointed at almost the same time, to draw up a declaration
concerning independency, had only five members. On July 12th, the
former committee brought in a draft of thirteen Articles of
Confederation, by common consent ascribed to John Dickinson, but
evidently based on Franklin's draft of a year before. This is indicated
by the style and form, although the details differ in many particulars.
Eighty copies of these proposed Articles were ordered printed for the
use of the members, extreme secrecy being enjoined upon all concerned.

These steps toward a national government were taken, it must be
remembered, in the midst of a war. The nascent nation had never
experienced the duties which peace places on a government; it was
familiar only with the requirements of war. The main idea running
through the Articles as reported by the committee was a "union for the
common defence." The general welfare found no place. The activities
of government were confined almost exclusively to conducting a foreign
war. The Central Government was authorised to declare war, make peace,
and send ambassadors. It had charge of appointing high officers of the
State armies, of judging prizes in war, of trials for piracy, and of
granting letters of marque. Its few peace functions embraced the postal
service between the States, regulating Indian trade, issuing bills of
credit, determining the national and State standard of coins, and
assessing quotas of expense on the States. Conversely, the States were
forbidden to perform these national acts.

Remembering that the Articles were framed to meet the exigencies of
war, and considering the condition of public sentiment at the time,
one finds it difficult to conceive how any other form of union could
have been secured. Individualism was in the saddle. Engaging in war
to resist the encroachments of a centralised government and smarting
under the actions of a body in which they were not represented, the
people would naturally resolve to retain the control which the rebellion
had thrown into their hands. Distributed power must never be centralised
again. Liberty was closely associated with individualism. A majority
was no safeguard. Reaction from a centralised monarchy had evidently
swung public sentiment to the other extreme, resulting in a
decentralised confederacy.

As implied in the name, this Continental Congress had been called
together originally as a consulting body for the thirteen distinct
colonies. When the war forced the second session into making laws, the
name should have been changed to "Parliament"; but, in the chaotic
condition of affairs and the very gradual assumption of sovereignty,
a change in name went by default. Although the Congress became a
parliament in form, its members never so regarded it. They still served
their sovereign States in a national body, consulting and providing
for the common defence. They had no desire to make a modern union at
the time they formed the Confederation. This is evidenced by the
preliminary statement of the Articles that each State retained its
sovereignty, freedom, and independence. In this view, "a firm league
of friendship," the phrase used to describe the nature of the
Confederation, is exact and appropriate. It formed a league of
individual units, such as the separate colonies had been, "binding
themselves to assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks
made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty,
trade, or any other pretence whatever."

This individualistic tendency was manifest in the workings of the
Articles. Franklin's plan provided for an executive council of twelve,
appointed by Congress from its own numbers. Instead of this arrangement,
the Articles allowed the consulting Congress to retain all the executive
powers which it had gradually assumed. Fear of delegating authority
to any kind of executive, lest the action might lead eventually to
another king, was responsible for this mistake. Retaining also the
legislative powers, which it had assumed, and such judicial powers as
had arisen from the adjudication of prizes appeals, the Congress would
monopolise all the functions of the National Government. It would
probably continue to consult and recommend, and do nothing more. It
had a president, chosen by itself from its own number; but he was
simply an officer to preside over the sessions.

In voting in Congress, each State was given one vote, being considered
a unit. In declaring assessments, Congress dealt with the individual
States and not the people. Congress was authorised to make an estimate
of the value of land and improvements in each State for proportioning
expenses; but the matter was left to the States and never done. In an
elaborate plan for adjudication between States in the numerous boundary
disputes, Congress again dealt with the States as units. The central
authority would nowhere come into contact with citizens of the States.
It had no way of gaining their respect, their gratitude, or their
allegiance. It apparently dealt with them in the provision guaranteeing
citizens of each State all their rights in the several States; but if
a State transgressed on the rights of citizens of another State, the
Confederation could only complain and protest. It had no power of
punishment or coercion.

One of the chief disagreements over the Articles, as they were
considered by Congress, arose from the conflicting claims to the land
lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi. The claims
put forth by Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, the Carolinas, and
Georgia, that their charters extended interminably into the land, were
resisted by New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Maryland, whose western boundaries were distinctly defined. New York
put forth a claim for the Ohio valley, based on an Indian treaty. It
lay athwart the claims of some of the other States.

Virginia's assertion that the "South Sea" mentioned in her charter as
her western limits entitled her to the land as far west as the Pacific,
if British authority should ever extend so far, was declared
preposterous by delegates from other States who looked upon the land
between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi as a valuable common asset,
if the war should terminate favourably to their cause.

"Every gentleman," said Wilson, of Pennsylvania, in debate, "has heard
much of the claims to the South Sea. They are extravagant. The grants
were made upon mistake. They were ignorant of geography. They thought
the South Sea within one hundred miles of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not
conceived they extended three thousand miles. Lord Camden considers the
claims to the South Sea as what can never be reduced to practice.
Pennsylvania has no right to interfere in these claims, but she has a
right to say that she will not confederate unless those claims were cut
off."

On the other hand, Virginia and the States having these western claims
had sufficient influence in the Congress to strike out every proposed
clause attempting to restrict the western limits; but they could not
prevent the regulation of trade with the Indians not inhabiting a State
being handed over to the proposed Confederation. This was the initial
step in national regulation of western affairs.

Since the Congress in this new form was to be the sole visible agency
of the National Government, possessing the legislative, the executive,
and even such judicial powers as the Confederation possessed,
representation in it had to be most carefully considered. The committee
had provided that in determining questions the present method should
be continued which allowed each State to have one vote; and in vain
did the advocates of representation according to population plead
against it. Franklin pointed to the effects of unequal representation
in England and begged that the new Government might be started aright.
"Let the smaller colonies give equal money and men," said he, "and
then have an equal vote." His fellow-delegate from Pennsylvania, Dr.
Rush, added the voice of prophecy when he declared that the States
ought to represent the whole people; and that each State retaining one
vote would tend to keep up colonial distinctions.

"We are now a new nation," said he. "Our trade, language, customs,
manners, don't differ more than they do in Great Britain. The more a man
aims at serving America, the more he serves his colony. We have been too
free with the word independence; we are dependent on each other, not
independent States. I would not have it understood that I am pleading
the cause of Pennsylvania. When I entered that door I considered myself
a citizen of America."

Truly here was the voice of unionism crying in the wilderness of
individualism. It is the sentiment of a century later.

The advocates of equal State representation had the advantage of
precedent and of present practice. The large States had won in retaining
their claims to the western lands. It was now the turn of the small
States. In the final vote on representation, the four large States of
Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, containing over
one-half the entire population of the thirteen States, were outvoted
by the five small States of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey,
Delaware, and Georgia. The State and not individual voting was to
continue in Congress. The medium-sized States of Connecticut, New York,
and the two Carolinas, showed a "disinterested coolness" in the matter.
Few took so gloomy a view of such an arrangement as did John Adams,
who predicted that within ten years the Articles would be found as
weak as a rope of sand in holding the people together.

Being one of the chief causes of the Revolution, the power of direct
taxation was a very sensitive point. To avoid this, the pernicious
system of assessing quotas on the several States was continued. It was
derived from the colonial custom, and might be expected to produce as
little revenue and as much discord as it had done in those days. The
Articles as adopted by the Congress were an improvement upon any effort
of the kind previously attempted; but the results likely to follow the
withdrawal of the pressure of war and the return of decentralising
peace might easily be predicted.

Having at length been agreed to in the Congress, the Articles were
sent to the several State Legislatures to be accepted or rejected.
Although popular conventions had come into use in forming the various
State Constitutions, the Congress maintained its early diplomatic and
consulting nature by dealing with the State Legislatures instead of
popular conventions. The members of Congress were too well aware of
the many defects in the new frame to hope that it would be speedily
adopted. In the official letter which accompanied it to the State
Legislatures, they confessed that the business of coming into the
national agreement had been attended with uncommon embarrassment and
delay.

"To form a permanent union," said the address, "accommodated to the
opinion and wishes of the delegates of so many states, differing in
habits, produce, commerce, and internal police, was found to be a work
which nothing but time and reflection, conspiring with a disposition to
conciliate, could mature and accomplish. Hardly is it to be expected
that any plan, in the variety of provisions essential to our union,
should exactly correspond with the maxims and political views of every
particular State."

As rapidly as the State Legislatures adopted the proposed plan, they
were to notify their delegates in Congress to sign the document, thus
formally entering the Confederation. It was provided in the Articles
that they should not go into effect until signed by every State. Neither
could they be amended without unanimous consent. These unfortunate
provisions were due to the tender regard which prevailed at the time
for the rights of the individual. "Government proceeds from the consent
of the governed" was interpreted by many enthusiasts to mean the consent
of every individual and not simply the majority. These Article days
mark not only the ultimate point of the fear of centralisation, but
also the greatest solicitude for the individual. Even in Congress,
where delay in legislation might be hazardous, no important action
could be taken by a majority, but the consent of nine States must be
had.

The required unanimity of ratification kept the Articles for nearly
three years awaiting action by all the State Legislatures, while the
people gradually lapsed into that lawlessness which a civil war always
brings in its train. The war itself contributed in no small degree to
the delay. When a State was invaded by the enemy, help was needed, and
the confederation feeling ran high; but the civic machinery, disturbed
by war, could not be made to serve the purpose of ratification. When
the tide of war swept on, and the State was relieved from immediate
danger, the old feeling of local importance returned, individualism
revived, and the union feeling waned.

The Legislatures of seven States in ratifying thought they could improve
the Articles in certain particulars. Some wanted a test oath applied
to all national officers; others would have wealth as a basis of
apportionment simply a trial arrangement; and still others would remove
the requirement that nine States be represented in Congress for the
consideration of certain matters. New Jersey had the clearest vision
of all.

"We are of the opinion," said her Legislature, "that the sole and
exclusive power of regulating the trade of the United States with
foreign nations ought to be clearly vested in the Congress, and that the
revenue arising from all duties and customs imposed thereon ought to be
appropriated to the building, equipping, and manning a navy, for the
protection of the trade and defence of the coasts, and to such other
public and general purposes as to the Congress shall seem proper and for
the common benefit of the states."

Neither this nor any of the forty-six amendments thus proposed by the
States was adopted by the Congress. The Articles stood as first adopted
until their overthrow.

Maryland, for reasons to be given hereafter, was the last State to
consent to the Articles. On March 2, 1781, the legal government of the
Articles of Confederation took the place of the illegal revolutionary
government, which had existed by common consent since 1776. A few guns
were fired, and flags displayed, but there was nothing to show the
change. The United States Congress, as it came to be called, was the
chief evidence of the Federation. Its actions were now justified by
a written agreement among the States and its powers definitely
prescribed. Otherwise affairs continued as before. The war was still
the engrossing business.

The Articles were in reality only a general treaty between thirteen
sovereign States occupying contiguous territory and pledging themselves
mutually to resist any attacks made upon them. Such a plan might have
been practicable, if the States had occupied thirteen islands, each
using a different language, and each producing sufficient to satisfy
its inhabitants, so that trade and communication need never have become
necessary. As it was, the framers failed to appreciate the force of
geographic contiguity. They believed that they could create and maintain
a kind of central clearing-house for national needs, giving to it only
the duties of declaring war and peace, managing ambassadors, making
treaties, establishing prize courts, managing the post-office, and
commanding such land and naval forces as might at any time be necessary.
Regardless of the expanding laws of growth, they thought the central
authority could be confined to these stated activities.

[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF A COPY OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION.
This copy was printed in 1777, the year the articles were proposed by
the Continental Congress to the several States to be ratified.]

Compared with the present National Government, which a different plan
and a liberal interpretation for a century have conspired to bring
about, the Articles of Confederation presented some strange anomalies
of administration. The Federal Government could declare war, but could
not enlist soldiers. It could only call upon each State to furnish its
proportion. If, as was likely to happen, any particular portion of the
country was threatened by an enemy, Congress might call for an extra
number of soldiers; but the State Legislature might judge how many
could safely be spared from the service of the State. The National
Government could not even appoint its own officers below the rank of
colonel. It could make peace, but, in order to secure a successful end
to a war, it could not collect a dollar for expense, except as each
State graciously consented to pay its share. It could make a treaty
with another sovereign, but could not compel its own subjects to obey
the terms of the treaty. It could send an ambassador to a foreign
Court, but had to turn to the States for money to pay his salary. It
could regulate prizes and subdue piracies on the high seas, but had
no control over goods entering its own ports. At the close of the war,
it could gratefully vote a monument to General Washington to be erected
at the seat of government, but could not secure enough money to erect
it.

The National Government under the Articles of Confederation could
destroy the commerce of an enemy, but could not retaliate upon the
products of an unfriendly rival in time of peace. It could regulate
the alloy and value of coins, but could not keep a State from issuing
waggon-loads of paper money, destined to depreciate and to disturb its
own finances. It could make laws within certain limits but could not
enforce the least of its decrees. It pledged its faith to discharge
all debts contracted by the Continental Congress, but it could not
collect a sixpence with which to do it. The States entering the
agreement promised to refrain from inter-alliances and foreign treaties,
from making war except against Indians or pirates, and from keeping
standing armies or vessels of war; yet if a State broke one of these
stipulations, no provision was made for punishing it. Although any
State could levy impost duties on goods coming into it from another
State the same as from a foreign country, thereby engendering endless
dispute, the Central Government had no court or other means of settling
such contentions or of getting redress for individuals.

With such false conceptions of the relations between individualism and
unionism, with a national frame foredoomed to failure, with the
distracting situations of the war still upon them, the people of the
United States attempted in 1783 to take that stand among the nations
which they declared God had given them. At once they came into contact
with the habits and precedents of old and well-established governments.
Diplomacy is not a game for amateurs. Fortunately a decade was to
elapse before a European crisis would call attention to the new-comer
as a possible pawn in the game. Their first introduction in the
character of solicitors for aid had not been auspicious. The process
of securing this aid had gained for them a treaty with France and
indirectly with Holland; but Spain, more suspicious of the new nation
because of the proximity of her Floridas and Louisiana to them, still
dallied with their advances. England, compelled to make a treaty to
close the war, refused to do more. Sweden, Prussia, and Morocco were
of insufficient maritime importance to make the treaties with them a
cause for rejoicing.

Admission to full membership and to an equal share in trade did not
follow necessarily from these first greetings. They could be gained
only by proof of fitness and even compulsion. The applicant must make
a place for himself. Sentiment plays no part in the rivalry of nations.
Self-preservation is the prime law.

John Adams, conscious of his prominent part in the rebellion, militant
in his ideas of republicanism, elbowed his way into the Court of St.
James as the first representative of the former British possessions.
He was distressed, as he wrote to Livingston, Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, at being obliged to consume the labour of his fellow-citizens
upon the foolish ostentation of a Court presentation. Anxious concerning
the reception which he would meet from representatives of other nations,
he was relieved to find that custom required them to call first upon
a new-comer. "We shall now see," he wrote, "who will and who will not."

As a whole, his reception by both Court and diplomatic corps was
satisfactory, especially the courtesies shown him by the King. But he
was chagrined to find what a small impression the birth of his country
had made on British memory and British policy. Political independence
had been allowed, but commercial independence was denied. No treaty
of commerce could he add to the existing treaty of peace. The West
India ports remained closed to American trade. Pitt's bill to annul
the Navigation Acts so far as they concerned the United States was
dropped in Parliament. It was feared to put the Americans on the same
footing as European nations, lest they might be able to retain the
trade which they had enjoyed as British colonists. Certain additional
restrictive measures were put into force. "Our trade was never more
completely monopolised by Great Britain when it was under the direction
of the British Parliament," Madison complained to Monroe.

Neither would Britain grant the new sovereign power the courtesy of
sending a Minister in return for Adams.

"At present," Lord Sheffield advised in his book on _Observations on the
Commerce of the American States_, which passed through several editions,
"the only part Britain should take is most simple and perfectly sure. If
the American States choose to send consuls, receive them, and send a
consul to _each State_. Each State will soon enter into all the necessary
regulations with the consul and this is the whole that is necessary."

This gentle insinuation that the Confederation had no force and the
suggestion of uncertainty whether the new nation consisted of one or
thirteen powers contained too much truth to be pleasant to the
Americans.

Mrs. John Adams, exchanging the social station accorded her in
Braintree, Massachusetts, for the diplomatic colony at London, found
herself of little service in aiding her husband's social standing. She
shared his Americanism. She wrote home that she had never seen an
assembly room in America which did not exceed that at St. James in
point of elegance and decoration, and that the women of the Court, in
all their blaze of diamonds set off with Parisian rouge, could not
match the blooming health, the sparkling eye, and modest deportment
of the dear girls of her native land. When presented to the King, she
declared that her reception stung her like an adder, although His
Majesty was kind enough to salute her cheek. She thought Queen Charlotte
rather embarrassed and Mrs. Adams confessed to a disagreeable feeling.
Yet the Queen simply inquired whether Mrs. Adams had gotten into her
new house and how she liked it. Years after, Mrs. Adams confessed that
the humiliation of Queen Charlotte was no sorrow for her. Three years
of neglect could not be readily forgotten or forgiven.

"Nothing but retaliation, reciprocal prohibitions, and imposts, and
putting ourselves in a posture of defence," the American Minister
informed his Government, could make an impression on England. National
action along any of these lines was impossible, because each State had
control of its own commerce. Individual retaliation was a burlesque.
Virginia at one time placed a tonnage duty on British vessels four
times that charged French and Dutch traders with whom the United States
had treaty arrangements. British vessels simply avoided Virginia ports
and sailed freely into those of other States. "When Massachusetts set
on foot a retaliation of the policy of Great Britain," wrote Madison,
sending the news to Jefferson in France, "Connecticut declared her
ports free. New Jersey served New York the same way. And Delaware, I
am told, has lately followed the example, in opposition to the
commercial plans of Pennsylvania." Many similar cases might be cited.
Some wag likened such efforts to a man who plugged up most carefully
the worm-holes in one end of a cask and knocked the whole head out at
the other end.

Fully three-fourths of all shipping to be seen in American ports flew
the British flag; yet American vessels could bring only American goods
into British ports. American ships were positively forbidden to trade
in the British West Indies, and American vessels sold in England could
not be used in British colonial trade. Under these circumstances, John
Adams became convinced that nothing but a complete change in the form
of the American National Government, giving over the control of commerce
into the hands of the Confederation, would be of avail in bringing
Britain to terms. As the end of her husband's mission drew nigh, Mrs.
Adams declared that she would quit Europe with more pleasure than she
came to it, and uncontaminated, she hoped, with its manners and its
vices. She attributed the ill success of her husband's efforts to the
lack of concord at home; to the debts which her countrymen had
contracted in Europe and were unable to pay; to the expectation in
England that prohibitory acts and heavy duties would bring the Americans
back to British allegiance; and to the calumnies circulated by the
Tory refugees in England. Their departure was marked, in the opinion
of John Adams, by a dry decency and a cold civility, which made him
feel, in breathing the air of his own country again, as if he had just
escaped from prison.




CHAPTER II

THE PROBLEMS OF THE BACK LANDS



The ease with which the American domain had been permitted to extend
to the Mississippi in the peace negotiations with Great Britain did
not mean a freedom from future anxiety concerning the "back lands,"
lying to the west of the thirteen States. The entire domain contained
about 827,000 square miles, inhabited by about three million people,
very unequally distributed. Population was most dense near the coast
and gradually shaded off toward the interior. The front wave of
civilisation may be located by an irregular line passing through central
New Hampshire, skirting Lake Champlain, narrowing down to the Mohawk
valley, and across north-western New Jersey, whence it turned due west
across the mountains in a long arm reaching to Pittsburg. Retreating
to the Shenandoah valley, it descended to central Georgia and thence
to the sea. An "island" of people was to be found in central Kentucky
and another in north-central Tennessee. A great tract of vacant but
desirable land, comprising probably three-fourths of the domain,
stretched from within two hundred miles of the seacoast to the distant
Mississippi River. Barring a few French villagers, it was inhabited
only by savage men and beasts.

The lack of co-operation among the colonies in managing the Indians
had made a lasting impression. During the Revolutionary War, the
Congress gradually assumed the management of the savages to keep them
from serving the British forces. This was especially true of the tribes
dwelling beyond the recognised limits of the thirteen States. The State
Governments readily consented to allow the central body a large control
in this matter, because it meant so much for the common defence. The
British method of Indian agents and commissioners for different
geographical departments was adopted by the Congress, the whole being
placed under control of the Department of War. The National Government
thus came into control of the savages who inhabited the vast
trans-Alleghany region. The thought naturally followed that it should
be given control of the land itself, if it were to manage the savages
successfully.

Following the war, commissioners and agents complained that they could
not get the confidence and trade of the Indians of the North-west,
because of the influence of the British troops remaining in the forts,
in that quarter. According to the stipulations of the treaty of peace,
the forts located on the American side of the boundary line were to
be evacuated. There were some half-dozen of these posts, ranging along
the international line from Michilimackinac at the head of Lake Huron,
to Dutchman's Point, near Lake Champlain. The number of troops in each
was not sufficient to cause any fear of invasion; but their presence
produced an uncertainty in the Indian mind whether the control was
still with the British or had passed to the United States. The fur
trade, which should have passed through the States, was diverted to
Canada along the old lines.

Instead of vacating, the troops went out from some of the forts and
built additional new posts on American soil. "The Great Father across
the Waters," said a chief, when returning an unsigned treaty to Col.
Harmar, "has not given this country over to the Thirteen Fires." Knowing
the former predilection of the Indians for the French, the services
of Lafayette were enlisted, prior to his return to France, in addressing
a council on the frontier of New York to enlighten the natives
concerning their new allegiance. It was felt that all efforts would
be of no avail until the British were removed. To all American protests,
the British Government replied that the posts would not be evacuated
until the Americans had fulfilled their part of the treaty concerning
the debts owed to British merchants.

[Illustration: THE OLD BLOCKHOUSE AT MACKINAC, 1780]

At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, large sums had been due
British exporters and factors by American planters and traders, because
of the commercial system in vogue at that time. The war gave excuse
to unscrupulous debtors to withhold payment. Associations were formed
in many communities to adopt this form of retaliation, although
discountenanced by the better classes. At the close of the war, it was
said that there was not sufficient money in circulation to discharge
these long-due obligations. Jefferson estimated the debts due British
merchants in Virginia alone at thirty times the amount of money in
circulation in the State. Many States had passed stay laws against
executions to recover such debts and had thrown other legal obstructions
in the way of the British creditors. Claim was made not only for the
original amount of the debts, but for back interest as well. The
American merchants rejoined that they could pay neither principal nor
interest until they had been compensated for their slaves carried away
by the British Army and the Tories at the end of the war and contrary
to the terms of the treaty of peace. The labour of these slaves, they
said, would enable them to pay the debts.

Undoubtedly American statesmen wished to sustain inviolate the
provisions of the treaty, not only by preventing the States from
interfering with the collection of valid debts, but also by protecting
the Loyalists or Tories, as the treaty demanded. The English
negotiators, having small experience with a Confederation, supposed
that the clause in the treaty binding Congress to recommend actions
to the several State Legislatures was equivalent to a warrant. It was
agreed that the privilege should be granted to any person to go into
and remain twelve months in any part of the United States to regain
his property by law. The treaty provided further that Congress would
recommend to the States the restoration of all property to former
owners upon payment of the bona fide price which the present possessors
paid for it after confiscation. The treaty also implicitly promised
that there should be no more confiscations or prosecutions. The several
provisions for the alleviation of these Loyalists indicate slightly
the misfortunes into which their action brought them. Their treatment
both officially and by the mob has been described by some foreign
writers as the darkest page in American history. But they had choice
of sides in the issue. Granted that they supposed they were right in
upholding government against rebellion; yet the law of consequences
accepts no excuse for over-conservatism. He who fails to keep step
with the march of events falls behind and suffers the consequences.
The Loyalists were on the losing side and suffered the common fate of
the conquered.

War is abnormal. It undermines ideas of justice prevalent in time of
peace. Thus it came about that the treatment of the Loyalists reacted
unfortunately on the patriots. They had harried the royal sympathisers
out of the land. They had grown accustomed to using force and could
not readily return to law-abiding methods. They would not obey even
the provisions of a national treaty. The Articles of Confederation,
under which they were attempting to live in concord, kept a State from
laying a duty which would interfere with the proposed treaties with
France and Spain. Otherwise there was no compulsion aside from the
moral obligation attached to a treaty. However, John Jay, Secretary
of Foreign Affairs, acting in the capacity of an Attorney-General,
rendered an opinion that no State according to the Articles could
disobey or even interpret the provisions of a national treaty. Congress
adopted resolutions to the same effect. But without coercive power,
resolutions of Congress were idle as the wind. Jay confessed to
Jefferson in France, his fears that "some of the States had gone so
far in their deviations from the treaty that I fear they will not
easily be persuaded to tread back their steps." He also stated his
conviction after investigation that there had not been a single day
since the treaty had been signed in which it had not been broken by
some State. Washington also testified to the helplessness of Congress
by saying, "If you tell the Legislatures that they have violated the
treaty of peace, and invaded the prerogatives of the Confederacy, they
will laugh in your face." In this manner, a series of unfortunate
diplomatic complications turned upon the British possession of the
American forts along the frontier.

Nor was the impotence of the new nation exhibited toward England only
in the western country. Because it drained almost the whole of the
great inland valley, forming with its tributaries a network of
ready-made highways, the Mississippi River assumed an importance to
the trans-Alleghanian settlers which is lost in these days of
artificial means of transportation. As Madison once said, "It is the
Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable waters of the
Atlantic States formed into one stream." It is true that the freedom
of navigating the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence was secured to these
western people by the Treaty of 1783, but these ways to the sea were
closed by ice during a portion of the year and were impeded by falls.
The lower Mississippi, on the other hand, had neither of these
obstructions to navigation. Near its mouth was the city of New Orleans,
where ocean vessels lay ready to receive western products. The current
made easy the voyage thither. For twenty years the traditionally
easy-going Spaniard had held the mouth of the river, placing severe
restrictions upon foreign traders, but too indolent to enforce them.

Great Britain and the United States had ignored Spain when they declared
in the treaty of peace that the Mississippi, from its source to the
Gulf, should remain for ever free and open to citizens of both
countries. Perhaps because she was disappointed in not getting a portion
of the middle valley away from the Americans in the course of the peace
negotiations, Spain soon began to show that she was at least mistress
of the lower part of the river. Just where her dominion began was
uncertain. During the war, a Virginia captain raised his colours on
the Mississippi a few miles above Natchez. A Spanish commandant buried
a box near the same spot with the colours of his sovereign as a token
of possession. After 1783, the flatboatmen, who adventured down the
river with loads of tobacco, flour, or planks, seeking a market at New
Orleans or adjacent settlements, found at the Walnut Bluffs, about ten
miles below the mouth of the Yazoo River, a post of Spanish customs
guards. These bade them lower their flag and put themselves under the
protection of the governor of Natchez before proceeding. If the goods
escaped paying a duty at this place, they were examined a second time
when they reached the group of about one hundred houses, crowning the
bluff, which constituted the city of Natchez. On a prominent point,
commanding a view of the river for many miles, stood the governor's
palace and the fort, at which were usually stationed about a score of
Spanish troops.

The hardy frontiersmen, who escaped the perils of navigating the river
as far as Natchez, bore the inspection and frequent seizure of their
goods as a great hardship and unwarrantable action. Scarcely had trade
opened after the war before Congress received a complaint from one
Fowler that his flatboat loaded with produce for the New Orleans market
had been seized for refusal to pay duties at Natchez. A few months
later, Thomas Amis, a North Carolina trader, reported the seizure of
his stock at the same point, consisting of 142 Dutch ovens, 53 pots
and kettles, 34 skillets, 33 cast boxes, 3 pairs dog irons, a pair of
flat irons, a spice mortar, a plough mould, and 50 barrels of flour.

Complaints of some of these seizures officially reached Congress.
Countless tales of other infringements upon American rights on the
lower Mississippi were told among the settlers along the western slope
of the Alleghanies, arousing them to the conviction that they were
being sacrificed by the commercial interests of the Atlantic plain who
wished to preserve a profitable trade with Spain. Gardoqui had arrived
at the seat of government in 1785 as the first representative of the
Spanish King. He was determined, as he said, to make the lower
Mississippi a "bone of contention" in negotiating the long-delayed
treaty with the United States. Not much agitation on his part was
necessary. The western people were wrought up to the determination to
take matters into their own hands, if necessary, to procure an outlet
to Europe for their goods. The rumour that Jay, Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, had approved to Congress the suggestion of Gardoqui, that the
river be closed for ten years as the price of a commercial treaty,
drove them to the point of forcible resistance. The Spanish also
continued to occupy posts on the American side of the Florida boundary
line, but this was a grievance only as they were accused of arousing
the Indians to hostility against American settlers. In truth, these
western pioneers formed a long arm of people thrust out between Indians
under British dominance on the north and Indians under Spanish control
on the south.

Believing themselves outside the pale of eastern protection, the western
people entertained various projects for self-preservation. George
Rogers Clark, whose daring Virginia expedition into the Illinois country
had gained him fame in the Revolutionary days, placed himself at the
head of a volunteer company which called itself the "Wabash regiment,"
and had been recruited in Kentucky for an expedition against the Shawnee
Indians. Clark had degenerated through intemperance into a kind of
border freebooter. Turning his troops from the original purpose, he
seized the goods of the Spanish traders at Post Vincennes as a
retaliation upon the Spanish, and prepared to descend upon New Orleans.
Congress was compelled to take strong measures for disbanding his
followers and making amends to Spain. A short time after, another
Kentuckian was at Vincennes organising men to drive out the Spanish
and make a settlement at Natchez, presumably inside the limits of
Georgia. "Ireland is a free country to what this will be when its
navigation is entirely shut," he wrote to the governor of Georgia in
unfolding his scheme. An emissary was sent through the Illinois French
settlements to describe the Spanish outrages on the lower Mississippi.
Seditious papers were circulating in Kentucky and in the revolutionary
State of Franklin. "In case we are not countenanced," said one of these
documents, "and succoured by the United States, our allegiance will
be thrown off and some other power applied to. Great Britain stands
ready with open arms to receive and support us." One adventurer assured
Gardoqui that fifty thousand men would be in arms in the western country
to get their commercial rights.

Even a more efficient government than a Confederation would have
experienced difficulty in overcoming these decentralising effects of
the Alleghany Mountains, before improved methods of transportation had
annihilated the barrier. The people along the Atlantic Ocean and those
in the Mississippi valley lived really in two parallel north and south
plains, having easier outlets through foreign countries and therefore
more points of contact with them than with each other. Although obscured
by the later north and south sectionalism, this east and west difference
for many years caused a fear in the older portion that the newer or
valley part would secede from it. This fear began with the troubles
over the navigation of the Mississippi, it was renewed by Genet's
intrigues, it reached its climax in Burr's expedition, and it subsided
only when railways and canal transportation had levelled the mountains
and thereby lessened the importance of waterways.

European strategists made ready use of the isolated condition of the
western people, not always with the object of absorbing them, but
rather of using them in the great game of territorial acquisition
played so many times on the American board. For instance, in 1787, the
French Minister to the United States forwarded to his Government a
document presented to him, evidently by a native of France residing
in America, which described the extent of the Mississippi valley and
the dissatisfaction of its inhabitants. The paper asserted that the
people beyond the mountains

"seek for a new support and offer to the power which will welcome them
advantages which will before long effect those which America, as it now
is, could promise.... It requires a protector; the first who will stretch
out his arms to it will have made the greatest acquisition that could be
desired in this new world. Fortunate my country if she does not let this
moment escape, one of those not presented twice."

A year or two later, the British consul at Philadelphia was suggesting
to his Government the use of the western settlements of the United
States in an expedition to be made against Spanish New Orleans. These
frontiersmen would co-operate, he thought, in any measure that might
tend to secure them a free trade which the uninterrupted passage of
the Mississippi would effectually establish. He pronounced them a hardy
race, adventurers by profession, and ready to seize every opportunity
of profit or employment. They were described in a project for using
them presented at another time to the French Government as "hardy,
enterprising, good marksmen, lovers of liberty, and always armed."

The extent to which the western people were prepared to go in the
Confederation days was a matter of much dispute, and was aired fully
in the course of time by controversies in Kentucky politics. But their
hardihood and capacity for achievement have never been questioned.
They were qualified by nature to insist upon their rights even if such
insistence embarrassed the foreign negotiations of the home Government.
Bred in the rural districts of Virginia and the Carolinas, accustomed
to solitude and privations, depending upon their rifles for food and
largely for dress, they felt no ties binding them to home and the old
life when once they had crossed the mountains. They were self-dependent
in nearly every particular except arms and ammunition. Carrying the
organising instinct of their English forefathers, they set up local
government as rapidly as their numbers warranted. To be held as
colonists by the States to the eastward of the mountains was contrary
to that spirit of inherited freedom which had already made those States
out of colonies. Just at the dawn of the Revolution the colonisation
of the far-famed "blue grass" region of Kentucky had begun, when Daniel
Boone led the Transylvania Company from North Carolina to found
Boonesboro. Although the independent government which this company
erected was suppressed by the governors of Virginia and North Carolina,
the movement could not be stayed. A few years later, these Kentuckians,
increased in numbers by the enormous migration thither, were holding
secession conventions which Virginia thought wise not to resist. North
Carolina repressed with some effort the independent State of Franklin,
or "Frankland," the land of the free Franks, as it was first called,
which John Sevier and other hardy spirits set up in what is now eastern
Tennessee.

While these attempts to create independent States in the remote regions
are now praised as evidences of the organising instinct of the American
people, it must not be forgotten that at the time they were formed
within the legitimate bounds of regular States and seriously threatened
to impair their domains. The domain of a State is regarded as one of
the most inviolable attributes of its sovereignty. The third Article
of the Confederation bound the States to assist any of their number
against attacks made upon its sovereignty. Not only were the States
of Virginia and Kentucky threatened with the loss of territory through
insurrection. The "Green Mountain boys," headed by Ethan Allen, had
succeeded in setting up an independent State, with a popular innkeeper
as governor, upon land claimed by New York. Against these infringements
upon the integrity of the States, the Congress could do nothing more
than draw up resolutions expressing "the highest disapprobation" of
those who participated.

The experience of the National Government under the Articles of
Confederation with the settlers on the frontier beyond the recognised
limits of the thirteen States, although alarming at the time, was
invaluable as a lesson. It taught thinking men not only that the Central
Government must be given more power to protect the States themselves,
but that these remote districts could be best governed by the central
authorities. Every argument of this kind was timely since it might
induce the States still holding out to yield their back lands as a
common property. The beginning of ceding the western lands to the
common stock is important as a precedent since it created ultimately
the profit-sharing principle of the public domain. Mention has been
made of the failure in Congress to place western bounds on certain
States. When the Articles were sent to all the States for ratification
before going into effect, individual State Legislatures had opportunity
of making such boundary restriction the price of a national agreement.
Individualism in this instance proved a blessing. It is important to
an appreciation of the times to note that the State whose persistence
won the victory was not one of the largest or most influential. Maryland
was the eighth in rank of territory and probably the sixth in number
of population. Her powerful neighbour and ancient enemy, Virginia,
upon assuming statehood, had reiterated her charter claims to full
one-half the territory of British North America, magnanimously "ceding"
to the States of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the two Carolinas the
land of which they were already possessed.

As Virginia admitted, the British Government had always assumed that the
Atlantic coast-plain was the seat of its thirteen American colonies, and
had refused to acknowledge openly their claims much beyond the crest of
the Alleghanies. The ownership of the vacant lands between the mountains
and the Mississippi River was vested in the King under the name of "Crown
lands." But no sooner had the struggle for independence begun than the
colonies determined in case of success to claim the entire British
possessions in those parts; that is, to the Mississippi. As early as 1776,
Silas Deane, the commercial agent of the United States in Paris, suggested
to Congress the sale of the vacant lands to French colonists as a means of
paying the expenses of the war. The rich valley, when fully regarded as a
possible spoil of war, became a golden apple of discord. It had been won,
small States argued, "by the blood and treasure of all, and ought,
therefore, to be a common estate."

Led more by the necessity for some kind of a national government to
replace the rule of Britain thrown off in 1776 than by such appeals, the
Legislature of New York in 1781 authorised her delegates in Congress to
quitclaim all lands lying outside her present boundaries to the General
Government for the benefit of present and future States of the Union.
Although the claim of New York, based upon a treaty with the Indians, had
been regarded as shadowy by other States, yet her greatly lauded action
led in the same year to propositions from Virginia and, a few years later,
to advances from Massachusetts and Connecticut resulting eventually in
their giving up all territory north of the Ohio and west of Pennsylvania
and New York. Persuaded by these favourable indications, Maryland signed
the Articles, as heretofore described.

Whether the persistence of Maryland was due to her desire for the
national good, to selfishness in wishing a share of the national spoils
of war, or to animosity toward Virginia dating from their ancient
boundary dispute, the result may well be pronounced the most important
step toward union since the appointment of Washington to the head of
a national army. The public domain was the first inheritance the needy
National Government ever received aside from debts and disputes. Not
that the pecuniary return from the sale of the public lands proved as
large as at first imagined; but that this tangible asset gave some
dignity to the intangible Union. The disposal of the land, as a
profit-sharing enterprise, formed a business undertaking which concerned
all the States. It could be managed only by the combined powers.




CHAPTER III

THE CARE OF THE PUBLIC LANDS



Having been entrusted with the responsibility of administering the
back lands, Congress immediately entered upon the work of arranging
a method for their survey and sale, and of devising a feasible
government to be extended over them. The pressing need of securing a
revenue from them, together with a realisation that prospective
purchasers would require protection both from each other and from the
savages, impelled the members to immediate action. Against the many
failures with which the old Congress stands charged during the eight
years of its national control, the ordinances for the disposition and
government of the western lands form a most pleasant and redeeming
contrast. The Congress faced an absolutely new task. There were many
precedents in history for colonial holding, varying from the policy
of Greece, which allowed complete severance of home ties, to that of
Spain, which regarded colonies as existing solely for the benefit of
the mother country. By adopting the one, the United States must have
left the western emigrants to perish. The other was repugnant to a
people who had just rebelled against even the moderate colonial system
of Great Britain. Equality is the only standard for a republic. Congress
had resolved in 1780 that the lands ceded to its jurisdiction should
be "disposed of for the common benefit and be settled and formed into
distinct republican States which shall become members of the Federal
Union and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independence
as the other States." Here was an action almost unprecedented. Instead
of holding the outlying region as a colonial possession for the benefit
of the older portion, or making it into an Indian hunting-ground as
Britain had tried to do, the Confederation of States had voluntarily
agreed to erect it into independent States upon perfect equality with
themselves. It was a practical application of the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, of no taxation without representation,
and of the real equality of all portions of the domain. The action was
taken for the very practical purpose of assuring the States that if
they surrendered their claims to the western lands, their citizens who
migrated thither would not lose their rights by changing from State
to national sovereignty.

Jefferson is presumed to be the father of the ordinance which first
collected these promises into a working model; but not even Jefferson,
rejoicing in laying out imaginary states from the new national
possession and giving classic names to them, could foresee that there
was being called into existence a factor most dangerous to his beloved
individualism. The people who would remove from the States and settle
upon lands purchased from the National Government, would be under
national protection, subject to national legislation, and eventually
be admitted by the national power to national statehood. Their affection
would be gradually won away from their native States to be centred on
the Union. Yet the States had not been able to hold the lands
individually. Thus was necessity silently making the Union.

The provisions of the Jefferson Ordinance of 1784 for the temporary
government of the western territory have been almost lost sight of
because, after it had been in operation for three years and little had
been accomplished through difficulty of dealing with the Indians in
possession of the land, circumstances arose which brought about a new
ordinance superseding the old and changing it in its working details.
Yet the first ordinance embodied the main principles in creating States
which have since been followed. The number of people in any given
portion of the public lands was to be the determining factor.
Jefferson's ordinance would allow these settlers to establish a
temporary government, to adopt the constitution of any one of the
thirteen States, and to elect a legislature. When their number should
reach twenty thousand, they would be allowed to call a convention and
establish a permanent constitution and government. Upon attaining a
population of free inhabitants equal to that of the least numerous of
the thirteen original States (at this time probably Georgia, whose
population was estimated at twenty-five thousand) they would be admitted
on equal footing with the other States. Between the establishment of
the temporary government and admission to statehood, the prospective
state should be allowed a representative in Congress with a right of
debating but not of voting. The well-known Ordinance of 1787, which
replaced that of 1784, substituted for the temporary government to be
erected by the settlers a ready-made administration of governor,
secretary, and territorial judges, to be sent out by the National
Government, and to continue until the free male population should
number five thousand, when they were to be allowed to exercise home
rule in setting up a territorial government. The standard for statehood
was fixed definitely in the later ordinance at sixty thousand free
inhabitants.

Jefferson, notwithstanding the supposedly aristocratic training of a
Virginia environment, placed no qualification for suffrage or office
in his ordinance. The Ordinance of 1787, presumably drafted under
democratic New England ideas, placed a qualification of ownership of
two hundred acres of land upon a representative in the territorial
legislature and of fifty acres upon an elector for a representative.
Here was an illustration of that revertive tendency in the sections
which has maintained the national equilibrium. Accumulated wealth in
the North was beginning to overcome the levelling creed of the Puritan,
while the economic loss resulting from slave labour in the South was
reducing the colonial Cavalier class in the planter States. The
exceedingly profitable cotton culture had not yet developed in the
Gulf States to create the ante-bellum aristocracy of the lower South,
nor had the stream of European immigration set in to the Northern
States to restore the levelling tendency there.

The two ordinances were alike in precluding the separation of any part
of the territory from the United States, requiring the inhabitants to
pay a portion of the national debt, and forbidding new States, to
interfere with the sale of or to tax the national public lands within
their limits.

Two provisions in Jefferson's first draft of the Ordinance of 1784
were struck out by the Congress before adoption. One, which forbade
granting of titles of nobility, was eliminated because, as Jefferson
wrote to Madison, "it was thought an improper place to encounter them."
The contest against the introduction of aristocracy was unlikely to
be precipitated in the backwoods bordering the Ohio River. Yet the
provision would have been in keeping with the spirit of the times.
Congress had recently rejected a proposition made to Washington by the
Polish Order of Knights of Divine Providence that their order should
be officially extended to the United States. The other eliminated
provision, forbidding slavery and involuntary servitude in the territory
after the year 1800 except as a punishment for crime, is important not
only as the first attempted restriction of the slavery system by the
National Government, but also as furnishing an interesting comparison
with the later sentiment on this unfortunate controversy which affected
every phase of United States history for a century.

When he incorporated this provision in his draft of the ordinance,
Jefferson was but little in advance of the opinion of the day on the
effects of employing slave labour. Never until its death was the system
so near dissolution as in the organising days between the birth of the
republic and the invention of the cotton-gin. State after State in
forming its constitution, or by special enactment, arranged for
immediate abolition or gradual emancipation. Even in slaveholding
Virginia and North Carolina, few could be found to defend the system
from an economic standpoint, although they had to admit the necessity
of its use in the rice swamps of South Carolina and Georgia.

Lafayette was urging Washington to employ his recently acquired leisure
in transforming slaves into free tenants. "Such an example as yours,"
he wrote from Cadiz, "might render it a general practice."

"Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself generally into the minds
of the people of this country," replied the Virginia farmer, "but I
despair of seeing it. To set the slaves afloat at once would, I really
believe, be productive of much inconvenience and mischief, but by degrees
it certainly might and assuredly ought to be effected; and that too by
legislative authority."

At the same time he put himself on record as determined never to add
another to the number of his slaves by purchase. A petition for
emancipation had just been introduced into the Virginia House of
Delegates and was "rejected without dissent; but not without an avowed
patronage of its principles by sundry respectable members," as Madison
informed Washington. "A motion was made to throw it under the table,
which was treated with as much indignation on one side as the petition
itself was on the other."

Jefferson had been disappointed at an earlier time because no
emancipation provision had been incorporated in the Constitution of
Virginia.

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man!" he wrote in
this connection, "who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and
death itself in vindication of his own liberty and the next moment be deaf
to all those motives whose power supported him thro' his trial and inflict
on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery
than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."

An interesting commentary on the industrial progress of the country
is afforded by comparing these early views of Southern statesmen upon
the slavery system with those held by a later generation.

Public sentiment in Virginia was not ready to follow the champions of
individual freedom to the emancipation point, and it refused as
strenuously to be coerced as it did in later years. When the Quakers
of Philadelphia attempted to secure by law the freedom of a body-servant
whom a neighbour of Washington had taken with him on a visit to that
city, the General wrote to his friend, Robert Morris, the wealthy
merchant of Philadelphia, "If the practice of this society, of which
Mr. Dalby speaks, is not discountenanced, none of those whose
_misfortune_ it is to have slaves as attendants, will visit the city
if they can possibly avoid it."

However, the clause which was struck from the Ordinance of 1784 was
not intended to abolish slavery where it already existed, but to prevent
the extension of the system to new territory. It was the forerunner
of a similar controversy which attended every addition to the national
territory as the people spread westwardly, and which eventually became
a strong factor in precipitating the Civil War. The motion to cast out
was made by Spaight, of North Carolina, but Williamson, his colleague,
voted to retain the clause and thus divided the State. Jefferson was
outvoted by his two colleagues who favoured no restriction on the
people desiring to migrate to the new lands. Maryland and South Carolina
were the only Southern States unanimously against the clause. Six
States north of the Mason and Dixon line voted to retain the clause.
Jefferson took the defeat sorely.

"Seven States being requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively," he
said, "it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the State which
was divided or of one of those which were of the negative, would have
prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new
country."

To Madison he reported, "South Carolina, Maryland, and! Virginia! voted
against it. N. Carolina was divided as would have been Virginia had
not one of its delegates been sick in bed." The absent member was young
James Monroe, serving his first term in Congress.

The close vote, of which Jefferson complains, well illustrates the
evils of voting by States in Congress. Seven affirmative State votes
were necessary to retain the anti-slavery clause. Only eleven States
were represented. One of these had but one delegate and his vote was
cast out by the rule requiring a State to be represented by at least
two delegates to participate in a vote. Of the ten States remaining,
seven must have at least two delegates of an affirmative mind from
each to retain the clause. Six of these States voted solidly to keep
the restriction, but the seventh State could not be secured, as
Jefferson stated. Considered by our present method of voting, sixteen
of the twenty-three delegates present voted affirmatively and seven
negatively; yet the motion was lost and the clause struck out. Rarely
has the power of a minority been so great. The individual may be allowed
to hide the mass by being held too close to the vision.

However, the defeat of Jefferson's plan of excluding slavery from the
territory after the year 1800 must be considered fortunate by all in
sympathy with the general purpose. By it, slavery would have been
permitted in the western country for sixteen years. The large influx
of migration into the territory within that period, especially from
the Southern States, would have established the system too thoroughly
to be eradicated. The difficulty with which slavery was permanently
kept out, although expressly prohibited by the Ordinance of 1787, is
a proof of this assertion. The clearing of the way for the later
prohibitive action by striking out the clause tended to the ultimate
good. On the other hand, it is pointed out that the Jefferson ordinance
provided only for "a temporary government of the western territory"
and covered "so much of the territory ceded or to be ceded by the
individual States to the United States as is already purchased or shall
be purchased of the Indian inhabitants and offered for sale by
Congress." Eulogists of Jefferson argue, consequently, that if his
restricting clause had been allowed to remain it would have prohibited
slavery in all the land west of the thirteen States, both north and
south, after the year 1800, and thus the entire slavery system would
have died through non-extension. But it must be remembered that the
only land thus far ceded lay north of the Ohio and immediately west
of the free States. It is not conceivable that such a restriction would
have been permitted to hold south of the Ohio and west of the
slaveholding States, directly in the line of migration. Indeed, when
the time did arrive to create a government south of the Ohio,
interference with slavery was distinctly prohibited. It is true, also,
that Jefferson's ordinance as adopted solemnly declared its articles
a charter of compact to stand as unalterable constitutions both before
and after the sale of any part of the vacant land; but that a new
ordinance should supersede it after three years, simply because a
proposed purchaser demanded some additional guarantees, is a proof
that none of its provisions could have withstood the pressure of slave
territorial expansion.

However, at the time, there seemed small prospect that the National
Government would ever be required to make regulations for any territory
south of the Ohio. Congress had sent out appeal after appeal to North
Carolina, citing the action of the other States, and begging her to
yield her claim to what is now the State of Tennessee. But she resisted
until 1790. South Carolina retained control of a long, narrow strip,
south of the present Tennessee and extending to the Mississippi, until
1787. Georgia, claiming almost the whole of the present States of
Alabama and Mississippi, remained deaf likewise to the entreaties of
Congress until 1802. Virginia, having yielded so much of her original
claim as lay north of the Ohio, was disposed to retain her claim to
the Kentucky country. Jefferson wished to yield all lying west of the
mouth of the Kanawha. Washington approved of this limit, seeing, as
he said, "the impolicy of this State's grasping at more territory than
they are competent to the government of." This liberal sentiment was
never sufficiently general to be effective. Thus it came about that
the Southwestern territory, which Congress ultimately created from all
land ceded south of the Ohio, was never more than a temporary and
passing arrangement compared with the North-west territory.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE PROPOSED WESTERN STATES. From Morse's
"American Gazetteer". The five States here outlined in the North-west
Territory, with slightly changed boundaries, are to be found on the
map at present.]

After much study, Congress drew up the Ordinance of 1785 for the survey
and sale of such land as might be given to its care. The details of
this important arrangement in the story of the American people
illustrate the advantages arising from instituting new governments at
a stroke. The rectangular system of land surveys, like the decimal
system of money, was devised and not inherited. Each has proved a
blessing in its simplicity. The divisions of the land upon an
even-number basis, the progressive numbering of the divisions, the
elasticity of the system, and the subdivisions arranged to accommodate
small purchasers, have conduced by their simplicity and adaptability
to speedy disposition and settlement of the national domain and have
minimised later litigation and discord. Since the history of the
American people has been influenced so extensively and persistently
by the disposal and peopling of the public lands, the simple survey
system may be counted among the valuable parts of the national
machinery.

Surveys were to be made by the "geographer" of the United States,
assisted by a surveyor from each of the States. One-seventh of all
lands surveyed was to be reserved for the land bounties promised to
those who had served in the Continental army. An old handbill,
frequently reproduced, shows that among the inducements to enlistment
held out during the darkest period of the war were "Ease, affluence,
and a good farm." The certificates issued to the soldiers at the close
of the war in lieu of money were made receivable in payment for public
land. A share in all gold, silver, lead, and copper mines was retained
by the National Government. Lot number sixteen in every township was
reserved for the maintenance of public schools.  A provision for setting
aside the section adjoining it for the support of religion was struck
out, nor could a motion prevail to preserve it for "charitable uses."
The votes on this question seemed to be governed purely by individual
opinion. The delegates from Virginia, whose Legislature had just dealt
the Established Church in that State its death-blow, voted to retain
the reservation of land for religious purposes, much like the old
church glebe lands. But the separation of Church and State had become
too complete to enter upon a scheme so suggestive of establishment.

For three years the Ordinance of 1784 awaited the migration of settlers
to the territory who would be protected by it, and, at the same time,
put it into effect. Thomas Hutchins, the national "geographer," and
his assistants from the several States, laid off seven ranges of
townships, in the eastern part of the present State of Ohio, according
to the land Ordinance of 1785, before rumours of hostile Indians drove
them back. The Secretary of War was instructed to draw by lot enough
of the surveyed land to satisfy such bounty land certificates as might
be presented and to advertise the remainder for sale. United States
troops were employed to drive out the "squatters" on the public lands,
to burn their cabins, and destroy their crops. But not an acre was
sold in those three years, not a certificate of national indebtedness
redeemed, and not a shilling received from the land sales for the needy
treasury.

The Jefferson ordinance had been intended for such western lands as
might from time to time be given to the National Government. But no
land south of the Ohio was surrendered. Congress, therefore, determined
to cast aside the old ordinance, and to form the portion yielded into
a specific territory, with a new ordinance which would allow more
leeway in forming the States and give Congress more control over the
domain from its incipience.  Accordingly, Johnson, of Maryland, offered
a new ordinance in the spring of 1786, which passed to a second reading.
With the exception of the reforms noted above, it closely resembled
the old ordinance. But in July following, after an interregnum of no
quorum, the Congress passed, by an almost unanimous vote and after a
consideration of only a few days, an entirely new law governing the
territory north-west of the Ohio. It was the famous Ordinance of 1787.
Its sudden transformation, inexplicable to early investigators and
solved only by later research, was the result of a business transaction
connected with the bounty certificates given to the Revolutionary
soldiers.

During the progress of the war, it had been necessary to secure enlistment
by offering bounty lands. The desire to realise on these promises was
shared by officers and privates alike. Doubtless around many a camp-fire,
as the war drew to a close, the value of these land certificates was
discussed, and plans made for "associating" to form colonies in the "back
lands" to which the soldiers were winning both right and title. The
danger-line in the future would be along the frontier, where the newly
won empire must be guarded from invasion both from British Canada and the
Spanish Floridas, and where the advancing line of pioneers must be
protected from hostile Indians. Bands of these "associators" were
organised to obtain their allotments in the new country and to settle upon
them. They would "plant a brave, a hardy, and respectable race of people
as our advanced post," wrote Washington in presenting the project to
Congress. "A settlement formed by such men would give security to our
frontiers; the very name of it would awe the Indians."

One body of men, styling themselves "The Ohio Company of Associators,"
composed of ex-Revolutionary officers and privates residing in and
about Boston, sent a botanist-parson, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler,
to the Congress in the summer of 1787, to urge a proposition they had
advanced for the purchase of a large tract on the Ohio River. These
"adventurers," as they styled themselves, were desirous of driving a
good bargain in a low price for the land and also of gaining certain
guarantees from Congress which would give them as much personal liberty
and protection in the new home and under the National Government as
they enjoyed in their present residences under their State Governments.
Cutler, provided with forty-two letters of introduction to members of
Congress and prominent citizens of New York city, reached the seat of
government in due time. "At 11 o'clock," he wrote in his private
journal, "I was introduced to a number of members on the floor of
Congress Chamber, in the City Hall, by Colonel Carrington, member from
Virginia. Delivered my petition for purchasing lands for the Ohio
Company, and proposed terms and conditions of purchase." Fortunately
there was a quorum in Congress, the first in nearly two months. A few
days later, Cutler was sent a copy of the Johnson ordinance then
pending. To this he proposed "several amendments." Three days afterward,
the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, for the government of that portion
of the territory north-west of the Ohio, was completed and adopted to
Cutler's satisfaction. "It is in a degree remodelled," he wrote in his
journal. "The amendments I proposed have all been made except one, and
that is better qualified."

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.

[Illustration: DR. CUTLER'S CHURCH AND PARSONAGE AT IPSWICH HAMLET, 1787.
The rendezvous from which the first company started for the Ohio, December
3, 1787.]

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."

[Illustration: A PETITION FROM CONGRESS TO THE STATES. Many such appeals
were issued at different times, begging the States in the Confederation
to give more power to the Central Government.]

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.

[Illustration: SIGNATURES TO AN ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF PRINCETON,
NEW JERSEY.]

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.

[Illustration: SIGNATURES OF DELEGATES TO ANNAPOLIS CONVENTION.
Hamilton, Reed, Dickinson, Randolph, and Madison were the most prominent
members of this abortive meeting, which led eventually to the
Philadelphia Convention.]

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."

[Illustration: MANASSEH CUTLER]

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."

[Illustration: COPY OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION AND THE
CONSTITUTION IN PARALLEL COLUMNS. The foot-notes show that it is an
Anti-Federal print.]

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.

The keener spirits among the opposition looked above these details and
saw a threatened consolidation of the Central Government. "Give me
leave to inquire," said Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention,
"who authorised them to speak the language of 'We, the people,' instead
of 'We, the States'? States are the characteristics and the soul of
a confederation." "I stumble at the threshold," said Samuel Adams, on
first reading the document. "I meet with a national government, instead
of a federal union of sovereign States." Said a member of the first
North Carolina Convention, "I am astonished that the servants of the
Legislature of North Carolina should go to Philadelphia and, instead
of speaking of the 'State' of North Carolina should speak of the
'people.'" In the Massachusetts Convention it was declared that "We,
the people," created an actual consolidation of the States, and the
moment it was adopted would mean the dissolution of the State
governments.

A few advocates of the new Government did not hesitate to admit that
it was intended to form an efficient government for the entire people
of the United States, regardless of the States. One of the two must
be superior. In the convention, Gouverneur Morris had made this laconic
speech, "Mr. President, if the rod of Aaron do not swallow the rods
of the magicians, the rods of the magicians will swallow the rod of
Aaron." However, the more politic endeavoured to quiet the fears of
the people by explaining that "We, the people," was simply the style
or title of the new form; that the powers given to the Central
Government were entirely national ones; that all the rest were reserved
to the States; and that the people could easily change the Constitution
by amending it if they experienced any danger at any time from the
central authority.

These words of the preamble to the Constitution, so pregnant of future
interpretation, were thus, from the beginning, a cause of alarm to a
few minds. Patrick Henry seemed to feel presciently that the later
theory of an indissoluble union would be based largely upon this phrase,
and that the Civil War to preserve the Union would be justified by it.
Yet its incorporation in the document in that form was due purely to
an accident. The Virginia plan contained no preamble. Pinckney's plan,
as given by Madison, began, "We, the people of the States of New
Hampshire, etc." When the first rough draft of the Constitution had
been put together by the Committee on Detail, during the eleventh week
of the convention, and secretly printed for the use of the members,
the preamble began, "We, the people of the States of New Hampshire,"
etc. Six weeks later, the revised draft was reported with the preamble
changed to "We, the people of the United States," etc. What caused the
change to be made? Chiefly because the blank designating the number
of States required to put the new form into execution had been filled
with the word "nine." No one could tell which nine would ratify first
and, therefore, no list of States could be put into the preamble. A
phrase covering all the people of the United States was substituted.
What slight chances give rise to arguments justifying the making of
a nation!

[Illustration: FIRST DRAFT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.
The form of the preamble in this draft is described in the text of
this volume. It was printed for the benefit of the members of the
Convention in making further changes.]

Two factors were potent in securing the final success of the new plan.
One was the provision in the last clause by which the new frame could
be amended easily. The unanimity which the Articles required in order
to correct a mistake had taught a valuable lesson. Three-fourths was
to be the maximum requirement hereafter. It is interesting to note
that a unanimous vote has never been obtained on any amendment thus
far made to the Constitution. The other favourable circumstance was
the tacit understanding that Washington would consent to serve as the
first President, guaranteeing the perpetuity of the Republic by his
past record. His fidelity had been tested at the close of the
Revolutionary War, when a devoted army might have made him a Julius
Caesar or an Oliver Cromwell in the chaotic condition of affairs. That
he had returned to his Virginia farm to become an active citizen was
an assurance that he could now be trusted with the vast powers conferred
on the chief executive under the new plan.

The State conventions were not slow to take advantage of the privilege
of proposing amendments, and these the promoters were too wise to
resist. Proposals to make amendments were non-committal and harmless
where the motto was "Anything to get the new plan in operation."
Massachusetts wished nine additions made, South Carolina four, Virginia
twenty, New Hampshire twelve, New York thirty-two, and North Carolina
twenty-six. Of the 103 propositions submitted to the consideration of
Congress by the conventions, many were duplicates. Only ten were
destined to survive. At the time, they served as a machine of the gods
to avert the dangerous proposition that another convention be held to
draw up a second constitution embracing the desired changes.

No one can read the acts of ratification in which these proposed
amendments were incorporated or added without being impressed by the
fear of the States that they were hazarding their hard-earned liberties
in this experiment. It is easy to make light of them in the successful
experience of a hundred years. It is clear now that whatever precautions
the States took would be swept aside by the hand of necessity, and
that later generations would repudiate some of the principles laid
down in their manifestos. It is useless to demand consistency in a
growing body. How futile for Virginia and Rhode Island, for instance,
to declare that all power granted under the Constitution proceeds from
the people of the United States and that, whenever the same is
perverted, it may be resumed by them! Being adopted in State conventions
and voicing the sentiment of the people in these established groups,
is it unlikely that they meant the people of the United States as
grouped into the several States precisely as they had formed and were
now adopting their Constitution? Yet a generation or two later, Virginia
was to be told that she meant the people of the entire United States,
regardless of State lines, and in this opinion the people of Rhode
Island in that generation would join.

How useless for South Carolina to make as part of her ratification the
precautionary statement that no part of the Constitution should ever
be construed so that the States might be deprived of any power not
expressly relinquished by them! How fruitless for New Hampshire to
stipulate that all powers not expressly delegated by the Constitution
should be reserved to the several States to be exercised by them! How
profitless fate was to make the stipulations of New York that Congress
should never lay any kind of excise except on ardent spirits, and that
the clauses in the Constitution forbidding Congress to do certain
things should not be construed into a permission to do anything except
that which was named in the document! Time was soon to demonstrate the
folly of attempting to place these barriers in the path of progress.
Under such restrictions, the new Government would have been as helpless
as the old, unless new powers had been added to it from time to time
by the precarious method of amendment. Advancement must have been
hindered constantly by waiting on the slow process of adding provisions
to the Constitution. Such crises as the purchase of Louisiana, the
suppression of domestic insurrection, and the adjustment of the national
finances after the War of 1812 could never have been met because of
constitutional limitations.

Several of the States incorporated in their acts of ratification a
kind of political creed of the inalienable rights of the individual.
Although not intended as amendments or even as conditions of
ratification, they were supposed to be a kind of perpetual compact
between the State and the nation. They were modelled after the Bill
or Declaration of Rights in some of the State constitutions. Rhode
Island, for instance, declared that "the rights aforesaid cannot be
abridged or violated and that the explanations aforesaid are consistent
with the said Constitution." Time was to show in seasons of national
aggrandisement, during the reconstruction period, for instance, how
futile such State barriers would be in hedging about the national
powers. These sticklers for individualism and fearing souls could not
see that the central clearing-house, which the people of the respective
States were creating, could not be confined to a few expressed powers;
that unseen situations and sudden emergencies would call for action
not specified; that to make a list of allowable acts in advance was
simply an impossibility. In their alarm, they failed to see that the
individuals of which the States were composed would come in contact
more closely with local than with national affairs; that they would
participate more frequently in State than in Federal Government; and
that this very participation for the regulation of local affairs would
perpetuate a fealty to the State which would guarantee its perpetuity
within its proper sphere. But, at the time, many agreed with Lowndes,
who predicted in the South Carolina Convention that despite all
precautions the State powers under the Constitution would soon be
confined to the regulation of ferries and roads.

All anxiety about ratification ceased on the second day of July, the
anniversary of the motion for independence, when the favourable act
of New Hampshire, the ninth State necessary, reached Congress. The
matter of arranging for putting the new Government into motion was
referred to a committee. In taking this action, the old Congress was
sealing its death-warrant. It would cease to exist, and be replaced
by two houses of Congress under the Constitution. It had served well
its purpose. Called into life by the necessity of colonial co-operation
in 1774, the Continental Congress had gradually assumed sufficient
power to bring a great war to a successful conclusion. Deprived of
much of this power under the Articles, circumscribed by the suspicious
bounds of State sovereignty, the Congress had become a thing of
contempt. Not a member was now present who had been among those
assembled at the hall of the Carpenters' Association in Philadelphia
fourteen years before. Not a man now present was a signer of the
Declaration of Independence.

Nevertheless the body assumed an unwonted activity in these, its last
days. A quorum was had during several of the summer months of 1788.
The business of settling accounts between the Confederation and the
several States was actively carried on, and further arrangement was
made for selling the public lands in the North-West Territory. The
form of levying quotas upon the States, amounting to a million and a
half dollars, was again gone through with. Since it was unlikely that
these assessments would be paid, John Adams borrowed one million
guilders in Holland for ten years with which to inaugurate the new
Government.

A petition for statehood from the settlers in Kentucky, the second in
the long list of additions to the Union, reached Congress, accompanied
by the consent of Virginia to the severance of her western district.
Since the time for the beginning of the new Government was so near at
hand, the petition was returned with the suggestion that it be renewed
after that event.

The principal item of domestic expenditure was found to be that for
supporting the United States army of 595 officers and men scattered
along the frontier. They were garrisoned in Fort Pitt, at the head of
the Ohio River; Fort Franklin and Fort McIntosh, between Pitt and Lake
Erie; Fort Harmar, at the mouth of the Muskingum; Fort Steuben, at the
falls of the Ohio, now Louisville; and Fort Vincennes, on the Wabash,
now in Indiana. Also a force consisting of an officer, one sergeant,
and fifteen privates was stationed at West Point. To meet the expenses
for these troops, and also those for Indians and pensions, there was
available in the domestic treasury the sum total of $22,000.

The committee of Congress to whom had been given the arrangement for
putting the new Government into motion found that the election of
senators and representatives was left by the Constitution to the States;
that the creation of the Federal judiciary belonged to the new Congress;
and that only the measures necessary for the election of a President
were left to them. They therefore set the first Wednesdays of the first
three months in the following year for the three steps of appointing
presidential electors, having them cast their ballots, and for
commencing proceedings under the Constitution. These dates were adjusted
to the meetings of the State Legislatures, as Madison explained to a
correspondent. No objection was found to this arrangement of time, but
the selection of a place in which to begin the new Government aroused
the old sectional fear and avarice, and precipitated a two-months'
contest, during which New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Wilmington,
Lancaster, and Annapolis were considered. "The present seat of Congress"
was finally adopted largely through impossibility of agreeing on
another.

[Illustration: LAST PAGE OF THE MINUTES OF THE OLD CONGRESS. Preserved
in the archives of the Department of State. It shows that members
appeared occasionally as late as March 2, two days before the new
government was to be inaugurated; the printed journals differ, stating
that members appeared until the first of November only.]

Having thus planned for its successor, having arranged the finances,
the army, the post-office, the public land system, and other national
affairs as best it could, the Continental or Confederation Congress
slowly dwindled in membership until it lacked a quorum early in October,
1788. A few members attended at intervals until the beginning of the
following March, when the thirty-nine foolscap volumes recording the
birth of the United States were closed, to be deposited among the
archives of the United States under the Constitution. A successor was
now ready to undertake the task for which the Confederation had been
found inadequate.




CHAPTER VII

BEGINNING AN EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT



In the manner of its formation and adoption the Constitution was the
product of a confederation. In these respects, it was little in advance
of the rejected Articles. Its strength lay in the possibilities of its
administration. But as a document in 1789, it was the product of
federated States. If all the people of the United States could have
assembled and formed a constitution to go into effect immediately, or
even if delegates, chosen by the people of the United States as a
whole, had drawn up such a document, which had been adopted by the
entire people or their delegates in a ratifying body, there would have
been a national sovereignty wholly independent of the States from the
beginning. Such a procedure was impossible--the very best reason why
it was not attempted. A pure democracy is possible only among a small
number of people living in a small State. For a large population and
an extensive territory representative government must be substituted.
If the idea of government in the British colonies in North America had
been national instead of local from the beginning, the States would
have disappeared under the Constitution, or have been kept only for
selecting national representatives, and performing other national
functions. An equipoise between the two could never have been reached.
But fate had ordained otherwise. In a new land, the settlers naturally
gathered into little groups for mutual protection. Collecting about
some harbour or along some navigable waterway in the Northern colonies,
or assembling from the plantations at the centre of the parish in the
Southern colonies, the people instituted local government. Clusters
of these units under home rule formed larger divisions, and, in this
way, union came as an afterthought resulting from contiguity and
intercourse. The States as colonies existed long before the Union.
Individualism was born long before unity in America, and gained a
prestige which aggregation has required nearly a century to overcome.

The ease with which the various States formed their first constitutions
and the ease with which they corrected errors by substituting later
frames, is an additional proof of their early efficiency. No State had
as much difficulty as did the nation in reaching a workable basis. It
is true that the national Congress first suggested State governments
to the chaotic colonies, but they did not authorise them. The colonies
looked to the nation for a uniform suggestion, but neither for sanction
nor permission. Never for a moment did the members of the Continental
Congress assume that they were working independently of their States,
but considered themselves subordinate to the State assemblies. The
States were always the last resort of Confederation days. The story
of the United States is largely taken up with the struggle of the
States to retain their early supremacy when that supremacy was menaced
from time to time by new conditions.

Whatever destiny may have made of the later Union, whatever theories
may now be indulged in concerning the abstract Union the fathers made
in 1789, the concrete Union which was put into effect was the offspring
of the States not only in the thoughts of the people, but it was even
dependent upon them for aid in several particulars necessary for putting
it into operation. Having no electoral machinery, the Union was
compelled to ask the States to choose members of both branches of its
Congress. In electing its chief executive, it was obliged to give the
States sole charge of choosing electors for this purpose. A national
election gradually came into existence because the Union took this
control practically away from the States. The Federal Government was
indebted to State agency for its first capitol, the Federal Hall,
furnished it by the kindness of the City of New York. It had not a
foot of soil independent of the States, State militia furnished the
military escort for its President-elect, and a State governor, Clinton
of New York, with his staff, gave him official welcome to the State
and national capital combined. Even the oath given to the chief
executive, an oath required by the national Constitution, was
administered not by a national official, but by the chancellor of the
State of New York.

An independent national government such as time has given us, and such
as would be formed in the light of the present day, would not leave
the method of choosing its presidential electors to the whims of the
several States. At the time, no other method was possible. The State
machinery was at hand and could be utilised. The national appliances
had not yet been evolved. In some States the size of the precincts
made voting well-nigh impossible. Residents of Luzerne County,
Pennsylvania, must travel several hundred miles to the polls, according
to Timothy Pickering. Although the Assembly of Virginia placed a fine
upon every qualified voter who failed to perform his duty, and although
the Federalists of Maryland offered a roasted ox at one polling-place
to attract voters, it is estimated that not more than one-fourth the
men entitled to vote availed themselves of the privilege. Many had
been so recently enfranchised by the State constitutions that they did
not appreciate the right. Independence having been won, the details
of government failed to maintain civic zeal. In present-day elections,
by contrast, as many as five-sixths of those qualified to vote at
national elections avail themselves of the privilege.

It must also be noted that State qualifications for freemen determined
who should vote in this first national election. In those States where
the people voted, statistics show that only three men out of every
hundred of population could vote in this first presidential election,
where nowadays twenty men have that liberty. In some States, the people
had no voice whatever in choosing the President, because the State
Legislatures decided that they were the proper mediums to choose the
presidential electors. The Constitution left the matter entirely in
their hands. In some States, the people voted for electors in fixed
districts; in other States they voted for a whole electoral ticket.
This system of choosing a President through a set of electors, borrowed
from the method of electing a German emperor, was far removed from
democracy. It showed the distrust which the Constitution-makers felt
in the intelligence and discrimination of the masses. Irregularity
marked the elections generally. Two factions in the New York Legislature
fell into a dispute over the manner in which Senators and electors
should be chosen. It resulted in that State being deprived of
participation in the first election and in the first session of the
Senate. Before the next presidential election, Congress began to make
regulations governing the States in their conduct of this important
matter, an innovation which grew until it culminated in the election
"force laws" of reconstruction days following the Civil War.

"The first Wednesday in March next shall be the time and the present
seat of government the place for commencing proceedings under the said
Constitution." So accustomed had the people grown to delays in public
affairs, that a strict compliance with these provisions of the old
Congress would have been a surprise. The first Wednesday of March,
1789, fell upon the fourth day of the month. At noon of that day, when
the members constituting the two branches of the first Congress under
the Constitution assembled in the rooms arranged for their sessions
in the reconstructed City Hall of New York, there was no quorum in
either House. Since eleven States had adopted the new plan and each
was entitled to two Senators, twelve members of that body would be
necessary to constitute a quorum. But only eight were present. These
sent out one circular letter after another to the delinquent members,
begging their immediate attendance. The condition of the roads at that
season of the year and the inadequate means of transportation can
scarcely be imagined at present. Madison, because of poor roads between
Montpelier and Baltimore, missed the stage and lost two whole days,
as he complained. However, one by one the tardy Senators arrived, and
on April 6th, over a month late, the Senate found itself with a quorum.
Even then there were only two members present from States south of
Pennsylvania. Having read their credentials of election, they proceeded
to elect a presiding officer "for the sole purpose" of opening the
votes cast by the electors for President and Vice-President of the
United States. The latter, according to the new plan of government,
would be their permanent presiding officer. The choice for the temporary
office fell upon Senator Langdon, of New Hampshire, a member of the
convention which had framed the Constitution.

On the 4th day of March, the new House of Representatives had only
thirteen members present. The Constitution required that they should
be chosen by the people in the different States. The State Legislatures
were unable to monopolise the elections as they did the presidential
elections in certain States. Yet the people took little interest in
this first congressional election. Out of 3,200,000 people, probably
not more than one hundred thousand voted. Until some count of the
number of people could be taken to secure a proportionate
representation, the Constitution had set an arbitrary number of
sixty-five, apportioning them among the States by a guess at the
respective populations. Rhode Island and North Carolina not being in
the Union deducted six from this total, making thirty necessary for
a quorum. Day after day, the incomplete House adjourned. New members
arrived at intervals until the first day of April, when a quorum was
had, just four weeks late.

As first formed, the House consisted of the following members: New
Hampshire, 1; Massachusetts, 5; Connecticut, 5; New Jersey, 2;
Pennsylvania, 6; Maryland, 2; Virginia, 8; South Carolina, 1. Other
members arrived from time to time. More or less irregularity had marked
the elections in the various States. A protest soon reached the House
from citizens of New Jersey claiming that the four members from that
State had not been legally elected. The polls had been kept open in
one district for two weeks, until closed by a proclamation from the
governor. From South Carolina came charges against a member that he
had not been a citizen of the United States the required seven years
at the time of his election. Although a native of South Carolina, he
was being educated in Europe during the Revolutionary period and had
returned to the State after the close of the war, but before the
adoption of the national Constitution. Contested elections here find
early precedents. In both cases the House declared the elections valid
and the members entitled to their seats.

[Illustration: HEADING OF THE FIRST LAW PASSED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.]

Although the delay of nearly a month in securing a quorum in the new
Congress was not alarming, it was most unfortunate. Never had the
National Government come so near abdicating in favour of the State
governments. There had been no sessions of the old Congress for the
past six months, although straggling members appeared from time to
time. There was a national Board of the Treasury wrestling with the
problem of home and foreign creditors, but confronted with an empty
coffer. Jay was acting as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and Knox was
Secretary of War. There was positively no other evidence of "The United
States of America" except an "army" composed of a few soldiers scattered
along the frontier. Jefferson, Minister to France, wished a leave of
absence, which Jay thought reasonable. "But, my dear sir," he said,
"there is no Congress sitting, nor have any of their servants authority
to interfere. As soon as the President shall be in office, I will,
without delay, communicate your letters to him." Madison foresaw
contentions, "first between federal and anti-federal parties, and then
between northern and southern parties, which give an additional
disagreeableness to the prospect." John Adams pronounced the nation
united in nothing save the choice of Washington.

After quorums were secured, new problems confronted this National
Government, feeling its way without precedent. Only eleven States had
come into the new agreement. The North Carolina Convention had adjourned
without action, and Rhode Island had rejected the Constitution by a
popular vote of 2708 to 232. Had a Congress representing eleven States
the right, even if it had the power, to legislate for thirteen sovereign
States? Many felt that important questions like amendments to the
Constitution should be postponed until the United States were united
in fact as well as in name. Even eleven States were insufficiently
represented. Delaware had only one Senator and no Representative at
hand. South Carolina had but one Senator present. The influential State
of New York, the home of Hamilton and Jay, the place of meeting of the
new Congress, was in the throes of a political "dead lock."

There was also no precedent for the workings of two branches of the
National Legislature. Some prophets of evil who recalled the
difficulties in one House of the Continental Congress predicted a
double portion of woe under the new arrangement. It must not be supposed
that a bicameral system was entirely a novelty. The colonies generally
had such a system and, on becoming States, had adopted, with one
exception, that form. It was true, as many recalled, that contests had
frequently arisen between the colonial council and the popular assembly,
especially where the former was appointed by the colonial governor.
It was scarcely to be hoped that all friction could be avoided between
the two branches of the United States Congress. They possessed to a
large extent joint powers, and yet had individual initiative and
control. A further difference might arise from the variation of the
constituency which they represented. The Senate was appointed by and
represented the States in their sovereign capacity, as the House of
Lords represented the pleasure of the British sovereign. The House of
Representatives was dependent upon and represented the direct interests
of the people, as did the Commons under the British Constitution.

The Senate had the advantage of the prestige of the colonial council.
When the day arrived for opening the presidential ballots the Senate
notified the House that it was ready, and the latter obediently mounted
the stairs to the small Senate chamber, where the ballots were counted,
disclosing a unanimous election for George Washington and a majority
for John Adams. The Senate immediately despatched messengers to notify
these men to attend and be inaugurated. This feeling of superiority
on the part of the Senate was not diminished, as its members
contemplated the power of ratifying treaties and confirming appointments
which they shared with the Chief Executive, as well as the long tenure
of office and permanent session with which the body had been endowed.
Because of this executive function, the Senate followed the example
of the Continental Congress, and refused to admit the public to hear
any of its deliberations during the first five sessions. It then yielded
to public opinion and opened its doors when acting in its legislative
capacity, going into secret session only when exercising its executive
powers. To counterbalance these extraordinary functions, the House had
only the exclusive right of originating revenue bills.

The necessary connection of the two Houses was recognised at the very
beginning of the sessions by the appointment of joint committees to
prepare rules for conference on bills upon which the two bodies might
differ; to arrange for the transmission of papers; to dispose of the
papers of the old Congress; to arrange for the inauguration of the
first President; and to provide for the election of chaplains. Many
of these matters common to both were easily adjusted. Two chaplains
of different denominations were to be appointed, one by each House,
and they were to interchange weekly. In this way Congress hoped to
avoid the ever-recurring fear that one sect might be patronised until
it became the established church. But upon the apparently minor point
of the manner of transmitting papers from one body to the other a
difference arose. The joint committee reported to each House an
elaborate method whereby the Senate should send a bill or message to
the House by its secretary. This official was to make an obeisance on
entering the House, and another on delivering the paper to the Speaker,
a third after it had left his hands and a fourth as he left the room.
When the House sent up a bill to the Senate, it was to be carried by
two members, undoubtedly in imitation of the custom of members of the
Commons carrying a bill to the Lords. Precisely as many bows and at
corresponding places were demanded of these two members as the secretary
of the Senate was required to make in the House. All messages except
bills could be carried up by one member, who should make the four
obeisances. As a return courtesy the entire Senate should rise when
two members entered the room, or the President of the Senate only, in
case one member appeared with a message.

This exhaustive ceremonial clearly gave such superior standing to the
Senate that it was rejected by the House. Being recommitted to the
joint committee, they reported a simple substitute whereby any message
should be sent from either House to the other by "such persons as a
sense of propriety in each House may determine to be proper." The
messenger was to be announced at the door and should communicate his
message to the presiding officer. This in turn was rejected by the
form-admiring Senate. Finally the Senate sent notice to the House that
if their members should bring up a bill or message as originally
provided, they would be received as first promised; but if they chose
to send it by another agent he must hand the paper to the secretary
of the Senate, who would deliver it to the President of the Senate.
The House chose a messenger as their agent; the Senate soon followed
the plain example; and thus a simple custom was inaugurated which has
held to the present day.

The wisdom of providing some arrangement for a conference in case of
disagreement between the two Houses was manifest several times in the
first session. Conferences were held on no less than nine of the
ninety-five measures passed. It is impossible, in the absence of
reported debates, to ascertain the attitude of the Senate toward the
other branch. Maclay, the garrulous Senator from Pennsylvania, whose
diary is invaluable during these closed-door sessions, mentions several
instances in which the Senate coerced the House by threatening to hold
up appropriation bills. "It was a trial of skill in the way of
starvation," he declares. The temper of the House when contending for
what it considered its prerogatives can be seen from the debates.

"I am an advocate for supporting the dignity of the House," said a
member from New York, debating a disagreement with the Senate, "and to
me it appears somewhat inconsistent that we should change our sentiments
in order to conform to the amendments of the Senate.... If we are to
follow the Senate in all the alterations they propose, without hearing
reasons to induce a change, our time in deliberation is taken up
unnecessarily."

On a similar occasion, when the tonnage bill was being worked out by
compromise, a member from Delaware hoped that the House would not
recede from its position, "otherwise it might be considered that the
House was under the government of the Senate, and adopted their opinions
without arguments being offered to convince their judgments." A Virginia
member "would rather lose any bill than have the doctrine established
that this House must submit to the Senate; yet, if it was done in this
instance, it would serve as a precedent in future decisions." In this
slow manner, and with frequent irritation, the two branches of the
National Legislature adjusted themselves to each other and formed
precedents which have held for a century. The first measure to pass
both Houses, receive the President's assent, and become a law, defined
the oath which every officer of the National Government was required
by the Constitution to take. It became a law within two months after
quorums were obtained.

The relations of the two branches to the Executive were not so close
and, therefore, more easily adjusted. No little credit is due to the
very cool and conservative man who became the executive head of the
revived nation. Even the journey of the President-elect from his home
to the seat of government had been a continued ovation. It can be
compared only with his progress to Cambridge nearly a score of years
before to take command of the Revolutionary army. In both instances
he was regarded as the deliverer of the country from a great peril.
Possessed of probably the largest fortune in America, he could not be
accused, as were many of his compatriots, of mercenary motives in his
public actions. His freedom from personal ambition and selfish motive
having been tested in the tempting days of the war, he could be relied
upon by the people not to betray them in their extremity by any
assumption of powers. Reputed to be a man of great self-control, almost
cold-blooded in his self-guardedness, having dwelt far removed from
the partisan strife pertaining naturally to populous centres, he would
be careful in forming opinions, conservative in actions, and unlikely
to yield to the influence of faction or partisanship. A moral man for
that day, but neither a propagandist nor a zealot, he was unlikely to
favour any sect or establishment of religion--a danger against which
every possible precaution had been taken.

Even while the electors were being chosen and were holding their
meetings in the several States, it was understood that Washington would
undoubtedly be the choice for the first President. Indeed, before the
Constitution had been fully formed, Hamilton and others were naming
him. In the State conventions which considered the new form, speakers
did not hesitate to predict his election. The assurance that the dreaded
power would be first entrusted to his hands to form precedents persuaded
many to try the change. John Adams, recently returned from representing
his Government in Great Britain, and finding himself chosen to the
second place, was said to be unable to comprehend how Washington's
military experience had fitted him for this civic duty. Yet it was
simply the first of many instances in which the gratitude of the people,
backed by innate hero-worship, has singled out a war hero for the
highest civic honours. Hence it came about that the very unanimity of
election, for which all had hoped, defeated the purpose of the framers
of the Constitution to have an unbiassed selection made by the
presidential electors. This, or a like cause, has thwarted the purpose
in every succeeding election of a President.

[Illustration: FEDERAL HALL, NEW YORK CITY. Upon the balcony between
the pillars of the second story Washington was inaugurated President,
April 30, 1789. Congress sat in this building in 1789 and 1790.]

Considering the descent of the American people at that time, it is not
surprising that the inauguration of the first President was copied
largely from the inauguration of a British sovereign. Our fathers were
not attempting to experiment with novelties of government, but to adapt
tried methods to their needs. The trappings of royalty to be seen in
an ancient kingdom were replaced in this Republic by a military display,
significant of the means by which its birthright had been won. The
royal procession from Buckingham Palace to the Abbey was reproduced
in miniature in the escort of the President from the Osgood House, his
temporary residence, to the Government chambers. The religious and
civic rites observed at Westminster Abbey were here separated, the
religious service being held at St. Paul's Chapel and the civic in the
little recess or gallery between two pillars which had been made by
the architect in transforming the New York City Hall into the National
Federal Hall. The oath was taken upon a copy of the Bible by both
monarch and President. The shouts from the crowd in front of the Federal
Hall in Wall Street which followed Chancellor Livingston's cry of "Long
live George Washington, President of the United States!" were no less
sincere, although coming from fewer throats, than the cries of "Long
live the King!" and "God save the King!" which proclaimed the homage
of British subjects to their monarch. The cannon in old Fort George,
down near the Battery, could greet a President as lustily as those in
the Tower proclaimed a king.

But every departure from royal custom was in the direction of simplicity
of detail. Instead of being surrounded by nobles and courtiers, the
President was attended by the committees on inauguration from the
Senate and House, by Vice-President Adams, Governor Clinton, and others.
The coronation feast in the palace was republicanised into a dinner
at the residence of Governor Clinton. The rich robes of the sovereign,
to make which the resources of an empire were drawn upon, were
transformed into a suit of ordinary clothing made entirely in America.
Instead of being seated in an ancient chair endowed with kingly legend,
the American President stood during the short ceremony. Instead of
being administered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the oath was given
to him by the Chancellor of the State of New York. The fair and
festivities which commonly ended the first day of a new monarch were
changed into an illumination of the city of New York and a display of
fireworks.

The ceremonies between the new President and the Congress bore an even
closer resemblance to those accustomed to be seen at a coronation or
upon the opening of a session of Parliament. The inauguration speech
of the monarch took the shape of an inaugural address by the President,
which confessed a lack of personal assurance and a reliance upon a
Higher Power, called attention to the benefits of government, and
begged the co-operation of all concerned in it. The speech from the
throne at the opening of Parliament became a message to Congress at
the opening of each session. Like the king's speech, it was divided
into a general address to both Houses, and a special message to each.
The attention of the House of Representatives was called to various
financial matters, as the English monarch had been compelled to do
since the stormy Stuart period.

Early in Washington's administration the Senate showed conclusively,
by refusing to hear the Secretary of War explain an Indian treaty,
that the Cabinet was not to have the British privilege of initiating
legislation. Washington was compelled, consequently, to recommend to
each branch of Congress in his opening address such matters as he
thought demanded legislation. It is the only form of influencing
Congress which has ever been given to the President, barring patronage.
On these State occasions, when opening Congress, Washington was
accustomed to ride down to the Federal Hall in the coach provided for
him by Congress, with four instead of the two white horses usually
driven, and outriders in advance as well as the two secretaries who
rode habitually on horseback behind the coach. As was the custom in
Parliament, a committee was appointed in each branch of Congress to
draft a reply to the President's address. In due time this was carried
by the Senators in solemn procession, headed by Vice-President Adams,
to Washington's residence, where it was handed to him. The more
democratic House of Representatives contented itself with presenting
its reply to the President in a vacant room in the Federal building.
To each of these replies Washington was accustomed to make a
counter-reply, thanking the members for their courtesy and promising
his continued efforts to secure the objects they suggested.

These forms and ceremonials, although copied originally from Britain,
had been used in the inauguration of colonial governors and in the
opening of colonial assemblies. They furnish a further proof that the
American nation has been a thing of growth, an imitation of existing
conditions until such time as originality could be developed or
imitations transformed to meet the new conditions. Local forms furnished
the models. They would be changed only as national ideals were
developed. The fact that most of these European ceremonials were lopped
off within twelve years shows how rapidly originality was developed.

During the first session Congress took up "the principal officer in
each of the executive departments," as authorised by the Constitution.
It was understood that these would be about the same as had been
developed during the preceding years, viz., Foreign Affairs, Treasury,
and War. It was not foreseen that they would become in time a "Cabinet."
To these three departments Congress added a fourth, Justice, for which
an attorney-general was appointed. He was considered a head of an
executive department and ranked with the other three among the
President's advisers.

The wisdom of the framers of the Constitution in simply arranging
outlines instead of filling in details was nowhere better shown than
in the provisions for the national judiciary. Congress was bound only
to establish "one superior court" and could add such inferior courts
as necessity might demand from time to time. So essential was a national
judiciary felt to be, that during the pressing business of the first
session the United States was divided for this purpose into thirteen
judicial districts, conforming generally to the eleven States in the
Union, each to have a district court held by a Federal judge. These
districts were then grouped into an eastern, a middle, and a southern
circuit, in accord with the geographical grouping of the States. In
these two circuit courts were to be held each year by one or more
district judges and one or more justices of the Supreme Court. The
latter, the final tribunal of appeal from these inferior courts, was
to consist of a chief justice and five associate justices. Necessary
officers, such as marshals and clerks, were given to these courts,
rules were formulated for their procedure, and an act was passed at
the next session defining crimes against the United States. A resident
of any State was by these acts made the subject of a new sovereign,--the
United States of America,--liable to be punished for treason committed
not against his State, but against the nation; to be prosecuted for
piracy on the seas; for counterfeiting money, altering records,
committing perjury in the Federal courts, resisting a national official,
or offering violence to a foreign representative.

The United States could now command some respect from the individual.
The Union would also assume a new dignity from being a judge instead
of an arbiter between the States. No more would such long-continued
warfare as the territorial dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania
bring the Republic into ill-repute. This new judicial power extended
to "controversies between citizens of different States." Never again
would the cumbersome machinery of Federal commissioners to hear disputed
claims to territory be called into service--a kind of Platonic
lot-casting phantasy--because the new national judiciary system covered
"controversies between two or more States." What powerful possibilities
were given to the new Central Government in the provision that the
Supreme Court should have "appellate jurisdiction from the courts of
the several States in the cases hereinafter specially provided for."
It would be found as futile to restrict the cases in which the national
court should have an appeal from the State courts as to attempt to
reserve all the powers to the States not expressly granted to the
Union. In the haste necessarily attendant upon suddenly putting the
provisions of the new government into effect, no one had the leisure
if any possessed the foresight to consider the limits to which the
Federal courts might extend its authority in the light of
interpretation. Even Jefferson later confessed that this member of the
Federal Government was at first considered as the most harmless and
helpless of all its organs.

[Illustration: THE PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, FRANKLIN SQUARE, NEW YORK
CITY 1789.]

The beginnings of the national judiciary were so modest that no one
could have taken alarm. The day that he signed the judiciary bill,
Washington nominated John Jay, of New York, to be chief justice of the
court, Edmund Randolph, of Virginia, to be attorney-general, and John
Rutledge, of South Carolina, James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, William
Gushing, of Massachusetts, Robert H. Harrison, of Maryland, and John
Blair, of Virginia, to be associate justices.

State distribution of patronage was not such a criterion as in later
appointments; yet the department of Justice represented all parts of
the country. Considered from a sectional point, there seemed at the
time little likelihood that the court would prove hostile to Southern
individualism, since it contained, counting the attorney-general, four
Southern men and three Northern men. District judges, attorneys, and
marshals for the eleven judicial districts were appointed at the same
time. A joint resolution of Congress asked the States to give their
jailers power to receive and hold United States prisoners.

"Many of your old acquaintances and friends," wrote Washington to
Lafayette, "are concerned with me in the administration of this
government. By having Mr. Jefferson at the head of the department of
state, Mr. Jay of the judiciary, Hamilton of the treasury, and Knox that
of war, I feel myself supported by able coadjutors, who harmonise
extremely well together."

Randolph, the Attorney-General, had never come in contact with Lafayette
and consequently was not mentioned by Washington. This list of the
chief administrators of the new Government must have reassured
Lafayette, as well as other friends of the experiment, who wished to
see it given a fair trial. They feared that the first administration
might be given over to its enemies, who would be inclined to decrease
rather than to strengthen its powers. Before the elections, General
Lincoln had confessed to his former companion in arms, General
Washington, his apprehension lest "the Anti-Federalists would try to
get into office men unfriendly to the Constitution and so break it
down, or men who would change many of its provisions at an early date."
The attitude of the President and of most of his Cabinet, it was well
known, was in favour of an efficient central power. John Adams, the
Vice-President, had long been an advocate of a stronger frame, and now
made good his words by casting the deciding vote in twenty ties in the
Senate, every time in favour of centralised authority where there was
any doubt involved. By one of these close votes authority was given
the President to remove an official without the necessary consent of
the Senate. The Constitution was silent on this point, and its decision
favourable to the Executive greatly increased the prerogatives of that
office.

This summer of 1789 was a time of anxiety for the friends of the new
Government. They could scarcely hope that the new machinery had no
flaw. At any moment an unforeseen defect might bring the whole to a
standstill. Friction fatal to continued happiness might arise between
the different departments of the General Government or between it and
the component States. The people of some section might refuse to be
bound by the General Government. During the heat of debate in the South
Carolina Convention, a delegate had defiantly declared that his people
would not take part in the new Government, if adopted, if not compelled
to do so by force; unless a standing army which the new autocrat would
possess should ram it down their throats with the points of bayonets,
like the Turkish Janizaries enforcing despotic laws. As time went on
and none of these calamities happened, a general confidence took
possession of the people. At last they had come into a time of general
agreement which would allow the experiment of self-government a fair
test. Two States remained out of the Union, but time was expected to
bring them in.




CHAPTER VIII

SUMMONING THE GENII OF THE IMPLIED POWERS



Even before the executive part of the new Government had been initiated,
Congress attacked the most serious problem it had received from its
predecessor. All were agreed that the chief difficulty in carrying on
the Revolutionary War had been the lack of sufficient funds. The
administration of the Articles of Confederation had been hampered
constantly by the same need. The nation was even now millions upon
millions of dollars in debt. In order to pay the interest on the French
and Spanish loans it had been the custom for several years to borrow
more money from the Dutch bankers. This was accomplished with no little
difficulty. From the same source John Adams had secured funds with
which to install the Government under the Constitution. The
President-elect had been compelled to borrow money from a neighbour
at Alexandria to meet the expenses of his journey to the capital to
be inaugurated.

Public credit both at home and abroad was in ill-repute. To meet the
foreign interest and installments due in 1789, over four million dollars
must be raised. "Not worth a continental," sighed the merchant as he
turned over a heap of depreciated Continental currency in a corner of
his strong box. "Acknowledgment to pay by the 'untied States,'" said
the owner of a pile of worthless United States certificates of
indebtedness. His patriotic zeal in lending money to the National
Government in her hour of need now bade fair to ruin him. The veteran
of the Revolutionary War carried his half-pay certificate to the
money-lender, glad to get even five shillings in the pound for it.
Holders of various forms of State indebtedness besieged their State
authorities for payment, rapidly approaching a point where they would
welcome any agency which would get them their due.

According to Madison, the Continental Congress had chosen such an
unseasonable date as the first Wednesday in March for beginning the
new Government in the hope of levying a duty at once which would catch
the spring importations of goods from Europe. It was this purpose which
brought him to his feet in the House of Representatives on the eighth
day of the first session to introduce a subject which he declared to
be of the first magnitude, and one that required their first attention
and their united exertions. This was the deficiency in the national
treasury. For a remedy, he had chosen an impost on certain imported
goods.

Fortunately, an impost was not a novelty requiring time and instruction
to secure. Imposts had been instituted generations before to obtain
funds for clearing the seas of pirates and for making safe the merchant
marine. Because of these laudable objects, imposts had come to be
regarded as a legitimate form of external taxation and as a means of
raising a revenue to meet the expenses of government. The American
people had been familiar with imposts from colonial times; they had
been commonly levied by individual States since independence; and they
had been associated in thought with the National Government in the
vain attempts to revise the Articles by giving it this method of raising
a revenue. "To lay and collect imposts" was indisputably stated in the
Constitution as a power of the Federal Government. All that was
necessary to do was to determine what goods should be liable to a duty
and what the amount of duty should be.

Madison submitted for specific duties a fixed list of articles, which
the Congress had determined upon in 1783, at the time it was requesting
the States to allow it to collect a duty. The list was made up of rum,
molasses, wine, tea, pepper, sugar, cocoa, and coffee. These were
regarded at the time as luxuries likely to be consumed by those able
to pay the duty. Other imported articles were to have an ad valorem
duty. Madison had in mind, as he said, a productive tariff to secure
money for the bankrupt national treasury. If more money was needed,
the rates could be raised at any time. But early in the debate a member
from Pennsylvania moved an amendment adding a number of articles to
the specified list. They included beef, butter, candles, soap, boots,
steel, cordage, nails, salt, tobacco, paper, hats, shoes, coaches, and
spices. "Among these," said he, in explaining his motion, "are some
calculated to encourage the productions of our country and protect our
infant manufactures." At once, members from States which did not produce
these articles protested that the addition of an impost would keep out
foreign competition and make them pay higher prices for the goods.
Other members from States which produced articles in neither list were
equally urgent in getting their special products added. The tradesmen,
manufacturers, and others of Baltimore sent in a petition "to the
supreme Legislature of the United States as the guardians of the whole
empire," begging them to impose on all foreign articles, which were
made in America, such duties as would give a just preference to their
labours. The shipwrights of Charleston in a petition pictured their
distress under the present condition of trade and begged relief by
proper legislation. Petitions soon followed from coach-makers,
soap-boilers, snuff-grinders, makers of mathematical instruments,
manufacturers of sheepskin trousers--in fact, nearly every form of
industry wished to take advantage of this opportunity to secure national
where they had formerly been able to get only local protection. The
members of Congress described in their letters to friends the fish
battles, the salt battles, and other manifestations in legislative
halls of the cupidity of mankind when opportunity is once presented.

In this way it came about that the first revenue measure in the first
session of the first efficient National Legislature brought the members
face to face with the question of the purpose for which government
exists. The Declaration of Independence had declared it to be the
securing of certain inalienable rights with which men are endowed by
their Creator. This French conception of certain abstract and general
rights had taken in British and colonial minds the very concrete shape
of property. It is scarcely just to say that even unconsciously the
British people had instituted government for the protection of property
and invested interests; but it is within the bounds of truth to say
that a large part of the legislation of Parliament, in the formative
days of the American colonies, had been inaugurated with this end in
view. With the abuses of the monopolies granted by the mother country,
the colonists were only too familiar. But the principle had been
inherited, and it had been put into practice in the shape of legislative
aid granted by colonial assemblies for the inauguration of various
commercial and manufacturing enterprises. Sometimes this assistance
had taken the form of money; at other times, of a patent or monopoly
granted for a number of years. Petitions for such aid had been presented
to the Continental Congress at various times. It was not strange that
they should appear in the new Congress, as has just been described.

Political parties had not yet been developed, but the debates on this
first tariff bill showed a strong tendency to sectionalism, arising
from the varied interests of an extensive territory. It was a
sectionalism which, if it prevailed, would tend to weaken the Central
Government, but, if overcome by compromise or force, would strengthen
the national authority by the very fact of the victory. At the time
the differences of opinion arising from the various parts seemed so
irreconcilable that Madison frequently confessed his despair of getting
any tariff measure passed at the session; so early did the sectional
interests appear, which were destined later to threaten seriously the
very existence of the Union.

If the distillers of Philadelphia, for example, petitioned for a greater
discrimination in the duties on rum and on molasses, the citizens of
Portland, then in Massachusetts, assured Congress that any duty on the
latter commodity would operate injuriously and be attended with
pernicious consequences to all the New England States. Once entered
upon, this protective policy could not be stopped. By mutually aiding
each other, members could get articles added to the protected list
more easily than the unorganised opposition could keep them out. By
comparing such co-operation with the united efforts by which the first
settlers had cleared their fields, the phrase "log-rolling" was
invented. Thus it happened that the first import bill, intended by
Madison as a measure for raising revenue, was turned virtually into
a protective-tariff measure, and was so called in the preamble. Few
realised the importance of the change at the time. Madison called it
the "collective" bill, and wrote to a friend that it had cost much
trouble to adjust its regulations to the varied geographical and other
circumstances of the States. However unconsciously done, the principle
of protective-tariff legislation by the National Government had been
adopted.

It is prophetic of the future to note that in this first debate a
difference of opinion was shown to exist concerning the proper function
of government. One speaker cited the history of the ancient world to
prove that the protection of industries and the establishment of
manufactures was a very proper aim of government. Others held to a
contrary opinion. Madison was among those who thought that business
should be left to take its natural course without government
interference. He said:

"I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce and to hold
it as a truth that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive,
and impolitic; it is also a truth that if industry and labour are left
to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those
objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and
direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could
point out."

This was the voice of the country member, unaccustomed to the fostering
hand of government. It was also the voice of the minority. The
Constitution had been framed and adopted by the commercial interests
generally, who took quite an opposite view of the duty of government
toward business.

No one at this time seemed to feel the potency of the protective
principle in enlarging the power of the Union. It was unseen until
fully developed some thirty years later. Yet to appreciate the full
force of this tariff bill of July 4, 1789, with its protective preamble,
as a sample of Union-making legislation, one need only consider the
gratitude which the National Government has won through such protective
measures; the attachment of leading men to the Union from guarding
their interests; the accumulated strength of moneyed interests in time
of danger to the Republic; the use made of the tariff in protecting
workingmen; the revenue derived from high tariffs, which has been spent
on public improvements; and the force of public opinion which has been
frequently rallied by both employer and employee to the support of the
execution of a national revenue law.

Above all members of the first administration, Hamilton stood for an
efficient National Government. He saw opportunity in the administration
and interpretation of the written document to correct the weak places
which he had sought in vain to avoid when the frame was being made.
A constructive genius by birth, a financier by study, a leader of men
by nature, Hamilton had, in the Treasury Department, that function of
the new Government which needed the most strengthening, and in its
present condition the necessity which would support the strongest
measures. Called upon by Congress at the time of its first adjournment
to inform them of the exact financial condition of the country, he
drew up an exhaustive report showing that the National and State
governments together owed something like fifty-two millions of dollars.
The national obligation to-day is twenty times that sum. Its proportion
to eighty millions of people is not much less than the fifty-two
millions were to the three and a half millions of people who faced the
debt of Hamilton's time. But the debt now is of fixed form and assured
payment before it is incurred. The debt which Hamilton presented to
Congress was heterogeneous in form and without means of payment. Arguing
that a national debt properly funded had contributed largely to the
prosperity of Great Britain, Hamilton proposed to collect all these
evidences of debt into a national obligation, which would bring interest
to its holders until paid. The faith of the United States toward its
creditors must be redeemed. To secure a revenue with which to pay this
interest and evidently to redeem the principal in addition to meeting
the running expenses of the Government was the first task. Hamilton
proposed to place additional duties on imported goods and to lay a
tonnage on vessels using American ports, the latter of which he
estimated would yield more than a million dollars. He would also put
an excise on distilled spirits manufactured in the United States and
on those imported, both bringing in nearly three million dollars. The
profits of the post-office he estimated at almost a million dollars
annually, to be applied also to the national expenses.

[Illustration: CERTIFICATE OF DEBT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES. From the
Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. This was one of the
Revolutionary obligations assumed and paid under Hamilton's financial
measures.]

The members of Congress, at the subsequent session, with remarkable
unanimity, concurred in these recommendations of the Secretary of the
Treasury for the redemption of the national obligations, including
both the debt owed to foreign nations and that incurred to domestic
holders during the exigencies of the war. But upon another proposition,
that the United States should assume the debts incurred by the several
States during the war, there was strong opposition. It was said that
such action would lead to speculation and stock-jobbery in buying up
these debts and converting them into new forms. The original holders
had long since disposed of them to brokers, who would be enriched by
national legislation. It was the old clash between the moneyed and the
moneyless classes. Although the action would be a direct interference
of the National Government with State affairs, the debates turned on
economic rather than constitutional grounds. If Hamilton had the
foresight with which he is credited by his admirers, if he saw that
the allegiance of the people would gradually be won away from the
States to the Central Government because the latter was redeeming
promises which the States had long been endeavouring to meet, if he
was taking advantage of the selfishness and cupidity of the deeply
indebted States, there is no evidence to show that the States saw or
appreciated the danger.

Virginia, whose representatives bore the brunt of the opposition, had
a source of revenue in her western lands from which she could easily
discharge her obligations, and naturally had no desire to share the
liabilities of others. But her State Legislature, after Hamilton agreed
with Jefferson to buy off the Virginia opposition in Congress by
locating the national capital on the Potomac, protested in strong and
exact terms against the State-debts-assumption proposition. These
resolutions recited that the people of Virginia had adopted the Federal
Constitution under the impression and upon positive condition that
"every power not granted was retained," and that they had read the
document in vain to find the right given to assume the debts of the
States. Here, within two years after the adoption of the Constitution,
was a State Legislature protesting against the usurpation of power
under it. It was the first of many futile protests.

Hamilton, sending a copy of the Virginia resolutions to Jay, saw "the
first symptom of a spirit which must either be killed or will kill the
Constitution of the United States." He thought the collective weight
of the different parts of the Government ought to be employed in
exploding the principles they contained. Theoretically, the Legislature
of Virginia may have been correct in its attitude; but no theoretical
protest could avail against the worthy sentiment that the entire
national credit must be restored, backed by the practical demands of
the creditors, and by the desires of those who saw an opportunity of
investment or speculation.

Those people, both officials and citizens, who took the stand in these
formative days of political parties that the Federal Government should
be restricted in its workings to the powers expressly given to it in
the Constitution, a "strict construction" of that document, as they
called it, were generally country bred, of the borrowing rather than
the lending class, depending upon individual initiative rather than
mass action, strangers to the paternal aspects and fostering hand of
government, and inexperienced in the intricacies of finance. Gen. Henry
Lee, of Virginia, complained to Madison of the complexity of Hamilton's
plan. "It departs," replied Madison, "from that simplicity which ought
to be preserved in finance more than anything else." Inability to
comprehend naturally breeds suspicion.

Hamilton's followers were, for the most part, from the Northern and
Middle States, city dwellers, money-lenders rather than borrowers,
business men, and manufacturers, who saw no wrong in having the
Government promote the general welfare by legislation. The sudden
revival of business which followed the adoption of Hamilton's plan to
redeem all the debts seemed to them both natural and legitimate. The
other group looked upon the entire matter as a corrupt transaction,
contrived by Hamilton, and a prostitution of government from its
legitimate purposes. Madison wrote that just before the report came
out the value of the various forms of debt rose from a few shillings
to eight or ten shillings in the pound, and that emissaries were still
exploring the interior and distant parts of the Union in order to take
advantage of the ignorance of the holders. To meet the occasion
Jefferson invented the phrases, "corrupt squadron," "stock-jobbing
herd," and "votaries of the treasury," upon which he rang the changes
during a long lifetime.

To this indignation was added dismay when the effects of national
assumption of State obligations began to be appreciated; when creditors
who had besieged the State treasury for years found the Union satisfying
their just demands; when the evidences of national government, which
had heretofore been confined to a wandering Congress, began to appear
at every hearthstone. A realisation of these results brought from
Jefferson the complaint that he had been duped by Hamilton in the
assumption-capital bargain; that he had been "most innocently and most
ignorantly made to hold the candle for a wicked scheme."

A similar aggrandisement of the National Government was the motive,
according to the eulogists of Hamilton, which prompted him to make a
suggestion for another novelty, a United States bank. Ostensibly he
claimed that it would have the effect of bringing immediate financial
relief, as well as safeguarding the future. The arguments presented
by him to Congress for the incorporation of a bank in which the National
Government should be a stockholder were purely utilitarian. The bank
would benefit the public by offering an opportunity for the investment
of capital. It would benefit the Government by lending it money in an
emergency and by collecting its revenues. Its notes would also form
a circulating medium. The bill drawn by Hamilton incorporating such
a bank passed the Senate without material change and without a division.
One Senator from Pennsylvania, suggesting amendments to his colleague,
was informed that Hamilton's father-in-law, a Senator from New York,
had said Hamilton did not wish the bill altered. The hopeless minority
in the Senate claimed that the chances of subscribing to the proposed
bank, guaranteeing an investment at six per cent, for twenty years,
won many to its support. They also saw here another link in the chain
which Hamilton was welding about the States. The debts having been
assumed, the certificates would be accepted as subscriptions to bank
stock. Thus one measure would be made to play into another.

In the House, the right of the Federal Government to found a bank was
attacked by Madison, who here parted from Hamilton, with whom he had
laboured in getting the Constitution adopted. The line-up of parties
had begun. Madison found himself opposed to the way in which the
Government was being perverted by Hamilton under the Constitution. His
speech is the first extensive exposition of the doctrine of strict
construction of the written instrument; that the central power must
be held strictly to the powers numerated in the document. Strict
construction exhibits the vice of a written Constitution--the
impossibility of growth or even continued life within the bonds of the
written word. Stagnation and death must result from binding the limbs
of the body politic. Loosening by interpretation is the remedy. Madison
was correct in saying that the right to incorporate bodies was proposed
in the Philadelphia Convention and abandoned; that the power to
incorporate a bank was nowhere given in the Constitution to the Federal
Government; that banking was presumed to be a matter for State control;
that in all the debates and papers written on the Constitution it was
understood that "the powers not given were retained; and that those
given were not to be extended by remote implications."

In reply, Boudinot did not deny that all powers, vested heretofore in
any individual State, and not granted by this instrument, were still
retained by the people of such State and could not be exercised by
Congress. But he then showed that the power to incorporate the bank
was "drawn by necessary implication" from those expressed. The preamble
declared in general terms the objects of the Constitution; one of the
expressed functions under it was "to borrow money"; and the circle was
completed by the liberal clause to "make all laws necessary and proper
for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Now to provide for
the general welfare it might be necessary to borrow money; a bank was
essential to the borrowing of money in adequate sums; therefore the
power to establish a bank was deduced by the strongest and most decisive
implication.

Here was the first complete exposition of the doctrine of a loose
construction for the wording of the Constitution. If that be correct
reasoning, said the opposition, the Constitution may as well stop with
the preamble, since there is no power under heaven which could not be
exercised within its limits. It would mean the consolidation of all
powers, and the practical extinction of local government. The attitude
of the two sides in the debate may be shown by one illustration
employed. Suppose the power to make a treaty or to raise an army had
been omitted from the Constitution, asked the Hamiltonians, could the
National Government in an emergency assume such rights from the preamble
and the powers expressed? Must it hesitate and temporise while the
blood of its citizens was being shed? Such an assumption of power,
replied the strict interpreters, might be excusable in an emergency,
but could be warranted as a practice only by an amendment to the
Constitution made in the manner it prescribed.

The present situation and the compelling force which had produced it
were manifest when those who favoured giving the Union such implied
powers as would make it effective pointed out many instances of
implication of which Congress had already been guilty; such as accepting
land for lighthouses, defining crimes under power to establish courts,
and even creating corporations in the shape of the North-West and the
South-West territories. One of these lesions of the written word, that
which interpreted a clause so as to give the President power over
removals from office, Madison himself had favoured.

This first constitutional debate also outlined the geographical
sectionalism which has penetrated and influenced every feature of
American political as well as commercial and social life. The Northern
and Middle States contained the cities, made up of the trading class,
whose capital was chiefly in ready money. The capital of the rural
dwellers of the South was in land and slaves, not easily converted
into cash. The latter became the borrowing, the former the lending
section. The spirit of unionism was engendered in the first by reason
of their urban life, their commercial employment, and their frequent
contact in business. The feeling of individualism was as naturally
bred in the latter by their rural surroundings, their agricultural
occupation, and the self-reliance induced by their solitary environment.
The opposition to the Constitution in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New
York, and Pennsylvania had been confined almost entirely to the country.
The rural States of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina did
not adopt the new frame without a struggle. Georgia was a Southern
exception; but population dwelt so exclusively along the coast in the
new State of Georgia that it was really a commercial State, settled
largely by New Englanders.

The mercantile class of the Northern and Central States, after Anti-
Federalism had been silenced by the success of the new Government, was
ready to adopt the theory of loose construction or interpretation by
inclusion, which would tend toward the realisation of a more potent
union. At the same time, a bank, supported by the patronage of the
National Government, with no danger of competition for twenty years,
offered not only a security for capital against such dangers as it had
previously known, but also, through its branches, an extended agency
for transacting business. Many details of the bill, such as the
advantages given to holders of national rather than State certificates
in subscribing for stock, contributed to the sectional division. The
national certificates were held in the commercial centres. The influence
of the city of New York, where the Congress met, no doubt contributed
to the passage of the bank and other commercial measures.

Precisely the opposite feelings held in the Southern States. Every
vote cast in the House against the bank came from Maryland or a State
to the south of it. There were a few scattering votes from the Southern
States in favour of the measure, but as a whole political lines were
here unconsciously drawn for a century to come, if not for the entire
existence of the Republic. The "court and country" parties of colonial
days had been born again.

Many of the members were surprised to find sentiment toward these
financial measures assuming such a sectional trend. Sectional interests
had been only too manifest in the convention, but compromises had
settled them, presumably for ever. Compromise is only a relief; it is
never a remedy. After each compromise in American history it has been
a matter of surprise to the participants that others were needed. On
the bank bill, a member wrote to a correspondent: "You may think it
unaccountable, but so it is that the differences in climate seem to
govern the opinions on this bill, and Potomac seems to be near the
dividing line with few exceptions."

Virginia was the leader of the section south of the Potomac, and
Jefferson was the leader of Virginia. Although debarred from the
congressional debates by his Cabinet position, he filled his letters
to his friends with warnings against the dangerous assumptions of the
Hamilton measures. In response to Washington's inquiry to his Cabinet
upon the constitutionality of the bank, Jefferson drew up a paper
setting forth in strong terms his opinion that the Central Government
had no power to engage in business. Hamilton presented an equally
strong argument for the bank in his reply.

Madison, the leader of individualism in the House, could not agree
with Hamilton's interpretation of the "general welfare" clause of the
Constitution. The former co-labourers for efficient government parted
at this point. Madison thought the adoption of such an interpretation
would change the National Government from a limited one, possessing
certain specified powers, to an indefinite one, subject only to
particular exceptions. The phrase concerning "the general welfare" had
been taken from the Articles, he said, where it was understood to be
nothing more than a general caption to specified powers, and had been
retained because it was less liable to misconstruction than any other.
Whatever had been the original intent, the spirit of the implied powers
had been summoned from the vasty deep of uncertainty to aid in making
a confederated republic from confederated States.




CHAPTER IX

NATIONAL CENTRALISATION



No one can accuse Hamilton of failing to take advantage of these
formative years in giving the new Government a strong bias toward
centralisation. Although opposed by Jefferson, Madison, and Richard
Henry Lee, Hamilton had the assistance of Knox, and frequently of
Randolph, in the Cabinet, as well as Fisher Ames and others in Congress.
He also possessed the esteem and confidence of the President, and the
advantage which the commercial environment of New York as well as the
influence of the Schuyler family alliance could give him.

Among his numerous suggestions to Congress for cancelling eventually
the eighty million dollars of the national debt, to which business men
of the Northern States were subscribing freely, was an excise. Although
this debt, the "Hamiltonian debt," as the Jeffersonians called it, was
an iniquitous burden saddled upon the common people, an excise was to
them a most offensive way of meeting it. Being for the most part
agriculturists and country people, accustomed in regions far from
markets to manufacture their grain into spirits, they were not likely
to be persuaded that the consumer pays the tax in the end. It was a
direct tax, and, although constitutional, in form the most obvious and
objectionable. To have an inspector prying into your private affairs
in this manner was in ill-accord with the freedom for which America
stood. To put a tax on a still and its product was to them equivalent
to taxing their hand-mills and the meal or flour thus produced.

Having secured the passage of the excise tax as a permanent source of
income, Hamilton turned to meet the most pressing national obligations.
To pay the interest on the foreign debt, he had arranged a loan from
Holland. To provide money for circulation at home he revived the
oft-repeated project of a national mint, which should coin gold, silver,
and copper coins of a decimal denomination, the gold bearing a ratio
to the silver of one grain to fifteen grains. This ratio he arrived
at by making a computation of the respective amounts of these two
metals available in the world. It is interesting to note that the ratio
has changed but little in a century. Hamilton also drew up an exhaustive
report on the sources and conditions of American manufactures, with
a strong plea for the encouragement, by a protective tariff, of such
industries as had already been established.

The influence of Hamilton and the Federalist majority in both branches
of Congress made possible the adoption of these so-called "Hamilton
measures" as rapidly as they were suggested by him. They have been
praised, and justly praised, because they restored the public credit
of the National Government both at home and abroad. The receipts for
the first time met the expenditures. Never before had the national
resources been so adequately provided and so judiciously administered.
Hamilton's financial measures must also be praised because they first
demonstrated the efficiency of the new Government over the old form.
They made the first serious inroads on the affection which the people
had uniformly bestowed upon the individual States. They mark great
steps toward the centralisation of the National Government at a time
when they were most needed.

Nor did Hamilton, in his great constructive statesmanship, neglect the
details of his department, although a complete organisation awaited
the painstaking Gallatin a few years later. The States were divided
into fifty-nine collection districts regardless of State lines except
as they suited the purpose. Each district was supplied with all the
machinery necessary for collecting the duties levied by Congress from
time to time. Since the Treasury Department was so closely connected
with foreign commerce, Congress placed under its control all
lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers, as soon as they might
be ceded by the individual States in which they were located and which
had constructed them. At the time, no other disposition was possible;
but few foresaw the resulting effect upon the unification of the States.
By another act, the Treasury Department was given charge of the
registration and clearing of vessels. A duty of six cents a ton was
placed upon the carrying capacity of American vessels, and fifty cents
a ton upon foreign vessels. The fondness for discriminating in favour
of home interests was manifested so early and in so many different
directions that it could scarcely have been generic; it must have been
absorbed in the mother's milk of British colonialism in the eighteenth
century.

The necessity for these measures was so manifest, and the popularity
and the novelty of the new Government at first so attractive, that
little resistance was met with in passing them and still less in
enforcing them. Resistance to national measures and neglect of national
duty were no longer a menace to national existence, because the nation
now possessed the power of compulsion in a Federal judiciary. Upon the
day named in the judiciary act, the first Monday in February, 1790,
the Supreme Court held its initial meeting in the court-room of the
New York Exchange, which had been prepared for its use. According to
the newspapers "the jury from the district court attended; some of the
members of Congress, and a number of respectable citizens also." Several
meetings of the Supreme and district courts were held at this session,
a seal was adopted by the former, and several attorneys admitted to
practice before it; but there were no cases to be heard. The term
closed with a banquet given by the grand jury of the district court
to the justices and officers of both courts at Fraunce's Tavern in
Cortland Street. So gradually did appellate and original cases find
their way into the Supreme Court that three sessions were held before
it had a case on its docket. The legislative function of government
was, at that time, the most important and formed the basis of popular
hope. Time has gradually transferred this dignity and trust to the
judiciary department, whilst the legislative--national, State, and
municipal alike--has lost in public confidence and esteem.

The Federal judiciary, as the most novel feature, was apt, in making
a place for itself, to come into conflict with older agencies. Within
three years it gave a hearing to a citizen of South Carolina, who had
sued the sovereign State of Georgia on a money claim for damages.
Although the Constitution implicitly gave jurisdiction to the Supreme
Court over controversies between a State and citizens of another State,
the Legislature of South Carolina refused to pay attention to the suit,
insisting that the retained sovereignty of the State could not be
impaired by a clause of the Constitution. By four to one, the justices
of the Supreme Court held that South Carolina, by the act of entering
the Federal Union, was bound by all provisions of the Constitution.
Justice Wilson, of Pennsylvania, thought the question involved even
a higher point--do the people of the United States form a nation? Many
commentators on the Constitution before its adoption, including even
Hamilton himself, in commenting on this clause had assured the people
that it was not rational to suppose a sovereign State could be dragged
before the national tribunal. Yet it had been done within three years
after being put in force.

It is indicative of the prevalence of State-sovereignty feeling at the
time to note the general alarm caused by this decision. An eleventh
amendment to the Constitution, forbidding a State to be sued before
the Federal courts by non-residents, immediately passed the Senate by
a vote of twenty-three to two and the House by eighty-one to nine. It
was ratified by every State except New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Tennessee. The speed with which this remedy was applied gave confidence
in amendments for the future. But the number of amendments must be
endless if each aggression of the judiciary was to be met in this
manner.

The last toast at the judiciary banquet of 1790 was a wish that the
convention of Rhode Island, called for the early spring, would "soon
introduce the stray sister to her station in the happy national family
of America." Rhode Island represented the extreme of selfishness
resulting from State control of commerce. Through her ports passed not
only her own imports and products, but those of the adjacent parts of
Connecticut and Massachusetts. This geographical situation of the State
magnified her commercial interests, and made her unwilling to surrender
them to the Union. The country people were equally wedded to paper
money, and opposed every suggestion of giving over the right of issuing
money exclusively to the Central Government. The State fell into
disrepute. "Rhode Island can be relied upon for nothing that is good,"
said Madison in his despair. "In rebellion against integrity, plundering
all the world by her paper money, and notorious for her uniform
opposition to every federal duty," was the character given her by
Governor Randolph, of Virginia, when by popular vote she refused to
come into the Union under the Constitution. Fables were composed which
described twelve people desirous of building a new house and hanging
a recalcitrant thirteenth man by his garter to a limb near his cabin.
A "Southern planter" was reported to have offered the services of his
slaves to aid in shovelling Rhode Island into the sea.

North Carolina had also been late in assenting, but simply because her
first convention was turned from immediate ratification by the temporary
delusion of holding another constitutional convention to incorporate
the proposed amendments in the Constitution. The general sentiment of
the country had pronounced against running the risk of another
convention which was unlikely to produce anything more acceptable.
Hence the favourable action of North Carolina was simply a question
of time necessary to call another convention. This State was doubly
assured to the Federalists after favourable action in Virginia, to
which she was closely bound by family ties. The hope was well grounded,
for the first act, passed by the second session of the new Congress,
in the autumn of 1789, was to extend the impost, tonnage, and other
acts of the first session over North Carolina, whose ratification,
without amendments, reached New York during the adjournment. Rhode
Island was now the only recalcitrant. She still held out for
individualism and complete sovereignty. Had Congress a right or the
power to coerce her into the Union? Whatever action Congress might
take was destined to become important in the later discussions upon
the right of a State to withdraw from the partnership now being formed.
Fortunately, the opinion of the House upon this point is beyond
question. In the middle of the first session a motion made by a member
from New York to take up the case of the rebellious Rhode Island had
been voted down because it threatened a "delicate situation" for the
House and was best left to time and the State itself. Although the
recalcitrant sister was a maritime State, "situated in the most
convenient manner for the purpose of smuggling and defrauding our
revenue," nevertheless, as Madison said, "it would be improper to
express a desire on an occasion when a free agency ought to be employed,
which would carry with it all the force of a command." One searches
equally in vain through the correspondence of the men at the head of
government for suggestions of coercion. President Washington, although
exasperated to a point where his Virginia temper declared that the
majority of the people of Rhode Island had bid adieu to every principle
of honour, common-sense, and decency, refused to send any message to
the friends of the Constitution in that State other than his hopes
that the Legislature would call a convention.

Nevertheless, it was impossible long to continue such an anomalous
thing as a foreign State surrounded by the United States. The governor
of Rhode Island had become alarmed and early sent to the President and
Congress of the "eleven United States of America" assurance of the
steadfast adherence of his State to the principles of the Confederation
formed in the hour of danger, and begged that they should not be
considered altogether as foreigners. Although Rhode Island was speaking
a past language in such words, Congress by special enactment relieved
her from all duties except on rum, loaf-sugar, and chocolate until
January, 1790. When that time arrived, the governor pleaded for a
renewal of the privilege, stating that the Legislature had just called
a convention to reconsider the Constitution. Waiting several months
longer, the Senate passed a bill by a vote of thirteen to eight to
treat the goods of Rhode Island as if coming from a foreign country
and to demand from her a sum of money to be credited to her account
with the Union. In the midst of the consideration of this measure by
the House, further action was stopped by the arrival of the official
ratification of the Constitution by Rhode Island in a regular convention
at Newport by the narrow majority of two votes. "This event," wrote
Washington to one of his European correspondents, "will enable us to
make a fair experiment of a Constitution which was framed solely with
a view to promote the happiness of a people. Its effects have hitherto
equalled the expectations of its most sanguine friends." Rhode Island
escaped being coerced into the Union by an act of Congress; but she
was coerced by the higher law of self-preservation. Surrounded by
States in the Union, cut off from the natural channels of trade with
them, she must have perished of commercial starvation in the growing
trade of the nation, if she had been subjected to the discriminations
which Congress placed on the commerce of foreign nations.

The adoption of an efficient government and the institution of a central
control produced an immediate effect on commerce. Interstate strife
ceased. In eighteen months more than twenty million dollars' worth of
goods had gone abroad. Great Britain and her dependencies bought almost
one-half these American products and produce, with France a second.
Then came Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Denmark, Africa,
the East Indies, and Sweden in decreasing order. Even the northwest
coast of North America purchased some ten thousand dollars' worth of
goods from the new republic. Tobacco, rice, flour, wheat, and corn
were the chief articles of export. Manufactured articles were of minor
value. The total amount of iron sent out was little over three thousand
tons, as against three hundred thousand tons exported in 1900. Furniture
to the value of $8351 went abroad, of which $30 worth went to Spain
and the remainder to the West Indies.

During this same first fiscal year under the new Government, dutiable
goods to the amount of nearly seventy-four million dollars came into
the various ports of the United States. Brown sugar from the French
West Indies led the list, molasses from the same source ranking second.
Tarred cordage from England came next, with coffee from the French
West Indies, dried fish from Canada, distilled spirits from the British
West Indies, in order. This revival of trade did much to quiet the
predictions of those who still imagined the new Government must fail.
The second year gave them still less ground to stand on. It showed
that the United States custom-houses had collected over three million
dollars on imported goods, the largest collections being in the State
of Pennsylvania, with New York second, and Massachusetts third. This
was a larger sum than had been realised from all taxable sources for
the eight years preceding the Constitution government. Nearly $150,000
had been realised from charging tonnage upon vessels entering and
leaving American ports. The future of the finances of the National
Government was assured. Those who had so long begged that the power
of collecting duties might be given to it now felt their judgment
vindicated. The obligation incurred to France for loans and supplies
amounting to over ten million dollars, a debt of honour especially
pressing, was being paid so rapidly that by 1795 the entire balance
was advanced and the obligation cancelled.

Prospects brightened for the future. "I sincerely rejoice in the
prosperity of your country," wrote Hartley, from London, to Jay, with
whom he had negotiated the peace of 1783. "You must not expect to find
it otherwise than checkered with good and ill; such is the lot of human
life. To be as happy as any people in the world is a lot you must not
expect to exceed." In reply Jay said: "Whether the United States will
be more or less happy than other nations, God only knows; I am inclined
to think they will be, because in my opinion more light and knowledge
are diffused through the mass of the people of this country than any
other." Brissot de Warville, a French traveller, was impressed by the
American vessels venturing to the North-west coast for furs and peltry.
Thinking that point not far from the head of the Mississippi, he
predicted that Americans would soon find a short intracontinental way
to the Pacific. He also predicted that these traders would soon open
a new route between the Atlantic and the Pacific by the lake of
Nicaragua. "No sea is impenetrable," he said, "to the navigating genius
of the Americans. You see their flag everywhere displayed; you see
them exploring all islands, studying their wants, and returning to
supply them."

External commerce was not allowed to monopolise the attention of the
Americans, now at peace with the world and themselves. The Constitution
gave to the Central Government the exercise and care of several
functions heretofore left to the States. As rapidly as possible, a
mint was established to produce gold, silver, and copper coins. Laws
punishing the counterfeiting of the coin were passed. The existing
military system was recognised and the postal establishment with the
routes and offices of the previous year adopted. The pensions paid to
invalided veterans of the wars by the States were assumed by the nation.
Commissioners were appointed to treat with Indians in the United States
territories. Provision for making a count of the people was made. Steps
for the adequate protection of the frontier were taken. Commissioners
were appointed to lay out the capital city on lands granted by Virginia
and Maryland. The provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, modified to
meet the new conditions, were re-enacted.

Of less importance than many of these functions bestowed by the
Constitution on the Federal Government, but even farther-reaching, was
the indefinite power to "promote the progress of science and useful
arts" by encouraging authors and inventors. The right of an inventor
to a protection on his product had been saved from the monopolies so
freely granted to companies in the time of James I. It was one of the
birthrights of Englishmen brought to the American colonies. The right
of an author to the benefit of his productions was allowed in the
common law. Colonial legislatures had been accustomed to encourage
both authors and inventors by rewards of money as well as by exclusive
rights for a limited term of years. The Legislatures of various States
continued the practice after the Revolution, although there was no
system of inter-recognition of patents between the States. Fitch, the
steam-navigation experimenter, secured exclusive rights on his steamboat
from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and
even then was unprotected in the remaining States. This power so
evidently belonged to the national instead of State governments, that
it was never questioned in the convention, although it had not been
included in the Articles of Confederation. Indeed, so essential was
the necessity for the development of home resources felt to be that
at one time the convention had considered transferring from the States
to the Federal Government the general practice of "establishing public
institutions, rewards, and immunities for the promotion of agriculture,
commerce, and manufactures."

This paternalism was eventually confined in the Constitution to patents
and copyrights. Within a fortnight after the beginning of the House
sessions, David Ramsey, the South Carolina historian, petitioned
Congress for the sole right to sell his books for a limited term of
years. He was followed by Hannah Adams, the Massachusetts writer,
Jedediah Morse, the geographer, and others. Instead of granting such
petitions by individual bills, as the State Legislatures had done,
Congress enacted a general copyright law which gave to any applicant
exclusive control of his writings for fourteen years.

Simultaneously with the petition from Ramsey, which led to the first
copyright law, came one from John Churchman asking for exclusive right
to sell spheres, maps, charts, and tables on the principles of magnetism
which he had invented after "several years' labour, close application,
and great expense." Soon after came requests for such rights from Fitch
for a boat propelled by steam, from Rumsey for one propelled by setting
poles, and from Stroebel for another to run on wheels without the use
of oars. Other inventors asked for patents on a machine for raising
water to run a waterwheel, on one for making nails, for producing power
by using a weight, for curing the bite of a mad dog, for counting the
revolutions of a wheel, for a reaper and thresher, and for a
lightning-rod on an umbrella. In the second session Congress passed
an act making the members of the Cabinet, except the busy Secretary
of the Treasury, a board to hear petitions and to grant sole rights
to inventors for fourteen years.

The necessity for uniform action deprived the States of both copyright
and patent control and gave it to the central agency--powers trivial
in themselves, but potent in the unforeseen work of transferring the
trust and gratitude of men of learning and ability from their several
States to the Union. "The encouragement of learning" is sufficiently
indefinite to become a giant by interpretation. This was apparent in
the very first session of Congress. To his petition concerning his
magnetic maps and charts, Churchman had added a prayer for "the
patronage of Congress" in undertaking a voyage to Baffin's Bay for
studying the cause of the variation of the magnetic needle--a problem
handed down from Columbus. The proposition was defeated in the House,
although only five to eight hundred dollars was suggested, because of
the deranged condition of the national finances. Only one member
expressed a doubt as to the constitutional power of Congress to do
more than reward inventors by patents. Although the Constitution
explicitly confined the encouragement to granting of exclusive rights
to the use of the invention, the cause of defeat was not the lack of
constitutional power, but the lack of means.

Washington, the friend in Virginia of every movement for the public
benefit, showed no fear lest Government assume too much power in this
particular. Years before, he had voted in the Legislature of his own
State to give exclusive right to a stage-owner to carry passengers
over a road because "he had expended a considerable sum of money in
the purchase of carriages and horses ... which will be productive of
considerable public convenience and utility ... and therefore it is
reasonable that he should possess for a reasonable time any emoluments
resulting therefrom." Once, in complaining to Jay that the
Postmaster-General under the Confederation had delayed the Virginia
mails by using horses and showing an antipathy to patronising the
stages, Washington had said: "It has often been understood by wise
politicians and enlightened patriots that giving a facility to the
means of travelling for strangers and of intercourse for citizens was
an object of legislative concern and a circumstance highly beneficial
to any country." Now, in his message to the second session of the First
Congress, he took occasion to suggest to the members "the advancement
of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures," and "the promotion of
science and literature." He advised them to consider whether these
desirable objects could be "best promoted by affording aids to
seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a
national university, or by any other expedient." These simple and, at
the time, unsuspected phases of paternalism must not be ignored in an
examination of the growth of the Union. The most rigid of the
strict-construction Presidents became helpless before them, or never
foresaw their possibilities. From such small beginnings came the various
scientific expeditions, the investigations for the benefit of
agriculture, the printing and distribution of books, the distribution
of garden seeds, the vast donations of land and money for higher
education, and the many other ways in which the Union has expanded
under no other warrant than the simple requirement in the Constitution
that Congress "promote the progress of science and useful arts by
securing for a limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive
right to their respective writings and discoveries."

In his early messages to Congress, Washington was accustomed to call
the attention of members to "facilitating the intercourse between
distant parts of our country by a due attention to the post-offices
and post roads." This was no new power given to the Central Government
as was the right to encourage learning, but it had even more
possibilities of extension through interpretation. The monopoly of
carrying the mails, now generally claimed by all governments, may be
traced to the assumed prerogatives of the Stuarts in England. A few
attempts had been made in the dependent days by individual colonies
to regulate the carriage of letters, but the provisions of an act of
Parliament in Queen Anne's reign for appointing deputy postmasters-
general in the colonies placed the posts directly under the care of the
royal Government.

The use of the mails without government censorship was essential to
the patriots in the American Revolution for carrying out their plans.
Nearly a year before independence, the Continental Congress set up a
revolutionary postal system to replace the express riders which they
had thus far used. Franklin, the colonial deputy for America, who had
brought the posts to a high proficiency before he was dismissed for
sympathising with his countrymen, was placed in charge. Gradually these
"constitutional" post-riders and postmasters supplanted the royal
officials, and Congress in time inherited the monopoly. The Articles
sanctioned this assumption by giving Congress the sole and exclusive
power over the transportation of the mails passing from one State to
another, collecting sufficient postage to pay for the same, but tacitly
leaving to each State the control of its internal postal system. So
little did the postal system develop under this arrangement that, with
the exception of an extension fortnightly to Pittsburg and the
establishment of a few cross-lines, the main line in 1789, extending
from Portland, in Maine, to Savannah, Georgia, had improved but little
since Franklin established it years before. There were only seventy-five
post-offices in the whole United States in 1789, and they collected
less than $40,000 a year.

So essential to the intelligence and happiness of the people did a
well-regulated postal system appear, and so properly an interstate
agency, that no opposition was heard in the convention to that clause
of the Constitution which said: "Congress shall have power to establish
post-offices." In the second and in the final draft of the document
the words "and post roads" were added, by a vote of six States to five,
without debate, according to Madison's notes. In the series of papers
now known as the _Federalist_, Madison, when attempting to quiet the
fears of the people upon the possibility of the Central Government
securing too much power under the Constitution, said of this provision:
"The power of establishing post-roads must, in every view, be a harmless
power." Little could he foresee that within ten years he would be
called upon by his great chief, Jefferson, to decide whether "to
establish" meant to lay out a road, to construct it, or simply to adopt
an existing one. "Does the power to _establish_ post roads given you
by the Constitution mean that you shall _make_ the roads or only
_select_ from those already made, those on which there shall be a
post?" wrote Jefferson, taking Madison to task for this fresh assumption
of power in the Congress of which the latter was a member. "We have
thought hitherto that the roads of a state could not be so well
administered even by the state legislature as by the magistracy of the
county on the spot. How will it be when a member from New Hampshire
is to make out a road for Georgia?" Really, the carrying of the mails
was a power not expressed, but deduced, if fine distinctions were to
be made.

Still another power was expressly given to the Union which had not
existed under the Confederation and had never been exercised--the right
to create new States from original soil; to speak into existence rivals
of the agencies through which the Union itself had been created. When
the States gave this right to the Central Government, they furnished
a weapon most deadly to their continued supremacy. "No state shall be
deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States," declared
the Articles. It was to guard against this danger that the States in
ceding their western land, and the Central Government in accepting it,
had mutually agreed to convert it into States of a limited size as
rapidly as population would warrant. As has been shown, unsuccessful
steps had been taken under the Confederation to carry out this
agreement, "without the least colour of constitutional authority," as
Hamilton said in the _Federalist_.

The law of balance, if not of retribution, finds an illustration in
the manner in which the fear of the States lest they give the Union
too much power over the lands led eventually to a greater loss of
power. Their jealousy of each other prevented the land being held by
any one of them. They could not hold it severally, neither could they
so dispose of it. When they thought of converting it in time into new
States, no workable plan could be devised for such a disposition unless
they acted jointly. The control had to be given to the Union. For these
reasons, the Union became the parent of all the States except the
original thirteen and Texas. It was inevitable that the sympathy of
the people during the preliminary condition of a Territory should be
weaned away from the original States and their allegiance gradually
transferred to their benefactor, the Union. Unfortunately for State
supremacy, the process did not end, as then seemed probable, with the
Mississippi, but was prolonged for a century by new accessions of
territory.

The new Congress had not long to wait for an opportunity of fulfilling
the promise made almost ten years before. In his second message, the
President sent to Congress a petition for statehood from an authorised
convention of the people inhabiting the district of Kentucky, together
with a permission to that end from the parent State, Virginia. Both
papers had been inherited from the old Congress. As the President said,
they contained "sentiments of warm attachment to the Union and its
present government." Such a happy termination of the sixteen years'
contest between the trans-Alleghenians and their parent State, as well
as such a final contradiction to the repeated rumours of the secession
of Kentucky, caused the speedy enactment of a law "that upon the
aforesaid first day of June, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two,
the said new state by the name and style of the state of Kentucky shall
be received and admitted into this Union as a new and entire member
of the United States of America." A few days later it was decreed in
another simple law that Vermont should be admitted on March 4, 1791.
New York, the parent State, had agreed to release her on payment of
thirty thousand dollars. Vermont secured the prior admission because
her application named no day, as that of Kentucky did. In the creation
of these two States, the nascent Union was not only adding to its
strength, but was removing for ever two of the most alarming cases of
possible secession which had thus far menaced it.




CHAPTER X

FIRST LESSONS IN NATIONAL OBEDIENCE



Although the first years under an efficient form of national control
were remarkably successful, inspiring what was really the first
confidence in the free government of America, it was not to be expected
that all difficulties were to be avoided, especially if the new form
assumed a vigorous and capable management. Heretofore domestic violence
had threatened local government only, because the national administration
was too inefficient to come in contact with disorder. If the National
Government should now attempt to enforce its laws, the very action must
sooner or later bring it into conflict with recalcitrants in some section,
as well as with the naturally lawless. Even the understanding that local
policing was to be left to local government would not restrain an
efficient national administration from meeting such a crisis vigorously.
Indeed, the action of the nation in such an emergency would determine
whether it was at the mercy of State aid and protection or whether it
could care for itself.

If one were attempting to predict at what point of national
administration rebellion would arise, he would no doubt choose taxation.
The hostility of the people toward taxation, possibly engendered in
the Revolutionary days, and exaggerated by human nature, has been
described in previous pages. One of the objections to the Constitution
had been that the people could now be taxed by two agencies, State and
nation, thereby involving double taxes. The resistance to the excise
tax, which began to be manifest in a small way soon after its
institution in 1791, bore a striking resemblance to the rebellion
against the stamp-tax levied by Britain upon the colonists a generation
before. A tax levied on imported goods, collected at the ports, quietly
added to the original cost, and, therefore, a kind of external tax,
is never so objectionable as one paid directly out of hand, and hence
an internal tax. So little in evidence is an external tax that the
people are sometimes beguiled into questioning whether the producer
or the consumer pays the tax. An internal tax, levied on distilled
liquors, whiskey, rum, brandy, and gin, was no more a novelty in the
early days of the Constitution than was a stamp-tax in 1765. Being
accustomed to having it levied by the local government in each instance,
it became objectionable when laid by the superior power. Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Pennsylvania had used an excise as a means of raising
revenue. The people in the western part of the latter State had several
times resisted its imposition by the State Legislature, but the
penalties imposed upon their lawlessness had generally been remitted
by the governor, and the law had been finally repealed. "The Legislature
has been obliged to wink at the violation of her excise laws in the
western parts of the state ever since the Revolution," confessed a
United States Senator from that State.

The Constitution clearly stated the power of Congress to lay and collect
both imposts and excises. From the beginning of his reports upon
available sources of revenue, Hamilton had suggested a special impost
upon imported liquors and an excise upon those manufactured in the
United States. He fully realised that the word "excise" was obnoxious
to citizens who had migrated from Scotland and Ireland, where the tax
was imposed by a superior force, and in England as well, where it had
been known since Cromwell's day. To these people it meant not only a
tax on liquors, but on candles, salt, vinegar, and other forms of
domestic manufacture. It meant a license to own a gun, and to peddle
small wares. Not many years had passed since Samuel Johnson in his
dictionary had defined it as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities
and adjudged not by the common judges of property but wretches hired
by those to whom it is paid." Added to these inherited prejudices of
the Irish and Scotch-Irish settlers in western Pennsylvania against
the excise was a local complaint that they lacked roads for transporting
their grain across the mountains to market and were prohibited from
floating it down to New Orleans both by the distance and by the
hostility of the Spanish. Their surplus produce must rot unless it
could be manufactured into spirits which could be consumed at home or
carried to a market. A horse, it was said, could carry only four bushels
of grain across the mountains; but he could take twenty-four bushels
when converted into liquor. In that day, before the later temperance
movements had created a different sentiment, whiskey was regarded as
a necessary article of food as much as beef or bread. The amount of
strong liquor used in the United States was estimated at two and
one-half gallons per year for every man, woman, and child.

Although the consumption of liquor in the uplands of North Carolina
was almost equal to that in western Pennsylvania, there were no such
geographical causes for resistance to the General Government's excise.
It was seen by the Administration that opposition would be most likely
in the four western counties of Pennsylvania. That State had the most
diverse elements of population. Its colonial history had been marked
by racial and factional contests. It was now to have the unfortunate
distinction of producing the first open resistance to the Federal
Union. The disorder at first took the form of mobbing and intimidating
collectors, destroying the property of distillers who complied with
the law, and holding public meetings at which resolutions denouncing
the laws of the Government were passed. During the two and a half years
that the insurrectionary spirit increased, Congress twice modified the
excise law in a vain attempt to conciliate its Pennsylvania opponents,
who demanded a total repeal of the tax. To check the General Government
the leaders of the insurrection threatened to secede, thus setting an
early pattern for this form of intimidation.

"I am induced to believe," wrote one of them, "the three Virginia
counties this side the mountain will fall in. The first measure then
will be the reorganization of a new government, comprehending the three
Virginia counties and those of Pennsylvania to the westward, to what
extent I know not... Being then on an equal footing with other parts of
the Union, if they submit to the law, this country might also submit."

With such a spirit of combination against the Federal Government as
these words indicated, the supporters of the national power cast about
to find what provisions had been made for enforcing the national laws.
The Constitution gave the command of the army and navy to the President;
but the peace establishment, on which the army had been put at the
close of the war, placed at his service an inadequate force. The
necessity for economising, as well as the fear of a standing army, had
kept the army down to five regiments of infantry and one battalion of
cavalry. This force was required constantly on the frontier and could
not be spared to suppress domestic insurrection. In such a defenceless
condition, the Union must turn to the militia of the various States.

The Constitution had provided for such an emergency in a general way
by making the President the head "of the militia of the several states
when called into the actual service of the United States." Here was
opportunity in working out the details for the individualists to protect
themselves against the unjust use of the militia by restricting the
circumstances under which it could be called into the actual service
of the Federal Government. Unfortunately for them, measures for the
proper defence of the frontier were necessary from the beginning of
the new Government. Since the frontier lay so largely in the United
States territories, its defence belonged to that authority and not to
any State. Under certain limits of time and distance, the President
had been authorised in various laws to employ State militia on the
frontier. The Secretary of War eventually drew up a plan for organising
uniformly the militia of the States into a national defence, believing,
as he said, that "an energetic militia is to be regarded as the capital
security of a free republic, and not a standing army, forming a distinct
class in the community."

In drafting the militia law of 1792, in accord with the recommendations
of Knox, the President was authorised to call out the militia of any
State "whenever the laws of the United States should be opposed by
combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of
judicial proceedings." This efficient clause was productive of a
prolonged debate in each branch and a conference between the two. Its
opponents made various efforts to substitute the Legislature of a State
as the agency for calling out the militia, to require a previous notice
to the President from a justice that the laws could not be enforced,
and to have a session of Congress intervene before the President could
march the militia of one State into another. The fear of giving the
central power an excuse for maintaining a standing army had led the
framers of the Constitution to incorporate a clause placing the militia
at national service only for the purpose of executing its laws,
suppressing insurrection, and repelling invasion. Of these emergencies,
Congress was to be the judge. Should the dangerous authority now be
given over to the Executive? The long intermissions between sessions
of Congress made such delegating imperative. The Shays rebellion had
left its lesson. Yet, according to one speaker, the measure seemed to
suppose that only the General Government possessed the power to suppress
insurrections, whereas the States individually certainly possessed
this power and would execute it. Another thought it an insult to the
majesty of the people to hold out the idea that it may be necessary
to execute the laws at the point of the bayonet. "If an old woman,"
cried a disgusted member of the minority, "was to strike an excise
officer with a broomstick, forsooth the military is to be called out
to suppress an insurrection."

Finally, by a close vote in each House, the United States was given
power through its Chief Executive to call forth the militia of the
several States. The action made a connecting ligament between the
national body politic and the arm of a widespread and always prepared
force. The militia proved most effective in preserving the sovereignty
of the National Government in domestic affairs until the regular troops
were relieved from the duty of guarding the frontier. Unquestionably,
the measures pending at the same time for the protection of the frontier
and the inquiry into the defeat of General St. Clair in the
North-Western Territory did much to hasten the passage of the militia
bill.

Being thus fortified against domestic insurrection and resistance to
its laws, the decision whether the new Government would be more
successful in these particulars than its predecessor depended entirely
upon the attitude of its administrators. It was fortunate for the
people of the United States and the growth of the Union that Hamilton
was at the head of the department in which the first resistance to the
laws occurred. A secretary less devoted to the aggrandisement of the
central authority, more careful of the reserved rights of the
individual, or more temporising by nature, might have attempted to
check the well-known predilection of his chief for vigorous enforcement
of the laws instead of constantly urging him thereto. If Hamilton and
Jefferson had exchanged secretaryships, the story of the United States
would have been vastly different. Hamilton had time to time notified
the President that his departmental collectors were interfered with
in the execution of their duties in the districts of western
Pennsylvania. He wanted to use the full force of the Government against
offenders. "Moderation enough has been shown," said he. "It is time
to assume a different tone." The spirit was spreading to other parts.
The Federal officials of both North and South Carolina warned him that
the disaffection was extending to those States.

From the standpoint of the Union it was also fortunate that a military
man was President. Those who criticised the choice for the Presidency
of a man with military experience but no civic training, and those who
deplore a custom so frequently repeated since, may find here some
benefits arising from having a man with such an education. "I have no
hesitation in declaring," replied Washington to Secretary Hamilton,
when notified of the resistance manifested in western Pennsylvania to
the revenue officers, "that I shall, however reluctantly exercising
them, exert all the legal powers with which the executive is invested
to check so daring and unwarrantable a spirit. It is my duty to see
the laws executed." Very carefully the soldier-President felt his way
through his civic powers of coercion before using his military authority
in this first of several cases of preserving the Union against
insurrection. There was absolutely no precedent for the coercion of
citizens by the National Government. The Federal courts had not yet
come into conflict with any considerable number of citizens of a State.
But they extended as a judicial network over the whole national domain.
They covered every inhabitant. To them Washington turned first. Although
Attorney-General Knox decided that the insurgent meetings were not
illegal, several rioters were fined by the United States Circuit Court,
special sessions of which were held in Pennsylvania.

The President showed his appreciation of the delicate adjustment between
State and national authority by consulting the Governor of Pennsylvania
at every step. If the State at this formative hour had possessed an
executive confident in himself and in his ability to suppress the
disorder, he might have done a lasting service to the preservation of
the supremacy of the States and forestalled the prestige which the
Central Government was bound to obtain from its leadership in this
crisis. But Governor Mifflin was content to support the national
authority, claiming that the militia of his State was inadequate to
the emergency.

In the summer of 1794, the disorder broke out afresh, extending to the
spoliation of the United States mail. The National Government dared
hesitate no longer. Hamilton, by private letters and public reports,
urged the President incessantly to action. His unusual foresight saw
the opportunity for strengthening the nation. Weakness in the written
Constitution might here be remedied by the precedent of strong action
under it. At last a Federal judge of Pennsylvania notified the President
that the laws could no longer be enforced in his district. Washington
immediately issued the required proclamation of warning, which had
been penned by Hamilton. Five weeks later, the Chief Executive called
upon the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia
for militia and issued a second proclamation commanding peace. He based
this action on the constitutional provision requiring the Executive
to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

The seat of the National Government being at Philadelphia, near the
rendezvous of the militia, enabled the President to place himself at
the head of the militia. No later President has interpreted so literally
his office as commander-in-chief of the army. As he reached Bedford,
Fort Cumberland, and other scenes of his campaigns against the French
a half-century before, he must have compared that errand with his
present one. Then he was saving helpless colonists from a foreign foe;
now he was preserving a government from its own constituents.

"No citizens of the United States," he wrote to Governor Lee, of
Virginia, when leaving him at the head of the militia in order to return
to Philadelphia for the opening of Congress, "can ever be engaged in a
service more important to their country. It is nothing less than to
consolidate and to preserve the blessings of that revolution, which, at
much expense of blood and treasure, constituted us a free and
independent nation."

It was also fortunate that Washington had passed through some
instructive experience in Revolutionary days on the disadvantages of
an insufficient military force. To put down the small body of insurgents
in the western borders of Pennsylvania he called for almost thirteen
thousand militiamen. To a delegation of the insurgents who met him on
the way to complain of such an armed force coming to conquer them,
Washington replied that although we had made a republican form of
government and enacted laws under it, yet we had given no testimony
to the world of being able or willing to support our Government; that,
this being the first instance of the kind since the commencement of
the Government, he thought it his duty to bring out such a force as
would not only be sufficient to subdue the insurgents if they made
resistance, but to crush to atoms all opposition that might arise in
any quarter.

Washington foresaw the effects of using the military power in behalf
of the Union. "The most delicate and momentous duty the chief magistrate
of a free people can have to perform," he called it. Early in the
excise resistance he had declared that the Government must not use the
regular troops if order could possibly be effected without this aid.
"Otherwise," said he, "there would be a cry at once, 'The cat is let
out; we now see for what purpose an army was raised!'" But
individualistic spirits who were alarmed at this new distortion of the
Government toward centralisation feared the results of using even the
militia. Jefferson, having resigned his secretaryship and seeing the
unusually prominent part assumed by Hamilton in the expedition,
protested from his retirement at Monticello against such "employment
of military force for civil purposes." To his mind the disorder was
simply a riot and not an insurrection. "Yet it answered the purpose,"
said he, "of strengthening the government and increasing public debt
and therefore an insurrection was announced." To Madison he declared:
"The excise law is an infernal one. The first error was to admit it
to the Constitution; the second, to act on that admission; the third
and last will be to make it the instrument of dismembering the Union."
Madison, who had at first looked upon the suppression of the
insurrection as an electioneering scheme, thought it fortunate for the
lovers of liberty that the movement was so easily crushed, since
otherwise the principle would have been established that a standing
army was necessary to enforce the Federal laws. "I am extremely sorry
to remark," he wrote to Monroe during the ensuing session of Congress,
"a growing apathy to the evil and danger of standing armies." This
remark was brought out by the failure of the minority, with which
Madison had now fully allied himself, to restrict the use hereafter
of any militia to its own State. A "Federal army," the bugaboo of the
opposition, had been brought into existence by this unwarranted use
of the militia. Seven acts placing the military power of the United
States on a permanent basis and giving the Central Government efficient
control were passed at this session of 1795, the first fruits of the
Western rebellion to be reaped by the Union. Madison accounted for
this legislation by the influence of the Chief Executive and the
confidence of the people that he would not abuse the power. What later
Presidents might do could not be foreseen.

Outside the disaffected districts and with the exception of a few
alarmed leaders like Jefferson and Madison, the people undoubtedly
sustained Washington in his firm action against rebellion. An ode
written for the birthday of the President in 1796 contains an allusion
to his influence in suppressing the insurrection:

  "When o'er the western mountain's brow,
   Sedition rear'd her impious head,
   And Tumult wild his legions led,
   Serenely great, the Patriot rose.--
   Yet in his breast conflicting throes
   Of mercy check'd the impending blows.

  "He view'd them with a father's eye,
   Dimmed by thy tear, Humanity!
   Reluctant Justice half unsheathed the sword.
   Scar'd at the awful Sight,
   Sedition shrunk in realms of night,
   And Order saw her peaceful reign restored."

Giving the Central Government sufficient military strength was not the
only result of the first open attempt to oppose it. Individualism had
received a telling blow. The State was no longer inviolate. Objection
had been raised in the trivial matter of creating districts for
collecting the revenue because they disregarded State boundaries. It
was now seen that the National Government could and would march militia
directly to a place of resistance regardless of State lines. The people
of the States were no longer safe from invasion by the power which
they had created. Not only a respect for the United States laws, taxes,
courts, and officers was created by the incident, but the fidelity of
the militia, residents of different States, to the central authority
was assured. Jay was at this time on his celebrated mission to England
to prevent war with that nation, if possible. To him Washington sent
enthusiastic accounts of the people turning out to show their abhorrence
of the insurrection. He said that some of the officers had disregarded
rank and that others had gone as privates. He told of numbers of men,
possessed of the first fortunes of the country, yet willing to stand
in ranks, to carry knapsacks, and sleep on straw in soldiers' tents
with a single blanket on frosty nights. Evidently the spirit of Valley
Forge had not been lost. Five times the number could have been secured,
he said, to preserve the peace of the country. He also hazarded a
prediction that the failure of the insurrection would have a deterrent
effect on the political clubs, which he blamed almost entirely for the
inception of the insurgent spirit.




CHAPTER XI

NATIONAL PARTIES ON FOREIGN ISSUES



The Democratic clubs, which Washington scored so roundly, and so
unjustly as Jefferson thought, were simply reflexes of one phase of
the French Revolution. They serve to illustrate not only how dependent
America was upon Europe for political guidance and how strong was
European influence in America, but also that early parties were factions
along social lines of cleavage rather than divisions on national
policies.

Caste is always a relative thing. The patriots who inaugurated and led
to success the American Revolution had been, generally speaking, of
an inferior social rank to the Tories. Washington is regarded as a
striking exception. Yet his fame rested solely upon his early military
record. He was never a part of the gay life at Williamsburg. The royal
governor was at the head of the Court and set the social standard. The
patriots, being opposed to him, were placed in an inferior social
position. But when once the governors had been driven out and the
Tories had been subjugated or exiled, the patriots became the ruling
or superior class. Immediately a new inferior class arose, hostile to
the Administration. Thus it came about that Washington, Hamilton,
Adams, and Jay, the former democrats, were changed into aristocrats
in the eyes of Jefferson, Madison, and the present democrats.

The new democrats were in full sympathy with the effort made in France
to abolish the nobility, and imitated the Democratic clubs which were
established there on the basis of "liberty, equality, and fraternity."
Having no nobility to abolish in America, they declared war upon such
titles as "His Excellency the President," or "His Honour the Mayor,"
and even "Reverend" and "Esquire." These they would replace by a uniform
"Citizen." Record is to be found of some twenty-four of these local
Democratic societies, scattered from Maine to South Carolina and
westward to Kentucky. Their object, as set forth by a Vermont society,
was "the promotion of real and genuine Republicanism, unsullied and
uncontaminated with the smallest spark of monarchical or aristocratic
principles." They pledged themselves to the "utmost exertions to support
the rational and equal rights of man."

Like all movements depending upon enthusiasm, the Democratic societies
went to the bounds of extravagance. Taking offence at a tavern sign
in Philadelphia, they were not content until the proprietor had painted
a red streak about the neck of Marie Antoinette to denote the work of
the guillotine. A waxworks in the same city drew large crowds to witness
a representation of the execution of Louis XVI. According to the
advertisement, "The knife falls, the head drops, and the lips turn
blue. The whole is performed to the life by an invisible machine,
without any perceivable assistance." Children were admitted at half
price. A bust of George III., which had stood through the intense
feeling engendered by the Revolution, was now mutilated. At Democratic
banquets, a boar's head, representing the head of Louis XVI., was
passed about to be stabbed by the guests.

The resolutions adopted by the local societies frequently concerned
local grievances. The Kentucky club protested against the Spanish claim
to the exclusive control of the lower Mississippi, and a club in western
Pennsylvania paid its respects to the collection of the excise tax.
Nevertheless, it should be said that many societies in other States
deprecated the resistance to the National Government in that quarter.
In view of this fact, Jefferson thought Washington unjust in attributing
the insurrection to the encouragement of the clubs.

There was a more practical aim in the associations than the adoption
of resolutions. They hoped to unite the local bodies in a national
association which should bring the State and eventually the nation
into sympathy with France and her struggle for liberty. "France caught
the divine fire of liberty from us," said one society. "Shall we now
withhold ourselves from her?" The varying responses to this question
brought about eventually the rise of political parties in the United
States.

Three well-defined periods have marked political parties in the
Republic. The first epoch turned, as indicated above, entirely upon
the choice of sides in the war between France and England, which
followed the proclamation of the French Republic, September 21, 1792.
The second period, following the close of the War of 1812, the end of
foreign dominance, was produced by differences of opinion upon the
constitutional powers of the National Government. It was foreshadowed
by several constitutional debates in the first period. The Civil War,
by an appeal to the sword, decided the majority of these constitutional
doubts in favour of the Union. Since that time, a third phase of party
government has been developed, purely on grounds of expediency in
domestic and foreign control.

Political parties, therefore, are peculiarly dependent upon public
opinion. They are creatures of sentiment. They possess no power save that
of persuasion as to the proper lines of conducting the administration.
Choosing positions on great questions largely from previous policy, they
must appeal to the people for justification and support. They live by
opposition. No party can exist alone. In their modern aspect, political
parties were unknown in Revolutionary days. Whig and Tory were simply
reflections from the parties in England supporting or opposing the
Administration. There were divisions among men, largely of a social
nature; "court and country" parties, as John Adams called them in
reminiscence. The royal governor, surrounded by his place-men and
followers, residing in the city and opposed by the rural element,
represented the monarch. The opposition became the patriotic party of the
Revolution. After a decade, the patriots themselves divided into
Federalists and Anti-Federalists upon the advisability of changing from
the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. These divisions were
not political parties in the modern sense. Neither developed any policy of
administration or offered any candidate for office at the time.

When the Constitution was finally adopted, the Anti-Federalists ceased
their opposition. Since the impetus of adopting the new Government was
sufficient to place its supporters in power, its enemies held off and
awaited the day of failure when they should have the pleasure of saying,
"I told you so." In a few instances they made a demonstration, as when
Patrick Henry, according to Madison's belief, had Virginia redistricted
in order to keep him out of the Senate. After the new venture had
passed beyond the experimental stage under the Federalist party, the
name "Anti-Federalist" gradually passed from use. As policies of
administration were developed, an opposition was bound to be formed,
and thus modern political parties were born. A preliminary line-up was
caused by Hamilton's measure for a government bank; but the real
cleavage was produced by opposing opinions concerning the side which
the United States should take in the war between France and England.

If Great Britain, toward whom the animosity of the recent war was still
strong, had not been a monarchy, or if the revolution which changed
our Revolutionary benefactress, France, into a republic, had happened
in England, or if the French Revolution had not so closely followed
in form the change in the United States from monarchy to republicanism,
party animosity in America would have been checked instead of advanced
by the Old World contest. The same end might have been reached if John
Adams had been sent as Minister to France and Thomas Jefferson to
England. But Britain being the token of centralisation, the general
tendency of the United States toward unionism seemed to Jefferson to
be the certain road to monarchism. This he conceived to be the ultimate
aim of Hamilton, born in the British West Indies, and Adams, who had
returned from Britain with his obnoxious theory that the "well-born"
ought to rule the remainder of the people.

The attempt of France, on the contrary, to secure the rights of man,
with which Jefferson had grown familiar during his residence in that
country, appealed to him both from a national and a personal standpoint.
"I still hope," he said in one of those periods of French excess which
bade fair to ruin the whole, "that the French Revolution will issue
happily. I feel that the permanence of our own leans in some degree
on that, and that a failure there would be a powerful argument to prove
that there must be a failure here." "A struggle for liberty is in
itself respectable and glorious," said Hamilton, in giving a Cabinet
opinion that the treaty made with France in 1778 had been annulled by
the abrogation of the monarchy and the execution of Louis XVI. "But
if sullied by crimes and extravagance it loses respectability. It
appears, thus far, too probable that the pending Revolution in France
has sustained some serious blemishes." In another place he voiced the
sentiments of the anti-French by saying that thus far no proof had
come to light sufficient to establish a belief that the execution of
the King was an act of national justice. But the French sympathisers
thought otherwise. "If he was a traitor he ought to be punished as
well as another man," wrote Madison to Jefferson, quoting the sentiment
among the plain people of Virginia.

Public sentiment in the United States was thus crystallising into
political parties on the policy to be pursued toward the new French
Republic. One faction was of the opinion that the people of the United
States were bound to aid the new sister not only by the sympathy of
a common struggle for liberty, but by the still stronger bonds of
gratitude for assistance in gaining their own freedom. They considered
the alliance of 1778, which France had signed at the expense of a war
with England, as still binding upon the United States. It pledged the
United States to guarantee France in the possession of her West Indies,
to admit her ships with prizes to American ports, to keep out those
of the enemy, and to prohibit the enemy from using American ports to
fit out privateers. From this last provision, some friends of France
deduced the opinion that it tacitly gave her permission to fit out
privateers by denying the right to her enemies.

Hamilton and others, who thought the French movement, begun for the
sake of liberty, was deteriorating into a frenzied propaganda
destructive of rights and property, insisted that the change of
government in France had abrogated all claims which the alliance gave
to monarchical France; that, even if this were not so, the United
States was pledged to aid her only in a defensive war, and this war
with England was entirely offensive on her part; that to give aid to
the maddened revolutionists was to identify ourselves irrevocably with
destructive fanatics, bloody regicides, and wild propagandists. These
zealots, they said, had already pledged themselves to treat as enemies
any people "who, refusing or renouncing liberty and equality, are
desirous of preserving their prince or privileged castes, or of entering
into an accommodation with them." Our forefathers had been satisfied
with securing liberty for themselves without trying to impose it on
all other nations. It was this proselyting spirit which caused their
war against Britain. Hence, the anti-French element allied itself with
England. That nation was rapidly being forced into a position where
she alone would stand between French fanaticism and the disruption of
all society. These pro-British were, in the eyes of the French
sympathisers, base ingrates, as culpable as a nation would have been
who sided with Great Britain during the Revolutionary War.

Divided into these hostile factions during this summer of 1792, the
United States reached the first parting of the ways upon her foreign
policy. Hitherto she had been of small moment to European nations,
touching them only on boundary questions connected with the New World.
But in the mighty struggle between one people bursting the bands of
centuries of repression and monarchical rule, and another nation in
authority who saw prerogative, property, and person in danger from the
deluge, the United States would become important as a place for fitting
out and as a base of food-supply. Belligerents in the heat of war are
not inclined to be over-regardful of the rights of non-combatants. To
maintain a strict neutrality had been well-nigh impossible in the
history of European nations. In nearly every war of the past, kingdom
after kingdom had become involved. The "armed neutrality," headed by
Russia during the American Revolutionary War, was formed by non-maritime
nations ostensibly to protect their commerce from the belligerents;
but in reality to gather up the fragments of trade as they were
scattered by the warring sea powers.

The United States was fortunately located for announcing and maintaining
a new idea of neutrality, a nationality based on individual development
through peaceful methods. Time alone was needed in their isolated
geographical condition to develop an industrial strength more efficient
in Europe than an armed force at that time As Washington said, just
before issuing a proclamation warning all citizens of the United States
neither to aid nor to carry contraband goods to either belligerent:
"I believe it is the sincere wish of America to have nothing to do
with the political intrigues or the squabbles of European nations;
but, on the contrary, to exchange commodities and live in peace and
amity with all the inhabitants of the earth." To another he made the
prediction that "if we are permitted to improve without interruption
the great advantages which nature and circumstances have placed within
our reach, many years will not revolve before we may be ranked, not
only among the most respectable, but among the happiest people on this
globe." Notwithstanding the demands of the French sympathisers that
the United States should anticipate the payments due on the French
debt, should allow French privateers to be fitted out in American ports
and prizes to be brought in and sold, and regardless of the insolent
demands of the French Minister, Genet, and the haughty tone of the
Republic he represented, President Washington issued the proclamation,
April 22, 1793, warning the citizens of the United States to take no
part in the war. He was aided in maintaining this neutrality by the
continued trespass of each belligerent on American rights. If either
had suddenly shown any regard for the neutral position of the young
American Republic, sentiment would have demanded immediate war upon
the other. But when England tried to cut off the supplies which France
was receiving from America, France adopted similar tactics toward
England. Each accused the other of instituting these war measures.
Between the two millstones, American commerce bade fair to be ground
to powder. Britain, in order to recruit her navy, revived her practice
of retaking her seamen who had deserted, wherever they might be found.
She took a large number of men from American vessels, some of whom
claimed to be American citizens instead of British deserters. This
system of impressment she continued until it resulted in the War of
1812. Her refusal to yield possession of the forts on the American
side of the boundary line remained as an additional grievance.

So strong was the hostile feeling toward England, that if the French
revolutionists had not plunged into such excesses as to compel their
most ardent admirers to pause, the firm hand of Washington could
scarcely have prevented a declaration of war against Britain instead
of the temporary embargo which was adopted. As it was, a non-intercourse
measure was killed in the Senate only by the deciding vote of
Vice-President Adams. A war at this time, when the new Government had
scarcely gotten upon its feet, when it was still obliged to borrow
money from Holland to meet its expenses, when its borders were harassed
by hostile savages and its forts occupied by the enemy, would have
been ruinous if not suicidal. A foreign war would have been fatal to
the adopted policy of a disinterested neutrality, not dependent upon
force, and to an uninterrupted home development which was to continue
for over a century. Neither the clamour nor defamation of the Democratic
clubs, nor the insinuations of the opposition press that the President
was biassed toward a monarchy because he wished eventually to transform
his office into a kingship, could drive the cool Washington from his
stand of neutrality. It was such self-control which drew from England's
Minister, Canning, many years after, the tribute: "If I wished for a
guide in a system of neutrality, I should take that laid down by America
in the days of the presidency of Washington and the secretaryship of
Jefferson."

Jefferson was worn out by the onerous duties of his office during this
period of dominant foreign politics. He was harassed by constant
complaints of impressments and seizures. He was placed in an unfortunate
position by the presumptions of Genet. Distressed by the license into
which liberty in France was plunging he received small comfort in
contemplating the British monarchical tendency in America. He was
greatly disappointed because Washington, whom he had pronounced at
first "purely and zealously republican," had been so frequently
influenced by Hamilton and Knox in the Cabinet, by John Adams in the
Senate, and by John Jay in the Supreme Court. These were all Northern
men and all in favour of effective government. Most statesmen cling
more closely to the vessel during a time of party danger, but Jefferson
chose to withdraw, believing his continuance in office useless, and
trusting, as he said, that the people could not be permanently led
away from the true principles of government. After his withdrawal,
this monarchical tendency seemed to him to have no check. The President,
instead of advising war upon Great Britain both to avenge her insults
upon us and to aid the French Republic, sent John Jay to England as
a special envoy to try to secure some concessions from her. Jay
eventually sent home a treaty, which provided for the evacuation of
the Western forts, for a commission to consider payment for the slaves
carried away upon the evacuation of New York, and for the withdrawal
of the discriminating tax on American shipping; but it purchased
commercial entrance to the British West Indies at the expense of
Southern commodities. Above all, it made no mention of impressment,
of the search of American vessels, and the hindrance of their neutral
trade.

"Further concessions," wrote Jay to his friends in America, "on the part
of Great Britain cannot, in my opinion, be attained. If this treaty
fails, I despair of another. I knew and know that no attainable
settlement or treaty would give universal satisfaction. Men are more apt
to think of what they wish to have than of what is in their power to
obtain."

Hamilton, who had followed Jefferson's example and retired from
Washington's Cabinet, yet virtually remained at the head of the party,
advised the acceptance of the Jay treaty. "It closes," said he, "and
upon the whole as reasonably as could have been expected, the
controverted points between the two countries. The terms are in no way
inconsistent with national honor."

Jefferson, Madison, and their followers believed, on the contrary,
that the adoption of the treaty would violate all national honour in
practically dissolving the French alliance of 1778 and would bind the
United States to monarchical England warring on republican France. The
proclamation of neutrality from Washington had not been so hard to
bear, since it took sides with neither belligerent; but the Jay treaty,
it was said, would array America against the cause of liberty. The
French and British factions were resolved to put the matter to the
test in the Senate. From this time may be dated the beginning of
political parties in the United States. Feeling ran high. Jay was
burned in effigy in many cities and the treaty ridiculed and villified
in the Republican prints. Hamilton was mobbed in New York, and
Vice-President John Adams armed himself against personal violence.

The ratification of the Jay treaty by exactly the required two-thirds
vote in the Senate showed the relative strength of the two parties at
the time, although the Senate changes more slowly than the House. The
success of the treaty advocates allowed Washington to close his eight
years in peace with England. Pinckney, whom he had sent to Madrid at
the same time he sent Jay to London, succeeded in securing a treaty
with Spain. Nearly twenty years had been spent in gaining this first
acknowledgment from the Castilian. It provided for establishing a
permanent boundary-line between the United States and the Spanish
Floridas, arranged a control over the troublesome Indians living near
the line, and assured to American traders the privilege of using the
port of New Orleans as a place of trans-shipment for their produce.
If the port of New Orleans should be closed, another port was to be
opened to them. The Americans seemed to have succeeded, after more
than ten years' effort, in getting the privilege of using the lower
Mississippi.

This Treaty of 1795 with Spain, although overshadowed by the
contemporaneous Jay Treaty, was extremely important in American
diplomatic history. Not only did it quiet the discontent of the Western
people and terminate foreign intrigue in that quarter, but it affected,
strangely enough, the future history of the lower Mississippi. From
the time of the Pinckney Treaty, France was unceasing in her efforts
to persuade Spain to give over to her care the Louisiana province,
which embraced New Orleans, insisting that she was the only power
strong enough to check the advance of the United States and save the
rest of the Spanish possessions in America. Three years later these
arguments prevailed. Louisiana was transferred to France, and very
soon fell into the hands of the Americans.

Washington had closed some of the most troublesome foreign questions
which he had inherited from Confederation days. The new republic was
beginning to make a place for itself among the nations. Treaties of
amity and commerce had been made with all the maritime nations. American
ministers were to be seen at the principal European Courts. Britain,
France, Spain, and Holland had honoured the new power by sending
representatives to Philadelphia. The entire diplomatic horizon was
clear except in the French portion, where the Jay Treaty was bound to
give offence. Under its tacit permission, as the French sympathisers
claimed, more than three hundred American vessels were captured within
the next twelvemonth, and over one thousand American seamen impressed
by Britain. During the same period only three vessels and a few sailors
were taken by France.

In its domestic relations, also, the United States, as the time of
Washington's second term drew to a close, was exceedingly prosperous.
The new Government was in full operation. No one longer questioned its
success or its fitness for the task before it. Fears for individual
rights had been quieted by the adoption of ten amendments to the
Constitution, guaranteeing the continuance of such birthrights as
freedom of conscience, trial by jury, free possession of property, and
habeas corpus. The Union had come off victorious in its first case of
discipline. It had made practical demonstration that its laws would
be enforced and that it could use State militia regardless of State
lines in enforcing them. Its system of judges and marshals extended
over the entire domain. Its Supreme Court had sustained the claim of
a citizen of South Carolina against the State of Georgia. State
sovereignty had received a blow and national supremacy an impulse. The
Superior Court had also declared that a treaty of the United States
predominated over a State law, and that no State could confiscate a
debt owed to a British subject. According to another decision, the
United States District Courts were sustained in their admiralty
jurisdiction over the State courts. The validity and authority of a
presidential proclamation was established by the prosecution in the
circuit court at Richmond of an offender against Washington's neutrality
proclamation. But the decision during Washington's administration which
especially made for the Union was in the case of Penhallow _v_. Doane's
executors, which sustained all the actions of the old Congress both
during the Revolutionary period and under the Articles, and made its
decisions final in cases of appeal from State tribunals. Thus was the
national sovereignty, by a single decision, extended backward over
local government to the very beginnings of independency and, at the
same time, established for the future so long as the National Government
should exist.

Not only in the intangible shape of Supreme Court decisions, but in
a thousand practical particulars, the central agency was making itself
manifest to the people and gaining friends among them. The general
condition of the country was prosperous. Over ten million dollars had
been paid on the national debt. A dependable revenue was being collected
in scores of United States custom-houses scattered through the different
States. During Washington's last year in office, their receipts had
amounted to twelve and a half million dollars. The National Government
was expending a part of this money in rendering commerce safe. It was
purchasing lighthouses from the maritime States and erecting new ones.
Sites for these buildings were being ceded by the various States along
the sea-coast. Beacons, buoys, and public piers were being established
by the revenue service. Sixteen harbours within the several States
were being fortified at national expense. Plans for the improvement
of certain rivers were being considered. The Congress under the
Confederation had declared navigable waterways in the Northwest
Territory leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence to be free
highways, and the new Congress extended this inestimable guarantee to
all waters of the public domain. Its extension to the States would
come later from a Supreme Court decision. The improvement of these
rivers at national expense would result in time from the westward
expansion of the people.

The domain under the complete control of the Federal Government had
been increased by a cession from South Carolina. The States of Kentucky
and Tennessee had been carved out of the "territory south of the Ohio,"
and, with the State of Vermont, had been admitted to equal membership
in the Union by the sole action of the Federal Government. The national
post-routes had been extended in eight years from three thousand to
sixteen thousand miles, and the number of post-offices had been
increased to seven hundred. By severe penalties, the Government had
taught the people to respect as well as to be grateful for this branch
of its activities. It had also regulated trade with Indians not residing
within the jurisdiction of a State, and, by scattering its troops along
the border, was attempting to protect the savage from the encroachments
and debauchment of the white man, as well as to shield the white man
from the barbarity of the savage.

The presidential election machinery had been tried a third time and
had worked smoothly. Electors had been chosen in each State without
the predicted revolution and bloodshed. They had cast seventy-one votes
for John Adams and sixty-eight for Thomas Jefferson. The former, having
received the highest number of votes, was declared President and the
latter Vice-President. Perhaps some of those who had voted for Adams
may have thought the Vice-Presidency a place of training for the higher
office, and its incumbent in the line of promotion. But on examining
the geographical distribution of the vote, one sees that sectionalism
influenced the result of this third presidential election, as it did
a majority of later ones. The vote for Adams came almost entirely from
the Northern States; that for Jefferson from the Southern. Adams stood
for Federalism, for centralisation, for a continuation of the policy
of the present Administration. He and Hamilton were close friends.
They broke only when Hamilton found that he could not influence
President Adams as he had President Washington. Electors who voted for
Jefferson thought he stood for principles exactly opposite to those
of Adams. His antipathy to Hamilton was the best guarantee against
centralisation being continued under his management.

Those who had prophesied that the overwhelming majority of Washington
would result in a series of re-elections during his life, or that the
expiration of each term would find the country in some danger which
would demand his continuance, had been silenced by a farewell address
declaring his intention to retire. The pattern of two terms which he
set no President has ever dared attempt to exceed. The opponents of
his administration, those who had foreseen the coming royal reception
in the simple levee which marked his social life, or who objected to
the growing custom of celebrating his birthday as if he were a monarch,
were compelled to cease their evil prophecies when he attended, as a
spectator, the inauguration of his successor in the room of the House
of Representatives adjacent to old Independence Hall in Philadelphia
on the fourth day of March, 1797. As the incoming President wrote to
his wife, the multitude was as great as the space would contain and
not a dry eye but Washington's. Like the formative influence of a good
parent extending from generation to generation, the precedent of
Washington's voluntary retirement from the Presidency has been a rich
heritage to the American people. It may be safely said that it is
largely the cause of the pleasing contrast which exists between the
changes of administration in the United States and those in the other
American republics.




CHAPTER XII

SUPPRESSING THE FRENCH SYMPATHISERS



The only cloud on the horizon the day that John Adams became President
lay in the direction of France and was caused by the Jay Treaty. It
seemed impossible to keep peace with both belligerents abroad or with
their factions at home. Adams would probably be more scrupulous of the
rights of the individual than Hamilton; yet drastic measures were
likely to become necessary if the pro-British and the pro-French
agitators were to be muzzled and their clamour hushed. Such a censorship
of speech was a thing not to be lightly contemplated in America.

Freedom of speech and the press had been inherited as a privilege of
Englishmen, wrested from those in authority by years of contest, and
maintained only by constant vigilance. A guarantee that it should not
be restricted by the State had been placed in many of the State
constitutions. A similar prohibition formed the first amendment to the
Federal Constitution. Freedom of movement is closely akin to freedom
of speech. Not even in the heyday of State sovereignty had any serious
attempt been made to prevent the movement of unobjectionable free
people from one State to another. The Constitution guaranteed to
citizens of each State all privileges and immunities of citizens of
the several States. The same instrument allowed Congress to establish
a uniform rule of naturalisation in making United States citizens out
of foreign immigrants; but the right of declaring who should be citizens
of the States, having been assumed by the State constitutions, was
left to them individually. State and national citizenship were thus
separate from the beginning. For these reasons it could happen, as
pointed out in the Dred Scott decision many years later, that a State
could make an alien into a citizen of the State, entitled to all its
rights and privileges, but he might still be an alien in the United
States and deprived of national citizenship.

The first Congress recognised its constitutional obligation to provide
a uniform law for national citizenship by allowing an alien who had
resided two years within its jurisdiction and one year within any State
to take an oath before any court of common-law record to support the
Constitution and thereby become a citizen. Five years later, Congress
feared that the warring powers of Europe would send undesirable aliens
to the United States. "Coming from a quarter of the world so full of
disorder and corruption," said a speaker in the House, "they might
contaminate the purity and simplicity of the American character." A
new naturalisation law was passed, requiring an alien to give three
years' notice of his intention to change his allegiance--a kind of
period of repentance. The required time of residence was then raised
to five years for the nation and one for the State. During that time
he must maintain a good moral character, must abjure allegiance to all
other sovereigns, and must renounce all hereditary titles and orders
of nobility. In this way one speaker said he hoped to shut out those
refugees from the twenty thousand French nobility, who might choose
to fly to the United States. Another expected to see an equally large
number of the peerage arrive from Britain, as soon as the correct
principles of government should take root there.

Little alarm need have been felt about those members of the deposed
nobility of France who did arrive. They were more concerned with getting
daily bread than acquiring citizenship or retaining their titles.
Prince, marquis and marquise, vicomte, and bishop, alike must keep
body and soul together by turning wig-maker, baker, or milliner, until
the madness of the French people should pass. By and by, the changes
of fortune in France began to send over Constitutionalists,
Thermidorians, Fructidorians, and the like, to plot and intrigue. "They
kept their eyes fixed on France," said a French volunteer, who had
returned to America to secure the pay due him since Revolutionary days,
"to which all expected to return sooner or later and recommence what
each called his _great work_, for there were exactly the same number
of political systems as there were refugees." The French sympathisers
in America mingled with these _émigrés_ and were more or less concerned
with their plans. The press offered the opportunity to vent much of
their spleen on Washington and to express their opinions of the "British
United States Government," as they called it.

Added to these scribblers were certain other agitators, preachers, and
writers, refugees from England and Scotland, driven out by the British
Government in its effort to keep the sentiments of the French
propagandists from taking root in British soil. More libel suits had
been instituted in the courts of England during a single year of the
French Revolution than in any two previous decades. Among those banished
was Thomas Paine, who had returned to London, after lending his pen
to the American cause, and had written the famous, or infamous, as
some called it, _Rights of Man_. Many of these aliens in America were
scribblers who had picked up a few current phrases and lofty sentiments
about liberty and equality. They were of varying ability as writers,
but uniform in their venomous abuse and hatred of England and all her
sympathisers. In the rapid increase of newspapers, which marked this
first period of prosperity and the birth of political parties, many
of these writers found precarious employment; a few found remunerative
occupations. Of the two hundred newspapers published in the United
States when John Adams became President, it was estimated that at least
twenty-five were edited by men of alien birth.

At few later periods have political parties brought out such scurrilous
abuse in the press as in these early days. Although the number of
newspapers has so increased that irresponsible and vulgar men are to
be found among editors, although the restraints of law upon the press
have been greatly loosened, yet the tone of the leading newspapers
to-day is immeasurably better than it was a century ago. As the
opposition to the Administration gradually crystallised into a party,
few suffered more from the pens of its writers than did the first
President. The abuse, which included such grave charges as that he had
murdered a French envoy near Fort DuQuesne years before, that he had
taken money illegally from the United States Treasury, and that he
hoped to turn his Presidency into a monarchical reign, followed him
to the end of his administration. Washington's replies to the numerous
addresses of societies and public meetings which had greeted his
entrance to office eight years before breathed a spirit of toleration.
It was his eminent desire, as he said in one reply, to have every
association and community make such use of the auspicious years of
peace, liberty, and free inquiry, as they should hereafter rejoice in
having done.

At the same time, the mind of Washington, the exclusive Virginia
gentleman, could easily make a distinction between liberty and license.
He attributed the insurrection against the excise almost entirely to
the unbridled utterances of the Democratic clubs, their "first
formidable fruits," as he put it. Nor did he fail, in reporting the
suppression of the rebellion to the next Congress, to express his
opinion of these "self-created societies" who disseminated suspicions,
jealousies, and accusations of the whole Government. Jefferson, still
believing in the original doctrine of the rights of man, called this
allusion of the President "the greatest error of his political life."
The societies would have soon died out if left alone, he said. Coercion
would make them thrive. "It is wonderful," continued Jefferson to
Madison, "that the President should have permitted himself to be the
organ of such an attack on the freedom of discussion, freedom of
writing, printing, and publishing." He pronounced it almost incredible
that the freedom of association and of the press should be attacked
in the fifth year of the new Government, a step which England, fast
advancing to an absolute monarchy, had not yet attempted.

There was small probability that this abuse from the Jacobin clubs and
presses would cease with the retirement of Washington. When he gave
out his farewell address, written by "the President's president," as
they called Hamilton, a Vermont editor regretted that he had not retired
four years before, which would have saved the country from having been
so debauched by its mistress, England. The day of his departure for
Mount Vernon was celebrated by a scurrilous attack in the _Aurora_,
which a defender of his memory vindicated by an assault upon its editor.

John Adams, as Vice-President, had long been pilloried as "the dangerous
Vice," for his theories upon inherited talent, a doctrine in direct
contradiction to the tenets of democracy. He also appeared in the
Jacobin prints as "President Crispin," the son of a shoemaker, and as
"the President of three votes," alluding to the narrow majority of
Adams over Jefferson in the recent election. Many went so far as to
charge that the election of Adams had been accomplished by prematurely
closing the polls in a Maryland election district and by the action
of a Pennsylvania postmaster, who held back the returns. Franklin's
recent death had plunged the people of two hemispheres into mourning.
His memory was not sacred enough to prevent an accusation that he had
once pocketed the money for two hundred thousand stand of arms, which
had been intended as a present to the United States from the King of
France. The oft-repeated scandal of the lost million francs was freshly
ventilated. Yet so precious was freedom of speech in America that even
those attacked hesitated to follow British pattern in placing a censor
over the press. Even Patrick Henry, being rapidly won to the support
of the experiment which he had formerly opposed, declared: "Although
I am a Democrat myself, I like not the late Democratic societies. As
little do I like their suppression by law."

President Adams had years before placed himself on record concerning
the freedom of the press. Long a fulsome contributor to the newspapers
on political questions, he had said: "There is not in any nation of
the world so unlimited a freedom of the press as is now established
in every State of the American Union, both by law and practice. There
is nothing that the people dislike that they do not attack."

Entertaining such liberal opinions, an unforgiving enemy to Britain,
an admirer of the French people since first he came into contact with
them, John Adams entered the Presidency prepared to save the press
from the storm gathering about it. But the partisans would not stop
their abuse long enough to examine his predilections or to forecast
the attitude he was likely to assume in his conduct of foreign affairs.
They were enraged by the advantage apparently given to Britain in the
Jay Treaty, disappointed in the continued repression of every effort
to aid France, and emboldened by the high tone of the French Directory
after the sympathetic Monroe had been ordered home to be replaced by
the Federalist, Pinckney. They sneered at Adams's inaugural address
where he admitted a personal esteem for the French nation, formed
during seven years spent abroad and chiefly in Paris, and expressed
a sincere desire to preserve the friendship which had been so much to
the honour and interest of both nations.

Notwithstanding these cordial words, President Adams, within three
months, was calling together the first extra session of Congress in
the history of the Government, and informing them in vigorous language
that Pinckney, an American Minister, had been refused cards of
hospitality by the Executive Directory at the head of the Republic of
France, had been threatened by the police, and had finally been
practically ordered out of the country. The right to reject an
ambassador was recognised by the law of nations. But "a refusal to
receive him until we have acceded to their demands without discussion
and without investigation," said the President, "is to treat us neither
as allies nor as friends, nor as a sovereign state." The warlike message
advised strengthening the army and navy, perfecting the coast defences,
preventing further building of foreign cruisers in the United States,
and the raising of revenue sufficient for these purposes. Although
closing with a promise of continued effort toward neutrality, this
hostile address from the first statesman-President forms a strong
contrast with the mild messages of the first soldier-President. The
granite rock of New England had been reached and it gave no evidence
of yielding. The response to the defensive tone of the President varied
according to foreign affiliations. Parties in America were as yet
reflections of European wars. The pro-British faction, strong in all
parts of the National Government except the executive, were as eager
for a trial at arms with France as they had been reluctant for war
with England two years before. Hamilton wrote columns for the daily
press to prove that the assistance which France gave to us during our
struggle for independence was based on purely selfish motives. We were
bound by no ties of gratitude to yield to her pique at the Jay Treaty.
"Those who can justify displeasure in France on this account," said
he, "are not Americans but Frenchmen. They are not fit for being members
of an independent nation."

The opponents to this attitude--those whom Hamilton called "the servile
minions of France, who have no sensibility to injury but when it comes
from Great Britain, and who are unconscious of any rights to be
protected against France," were equally clamorous for forbearance.
They asked Adams, in this crisis, to send a sympathetic man, say
Jefferson, who would be acceptable to France and would soothe French
pride and avert the threatened war. Although Jay had been taken by
Washington from the Supreme Bench to be sent as envoy to England, Adams
thought the Vice-President too dignified a person to be used in this
manner. Such an action would also imperil the presidential succession.
Yet he was desirous of seeking some kind of an accommodation to preserve
neutrality. Although France had "inflicted a wound in the American
breast," as he put it in his message, he appointed three special envoys
to renew negotiations. Their number would protect American interests
and show to France the gravity of the situation. Pinckney, the rejected
Minister, was made quite justly one of the three. John Marshall, the
second member, like Pinckney, belonged to the anti-French faction.
Gerry, the third envoy, was a former Anti-Federalist and a sympathiser
with France.

The treatment which these three envoys received in France caused the
tempest in a teapot commonly known as "the X Y Z affair." By
discrediting the French faction, it hastened the day of their attempted
suppression by the Government of the United States. With the mysterious
methods current during the days of the contemptible Directory then at
the head of the Government of France, certain supposed go-betweens
approached the American envoys with suggestions that "money, lots of
money," would be necessary to heal the wounds inflicted on the French
heart by the Jay Treaty and by the recent words of President Adams.
This gold, it was said, was necessary as a pre-requisite for opening
negotiations. Part of it was to constitute a loan to carry on the war
with England, and the rest was understood to be a _douceur_ for the
pockets of the members of the Directory. "We loaned you money in your
hour of need," Pinckney was told by a mysterious Frenchwoman, who
figured in the affair. "Why should not you lend to us?"

[Illustration: A HALF PAGE OF THE X Y Z DISPATCHES. From the original
in the Department of State. A close inspection will show the brackets
drawn around the name of Horttinguer and the letter "X" inserted in
margin on left. This was done by order of Timothy Pickering, Secretary
of State, before the dispatches were published.]

In the reports of these envoys which John Adams sent to Congress as
rapidly as received, the name of Hubbard, who had introduced the three
to the go-betweens, was indicated by the letter "W," Horttinguer by
"X," Bellamy by "Y," and Hauteval, who acted as interpreter, by "Z."
It was useless for Jefferson, Madison, and the French sympathisers in
America to point out that _douceur_ meant a gift and not a bribe, and
that the supposed go-betweens were discredited and their action
disavowed by Talleyrand and the Directory. It was believed and is
currently stated in America that an attempt was made to bribe these
dignified representatives of the American people. The national spirit
was aroused. Unionism received such an impulse as years of domestic
relationship could not produce. The war microbe was loosed among the
people. One of those sudden outbursts of national rage, as unexpected
as violent, ran the length and breadth of the land. A broadside was
circulated, with stanzas beginning:

  "At length the Envoys deign to tell us
   They had to deal with scurvey fellows--
   With Autun and the five-head beast
   And half the alphabet, at least."

For perhaps the only time in his life, John Adams tasted the sweets
of a widespread popularity. His birthday, like that of his predecessor,
was generally celebrated. The sympathetic French following was swept
off its feet. "Exultation on one side and a certainty of victory; while
the other is petrified with astonishment," was Jefferson's admission.
In reporting to Congress that Pinckney and Marshall had indignantly
withdrawn from France, and that Gerry, who lingered, had been officially
notified by his Government that no loans of any kind would be made,
President Adams used a sentence which immediately became current: "I
will never send another minister to France without assurances that he
will be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a
great, free, powerful, and independent nation."

The British faction had at last an opportunity of crushing the French
sympathisers, and they accepted it most willingly. In their intolerance,
they went almost as far as the other side had gone a few years before.
A South Carolinian, visiting in New York, was assaulted in the circus
because he refused to take off his hat when the President of the United
States entered. A "reign of terror" was instituted against the
pro-French office-holders. It was even claimed by them that a general
massacre had been arranged for the Pennsylvania fast-day, and Bache,
the editor of the _Aurora_, made a show of garrisoning his house with
an armed body of his friends. A Senator in debate was reported to have
declared his willingness to vote for a law punishing every citizen of
America who educated his children in the study of the French language.

Hamilton and those who wished to give new precedent to the National
Government along lines of its foreign relations where patriotism would
support strong measures, were delighted with the response on the part
of the people. Theatre crowds demanded encores of the _President's
March_ and hissed French airs when played. Merchants of New York and
other seaports worked voluntarily on the neglected coast-defences. A
song was put to the air of _True Hearts of Oak_ in order to "cheer
those unused to spade and barrow, who might tire of working on the
several forts." It began:

  "Ye friends of your country, the summons attend,
      Be this your employment, your joy and your pride,
   Your heav'n-granted rights to preserve and defend,
      And the spirits of freemen your labors shall guide."

   Chorus.

  "Our country demands-her call we obey,
      Let 's work and be merry,
   We'll never be weary,
      While freedom and glory our labors repay."


Hundreds of addresses reached the President, the larger number heartily
endorsing his attitude toward the insulting Directory. Public opinion
supported Congress at the time in passing many war measures at this
special session of 1798 and the regular session which followed. Eighteen
acts were added to the Statutes at Large during the special and
seventy-five at the regular session, nearly double the number of laws
enacted at any prior sitting. The exportation of arms was forbidden
and their importation encouraged. The navy was separated from the army
and a new department created for it. The three men-of-war which
constituted the United States Navy were repaired and put into
commission. The construction of others was begun. Frigates, galleys,
and rowboats were ordered and regiments of artillerists and engineers
authorised to be recruited. A quarter of a million dollars was
appropriated to the coast-defences. Over a million was voted for
increasing the number and for arming the regular troops. A provisional
army of ten thousand men and a marine corps were placed at the disposal
of the President. From his retirement at Mt. Vernon, ex-President
Washington was summoned to assume command of the provisional army.

Not alone measures of defence, but actual war measures were passed.
The President was authorised to seize armed French vessels found near
the American coast. Merchantmen were permitted to arm against the
French. Thirty thousand stand of arms were distributed among the militia
of the States. All treaties with France were formally dissolved, and
all intercourse with her suspended until the next session of Congress.
To provide money for these unusual expenditures a loan of five million
dollars for fifteen years was authorised, and a stamp-tax levied not
unlike that of thirty years before, against which the colonists had
rebelled.

As if they had not yet sufficiently endangered the party, the triumphant
Federalist majority proceeded to vent its long accumulated wrath upon
its critics, and thereby brought the story of the United States a long
chapter forward. Those who had writhed under the attacks of Duane, a
former resident of Ireland, but lately driven from India for violating
the liberty allowed to the press, hoped for sweet revenge. Others
wanted retribution against Callender, setting up at Richmond an abusive
press such as had caused him to be driven from Scotland not long before.
The list of lesser offenders among the alien writers was long. As
President Adams asked: "How many presses, how many newspapers have
been directed by vagabonds, fugitives from a bailiff, a pillory, or
a halter in Europe?"

Charges against these aliens were not confined to their political
writings. The air was full of conspiracy. Some suspected a league
between foreigners and the United Irishmen; others thought the aliens
leagued with the Freemasons for the destruction of all social relations,
private property, religion, and government. Emissaries of France were
supposed to be in every republic plotting for her universal dominion.
Holland and Switzerland had already lost their liberty in this way.
Talleyrand, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had spent his
exile in America and had become a naturalised citizen, was in secret
correspondence, so it was declared in Congress, with certain people
in this country. Another Frenchman, it was said, "of a literary and
intriguing character, formerly a member of the Club Breton, doubtless
in the confidence of the Directory, who had for a long time lived in
Pennsylvania, has recently taken flight." Should this menace be allowed
to continue? Both France and England were exercising the right of
self-preservation and banishing suspicious aliens. These fled to the
United States and made it a common plotting-ground. They were described
in the Congressional debate on this subject as "men endeavoring to
spread sedition and discord; who had assisted in laying other countries
prostrate; whose hands are reeking with blood and whose hearts rankle
with hatred toward us. Have we not the power to shake off these
firebrands?"

By a safe majority in the House and a vote of two to one in the Senate,
the Federalists placed additional bars to the doors of the United
States by raising the time required for national residence prior to
naturalisation to fourteen years, with a residence of five years in
some one State, and a declaration of intention made five years before
admission. All white aliens were required to report to some official
register, and get a certificate within forty-eight hours after arrival.
By a law, called the "Alien Friends act," Congress gave power to the
President to order out of the United States all aliens whom he suspected
of being concerned in any treasonable or secret machination against
the Government. If he chose, he could give such an alien a license to
remain under bond. The duration of the act was limited to two years.
A companion measure, called the "Alien Enemies act," contemplated the
possibility of an immediate war with France and gave the President and
the courts power to arrest, to punish, or remove natives of a hostile
country after due proclamation. All courts were authorised to hear
complaints against aliens, much in the style of the denunciation system
of France a few years before.

The alien writers and the Republican press generally had not been
afraid to attack the war measures and the bills for the restraint of
foreigners as they were proposed and debated. Upon the sudden rage of
naming vessels after the President, Duane in the _Aurora_ sarcastically
remarked that the name would be a host of strength in itself and
completely protect our extensive commerce. He thought we outstripped
the British in this instance.

"In the navy of England, there is only one royal George and one
Charlotte; there is to be sure the Sovereign and the Queen; but we shall
certainly have, The President, the Lady Adams, or the Lady President,
with Squire Quincy and Squire Charley, otherwise the navy of Columbia
will be incomplete."

In other papers, the President figured as "Johnny Molasses" from the
rum manufacture of Massachusetts. The New York _Time-Piece_ pronounced
him "a person without patriotism, without philosophy, and a mock monarch
who had been jostled into the chief magistracy by the ominous
combination of old Tories with old opinions and old Whigs with new."
Addresses were printed begging aliens not to enlist in the provisional
army if any laws should be passed against them.

All action taken thus far to ensure the perpetuity and safety of the
Government against the strangers within its gates seemed to the
Federalists incomplete while this seditious press remained unbridled.
The crowning measure of the session of 1798, therefore, took the shape
of an addition to the early act defining crimes against the United
States. It provided fine and imprisonment for conspiring to oppose
measures of the Government, for advising insurrection, and for libelling
the Government, either House of Congress, or the President. The duration
of the act was limited to the end of the present Administration. As
originally introduced into the Senate, this "sedition act" declared
that giving aid or comfort to a Frenchman or to France was treason to
the United States, punishable by death. It was toned down in this and
several other particulars by moderate spirits before being enacted
into a law.

The opposition in Congress, called "Republicans" by themselves and
"Jacobins" by their enemies, had resisted these famous "alien and
sedition laws" at every step. They pleaded that such police regulations
had been left by the Constitution to the States; that national
citizenship did not exist separate from State citizenship; that Congress
could pass uniform laws of naturalisation, but could not control aliens
resident in a State; that adequate punishment for sedition was already
provided in the laws of the various States; that the crime of treason
was taken care of by the Constitution and Federal laws; that existing
treaties required notice to be given before foreigners could be sent
away, and then only in case of war; and that a dangerous power was
placed in the hands of the President. The constitutional amendments
guaranteeing trial by jury and freedom of speech were also quoted in
vain. When a member from New York declared that the people ought not
to submit to such tyrannical legislation and would deserve the chains
which these measures were forging for them if they did not resist,
such language was declared treasonable by the other side and productive
of the insurrectionary spirit they were trying to stamp out.

An analysis of the distribution of the vote on the Alien bill shows
that these presses, although located in the Northern and Central States,
were supported by the Southern people. Perhaps the sectional tendency
of the vote should be considered as indicative of the loss of the
Southern States to the Administration and prophetic of the support
which individualism was to receive from that section. Not a Senator
north of the Mason and Dixon line opposed the measure, and only one
from south of the line supported it. Of the Southern members in the
House, nine voted for and thirty against sending away dangerous aliens.
In the Northern section the vote stood thirty-seven to ten in favour
of the punitive action.

Jefferson, presiding over the Senate while these measures, so obnoxious
to him, were being passed, deprived of even the pleasure of casting
an occasional deciding vote by the overwhelming Federal majority,
quietly bided his time until this madness should die out. "War, land
tax and stamp tax," said he, "are sedatives which must calm its ardour."
To his mind, the people were still essentially republican; they retained
unadulterated the principles of '75; they needed only reflection and
information to bring themselves and their affairs to rights.

"A little patience," he wrote to a correspondent in Virginia, who
mentioned the possibility of separating that State and North Carolina
from the tyrannical majority, "and we shall see the reign of the witches
pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true
sight, restoring their government to its true principles. Better keep
together as we are, haul off from Europe as soon as we can, and from all
attachments to any portions of it."

At the same time, if war should come, he advised all to join for the
defence of home on the principle that if one's house is on fire he
must try to extinguish it without stopping to inquire whether it was
fired from without or within.

The execution of the Alien and Sedition laws proved as unpopular and
as futile as Jefferson had imagined. Callender escaped the Alien law
by completing his naturalisation, but was fined and imprisoned for
seditious publications. His counsel, Cooper, a lawyer-editor, suffered
similar punishment. A chartered vessel carried back to France, now
under more tolerant government, a large number of _émigrés_ including
Volney, the philosophical writer and former friend of Washington,
suspected of being at the head of the conspirators in the United States.
The abusive _Time-Piece_ was abandoned, one of the editors fleeing
the country and the other being under arrest. Duane was assaulted in
his office, his presses destroyed by a mob, and himself haled before
Congress for criticising their actions. Lyon, a violent Republican who
had come near being expelled from the House for assaulting a
fellow-member, was fined and imprisoned for commenting on certain
appointments made by the President. A half-dozen or more insignificant
country editors were caught in the Federalist drag-net, serving only
to make the law more ridiculous.

President Adams never found a dangerous alien friend to send out of
the country. The war with France was averted and the Alien Enemies act
consequently never enforced. Some new issue arose to attract popular
attention. The war fever passed as quickly as it came. Only the extra
taxes remained to remind the people that the French-war scare of 1798
had ever occurred. War measures are always popular at the time they
are passed. National patriotism is aroused, excitement refuses to
listen to conservatism, and judgment is replaced by impulse. Measures
necessary to raise the extra revenue are easily voted; but after the
excitement has passed, the extra taxes become an extra burden. Those
who yesterday clamoured most loudly for national defence and "patriotic"
measures will to-morrow seek to evade payment or turn and rend the
party which imposed the levies. The war is soon over; the train of
taxes which follows seems endless. A political party takes small risk
in fathering a war; it faces a great danger in the reaction which
follows.

The Federalists had not only authorised by their war measures a large
addition to the national debt, but had imposed certain forms of direct
taxes. Even more odious than either the stamp tax or the tax on slaves
was that on "improvements" in property. In order to arrive at a fair
conclusion of the value of dwellings, the number of windows in each
was taken as a standard by the assessors. This method was not unknown
to the Old World, but proved extremely obnoxious in the New. Resistance
in eastern Pennsylvania took the form of the so-called '"Fries
Insurrection." It offered another opportunity to the National Government
to assert its authority, but rendered President Adams still more
unpopular, and increased public hostility toward the Federalists.
Although Adams pardoned the leader, John Fries, he did not appease the
Republicans, and he angered the Hamiltonians, who would show no clemency
toward the opponents of law and order. Like some mastodon of old, the
party floundered deeper into the swamp, eventually to succumb, leaving
only its bones as a warning to the danger of overconfidence.




CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST STATE PROTESTS



The autumn of 1798 marked the extreme limits to which the leaders and
party intentionally strengthening the Union were allowed to go at
present. It was the culmination of Federalist power. The critical
turning-point, the momentary pause before the backward swing of the
pendulum, was marked by popular disorders. The first heat of party
passion, the tendency toward centralisation in ten years of Federalism,
and ignorance of the extent to which the party might go, had combined
to bring the country to the verge of actual disruption. The black
cockades (English) fought with the tricoloured cockades (French) on
a public fast-day in the streets of Philadelphia. Republicans,
attempting to nail up petitions for the repeal of the Alien and Sedition
laws on the doors of Christ Church, were set upon by the Federalists
and driven away. The President received anonymous letters threatening
to burn Philadelphia. Citizens packed their valuables in readiness for
flight. Numerous incipient riots occurred in New York and other cities.

While the people of the French faction were thus expressing their
disapproval of the administration measures, their leaders were casting
about to find the most potent remedy against such abuse of the national
power. Even those who, like Madison, believed in the efficacy of the
new Government had not expected to see it turned into an agency for
the oppression of the individual. To their minds, a continuance of the
present course must mean the complete loss of individual and State
liberty, or the overthrow of the Union of States, which had been gained
only after great effort. An appeal to the ballot was one remedy; but
more than two years must elapse before a change of administration was
possible. The States, in forming the Union, had thrown about themselves
many safeguards. It was high time to test their efficiency.

In the debates on the Alien and kindred measures, the ratification
acts of the different States had been quoted by Republican members to
show that the States had granted certain powers to the Union, and that
the States alone could judge when those powers had been transcended.
The State was the natural agency for the protection of the individual
in this hour of danger. To an alarmed resident of Delaware, Jefferson
offered an asylum in the State of Virginia, where the "laws of the
land, administered by upright judges, would protect you from any
exercise of power unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States.
The _habeas corpus_ secures every man here, alien or citizen, against
everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume."

Browbeaten, as Jefferson explained later, by a bold and overwhelming
majority in Congress, the Republicans resolved to retire from that
field, and to take a stand in their State Legislatures. The legislative,
rather than the executive or judicial branch of the States, represented
the people of the United States dwelling in the various States. The
State Legislatures had sent delegates to form the Constitution, and
the State Legislatures had called the State conventions which adopted
it. In the State Legislatures the true friends of the Union, as the
Jeffersonians called themselves, would endeavour to find an agency for
protection against the unwarranted attack of the National Government.
Four members of Congress at this time actually withdrew, forming a
striking precedent for sixty years later. Although sometimes charged
with planning a forcible resistance to the central power, the
Republicans as a whole contemplated nothing more than concerted action
in resolutions to be adopted by the State Legislatures. "I would not
do anything at this moment," advised Jefferson, who naturally assumed
the leadership, "which should commit us further, but reserve ourselves
to shape our future measures, or no measures, by the events which may
happen."

Selecting North Carolina as a strong Republican State to take the lead,
Jefferson drew up a set of resolutions setting forth the doctrine of
protest. However, chancing to meet some Kentucky politicians visiting
in Virginia, he gave the paper to them. Their State offered advantages
superior to North Carolina for inaugurating the movement. Her history
from infancy had been one continued struggle for political rights.
"Kentucky," said her governor in his message at the opening of the
session of the State Legislature following the passage of the Alien
and Sedition acts, "remote from the contaminating influences of European
politics, is steady to the principles of pure Republicanism and will
ever be the asylum of her persecuted votaries." The customary reply
of the House took the shape of nine lengthy resolutions, rewritten
from the set drawn up by Jefferson. They were adopted by both Houses
of the State Legislature, signed by the governor, and sent as an appeal
to the "co-states in the federal Union." Assuming that the States and
the Union had made a compact whereby the latter had been given certain
limited powers for definite purposes, the remaining powers being
reserved to the States, the resolutions declared that whenever the
General Government assumed undelegated powers, its acts were
unauthoritative, void, and of no force; and that, as in all cases of
compact having no common judge, each party had a right to judge of
infractions and redress. This hypothesis being assumed, the remainder
of the resolutions supports it with arguments, using generally the
ones employed by the opposition speakers in Congress to prove that the
Alien and Sedition laws were unconstitutional.

In a comprehensive view of the history of the making of the Union,
these resolutions are of great importance. They form the first note
of individualistic protest against the growing power of the Union. To
them one must look for the first suggestion of the means to be employed.
Unfortunately for this purpose, they are declamatory rather than
constructive. They seek to arouse passion rather than to lay out a
definite line of resistance. The only suggestion of immediate action
is an instruction to the Kentucky Representatives to attempt to secure
the repeal of the encroaching acts at the next session of Congress and
an appeal to the other States to "concur in declaring these acts void
and of no force."

Madison was no doubt in touch with the inception of the Kentucky
Resolutions. To him was given the task of drawing up those to be adopted
in the Virginia Legislature. So critical had the times become that he
had resigned from Congress to accept a seat in his State Legislature.
Although he composed a set of resolutions, as Jefferson had requested,
he thought the proper remedy lay in a convention of delegates from the
States rather than in the State Legislatures. The Constitution had
been formed by a convention and not by the Legislatures. Therefore,
to avoid having the Legislature seem presumptious, he had used only
"general expressions," as he said, in his resolutions. "In case of a
deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted
by the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto," said his
resolutions, "have the right and are in duty bound to interpose for
arresting the progress of the evil." Upon this assumption, a protest
was made against the Alien acts, which united unconstitutionally the
legislative and judicial powers to those of the Executive; also against
the Sedition law, which imposed a punishment expressly forbidden by
one of the amendments to the Constitution.

Upon the question of a proper remedy, Madison went no farther than to
beg that the other States would take "the necessary and proper measures"
to maintain the rights and liberties reserved to the State or the
people. But he lived to see this protracted warfare between the States
and the Union reach a critical point, when it was desirable to know
precisely what early protestors had meant. Madison explained that the
resolutions advised only interposition by all the States. The plural
form was universally used, and resistance by no one of them planned.
No revolutionary action was contemplated. The legal remedies to be
found in "interposition" he enumerated as remonstrances, instructions,
elections, impeachment, amendment to the Constitution, and finally,
if the usurpations became intolerable, a recourse to the right of
revolution. Whatever hope Jefferson and Madison entertained of a united
effort on the part of State Legislatures against the Alien and Sedition
acts was dashed by the dissentient replies from all the New England
States and by the lack of replies from the Southern States. They
accounted for it by the tardiness with which State officials change,
not always representing public opinion. The ease with which they carried
all the States except seven in the ensuing election of 1800 enabled
them to give the resolutions a large share of the credit for bringing
about the victory.

In the midst of the war fever, Congress assembled in December, 1798,
in the city of Philadelphia. No such glorious pomp and circumstance
of war had ever been witnessed at the opening of a session. When
President Adams read his address from the Speaker's platform to the
assembled Houses, notifying them that France showed no inclination to
yield, there sat at his right hand George Washington, summoned from
Mount Vernon to become the Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief
of the provisional army against the Republic of France. Near him sat
the new major-generals, Alexander Hamilton and Charles C. Pinckney,
the latter one of the rejected envoys to France. Soon after the opening,
Washington returned to his home, leaving Hamilton in command, an
arrangement not consented to without reluctance by Adams, and destined
to bear fruit later. The war measures were continued by the so-called
"Logan act" providing punishment for any citizen of the United States
who should, without authority, carry on communication with a foreign
government with an intent to influence any action. It was brought out
by Doctor Logan, a well-meaning Republican of Pennsylvania, who had
unofficially gone to France in an effort to avert the threatened war
and had held communication to this end with Talleyrand, Merlin, the
First Director, and others. With the suspicion common to the times,
the Federalists thought he was endeavouring to act as mediator or
plotting some league with France in the event of war. This act marked
the extreme limit, to the Republican mind, of the tyranny of the Central
Government over citizens of a State.

It might have been fortunate if matters had been put to the test in
1798 and the following year. If resistance had assumed definite shape
it would have been successful or it would have been overcome. The
history of the Union would have been put forward more than half a
century, or it would never have been written. For the time being, each
side seemed inclined to go to the extreme point. The Federalists had
taken their places in the Congress determined to ignore the scores of
petitions for the repeal of the acts. They refused to debate motions
to rescind, and came to successful votes as a "silent legislature."
Another provisional army was authorised and further additions made to
the regular army and navy. On the other hand, the Legislature of
Kentucky, rendered even more defiant by the timid assurance in the
replies of a few legislatures to her appeal and the decidedly
unfavourable answers of a large number, renewed her resolutions of the
preceding year in even stronger language. One new phrase, that "a
nullification by those sovereigns of all unauthorized acts done under
color of that instrument is the rightful remedy," was important because
of the later use made of it. Jefferson had used "nullification" in his
draft of 1798. It was no stronger than other words and phrases, yet,
thirty years later, the words "interpose" and "protest" were passed
by as too feeble, and "nullification" adopted as the proper term for
open resistance, But that Kentucky did not mean forcible resistance
is proved by her accompanying statement that she would bow to the laws
of the Union because she was a party to the Federal compact. The
Virginia Assembly reaffirmed its principles in resolutions and an
address to the people the following year.

In the midst of the warlike preparations, when the two republics seemed
determined to test the patience of each other; when the Jeffersonians
were bound hand and foot by the war craze; when Hamilton awaited the
word which would at last league his country with England against French
fanaticism and would also bring a realisation of his dream of a military
command--in the midst of all this, President Adams, in February,
suddenly sent to the Senate the nomination of the American Minister
at The Hague to be an envoy to France! The Federalists were dumfounded
at his change of position. If negotiations were renewed, peace might
follow. Peace with France would mean hostility with England, if not
a revival of the danger of absorption by French intrigue. Proud in
their strength, the Federalists had assembled only to be undone and
their warlike preparations made into an idle show by the actions of
this headstrong John Adams, who insisted upon being the President of
his own administration, and who would not take seasonable advice from
his party. He had done what the members of his Cabinet had feared,
although they now pretended to be surprised. For three months past he
had invited suggestions for envoys in case France should yield, had
drawn up a form of proposed treaty, and had ridiculed the idea of a
French invasion of the United States. "There is no more prospect of
seeing a French army here than in heaven," he said. Enforced by
Hamilton, who "chanced to be present," the members of his Cabinet had
wrestled with him for hours in a private conference at Trenton to turn
him from his purpose of conciliation rather than war. He informed them,
as he later informed Congress, that he had received assurance from
Talleyrand that if another representative should be sent to France
from the United States he would undoubtedly be received with the respect
due to the representative of a free, independent, and powerful nation,
thus using almost the precise words of Adams.

By the time the new envoys, whose appointment the Federalists did not
dare openly to oppose, reached France, the Directory had fallen and
Napoleon was First Consul. He saw the usefulness of the United States
to his plans as a friend rather than an enemy, and was ready to bury
all grievances in a treaty. The three envoys, Murray, Ellsworth, and
Davie, had no difficulty in getting the United States relieved from
the treaty obligation of 1778 and in arranging compensation for the
damages inflicted on American commerce. Thus was closed by the Treaty
of 1800 the series of events which came so near involving in war the
two nations, the allies of a few years before.

Viewed as a part of the diplomatic history of the United States, this
war of 1798 is simply an incident. In the story of the Union it plays
a greater part. Regardless of its disastrous results to the Federalists,
it undoubtedly first rallied the people to the standard of a union for
the common defence against a foreign foe. The old Revolutionary spirit
had been revived. A national respect had been created in the eyes of
its constituents. This was essential to a proper respect in the eyes
of other nations.

This national spirit, if the Administration had remained in the hands
of the Federalists, might have grown too rapidly for the maintenance
of a proper equilibrium. Hamilton, unhampered by an Adams, would have
made the United States a party to European alliances, dangerous to
American originality and American neutrality. Self-government would
have assumed some form of European imitation. Drawn into the Napoleonic
wars as allies of Britain, nothing but a miracle could have saved them
from the legitimacy-restoring Congress of Vienna. What changes in
American history might have followed! The desire of Britain for the
Louisiana country, the claim of Spain to the Mississippi below the
Ohio, silenced but not abandoned after 1783, the necessity for
neutrality as a basis for the Monroe Doctrine, and the development of
America free from the burden of a war-basis defence, must be considered
in this connection. So many are the conditions and menaces that
speculation pauses at predicting the results if the great law of
reaction had not manifested itself at this juncture.

The decision of John Adams to renew negotiations with France thus
became a turning-point in history, because it precipitated the
threatened schism among the Federalists, led to the downfall of the
party, and turned the National Government from centralisation toward
decentralisation. Although Adams recognised all this, he nevertheless
defended his decision as the most disinterested and meritorious action
in his life. Years after, he said that he desired no other inscription
on his gravestone than, "Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself
the responsibility of the peace with France, in 1800." At the time he
showed no spirit of yielding to his advisers, who declared his action
"the great shade on the presidential escutcheon." They said they had
been delivered to the enemy in the house of their friend. Hamilton
confessed that the news of the mission would astonish him if anything
from that quarter could astonish. Having complete mastery over the
President's Cabinet and with a large following in Congress, Hamilton
had become almost a dictator in the party during the war craze and the
enforcement of the Alien and Sedition laws. With the talent of a born
leader, he assumed charge of the War Department during the two years
that he was a major-general. Adams resented every assumption and attempt
at dictation.

"If any one entertains the idea that because I am a President of three
votes only I am in the power of a party," said he, "they shall find that
I am no more so than the Constitution forces upon me. If combinations of
senators, generals, and heads of departments shall be formed such as I
cannot resist, and measures are demanded of me that I cannot adopt, my
remedy is plain and certain."

Although not driven to resignation, as here hinted, Adams was from
this time sentenced to be cut off with one term by Hamilton and the
party. Meanwhile, Hamilton gave out what his policy would have been
in executing the Alien and Sedition laws. He would have collected a
"clever force" of the national militia and marched them toward Virginia.
There was an obvious excuse for this action in her resolutions, he
said. Then he would have measures taken by the National Government to
arrest some alien and so put Virginia to the test of resistance. To
the Speaker of the House, he outlined the steps necessary to be taken
if the Union was to be preserved. It was the swan song of extreme
centralisation. He would make the national judiciary districts much
smaller, greatly increasing the number and efficiency of the judges,
and also have national justices of the peace in every county. He would
give the Central Government power to construct roads and canals, would
increase the taxes, build a powerful navy, and make permanent the
provisional army. To reduce the dangerous power of the great States
and to curb their rivalry with the nation, he would divide them into
smaller States.

It was entirely too late for such unionising suggestions. They had
gone out of fashion for sixty years to come. Reaction had set in.
Public sentiment, frequently reproached for its fickleness, but in
reality protective in its vacillation, demanded a change. Federalism
had lost prestige. Its leaders were at enmity. Washington, its
unconscious mainstay, was dead.

"The irreparable loss of an estimable man removes a control which was
felt and was very salutary," wrote Hamilton to a foreign correspondent.
"At home, everything is in the main well; except as to the perverseness
and capriciousness of one and the spirit and faction of many. The
leading friends of the government are in a sad dilemma."

The first reaction against an enlarged and all-powerful America had
been reached in the history of parties. The drag on the chariot was
now to be felt.

The Republicans were in correspondingly high spirits over the
prospective downfall of the party which had so far perverted the
administration of the National Government from the path which it should
have taken. Republican rhymesters exhausted their wit in describing how

  "Brave Hamilton, our warrior bold,
   Strove Adams in the chair to hold,
   By mustering sense, and spleen, and wit,
   To prove him totally unfit."

Madison thought a steady adherence to the principles of prudence all
that was needed. "It would be doubly unwise," he wrote to the impatient
Monroe, now Governor of Virginia, "to depart from this course at a
moment when the party which has done the mischief is so industriously
co-operating in its own destruction." If anything was wanting to assure
the defeat of the Federalists, it was supplied in the publication of
"A Letter from Alexander Hamilton Concerning the Public Conduct and
Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States." The
letter laid bare most mercilessly the weakness in the nature and the
defects in the administration of John Adams. Material for the recital
had been furnished Hamilton by his tools in the Cabinet. Hamilton had
his revenge on Adams, but he paid dearly for it in the estimation of
every non-partisan American. Simply because the national structure was
not being built to his own plans he would endanger the fabric by giving
it over to those whose theories tended to weakening instead of
strengthening it.




CHAPTER XIV

THE ADVENT OF DEMOCRACY



The presidential election of 1800 was epoch-making in several meanings
of the term. It was a reaction against the bold and defiant attitude
of the party in power. It was a revolution of the people. Yet it was
neither a dissolution of all government, as it appeared to the defeated,
nor a permanent conversion of the people to democracy, as the victorious
element was inclined to consider it. Sixty years later, the people
would rise against the victorious party, grown to be a slave-truckling
organisation, overscrupulous of the individual when the world was
turning to aggregation, and would take the sceptre from them for a
quarter of a century at least. The masses punish arrogance in a party
as in an individual. Unlimited success is always fatal. No sooner has
the party passed the safety-line in one direction than the tide of
popular favour turns in the opposite way and leaves it stranded. Owing
to such reaction, the National Government has never approximated anarchy
on the individualistic side of Jeffersonianism, nor has it been in
danger of monarchy under Hamiltonian centralising principles at the
other extremity. To-day it is as far from the ideals of the one as the
other. Controlled constantly by centrifugal and centripetal forces,
the fixed orbit of the Union has been maintained.

The election of 1800 marked the first transfer of the national control
from one party to another. So accustomed has time made us to these
changes, that it is difficult to appreciate the anxiety with which the
people of that day awaited the transition. Well-known party issues,
announced in party platforms, now give a fair assurance of the policies
to be pursued. Yet no serious suggestion emanated from the Federalists
that they would not yield to the ballot. Fitness for self-government
was again demonstrated, especially when contrasted with some other
American nations, by the peaceful eviction of one party, yielding to
no more warlike weapon in the hands of its opponents than the suffrage
of citizens.

The anxiety of the hour was increased because the national machinery
had suddenly come to a standstill. The defect predicted by its enemies
and feared by its friends had suddenly appeared in the method of
electing a President. According to the Constitution, each elector wrote
two names upon his ballot. The man receiving the highest number, if
a majority, was declared President, and the next highest, Vice-President.
Every Republican elector chosen in 1800 had written upon his ballot the
names of Jefferson and Burr. Consequently neither was elected, because
neither had a majority. The superiority of Hamilton over Jefferson as a
party manager is manifest by the fact that Hamilton had feared a
Federalist tie in the election of 1789 and had taken steps to prevent it.
The Republicans were now in a quandary. John Adams had received only
sixty-five votes, cut off with one term, a vicarious sacrifice, as he
thought himself; yet neither Jefferson nor Burr was elected, each having
seventy-three votes. Various rumours disturbed the peace. It was said that
Congress would appoint a President for the interim; that Adams would hold
over; or that Hamilton, disappointed in not being made President, would
turn dictator. Governor Monroe promised Jefferson that he would
immediately re-convene the Virginia Assembly "should any plan of
usurpation be attempted at the federal town." Monroe's remedy was an
amendment which would correct the Constitution in this particular. The
fathers had not foreseen this precise accident, but, in their wisdom, had
provided a remedy for a defective election by casting a decision in the
House of Representatives, the most popular body next to the electors.
Jefferson had undoubtedly been the choice of the people, and his selection
had been the intention of the Republican electors. This was ultimately
accomplished in the House. An amendment to the Constitution was adopted
before the next election to prevent the recurrence of such an accident,
and the Union had by good fortune passed a crisis in a presidential
election second only to that of 1876.

The discomfited Federalists sought an explanation for their defeat in
everything save their own actions. After only twelve years, and twelve
years passed in creating an efficient from a deficient government, the
people had turned against them. "No party ever existed knew itself so
little," said John Adams, "or so vainly overrated its own influence
and popularity as ours. None ever understood so ill the causes of its
own power or so wantonly destroyed them." State debt assumption, the
bank, the excise, the increased debt, the war expenditures, the direct
taxes, and the Alien and Sedition laws would seem to furnish a
sufficient list of reasons for the downfall of a party, which came
into the Administration by only three votes. Yet, by common consent,
the blame for the defeat was placed on the aliens and their presses.
"A group of foreign liars," was the forceful way in which the defeated
President explained it, "encouraged by a few ambitious native gentlemen,
have discomfited the education, the talents, the virtues, and the
property of our country." Chagrined that Washington should have two
terms and he cut off with one, smarting under the treacherous letter
of Hamilton, to which he speedily framed a reply, the ex-President
"trotted the bogs" back to Massachusetts, as he termed it, without
paying his successor the courtesy of waiting to see him inaugurated.
Gadsden, the old Revolutionary leader of South Carolina, now relegated
to the line of spectators, lamented the short-sightedness of early
days in not sufficiently guarding American citizenship from the
admission of foreign meddlers. "Our old-standers and independent men
of long, well-tried patriotism, sound understanding, and good property,"
said he, "have now in general very little influence in our public
matters." He wished the advice of John Rutledge had been taken. He
would have admitted only the sons of aliens to citizenship.

The new President was to the manor born, but he held theories
dangerously akin to those put forth by the foreign faction, against
which the Alien and Sedition laws had been aimed. Speculative
philosophy, however philanthropic in its intent, was heresy to the
practical Federalists. Hamilton, in the midst of the uncertain election,
was reported to have given in a toast his preference for "a dreamer
rather than a Catiline," as between Jefferson and Burr. During the
campaign, pamphlets appeared describing Jefferson as a wild philosopher,
one who believed the savage more independent and happy than the
civilised man; who preferred newspapers to government; who believed
that a little rebellion now and then was a good thing; who esteemed
property and obligations of so little value as to declare that the
actions of one generation were not binding on the next; who justified
the excesses of the French Revolution by saying that if only an Adam
and an Eve were left in every country and left free, it would be better
than it had been before. Memories of Tory confiscations and penalties
were sufficiently fresh to give credence to a rumour that the
President-elect contemplated such retributive measures toward his
political opponents. Memories of the disunion sentiments contained in
the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were still fresher, although
Jefferson's close connection with the latter was not yet generally
known.

Thomas Jefferson was an exponent of the democracy of his day, and with
him democracy came into the National Administration. The "well-born"
were discomfited. Yet it was not the democracy of Andrew Jackson's
time. It was a democracy reflected from Europe like everything else
in America at the time. It was the democracy of Montesquieu and the
encyclopædists. It was a democracy which could be led by a college
graduate and lawyer, who was also a gentleman farmer and a large
landholder, bound to his party by a country residence, by being a
borrower, and by speculative theories. Only such aristocratic democracy
was possible on the Atlantic coast-plain. Pure American democracy would
be born only after advancing civilisation found a majority in the
mid-valley of the continent, with the barrier of the Alleghenies at
its back. It reached a crude form in Andrew Jackson, the Indian fighter,
and a slightly higher type in Abraham Lincoln, the prairie lawyer.

Jefferson's democracy in the abstract was a kind of political
millennium, in which the people collectively exhibited traits quite
different from their individual components. The people, to Jefferson's
mind, were unselfish, by nature good, and needing no restraining bonds.
They were their own censors. His democracy in the concrete took the
shape of a great uprising of the people in 1800, temporarily led astray
from the true principles of self-government by the undue influence of
Alexander Hamilton acting through the moneyed interests, but returning
joyously and regenerate to the path of constitutional rectitude. The
election of 1800 he pronounced as real a revolution in the principles
of government as was that of 1776 in its form; the material difference
being that one was effected by the sword and the other by the rational
and peaceable method of suffrage. Jefferson had no more conception of
a modern political party than had Washington,--the latter because he
saw in them only factions; the former because his party embraced the
entire people.

For several years, it is true, Jefferson had been directing the pens
of his lieutenants in the various States, circulating sound Republican
literature, patronising Republican newspapers, and tabulating Federalist
defeats as skilfully as a modern political manager. He encouraged the
people to mass-meetings or county conventions of delegates. This was
probably the beginning of the county political machinery. He lamented
that the South had no towns, such as New England had, which would make
smaller units for popular gatherings. The Federalists scorned this
political machinery as too trivial and feared it as too popular. It
would have a tendency to make the people less amenable to the control
of their leaders. They preferred to continue the Revolutionary custom
of committees of correspondence to manage party affairs.

All this herculean effort was felt by Jefferson to be necessary to win
popular attention and support from the centralisation of Hamilton,
which, to his myopic vision, was monarchism. Years after, he testified
that nothing on earth was more certain than that if he, placed by his
office of Vice-President at the head of the anti-monarchists, had given
way and had withdrawn from his post, the people would have given up
in despair and the cause of liberty have been lost. By his efforts,
and the aid of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, the Constitution
and the Union had been saved when "at its last gasp."

As the time of Jefferson's inauguration approached, rumours of
revolutionary action grew into a general alarm lest all the union-making
of twelve years should be annihilated and the Federation days be brought
back again. Jefferson's well-known antipathy to taxation and a national
debt caused a rumour that he planned repudiation of the national
obligation, perhaps an agrarian law, and even the distribution of all
property. The vested interests were as much alarmed as ever they were
in subsequent elections. "We have seen," cried one holder of national
certificates and a subscriber to the bank, "the French clergy stripped
in a night. One vote of Congress would put our federal debt into the
family tomb with the paper money of Revolutionary days." Among the
measures supposed to be contemplated by the victorious "mobocrats,"
as the Federalists called them, were the abolition of the United States
Senate, destruction of foreign commerce and public schools, the
abolition of internal taxes, the annihilation of the bank, and the
Europeanising of the country by French immigrants. "God is punishing
the manifold sins of this nation by delivering it over to projectors
and philosophists," said a New England clergyman. Governor Strong, of
Massachusetts, appointed a day of fasting and prayer, that the first
magistrate and other rulers of the nation might rise superior to private
interests and the prejudice of party. The lower branch of Congress had
gone over to the Jeffersonians, and the upper House would be lost after
the next session. No check was possible upon the reformers.

Although neither partisans nor people were in such dangers as imagined
by the Federalists, the National Government might have been seriously
impaired by Jefferson and his followers, if necessity had not been
most fortunately on the other side. The contest was very unequal, as
well for Jefferson as for his successors who struggled conscientiously
but vainly against natural laws. Jefferson was misjudged by those who
pronounced him opposed to all union. He was always in favour of a
limited union--an impossible union as it proved--with the unexpressed
powers retained by the States. "The states," said he, "can best govern
our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones." In
later years he could remember but one instance of control vested in
the Federal over the State authorities in a matter purely domestic,
and that was the metallic tenders. Nor could he be said to be opposed
to the Federalists as a whole, since he never recognised the party,
but simply a few of its leaders. The latter were for the moment
misleading the people. He expected in time to win all back except "the
Coryphæi," or leaders, whom he pronounced incurables. One of the first
unpleasant revelations to Jefferson as President was the fact that a
sufficient number of the people to constitute a party would persist
in remaining under the influence of Hamilton and his fellows in several
of the States.

The man who depends thus upon the people and appeals to them as his
monitor must risk the charge of demagogism. Every action differing
from custom will be considered a bid for popular applause. "Jeffersonian
simplicity" has been ridiculed as a masquerade for a purpose. Yet it
was a protest against Old World imitation. Never was a salutation made
or an address presented to Washington or Adams at an opening of Congress
that Jefferson did not see in it a warning of imminent monarchy. He
applauded the democratic firmness, called "stubbornness" by the
Federalists, of Matthew Lyon, the only member of the House of
Representatives who steadfastly refused to march in procession to the
residence of President Adams in order to present to him the accustomed
complimentary address and to partake of his refreshments. Clearly it
was the duty of a President of the people to abolish these borrowed
forms of royalty. When elected Vice-President, Jefferson requested
that he might be notified by mail instead of by a messenger. No
notification of his election to the Presidency was necessary since he
was presiding over the Senate when elected by the House.

The embryonic city of Washington, surrounded by dense woods, was the
scene of Jefferson's inauguration, and it afforded little for the
ceremonies except democratic simplicity. It was announced in advance
that no "white wands" would be carried, in the British style, at this
inauguration. Republican papers had predicted that

  "Philosoph's reign the world will bless,
   Join'd with religion's simpler dress.
   Truth in homely garb shall shine,
   On every state, in every clime."

The inauguration plans provided only a salute from the company of
Alexandria riflemen who paraded before the lodgings of the
President-elect, an escort of citizens and members of Congress to the
Senate wing of the unfinished Capitol, and an inconsiderable
illumination at night. At a later time, in an effort to magnify
Jeffersonian simplicity, the story was invented that the President-elect
rode unattended to Capitol hill and tied his horse to a tree near the
spring.

Since Jefferson had been deprived of his wife by death many years
before, the social problem was greatly simplified. Hospitable to
extravagance in his home, as President he must reduce his entertainment
to the simplicity becoming a republic. He soon formulated as part of
his social program: "Levees are done away with. The first communication
to the next Congress will be, like all subsequent ones, by message,
to which no answer will be expected." In thus trimming away the useless
ceremonials which had so far attended the beginning of each session
of Congress, obviously copied, as previously said, from the opening
of a session of Parliament, Jefferson was contributing to American
individuality and common sense.

The task of restoring the Union to the form the fathers had meant for
it and revoking the prerogatives unconstitutionally given to it was
uppermost in Jefferson's mind. The bank had been chartered for twenty
years and was beyond reach at present. The Sedition law and the Alien
Friends act had expired by limitation before Jefferson came in. The
Alien Enemies act was harmless because it rested entirely with the
President for execution and was valid only during a foreign war; since
it might be useful later it was allowed to remain on the statute book.
But the odious excise, the stamp taxes, and carriage licenses could
be repealed, the probationary period for naturalisation could be reduced
to the former limit, work on the great war-ships could be stopped,
the provisional army allowed to disband, and Hamilton and other generals
cut off from the public treasury. The vast appropriations for the army
and navy and the coast defences could be reduced, and the expense of
the ornamental consular service cut down. As rapidly as possible,
Congress carried out these reform suggestions of the new President.
The Federalists deplored his penny-wise economy, especially when fifteen
ships, which had cost the Government nearly a million dollars, were
sold for one-fourth that amount.

The work of reform did not stop here. Two branches of the National
Government had been brought back to democratic principles by the will
of the people. But the third branch, the Judiciary, remained in the
control of the "monarchists." Jefferson first did justice, as he
conceived it, to Lyon, the only prisoner remaining convicted under the
Sedition law. No doubt some of the Federal judges had been overzealous
in securing the conviction of offenders under this law. Holding life
tenure under the Constitution, they could be reached only by
impeachment. This remedy was attempted in order to punish Judge Chase,
an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, who had shown partiality,
it was claimed, in the trial of Fries and Callender five years before.
The requisite two-thirds of the Senate did not vote him guilty, and
this method of curbing the Judiciary failed. "Impeachment is not even
a scarecrow," admitted the disappointed President. The enemy had retired
into the stronghold of the Judiciary, as he said, to be fed from the
treasury, and from thence to beat down Republicanism. "By a fraudulent
use of the Constitution," he explained, "which has made judges
irremovable, they have multiplied useless judges merely to strengthen
their phalanx."

In this indictment, Jefferson referred to the act of the closing days
of the Federalists, whereby the number of Federal courts had been
increased to twenty-seven. It had been done by creating six circuit
courts, with judges, marshals, and attorneys, instead of requiring the
district judges and Supreme Court justices to make up these courts as
had been done under the Judiciary Act of 1789. The excuse for the
creation of these medium courts was that too much labour had been
imposed upon the judges and justices by the old method. But the
Republicans believed it had been done to make places for a large number
of irremovable Federalist office-holders. By another act, a circuit
court, with three judges, was created for the District of Columbia,
with an elaborate system of justices' courts and justices of the peace.
To fill the large number of places thus created, the pen of John Adams
had been kept busy up to the last hour of his administration. Hence
the "midnight appointments," as they were commonly known. Some of the
district judges were advanced to the new circuit judgeships, and their
places filled by the district attorneys. These were "nominated for
promotion," as the message to the Senate termed it.

Not only would this presumably hostile force be in Jefferson's camp,
but their salaries would seriously interfere with his plans for
retrenchment. The Constitution distinctly provided that "judges both
of the supreme and inferior courts shall hold offices during good
behavior." But before the first session of Congress under his
administration was ended, Jefferson wrote that they had "lopped off
a parasite limb, planted by our predecessors on the judiciary body for
party purposes." How had it been done? By passing a new judiciary act,
which abolished the whole system of circuit courts, with their judges
and minor officials, and substituted the old practice of requiring the
Supreme and district judges to perform the labours of the circuit
courts. No life tenure would hold for an office which did not exist.
The anathemas of the "promoted" officials, thus fallen between stools,
added to the pleasure of the Jeffersonians. The names of twenty-two
unfortunates, whom the Senate failed to find time to ratify in the
closing hours, were recalled by Jefferson, under the caption, "Nominated
but not appointed."

Midnight of the 3rd of March had caught forty-one of the proposed
Federal justices of the peace for the District of Columbia without
their appointment having been fully made. Jefferson arbitrarily cut
down their number to twenty-five, "having been thought too many," as
he said. Among those dropped were four whose commissions had been made
out and sealed by the acting Secretary of State, but had not been
delivered. Madison, who became Secretary of State under Jefferson,
refused to deliver the commissions, and the men, headed by one William
Marbury, made a motion in the Federal court to obtain them. They had
no recourse in the State courts. From this trivial circumstance,
involving the least national judiciary office, came the case of Marbury
vs. Madison, involving the right of the judiciary branch of the Federal
Government to give an order to the executive.

One phase of the relation of these two branches had been established
nearly ten years before, when President Washington attempted to get
an interpretation from the Supreme Court upon the binding clauses of
the vexatious treaty with France. He was told that the court was not
an advisory body, but a tribunal established to adjudge specific cases
brought before it. For this advisory service, the Executive must depend
upon his Attorney-General. About the same time, the United States
circuit courts protested against an act of Congress which made them
recipients of pension applications subject to the final decision of
the War Department. Evidently the Judiciary intended to remain
independent of both the other branches of the National Government.

One feature of the relationship between the Federal courts and the
Congress had been presumed to exist by Hamilton and other commentators
on the Constitution, viz., the power to adjudge of the rights of
individuals under an act of Congress. This principle of passing on the
constitutionality of a legislative act by the courts had been
established in at least five States before the adoption of the
Constitution. It had been exercised in several cases by the Federal
courts before the case of Marbury _vs._ Madison arose. A new contention
was involved by asking whether the request made to the Supreme Court
to issue a mandamus would hold against the provisions of the
Constitution, which did not include mandamus in the powers specifically
given to the court.

It chanced that the case came before John Marshall, who had recently
assumed the station of Chief Justice, to which John Adams appointed
him in the closing months of his administration. The previous history
of the court, with the exception of two or three cases, had been
insignificant. Its decisions during the first ten years do not fill
as many pages as do those for a single year at the present time. Jay
had resigned its headship to undertake the mission to England, impressed
with the belief, as he afterward said, that the court could never
obtain the energy, weight, and dignity essential to affording due
support to the National Government. He refused to return to the bench,
and Marshall was appointed, with whom the second era of the court
begins. Marshall was a Virginian, a school-fellow of Monroe, and
co-worker with Madison in the Virginia Constitutional Convention. But
the war acquaintance which he formed with Washington and Hamilton,
added to his personal views, turned him toward Federalism. As a
Virginian, he was cultivated by members of that party, office after
office being placed at his option. Accepting the Chief-Justiceship
under a life tenure, he was "saddled" on the Republicans, as they said.

The decision in the case of Marbury _vs._ Madison was one of many which
emanated from Marshall, silently shoring up the fabric of the Union
as it was erected by the hand of necessity. "The theory that an act
of legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void," said the Chief
Justice, in granting Marbury and others the withheld commissions,
through the district court, "is essential to a written constitution,
and is consequently to be considered by this court as one of the
fundamental principles of our society." We speak so easily now of
declaring a law unconstitutional, thereby rendering it null and void,
and we acquiesce so readily in these decisions that it is difficult
to imagine the small beginnings of this great power exercised by one
branch of the Federal Government over another. By holding that the
mandamus must issue from the District and not the Supreme Court, the
case might have been dismissed briefly. The Republicans thought the
long disquisition on the powers of the court and its relation to the
executive branch a kind of defiance and entirely unwarranted. It was
the beginning of a long list of similar offences by Marshall.

Meanwhile the new Administration had continued its reform activities,
"to restore the government to its principles, amend its defects, reform
abuses, and introduce order and economy in the administration," as
Monroe outlined it to President Jefferson. The latter summed up the
reform work of the Republicans at the end of the first session:

"They have reduced the army and navy to what is barely necessary. They
are disarming executive patronage and preponderances by putting down
one-half the offices of the United States which are no longer necessary.
These economies have enabled them to suppress all the internal taxes and
still to make such provision for the payment of their public debt as to
discharge that in eighteen years. They are opening the doors of
hospitality to fugitives from the oppressions of other countries; and we
have suppressed all those public forms and ceremonies which tended to
familiarize the public eye to the harbingers of another form of
government."

Thus had democracy, in Jefferson's opinion, at last come into its own.




CHAPTER XV

STRICT CONSTRUCTION AN IMPOSSIBILITY



Sixty years of almost uninterrupted Republican-Democratic administration
were inaugurated with Thomas Jefferson in 1801. This period was
auspiciously begun by correcting the abuses wrought in the National
Government by the twelve years of Federalism. It was ended by the
faithful adherence of the party to the slavery system, to which it was
bound both by geographic strength and the principles of individualism.
The period was apparently long enough to allow the party to give the
Union such a bias toward decentralisation that it could never recover
its power and prestige. How the compelling laws of organised society,
the needs of the people in their conquest of the wilderness, and the
necessity of providing for the common defence and the general welfare
prevented such an unfortunate consummation makes up the middle period
of the story of the United States.

It was easy for the new administrators to show in theory how the Central
Government should be restricted to certain actions; it was impossible
to avoid entering upon certain new activities as progress demanded
from time to time. Take such a simple matter as the national capital.
Suddenly transferred to the woods on the banks of the Potomac, the
National Government found no such accommodations as the two cities in
which it had previously been lodged had afforded. One completed and
one incomplete wing of the Capitol building, an empty and bare
President's mansion, one tavern, and a few houses, with streets
indicated only by felled trees, formed the Athens of America, pronounced
by Robert Morris the very best city in the world for a "future"
residence. Members of Congress who traversed the three miles of mud
road to Georgetown, where the only comfortable lodgings were to be
obtained, would willingly have reduced the scale upon which the capital
was laid out. Very early it became the "City of Magnificent Distances."
However crude the city might be, the soil on which it rested belonged
exclusively to the United States. It was the only spot of any magnitude
which could be so claimed. It was due to the generosity of two
neighouring States, Virginia and Maryland. To the same charity was
owed the money which had partly built the two wings of the Capitol and
the President's mansion. Nevertheless, land and buildings do not make
a city. Money for the construction of streets, it was at first supposed,
would come from the sale of lots. "Path-ways" were built from this
resource under direction of members of the Cabinet before the Government
was transferred from Philadelphia. Money was advanced on such
expectation both by Congress and by the State of Maryland. Yet the
advent of Government and the inauguration of Jefferson found the work
incomplete. Members of Congress who stepped gingerly in their low shoes
over the paths made of chips of stone from the new buildings, or who
attempted the mile of cleared roadway between the two administration
buildings, received an object lesson in the necessity for improvements
which speedily overcame conscientious scruples.

[Illustration: THE CITY OF WASHINGTON. A drawing made about 1800 before
the site was graded. The Capitol is seen at the left of the masts.]

Any expenditure for such purposes could find warrant in the Constitution
only through the implied powers theory. "To exercise exclusive
legislation" over the District might mean to construct sidewalks and
to grade streets; but it was not so expressed. So urgent became the
necessity, that in 1803 an appropriation for buildings was made to
include the repair of the highway between the Capitol and the other
public buildings. The expenditure of this money, as Jefferson afterwards
boasted, was confined carefully to the avenue between the Capitol and
Mansion hills and to the squares about them. As time went on and the
city grew, specific appropriations had to be made for the construction
of streets and roadways within the District. These were wrung annually
from the reluctant party. To the disgust of people living in more
remote parts of the District, the first of these sums was spent entirely
in widening Pennsylvania Avenue, planting it with trees, in replacing
its wooden culverts with brick, in repairing the public squares about
the buildings, and in grading the slope in front of the War Office.
"It cannot be supposed," replied Jefferson to one protestant, "that
Congress intended to tax the people of the United States at large for
all avenues in Washington and roads in the District of Columbia."

Trivial as these incidents must appear in comparison with the present
attitude of the Government toward the District, they serve to illustrate
the law of compulsion. Numerous others might be introduced here. The
Jeffersonians inherited from the Federalists a small collection of
books and maps, which had been purchased for the use of the members
of Congress deprived of the library facilities they had enjoyed in the
cities of New York and Philadelphia. It was the beginning of the present
magnificent Library of Congress. Instead of casting aside the volumes
and returning the unexpended balance to the treasury, the strict
constructionists adopted the library and soon began to make direct
appropriations for it, crowning the action in 1815 by expending
twenty-three thousand dollars for the purchase of Jefferson's own
library to be added to the collection.

Thus did the seat of government and its needs drive another wedge of
loose construction into close-grained theory. To have exclusive control
over a district not exceeding ten miles square meant not only police
control, but it meant to make a home fit for the national seat of
government, and to provide for the necessities of its representatives.
Nevertheless conscientious scruples and niggardly appropriations had
sufficient weight for many years to make the home of the Union a
disgrace to the nation and a thing of contempt in comparison with the
capitals of other lands.

If the strict constructionists had inaugurated the National Government,
their task of confining it within a certain limit would not have been
so difficult. There is little doubt that the power to "regulate
commerce" was intended originally to cover the collection of a national
impost. But if United States custom-houses were to collect duties on
imported goods, they must erect lighthouses, build piers, and dredge
channels in order to get the goods into the harbours. The States,
having surrendered the benefits of an impost to the National Government,
were not likely to undertake or continue such works on an adequate
scale. No permission to engage in such enterprises was to be found in
the Constitution except as deduced from the power stated above. The
encouragement of foreign commerce had been almost a fetich with the
Federalists. They had freely granted appropriations for such purposes.
"I well remember," said Jefferson, on one occasion to Gallatin, under
whose care these agencies of commerce must come, "the opposition on
this very ground to the first act for building a light house. The
utility of the thing has sanctioned the infraction."

But it was not possible to restrict the demand to lighthouses. Presently
an appropriation was necessary for a dry dock to accommodate the little
gunboats which the thrifty Administration had substituted for the
Federal men-of-war. Jefferson got out of this in a way which would
have done credit to his great rival. "Although the power to regulate
commerce," said he, "does not give a power to build piers, wharves,
open ports, clear the beds of rivers, dig canals, build warehouses,
build manufacturing machines, set up manufactories, cultivate the
earth, to all of which the power would go if it went to the first, yet
a power to provide and maintain a navy is a power to provide receptacles
for it and places to cover and preserve it." Here Jefferson had made
out a list of proscribed actions, which the National Government dared
not enter upon. But soon Gallatin reported a vessel sunk in the Delaware
River, a menace to navigation, which neighbouring States showed no
inclination to remove. Reluctantly the President gave permission to
have the United States open the river. In quoting the powers of the
National Government over commerce to justify the action, he added,
"But we must take care not to go ahead of them and strain the meaning
of the terms still further to the clearing out of the channels of all
rivers, etc., of the United States. The removing of a sunken vessel
is not the repairing of a pier." Nevertheless, soon after, an
appropriation was made for erecting public piers in the Delaware River.
It is needless to continue citing the steps by which the Administration
assumed a fostering care of these public improvements. To sum up during
the last year of Jefferson's administration, appropriations aggregating
almost one hundred thousand dollars were made, without opposition, for
constructing lighthouses, for removing bars and shoals, and making
safe the ways of ocean commerce. The extension of this paternalistic
principle to internal commerce would come in time with the movement
of the people inland.

[Illustration: WESTERN ARKS AT NEW ORLEANS. From Hall's "Etchings in
America." In the foreground appear the flat boats which have brought
down the produce of the western people and beyond the shipping, which
is to carry the stuff to foreign markets. The sketch furnishes an
Illustration of the compulsion which caused the purchase of New
Orleans.]

It may be said truthfully that these various measures, so inconsistent
with the early avowed principles of the party, were inherited from the
Federalists. But responsibility for the supreme act, the addition of
foreign territory to the national domain, must be assumed solely by
the Administration. Perhaps no action, until the decision to prevent
certain States from leaving the Union, contributed so much to the
central authority as the purchase of the Louisiana country by the
Jeffersonians. If the decision had been negative, if conscientious
scruples had been allowed to prevail, one hesitates to predict what
would have been the fate of this "pent-up Utica." For forty years the
ownership of Louisiana had been shifting and uncertain. For twenty
years its possession had been a matter of scheming and intrigue by
both Great Britain and France. Permanently in the hand of any foreign
power, it would have completely blocked the path of progress. To possess
one-half the drainage basin of the valley would have led to constant
conflict with the owners of the other half. The insularity upon which
the United States has depended so largely, the freedom from annoying
neighbours, room for the westward expansion of the people, the
unification of the Mississippi valley--all would have been lost if the
original strict-construction theory had prevailed. Securing a domain
extending to the Mississippi in the Peace of 1783 had been simply
retaining what had been won largely by the colonists twenty years
before when the French were driven from the valley. In the Louisiana
question, the nation faced for the first time a national expansion.

To pronounce this the paramount action of the century in Union-making,
one need only think of the precedent for acquiring new territory thus
formed and which has been followed in no less than seven instances and
confirmed by a decision of the Supreme Court. It seems strange that
the framers of the Constitution did not foresee and provide for such
an emergency. Perhaps the omission was due to the intuitive feeling
that no nation in all history had hesitated to enlarge its domain when
advantage offered or necessity demanded. Necessity was here the moving
principle and it scattered to the winds party objection to using the
implied powers, and forced the friends of government to take refuge
in the preamble to the Constitution and in "all laws which are just
and necessary," a position from which they had tried in vain to drive
the Hamiltonians a few years before.

It was ordained by fate that the Jeffersonians should father a policy
of national expansion which covered every addition of territory to
that of Alaska. By nature they were opposed to giving such advantage
to the central power. After the acquisition had been made, Jefferson
was loud in his declaration that he would not "give one inch of the
waters of the Mississippi to any nation"; but neither by nature nor
party was he an expansionist. He would have been satisfied with the
acquisition of the east bank of the river, including New Orleans.
During the negotiations he confessed his doubts of success. He thought
trade would soon make Natchez a second New Orleans. Hamilton, on the
contrary, was an expansionist by principle and party. Three years
before the purchase of Louisiana he said of that country and the
Floridas, "I have been long in the habit of considering the acquisition
of those countries as essential to the permanency of the Union, which
I consider as very important to the welfare of the whole."

Holding such aggressive opinions, Hamilton and his party, had they
been in control during this long period, might have rashly entered
upon an offensive policy which would have precipitated frequent wars
and have endangered the Republic before its home strength had been
developed. Looking to the happiness of the mass rather than the
individual and devoid of scruples about the divine rights of man, the
Federalists would not have hesitated to hold as subjects the inhabitants
of acquired territory longer than the principle of self-government,
for which a republic stands, would have permitted. On the other hand,
by the time the "porcupine policy" of dealing with other nations on
territorial questions, as the Federalists contemptuously called the
early attitude of their opponents, had grown gradually into an
aggressive policy, the Republic had become sufficiently strong to
maintain whatever position might be taken.

It was not alone fear that the ambitious Napoleon might obtain a
foothold in neighbouring territory which moved the Jeffersonians to
this inconsistent step. Neither was the action due entirely to fear
lest Britain might obtain possession of it in the renewed war with
France. The law of compulsion showed in other particulars. The advance
of the American pioneers across the continent could not be checked.
They had compelled the Atlantic-coast majority into making the Pinckney
Treaty which opened the mouth of the Mississippi in 1795. Remembrance
of their threatened secession compelled Jefferson to try to quiet their
fears freshly aroused by the transfer of Louisiana to France, and the
closing of the Mississippi. Ex-Governor Monroe, of Virginia, was
chosen to assist Livingston, because his former executive position had
put him in touch with the Western people.

In several ways Louisiana played havoc with strict-construction
theories. So regardful of the rights of the individual had the
Jeffersonians been in the early days that many had hesitated about
creating Territories in the western vacant lands, lest the people
migrating to them should not enjoy equal rights with their fellows in
the States. When the inhabitants of the Mississippi Territory in 1799
petitioned for promotion to the second grade of territorial government,
Jefferson denounced the first grade, which had been given to them by
Congress a few years before, as "a despotic oligarchy without a rational
object." Within five years, he and his party were facing the problem
of establishing a status for some forty thousand white people, whom
the United States had acquired with the Louisiana country. The problem
was whether to violate the doctrine of the rights of man as well as
the treaty and hold these people perpetually as colonists, or, by
providing for their erection into States, further imperil the sectional
balance of power, further endanger the sovereignty of the individual
States, and contribute to the growing strength of the Central
Government.

In his Ordinance of 1784, Jefferson had provided for eventual and not
immediate statehood for the inhabitants of the Western territory.
Manifestly a State could not be made out of vacant land; it must await
a sufficient number of inhabitants. But this excuse for holding citizens
temporarily in a subordinate position was not valid in Louisiana, where
the southern point of the great triangle already contained a sufficient
number of inhabitants for statehood. Moreover, Napoleon had sufficient
thought for these pawns in the game of diplomacy to insert in the
treaty of cession a provision that statehood should be given them "as
soon as possible." The Jeffersonians were compelled to resort to loose
construction in interpreting this phrase. Louisiana contained a large
non-English-speaking population, unaccustomed to the privileges and
obligations of free government. Their deficiency was only partly
supplied by a sprinkling of Americans, who always precede and bring
about a demand for expansion of territory. "All men are created equal,"
was the doctrine of the Jeffersonian Declaration. But even the
doctrinaire would not insist that it gave to each individual immediate
and equal share in all government both national and local, whether or
not he was prepared by inheritance or environment. During nine years
the people of the Louisiana territory had to serve in preparation under
the rule of the rights-of-man party, before the first portion was
erected to statehood on an equality with the older States.

Being unable to admit the people of Louisiana to immediate statehood,
and unwilling to hold them purely as colonists, the Jeffersonians
divided the land into a territory and a district. This action prolonged
for years the possibility that the people reside in territories,
deprived of the privileges and protection of a State government. Suppose
the "monarchists" should again come into national control and pass new
Alien and Sedition laws? Where could these inhabitants of a territory
find a protector? Under such conditions, the prestige of State
citizenship was rapidly disappearing. The very fact that certain
inhabitants of the United States were living solely under the protection
of the national authority inspired a greater respect for that authority.
Likewise, when these people were admitted to statehood at the end of
their period of probation, it would be done by an act of Congress, and
not by the States.

Among the many constitutional dilemmas into which the party had been
brought by this compulsory action, was a provision of the treaty that
the port of New Orleans should enjoy certain favours for a number of
years. To reconcile this exception with the Constitution, which says
that "all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the
states," it was declared that the territory had been purchased by the
States in their confederated capacity and they could hold it like a
colony. Therefore, the Congress could regulate it as a territory under
the Constitution without reference to the provisions affecting the
States. Thus did fate compel a virtual acknowledgment from the sticklers
for individual rights, within four years after their accession to
national control, that the Constitution did not follow in all its
provisions the extension of sovereignty over new soil.

From a broad point of view, the placing of sixty years of territorial
expansion in the hands of the party opposed to the practice by birth
and nature is a strong evidence of the checks and balances which have
made the nation. Under strict construction, territorial expansion
became a potent factor in loosening the bonds in which the Government
might have been confined. Under loose construction, expansion might
have become a centrifugal force through foreign conquest and colonial
holding which would have destroyed the free system it was intended to
build up. The Jeffersonians were moved in later expansions by a desire
to extend an economic system and to make party capital. They never
sought national aggrandisement, as their opponents might have done had
they been in power. Proud of the territorial growth of the Union as
we now are, and seeing so clearly the wisdom of the final consummation,
we forget that the domain might have been increased too rapidly or too
extensively in more sympathetic hands.

In still another way was the fallacy of strict construction laid bare
by the Louisiana question. The remedy of an amendment to the
Constitution to bestow needed powers had been the one frequently
suggested. Here was an early opportunity to test this constitutional
preventive against central usurpation. But time was wanting. "From the
moment that France takes possession of the mouth of the Mississippi,"
said Jefferson, "she becomes our mortal enemy." Amendment-making is
necessarily a slow process. Months if not years are required. Jefferson
was obliged reluctantly to abandon his first thought of an amendment
to cover both the present case of Louisiana and the future affair of
the Floridas, if they were not included in Louisiana. He was forced
to suggest to members of Congress that the less said about any
constitutional difficulty the better, and that it would be desirable
for that body to do what was necessary in silence.

If the Jeffersonians had been driven from their first ground by this
territorial acquisition, the Federalists had fared no better. They had
first called into being the genii of the "implied powers," and now had
the mortification of seeing it serve their enemies. Having swung in
the change of 1801 from the "ins" to the "outs," they became the
opposition party and were compelled to resist many measures and
principles which they had formerly advocated. They had gradually lost
State after State until they were confined to New England. The former
great national party, the party of Hamilton, Jay, and Adams, the party
to which Washington had leaned, was shrinking into a sectional faction.
Where it had once wished to give the Union every means of
aggrandisement, it was now compelled to oppose almost doubling its
domain, lest the balance of power between the different parts be lost.
It feared the ascendency which Louisiana would give to the Southern
interests, never foreseeing from the shape of the addition that the
advantage would in time lie with the North. Professing devotion to the
Union, they would now deprive it of the advantages resulting from
prolonging indefinitely its holding of colonies. They must have seen
the result if the domain had never extended beyond the Mississippi.
The territory both north and south of the Ohio would speedily be made
into States according to existing arrangements. The great prestige
inuring to the Union from territorial control would thereby cease. But
with the addition of new provinces from time to time, the holding of
territories preliminary to statehood must be indefinitely prolonged.
The functions of the Union would be multiplied instead of diminished.

By the acquisition of Louisiana, Jefferson effectually settled the
twenty years of internal dispute over the navigation of the lower
Mississippi. From source to mouth, it flowed presumably through American
territory. Americans were to be found on both sides the great water
highway. Those west of the river had crossed upon invitation of Spain,
who hoped in this way to people her province without loss to her other
possessions. The colonists taken across the river by Colonel Morgan
and others had caused no little alarm to statesmen in the Confederation
days, lest the population of the United States be drawn off to people
a Spanish possession and so weaken the Republic. Among the thirty-five
thousand or more people to be found about the city of New Orleans and
along the lower Mississippi and the Red rivers was a small percentage
of Americans; but a much larger proportion was to be found in the six
thousand inhabitants of St. Louis and the small villages near by.

This leaven of Americans affected the whole. They had been accustomed
to the fostering hand of the National Government in the matter of
improving means of transportation and communication in the older States
from which they had migrated, and they did not hesitate to demand such
aid for their new localities. Thus the people in their westward
movement, carrying with them remembrances of the benefits of government
assistance enjoyed in their former homes, have extended the system of
national improvements across the continent.

There was a pressing demand for assistance in the Louisiana country.
The province had been long neglected because of the frequent changes
in ownership and the Latin method of colony holding. The task of
Americanising this foreign element was imperative. The extent of
territory to be brought under harmonious rule was extensive and varied.
It was impossible for the Administration, in providing for the welfare
and defence of the acquisition, not to be drawn into measure after
measure of that paternalistic nature for which the party had so roundly
criticised the Federalists. The sole management of Territories was
vested in the National Government. The individual States could have
no part in providing for the inhabitants of the Louisiana Purchase.

[Illustration: TAKING POSSESSION OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. Occupying
presumably the same balcony in which Laussat, Wilkinson, and Claiborne
stood on the front of the Spanish _cabildo_ at New Orleans, in December,
1803, witnessing the replacing of the French flag by the American flag
in the public square below, there stand, in the illustration, the
Governor of Louisiana, with a descendant of Claiborne, the Archbishop
and the Mayor of New Orleans, enacting the scene in December, 1903.]

Federalist precedent had paved the way for Republican action. Since
the Revolutionary days, Congress had been accustomed to maintain troops
on the border for the protection of settlers. The establishment of
forts in distant parts made necessary the construction of roads between
the posts and their connection with the settled parts for the conveyance
of troops and supplies. The addition of the vast tract of Louisiana
demanded an immediate extension of military posts and military roads.

The Federalists had been accustomed, as previously described, to
construct new post-roads instead of confining the mails to roads already
built by State or private funds. Some of these post-roads were nothing
more than a "trace" cut through the woods, which permitted a man on
horseback to pass, carrying a post-bag. Even this could not be done
without some expenditure. Occasionally the expense was met by a donation
of public lands through which the trace passed. In other instances,
payment was made from the postal receipts and appropriations. The
constitutionality of such action had been attacked occasionally by the
Republicans before they came into power. But having assumed the national
control, they were compelled to continue the construction of military
and post-roads. Even the fear of a standing army and the desire to
economise could not warrant a neglect of the inhabitants scattered
through the new possession. Congress owed protection to them not only
as an implied power, but as an implied duty.

Thus it came about that Jefferson, who a few years before was taking
Madison to task for thinking that the power to establish post-roads
meant to construct new ones rather than to establish post-routes on
those already made, was engaged with his Cabinet in planning a vast
system of new highways to and through Louisiana. Among other
enterprises, they contemplated a great post-road to New Orleans through
Georgia, instead of the long water route heretofore used by way of
Nashville and Natchez. The new way, it was estimated, would shorten
the journey five hundred miles. Branches were planned to St. Louis and
to Detroit. The difficulties of frontier travel may be imagined from
the fact that the surveyor-general, who was despatched to examine the
feasibility of the Georgia route, was nearly three months in reaching
New Orleans from Washington.

Interested in scientific knowledge and exploration, and desirous of
keeping American ships off the seas by developing internal trade,
Jefferson had anticipated the purchase of Louisiana by proposing
confidentially to Congress the despatch of a few men on an investigating
trip up the Missouri River. Trade with the Indians needed to be
cultivated in this manner, but no State was sufficiently concerned to
undertake it. Jefferson found an easy way to warrant national action.
"The interests of commerce," said he, "place the principal object
within the constitutional powers and care of Congress." Not even
Randolph, who deplored every departure from old policies, could ever
regret the expenditure of the $2500 which sent the Lewis and Clark
expedition across the continent and laid the claims for national
addition nearly a half-century later. After this precedent, it was
easy to send Lieutenant Pike to ascertain the true source of the
Mississippi and to explore the vast plains on the south-west toward
the Spanish possessions. Many expeditions for scientific purposes and
for exploration have been sent by the National Government since that
day; but it must be remembered that the practice was inaugurated under
the strict constructionists, with no other warrant than "to regulate
commerce."

The Lewis and Clark expedition called fresh attention to the
possibilities of the great West, and justified the urgent demand of
the Western people for national aid. The danger of Western secession
had long since disappeared; but many plotters had shown a tendency to
use the frontiersmen as allies in the European wars. Genet, over ten
years before the Lewis and Clark expedition, contemplated the use of
an American force against British Canada. Miranda proposed to use the
same recruiting-ground for his movements on Spanish South America, and
even Hamilton consented to the scheme, if he could be commander of the
expedition. Now came Burr, planning an expedition of these hardy
trans-Alleghenians into New Orleans and thence into the disintegrating
Spanish possessions of the South-west. Napoleon's success seemed to
have turned the heads of all ambitious men of the day toward foreign
conquest and they proposed to use the Mississippi valley as a
rallying-ground. To invade the territory of a nation with whom the
United States was at peace was contrary to Federal law. Jefferson
turned his attention toward punishing Burr on even more serious grounds;
but Gallatin was keen enough to discover the cause for selecting the
Western people as tools. It was not a novel idea to suggest better
means of communication between the East and the West; but it was novel
to attribute Western disaffection to a lack of touch and sympathy
between the people of the two sections. Trade and intrigue with foreign
neighbours, so Gallatin thought, could be suppressed more easily by
kindness than by punishment. It was true that the National Government
had permanently opened the Mississippi River as an outlet for the West.
But the journey down was long and tedious, delays might be encountered
at New Orleans because of the limited number of ocean vessels on which
produce could be transshipped, and only a limited cargo if any was
possible on the return journey up-stream. The increase in population
and the consequent increase in the size of crops to be transported to
a market would speedily bring a demand for some means of taking the
products directly to the Atlantic seaboard and of bringing manufactured
goods in return.

Gallatin embodied some of these thoughts in his celebrated report on
the topography of the United States, which he submitted to Congress
in 1808. He first described the few attempts which had thus far been
made by States and private companies toward constructing canals and
turnpikes. Then he threw party theories to the wind and, with a
constructive statesmanship second only to that of Hamilton, he suggested
a vast system of national improvements on a worthy scale to be
undertaken and carried to completion by the central authority. It would
require not less than twenty million dollars. Since there would be an
annual surplus of five million dollars because of the unredeemable
form of the national debt, he would appropriate large sums to these
"national objects." Not only would the distant parts be bound together,
the mail better accommodated, and internal trade assisted, but, as
Gallatin pointed out, it would be possible to transport troops hurriedly
from place to place, adding to the national defence. Nature had
interposed mountains, falls, and sandbars in the pathways of interstate
communication. "The General Government alone," said he, "can remove
these obstacles."

Gallatin was compelled to acknowledge, however, that the execution of
his plan would be hampered because the National Government could not,
under the limits of the Constitution, undertake the construction of
a road or canal through a State without the express permission of that
State. In the Territories alone would it be possible. State consent
might be difficult to obtain, because so many States had inaugurated
similar enterprises, which would be obliged to compete with the national
roads and canals. Jefferson, in accord with his general theory,
suggested an amendment to the Constitution, removing this objection.
He overlooked the fact that national post-roads and military roads had
been already constructed within States. With such an amendment, he was
willing to use the national income accruing above the national expenses
for "the improvement of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other
great foundations of prosperity and union," as he said in his last
annual message.

Gallatin said in his report that the only work undertaken by the United
States at their sole expense, and to which the consent of the States
had been obtained, was the road from Cumberland to Brownsville. Further
appropriations for that object were constitutional. As to other
projects, he thought the National Government was empowered to do nothing
more at present than to assist those undertaken by giving them loans
or subscribing to their stock. Also the Federal engineers might be
employed in making surveys for proposed improvements. It seems strange,
in the light of modern Government initiative, to see statesmen blocked
in a desired undertaking by constitutional quibbling. Having embarked
in the work in the case of military and post-roads and in the Cumberland
Road, they hesitated to go on.

[Illustration: WRITTEN LAW OF THE NORTH-WEST TERRITORY. A law passed
at Vincennes, now in Indiana, against gambling. In the absence of
printing-presses it is said the judges were accustomed to nail up
copies of the laws on trees for the information of the public.]

This Cumberland National Turnpike is an excellent example of the
constant menace to individualism and the irresistible tendency toward
unionism resulting from the advance of population, the topography of
the country, and the cupidity of the people. The portage across the
watershed from the streams of the Atlantic plain to those of the Ohio
valley had been a matter of concern from colonial times. Artificial
waterways were impossible from lack of water-supply on the high levels.
The Union inherited this problem when the policy of creating national
Territories out of the back lands was inaugurated. Lack of funds
prevented any extensive attempt to solve the problem.

The State of Ohio was the first to be created out of the public domain.
The unsold public lands lying within its boundaries remained in the
possession of the United States, although sovereignty over them passed
to the State. By an agreement between the two powers, the State
refrained from taxing the lands for five years, in return for which
the Federal Government promised to spend five per cent, of the proceeds
of the land sales within the State in the construction of public roads.
A portion of this was to be devoted to building a highway over the
Allegheny Mountains to the State. Strict-construction scruples were
satisfied by securing the consent of the States through which the road
was to be built.

Consent having been given by the State Legislatures of Virginia,
Maryland, and Pennsylvania, work was begun in 1808 at the eastern
terminus of the portage, Fort Cumberland, Maryland, a name eventually
given to the entire road. Grants of money were made from the land
sales; but the proceeds accumulated so slowly that they were inadequate
for carrying on the work. The demand for the completion of the road
increased with growth of travel to the West. A way out of the difficulty
was found by making appropriations directly from the national treasury
"to be repaid out of the fund reserved for laying out and making roads
to the state of Ohio." When this condition would be dropped and
appropriations made openly for the road, the same as for the army, the
navy, and other specified obligations of the National Government, would
depend entirely upon the demands of the people. Every appropriation
simply whetted the appetite for more.

As Gallatin said, the Cumberland Road is unique. It is a solitary
example. It did not mean the adoption by the Jeffersonians of a party
policy on such liberal principles. But it made easier the adoption of
such a policy after the War of 1812 had demonstrated in a most
unpleasant manner the absolute necessity for such action on the part
of the General Government.

Jefferson had a most delightful manner of satisfying his conscience
and adjusting himself to the inevitable by likening national to
individual actions. In the case of the Louisiana purchase he had
compared the National Administration to a guardian who adds a desirable
bit of property to his ward's farm and then throws himself on the mercy
of the ward for approval. He pardoned the assumption of a constitutional
right to build the Cumberland Road by likening the Administration to
a farmer who wishes to sell some distant and inaccessible portion of
his land, and is compelled to spend part of the proceeds in constructing
roads to it in order to sell the remainder. Regardless of the soundness
or folly of such philosophy, the mischief was done. Insidiously the
internal-improvement precedent had been allowed to creep into the
strict-construction fold. How it grew until one veto after another was
required to bring the people back to their senses remains to be
described later.

During the latter portion of Jefferson's eight years of administration,
the party was saved from being driven into more Union-making actions,
because domestic matters were overshadowed by the hostile aspect of
foreign affairs. Measures looking to the improvement of internal
communication, development of interstate commerce, interior exploration
and discovery, and the spread of intelligence had to be postponed from
session to session to consider retaliation on the European foes to
American commerce. Such aggressive acts as the attack of the _Leopard_
on the _Chesapeake_ could brook no delay. But it was inevitable that
when the engrossing foreign questions should cease, the demand for
paternalistic measures would be renewed with a zeal doubled by delay
and by the new spirit of nationality. The important fact to be noted
at this time is that the movement of the people across the continent
went on steadily, whatever might be the aspect of affairs on the
Atlantic coast.

The foreign relations of the United States were rapidly coming to a
point which would terminate the predominance of European influence on
American political parties. The struggle of the French people for
liberty, which had appealed so powerfully to Jefferson and his
followers, was now lost in the ambitions of Napoleon. "I had hoped,"
said Jefferson at a later time, "that he would have seen the difference
between the example of a Cromwell and a Washington." Ten years before,
Jefferson would willingly have seen his countrymen fighting side by
side with the French patriots against monarchical England; but to be
allied with Napoleon meant to further the ends of Napoleon. With the
single exception of the Louisiana transaction, Jefferson's diplomatic
administration is a story of European intrigue and imposition upon an
impotent and helpless neutral. American commercial rights were lost
sight of in the world-struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. The
decrees of one belligerent were followed by checkmating orders in
council of the other, and _vice versa_, with no regard for neutral
rights, and no object save starving each other into submission.

It is true that the American traders sought every opportunity of evading
these orders and decrees and continuing the most profitable trade
America had ever known. For instance, Britain forbade all trading
directly between France, Holland, Spain, and their colonies in order
to cut off supplies. In order to evade this, an American captain would
take a cargo in these colonies, sail to some American port, enter his
cargo, and immediately clear with the same, without really unloading.
He was entitled to a drawback of the duties he had paid. Having now
broken his voyage, as he claimed, he sailed to a French or Spanish
port without danger of violating the British orders. The British
admiralty courts soon declared that this was an evasion; that there
had been in reality no "broken voyage." Then American traders began
the practice of really landing the goods in some American port, while
the vessel was overhauled and repaired, then continuing the voyage,
after reloading. The British courts conceded this to be a broken voyage.

In 1805, so ample were the supplies furnished France and Spain by this
method of evading the law, that the British court reversed its former
opinion. A large number of seizures followed. To cover the entire
continental coast, a paper blockade was declared by Britain about the
same time. The Administration could no longer continue its policy of
forbearance. Negotiation had failed. Retaliation was the only method
left. Jefferson, the father of his people, was a warrior neither by
nature nor practice. A foreign war meant to him the disarrangement of
domestic affairs, interference with domestic development, and the
accumulation of a debt which must fall in the last analysis upon the
common people, the least able to bear it. To a correspondent he
expressed his desire to avoid war until the national debt was
discharged, when the regular income would meet the expense of a war
and so prevent a new debt and increased taxes. His policy of
retrenchment, dictated by his love of the people, had reduced the army
and navy and left the land without adequate means of defence. He further
realised that war might bring undue national aggrandisement. The common
defence must be undertaken by the Central Government. In the haste and
the necessities of war, measures might be taken oppressive to the
people and destructive of their individual rights, which would never
be passed in the calm contemplations of peace. Reluctantly he was
compelled to advise Congress to enter upon a system of total embargo
on foreign trade, which might possibly avoid war and preserve the
pattern of neutrality which had been set by the first President.

Notwithstanding the pacific motives which impelled Jefferson to choose
that form of retaliation, the embargo was a part of the old colonial
idea of restriction. To avoid the capture of American goods and sailors,
keep them at home. Committing suicide is one way to avoid being killed
by your enemy. A more modern way is to arm yourself. If the commercial
interests, ruined by the embargo, as they claimed, had belonged to the
individualistic rural States, or if Jefferson had been from the trading
States, sectional differences might not have been so prominent during
the continuation of this policy, and the reactionary laws leading to
unification might not have been so apparent. The chief protestor against
marching a Federal army into the sovereign State of Pennsylvania a
score of years before was now stationing gunboats off the coast of the
sovereign States of New England, and on Lake Champlain in the sovereign
State of New York, for the purpose of coercing the people into an
obedience to national laws. The section which at that time had supported
so vigorously the repressive measures of Washington was now opposing
as forcibly such actions when taken toward themselves. The people of
Pennsylvania, a part of whom were then resisting the central authority,
now offered an armed force to the President "to cram the embargo down
the throats of the Yankees."

The paralysing effects of the embargo became apparent gradually during
the fifteen months of its existence and brought the commercial States
to the verge of rebellion. Nearly one-half the population of Salem,
it was claimed, had been compelled to ask public aid. Prices on imported
goods rose to a fabulous height, while surplus products, formerly
exported, fell to ruinous rates. Inland commerce was equally affected,
since there was no demand for carrying goods to or from the coast.
Writers compared the embargo remedy to a snake biting itself with
poisonous fang when surrounded by enemies; to a man cutting down his
tree to rid it of caterpillars; or to the fool who cut off his head
to rid himself of an aching tooth. The first anniversary of the embargo
was observed throughout New England with tolling bells, flags at
half-mast, and processions of unemployed seamen and artisans. The mayor
of New York forbade riotous gatherings. When a number of men disguised
as Indians retook a sloop caught by a man-of-war in forbidden trade,
their action was compared to that of the patriots who threw overboard
the East India tea.

It was claimed in the commercial States that the power "to regulate"
commerce, bestowed by the Constitution, did not cover an embargo or
prohibition of commerce. In advancing this argument, the New England
people quoted the opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
that "an unconstitutional law is not binding on the people." In reply
to this point made by the loose constructionists, the strict
constructionists could do nothing more than quote the implied power.
"To regulate" meant to keep the enemy from seizing. Time had wrought
a strange transfer of doctrines.

Rhymesters exercised their wit in ridiculing both Jefferson and the
embargo. Said one:

  "Our ships all in motion once whitened the ocean,
     They sailed and returned with a cargo;
   Now doomed to decay, they have fallen a prey
     To Jefferson, worms, and embargo."

Another paid his respects to the President in stanzas, one of which
will suffice:

  "Like the Tyrant of fame, he embargoes his ports,
     And to measures that ruin his subjects resorts;
   By fools he is flattered--by wise men accursed,
     For "No trade" is the maxim of Thomas the First."

These squibs illustrate the dominance which politics held over the
composition of the day. The discussion over the adoption of the
Constitution had long since given way to newspaper and pamphlet writing
on political issues. These writings, frequently scurrilous and abusive,
were caused by the rise of parties and, in turn, aided in forming
parties. None of the wretched stuff survived. _Peter Porcupine_, the
_Aurora_, and the much loftier _Columbiad_ are alike forgotten. Yet
it is indicative of the extent to which politics ruled the day to note
that in _Knickerbocker's History of New York_, Washington Irving turns
aside from the ostensible object of a humorous sketch of early New
York to ridicule President Jefferson. William the Testy, a dreamer,
a speculative philosopher, an impractical inventor, with a smattering
of all knowledge, was easily recognised as the President of the United
States. His suggestion of windmills as a means of defence was a
burlesque on Jefferson's little gunboats, and his government by
proclamation a parody on the embargo and its proclamations.

[Illustration: PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS.]

This isolated work of Irving, written ten years before the beginning
of his literary career, finds a counterpart in a long "poem" on the
embargo, advertised extensively in the newspapers of New York and New
England. It was composed by William Cullen Bryant, aged thirteen, no
doubt gladly forgotten in later years and to be found in few editions
of his works.

  "Go, wretch! resign thy Presidential chair,
   Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair,"

was the gentle manner in which the young rhymester addressed the author
of the hated embargo. The following orthographic puzzle went the rounds
of the Federalist papers. By beginning at the central letter, the
phrase "Embargo will ruin us" may be read in countless directions.

  S U N I U R L L I W I L L R U I N U S
  U N I U R L L I W O W I L L R U I N U
  N I U R L L I W O G O W I L L R U I N
  I U R L L I W O G R G O W I L L R U I
  U R L L I W O G R A R G O W I L L R U
  R L L I W O G R A B A R G O W I L L R
  L L I W O G R A B M B A R G O W I L L
  L I W O G R A B M E M B A R G O W I L
  L L I W O G R A B M B A R G O W I L L
  R L L I W O G R A B A R G O W I L L R
  U R L L I W O G R A R G O W I L L R U
  I U R L L I W O G R G O W I L L R U I
  N I U R L L I W O G O W I L L R U I N
  U N I U R L L I W O W I L L R U I N U
  S U N I U R L L I W I L L R U I N U S

The friends of the embargo attempted to rally the home spirit of the
people in order to support the measure. President Jefferson ordered
sufficient dark-blue cloth from Colonel Humphreys to make himself a
coat, saying: "Homespun is become the spirit of the times. My idea is
that we shall encourage home manufactures to the extent of our own
consumption of everything of which we raise the raw material." The
Legislatures of Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont, and Ohio fixed a
day, after which no imported clothing should be worn by members.
Pennsylvania used the proceeds of a dog tax to introduce a better breed
of sheep into the State. Clay, offering a resolution in the Kentucky
Legislature to use only homespun, was denounced by a fellow-member as
a demagogue, the affair ending, quite naturally, in a duel. A rally
of Americanism which would support the embargo was denied to Jefferson,
but Clay reaped the full benefit of these early efforts at a later
time.

The closing days of Jefferson's administration were not the most
pleasant he had to remember. Like the husband who, at his own request,
assumes direction of the household expenditures with high ideas of
reform, he found theory and practice far removed from each other. His
policy of retrenchment, it was true, had scaled down the army, navy,
and consular service nearly two million dollars a year, and the pension
list had been reduced to the lowest point in the history of the nation.
The public debt was lowered from eighty-three million dollars to
fifty-seven million, and could have been reduced still more if it had
been redeemable. Whatever pleasure the retiring President might have
derived from contemplating these facts was lost sight of in the
demoralising effects of the embargo. The exports had been reduced to
one-fifth their normal amount, the customs cut in half, and the entire
income of the nation had decreased from seventeen to seven million
dollars.

No American statesman before Greeley believed so confidently in the
goodness of the people and none so much desired their happiness. Nor
was ever altrurian more bitterly disappointed. The frustration of a
high hope and the selfishness of interests alike find exemplification
in the eight years of Jefferson. Assuming office with an aversion to
coercion in any form, assuring the people that the energies of the
nation should be used for the improvement of man and not wasted in his
destruction, he had been forced before leaving office to exclaim:
"Where is the patriotism of the people?" The individual had long since
been lost sight of in compelling the whole people to obey the law. It
was as impossible for Jefferson to carry the people to the thinly
populated plains of individualism as it had been found impossible to
transfer them to the elect city of centralisation. Defeated in his
attempts to avert war by commercial restriction, disheartened by his
failure to rally the patriotism of the people without recourse to war,
he confessed on leaving the Presidency that no prisoner, on being
released from his chains, felt such pleasure as he did in shaking off
the shackles of power.




CHAPTER XVI

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY LOST IN WAR



The United States, as a maritime nation, could scarcely expect to
escape the maelstrom of war induced by the task of suppressing the
French Revolution and Napoleon, a task which occupied the legitimists
of Europe for a quarter of a century, and involved every civilised
nation of the Old World. President Washington had early laid the course
of the ship of state on the medium way of neutrality. He maintained
the course, although at the penalty of such abuse as we gladly forget
at the present day. To continue that policy, President Adams wrecked
his party, cut himself off with one term, and became a vicarious
sacrifice when he chose negotiations with France instead of war.
President Jefferson spent eight unhappy years for the same object. He
endured national humiliation, was forced into coercive measures from
which his soul revolted, and brought his country to the verge of
commercial ruin to avoid war. President Madison, during his first four
years, was made the tool of British diplomatic equivocation and the
plaything of Napoleonic strategy to maintain the position chosen nearly
two decades before; so great was the task and so fearful the cost of
founding a neutral nation.

This delay of war proved most fortunate in the end. Those twenty years
allowed the American merchantmen to increase in numbers until they
were able to work such devastation on British commerce as marked the
course of the War of 1812. The period allowed the new nation to acquire
the strategic mouth of the Mississippi, and to make such inroads of
settlers in the debatable land of the Floridas that Britain was unable
to secure a permanent footing in them during hostilities. Twenty years
carried forward the Old World struggle to a point so near its close
that the Americans were able in the end to make surprisingly good terms
in the general European demand for a world-peace.

As if to put the strict constructionists to the test on every side,
the twenty years for which the Hamilton bank had been chartered expired
in the midst of a conviction that war was inevitable. The bank, as a
means of securing loans, would be indispensable during a war. The
liberal-minded Gallatin brought in a report to Congress advocating a
re-charter of the bank for another term of years. His arguments were
much like those of Hamilton twenty years before. Is it given to the
departed to know such a mortal pleasure as vindication?

Gallatin's recommendation evoked a storm of dissent from those members
of the party who adhered to early principles. They would not give a
new lease of life to this monopoly, unconstitutional in its origin and
abused in its administration. State banks, if given an opportunity,
could care for the United States money as well as an aristocratic,
exclusive institution, seven-tenths of whose stock was held in England.
This plea for the individual was the argument by which the opponents
of re-charter met the predictions of financial ruin with which the
advocates of Gallatin's suggestion filled the air. The withdrawal of
twenty-four million dollars from circulation would mean a national
panic, it was claimed. Arguments of expediency were heard where
constitutionality had held twenty years before.

The unionising process which the former individualists had undergone
in ten years of administration is illustrated by the speech of Crawford,
of Georgia, a lifelong adherent to the principles of Jefferson in the
main, but too liberal to be bound to a dead past. A rational analysis
of the Constitution, he thought, would show that it was not perfect
in language as commonly supposed, but that it occasionally gave a
general power followed by a specific power.

"This analysis," said he, "may excite unpleasant sensations, it may
assail honest prejudices; for there can be no doubt that honest
prejudices frequently exist and are many times perfectly innocent. But
when these prejudices tend to destroy even the object of their
affection, it is ostensibly necessary that they should be eradicated."

In pleading that the Constitution should not be held down to a
construction which would render it "wholly imbecile," he took as
advanced ground on the implied powers as had any Federalist in the
olden days. Ridiculing those who clung to the old restrictive theory,
he cited numerous actions of the party during the ten years it had
been in power which could be justified only by constitutional
implication. Among these, he said, were laws for the punishment of
counterfeiters, passed under the power to coin money; the erection of
lighthouses under the power to regulate commerce; the prohibition of
offences against the post-office department under the power to establish
post-offices and post-roads; and the acceptance of sites for arsenals,
forts, and dockyards under the power to control them. Even the
acceptance of the District of Columbia depended upon the implied instead
of the direct language of the Constitution. Nor did he fail to point
out that in 1802, when removing the judges of the circuit courts
established by the Federalists in their last hours, the party was
proceeding entirely upon the assumption that the expressed power to
create inferior courts contained the implied power to abolish them.

Petitions both for and against a re-charter of the Hamilton bank poured
in from merchants in various cities and from branches of the bank.
Instructions against the bank came from the State Legislatures of
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. So nearly was opinion divided
that a new lease of life for the bank was prevented in the House by
only one vote, and in the Senate by the deciding vote of Vice-President
Gerry, of Massachusetts, who chose to abide by party principles rather
than to listen to the voice of the majority of people in his own State.

The predicted extension of State banks and the disorder in the finances
of the country were alike experienced after the expiration of the
United States Bank in 1811. More than two hundred of these private
institutions were chartered in the various States to take the place
of the branches of the old bank. They were to be found especially in
the newer portions of the country, where banking facilities had been
previously unknown. Flooding the land with their bank-notes, they
speedily drove coin out of circulation. The latter was hoarded. When
the war began, banks found it impossible to secure this hoarded coin
to redeem their notes and were compelled to suspend specie payment
completely. The National Government, having made these banks
depositaries for the revenue collectors, according to the
individualistic demands, suffered loss and disarrangement of its funds.
The lesson was severe, especially in the face of an impending war.

In the final struggle of the giants, which began, near the close of
Madison's first term, with Napoleon's preparations for the invasion
of Russia, every offensive and defensive principle known to English
commercial history (and few are abandoned) was revived in the attempt
to starve out the French and prevent the long-anticipated invasion of
England. The seizure of American goods on the high seas had long been
a source of complaint from the commercial interests; but it never
affected the masses or so aroused them to the point of fury as did the
practice of taking seamen from American vessels. Britain was the worst
offender in both forms of reprisal, not alone because she was the
greatest maritime power, but also because a common speech characterised
the sailors of Britain and the United States. Yet it was largely a
matter of different views of citizenship. That a man should voluntarily
exile himself from British protection and citizenship was as offensive
to British pride as injurious to British strength. That an allegiance
could exist better than that of England was incomprehensible to the
British public; that a man deluded into so thinking should be set right
was a natural duty. "Once a subject, always a subject," gave the
sovereign a right to the services of every man born under the British
flag or having sworn fealty thereto. The subject could be taken by a
press-gang on shore or could be impressed from the deck of any vessel
on which he had taken refuge. Such doctrine was especially objectionable
to Americans, who depended largely upon aliens to people their vast
domain, and who placed so much stress upon individual freedom of motion.
Perpetual allegiance of the subject was as obnoxious as perpetual
ownership of the land to a people who were all aliens once, twice, or
thrice removed.

On the other hand, the British complained that their seamen were seduced
from their allegiance to fill up the American merchant marine. Formal
naturalisation papers were said to be given to men who sailed two years
from American ports. These deserters were engaged, for a large part,
in the neutral trade. Thus the enemies of Britain were being served
by British sailors. Not only was her trade injured and the enemy
strengthened, but this was being done by the loss of blood from her
own navy. Her writers called upon the Government to sacrifice even the
good-will of the Americans rather than to submit to the imposition of
neutrals on British trade and the loss of British sailors.

The Americans were forced by public sentiment to take a stand for
national citizenship. A broad patriotism was rallied which overcame
all scruples about the differences between national and State
citizenship. The matter manifestly belonged to the central rather than
the individual governments. When threatened by foreign powers, Federal
citizenship assumed a new value in the eyes of the Jeffersonians, much
akin to that which it had long borne in the opinion of the Federalists.
The party which ten years before was endeavouring to distinguish between
State and national citizenship was now compelled to take action to
protect sailors who were not residents of any State. Many of them had
no homes. They could look to no protector except the Union, under whose
flag they sailed.

It is questionable whether the Federalists, had they remained in power,
could have avoided a war with Britain when once the people had become
fully aroused by the continued attacks of Britain on American commerce
and American citizenship. Long-suffering and patient toward British
offence, that party had avoided war for at least ten years. Jefferson
and Madison, more devoted to maintaining neutrality than restrained
by love of Britain, postponed the inevitable war for twelve years more.
But Madison's was a gradually waning power. The end of his first
administration marks the termination of the one-man era. Hamilton and
Jefferson by turn had dominated national affairs. Perhaps no man could
have continued the monopoly. The day of many counsellors was at hand.
Revolutionary statesmen and warriors alike were to be cast aside by
a second generation, which knew not the horrors of war. The supremacy
of the Atlantic coast in national affairs had begun to wane. Political
power was moving westward with the people.

This war element, which practically took matters from Madison's hands,
was composed of men who were to measure their careers by decades instead
of years. Its constituents had been reared in the strenuous life of
the frontier. Separated from Old World influence by the Allegheny
barrier, they felt the first impulses of true Americanism. A
continuation of dominant foreign influence under them was impossible.
Instead of seceding to a foreign power, as their fathers had threatened,
these trans-Allegheny frontiersmen had now been absorbed by the Union
and were to secure their long-delayed rights by controlling their own
government, which had once been disposed to neglect them. They were,
for the most part, country-bred lawyers, belonging to the agricultural
and borrowing class rather than the bank-founding, lending Federalists.
In this respect, they would be in accord with Jefferson and Madison,
but totally at variance with them in their inland attitude toward ocean
commerce.

Like true Democrats, they breathed the air of the individual rather
than the masses. Clay was the son of a dissenting clergyman in
aristocratic Virginia, which was still under the spell of an
establishment of religion. By removing to Kentucky, he not only
exemplified the movement of national power, but freed himself from all
disadvantages of caste. The only aristocracy on the frontier was that
of worth. Calhoun came of equally humble birth and inherited his
individualistic principles. His father had been a country member of
the Virginia Convention and had opposed the adoption of the Federal
Constitution. Much of Calhoun's bias toward democracy was derived, as
he confessed, from an early conversation with the sage of Monticello.
Bred in the upland district of South Carolina, a region more akin to
Tennessee than to the seaboard, Calhoun may have had in mind the
massacre of his grandmother by the Indians as he arose in the war
session of Congress to make his report as chairman of the important
Committee of Foreign Affairs. He arraigned the British agents from
Canada circulating among the American Indians, and charged them with
the outrages committed on the American frontier. Members from the Ohio
valley did not hesitate to attribute the recent outbreak, culminating
in the battle of Tippecanoe, to intrigues of the British in Canada,
whereby the profitable fur trade would be diverted to their posts. "If
we are to be permanently free from this danger," said one speaker in
the debate which followed the report, "we must drive the British from
Canada. I, for one, am willing to receive the Canadians themselves as
adopted brothers." Grundy, of Tennessee, who, like Clay, had been born
on the Atlantic slope and had followed the advance of population across
the Alleghenies, arose to declare that the whole Western country was
eager to avenge their fallen heroes, and awaited but the word of
Congress to march into Canada.

The frontiersmen, never free from the hostility of the savage, sought
to explain it by every cause except the true one--their constant
invasion of the lands reserved to him by the National Government in
treaties made with him. Here lies at least one explanation of the long
endurance of British commercial wrongs by the United States before war
was declared. The West, with its grievance of Indian tampering, had
not yet come into control of national affairs. The frontiersmen, by
their conquests of nature, had come to despise the strength of all
enemies. With no commerce to be endangered by a foreign war, safe in
the almost roadless interior from the peril of invasion, the Western
representatives were able to carry by storm in Congress their
temporising, commercial brethren of the coast. When discussing the
embargo bill as a preliminary war measure in 1812, Clay, made Speaker
during his first session in the House, scorned the appeal of New York
for peace, in her defenceless condition, as her representatives
described her. "I do not wish to hear," said Clay, "of the opinion of
Brockholst Livingston or any other man. I consider this a war measure,
and approve of it because it is a direct precursor of war." Fourteen
Legislatures of the South and West, he said, had put themselves on
record as wishing to avenge the insults of Britain. The Legislature
of his own State had supported Jefferson's embargo four years previously
with such zeal that they almost passed a measure abolishing the English
common law in Kentucky courts.

Perhaps it was an accident that this twelfth Congress was composed
almost one-half of new members; but more likely it was the result of
popular impatience with the compromising foreign attitude of the
National Government. It was an incipient political revolution, without
involving a change of administration, a form of rebuke not infrequent
in the history of the Republic. The fact that these new and
inexperienced members, known as "war-hawks," were able to secure the
leadership may have been due to the accidental conjunction of natural
leaders; but a larger view would see in it a shifting of political
power with the advance of the people. The grievance of these Southern
and Western people against the Indians could neither be appreciated
nor believed by the New England and Middle Atlantic States, far removed
from the frontier and the savages. To their minds, the broader
accusation of preying upon American commerce was more real. Yet so
profitable had grown the monopoly of trade secured by them as neutrals
in the Napoleonic wars that they could well afford to lose occasionally
by foreign orders and decrees for the sake of the profit as a whole.
The War of 1812 from a sectional standpoint presents, therefore, the
unusual aspect of an inland, agricultural people forcing a war upon
the country for the protection of a marine, commercial people, who
were for the most part opposed to it. When Clay, in the lofty style
common to the time, declared the Americans unconquerable, and that if
the enemy should lay in ashes New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and
should devastate the whole Atlantic coast, the people would retreat
beyond the Alleghenies to live and flourish there, a member from New
Jersey protested that this was too high a price for him; that he had
no inclination to go beyond the Alleghenies; and that even the
Mississippi valley would be a poor consolation to him after everything
that was near and dear to him and his people had been destroyed.

The desire for commercial independence, which had been growing steadily
since political independence had been gained, was responsible for some
of this defiant attitude. Speaker after speaker described the spirit
of our forefathers who used only homespun in the rising Revolutionary
days. The career of the United States, if commercially independent of
Europe, was compared with her present situation, a victim of foreign
oppression on the highways of the world. One speaker thought we should
never be true Americans so long as we had to go to Europe for our
national airs. It was not admitted generally that England's restrictive
measures were due to her desire to starve out Napoleon, but as prompted
by jealousy of "her new commercial rival," the United States. "England
sickens at your prosperity," said Clay, "and beholds in your growth
the foundations of a power which at no distant day is to make her
tremble for her naval superiority." A foolish pride, characteristic
of youth, urged on the war spirit. It was said that a few years before
we had resolved for war, retaliation, or submission. The retaliatory
measures had been withdrawn; war or submission was the only choice
left.

Beneath the hostility arising from Britain's war measures lay, in the
American mind, the irritation caused by her patronising air. The
Americans had chafed under British social as well as commercial
intolerance ever since the birth of the Republic. In the British
thought, the Americans were still colonists in that they were not to
the manor born. The Declaration of Independence and the severance of
political ties had left them still dependent upon Britain in the higher
aspects of life.

"The Americans asserted their independence," said the _Edinburgh
Review_, "upon principles which they derived from us. They are
descended from our loins, they retain our usages and manners, they read
our books, they have copied our freedom, they rival our courage, and yet
they are less popular and esteemed among us than the base and bigoted
Portuguese and the ferocious and ignorant Russians."

When an English statesman suggested that his Government would do well
to cultivate the new Republic for the sake of trade if for no higher
motive, Lord Brougham ridiculed the proposition of paying heed to "a
people whose armies are as yet at the plough, or making awkward attempts
at the loom, whose assembled navies could not lay siege to an English
sloop of war." These sneers, although containing a large proportion
of truth, exasperated the young nation beyond control. The provincialism
of the day writhed under any suggestion that the New World was not the
rival of the Old in every intellectual particular. A broader spirit
would have confessed that time is required for the development of
genius and the surroundings which conduce to a high development of
intellectual and artistic life. Two decades later, Lowell satirised
this American tendency in the _Fable for Critics_ by saying that while
the Old World has produced barely eight poets, the New World begets
a whole crop each year.

  "Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties,
   That has not brought forth its own Miltons and Dantes;
   I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys,
   Two Raphaels, six Titians, (I think) one Apelles,
   Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens,
   One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens,
   A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons,--
   In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons,
   He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain
   Will be some very great person over again."

These extravagant claims incited fresh attacks. One British writer
insisted that Federal America had done nothing either to extend,
diversify, or embellish the sphere of human knowledge, and could produce
nothing to bring her intellectual efforts into any sort of comparison
with those of Europe. "Noah Webster, we are afraid," said he, "still
occupies the first place in criticism, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow
in poetry, and Mr. Justice Marshall in history." Another pronounced
the celebrated Philosophic Hall in Philadelphia a "meeting house" for
the society, where its transactions were "scooped together" in the
"genuine dialect of tradesmen." Not only the published papers of the
Philosophic Society were held up to ridicule, but also John Quincy
Adams's _Letters from Silesia_, Marshall's _Life of Washington_,
Barlow's _Columbiad_, Dwight's poetry, and Lewis and Clark's history
of their expedition.

"But why should the Americans write books," asked the _Edinburgh
Review_, "when a six weeks' passage brings them in their own tongue
our sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads. Prairies,
steamboats, grist-mills are their natural objects for centuries to
come."

The crudity of American life and manners had been sarcastically
described by Ashe, Fearon, Davis, and other European travellers.
American writers countered these attacks by comparing the treatment
of the slaves in America with the condition of British paupers and
East Indians. Charges of negro kidnapping were contrasted with
child-stealing in England; our gouging the eyes in fisticuffs with
their prize-fighting; the harshness of our slave code with their
criminal laws; and the condition of our free clergy with the
circumscribed established clergymen. A dispute arose between writers
of the two countries over the responsibility of England for American
slavery by having fostered it in the American colonies.

This war of words, which continued even after the close of hostilities
with England, went so far as to involve discussions whether Godfrey
or Hadley had invented the quadrant; whether Hulls or Fulton was the
father of the steamboat; whether steamboats were first used in England
or America; and whether Fulton should have offered his invention of
the submarine torpedo to France as well as to England. One may easily
say at the present time that the national spirit should have risen
superior to such trivialities; but the national spirit was taking a
most provincial cast. Originality was claimed for everything;
inheritance counted as nothing.

A maritime war is peculiarly a commercial war in that it affects trade
and consequently becomes a sectional war, since all portions of the
land are not equally affected. The War of 1812 was a sectional war
which arrayed the former friends of consolidated government against
the Administration, and consequently made the former enemies of
consolidation its most devoted supporters. The early attitude of the
various sections toward the war, with due allowance for party
allegiance, may be studied in the vote of the two houses of Congress
on the measure entitled "An act declaring war between Great Britain
and her dependencies and the United States and their Territories,"
which passed the House on June 4th, and the Senate on June 17, 1812.

  VOTE OF CONGRESS DECLARING THE WAR OF 1812
  ______________________________________________________
                       |               |               |
                       |     HOUSE     |     SENATE    |
          STATES       |_______________|_______________|
                       | For | Against | For | Against |
  _____________________|_____|_________|_____|_________|
  Vermont..............|  3  |    1    |  1  |    0    |
  New Hampshire........|  3  |    2    |  1  |    1    |
  Massachusetts........|  6  |    8    |  1  |    1    |
  Rhode Island.........|  0  |    2    |  0  |    2    |
  Connecticut..........|  0  |    7    |  0  |    2    |
  New York.............|  3  |   11    |  1  |    1    |
  New Jersey...........|  2  |    4    |  1  |    1    |
  Pennsylvania.........| 16  |    2    |  2  |    0    |
  Delaware.............|  0  |    1    |  0  |    2    |
  Maryland.............|  6  |    3    |  1  |    1    |
  Virginia.............| 14  |    5    |  2  |    0    |
  North Carolina.......|  6  |    3    |  2  |    0    |
  South Carolina.......|  8  |    0    |  2  |    0    |
  Georgia..............|  3  |    0    |  2  |    0    |
  Kentucky.............|  5  |    0    |  2  |    0    |
  Tennessee............|  3  |    0    |  1  |    1    |
  Ohio.................|  1  |    0    |  0  |    1    |
  ______________________________________________________

The unanimity of the inland and non-commercial States, with the
exception of the party vote of the Ohio Senators, is manifest. They
were secure from the ravages of maritime war. Massachusetts showed a
stronger war sentiment than New York, although the course of the
Administration in these States during the war reversed this condition.
The Massachusetts House of Representatives had passed resolutions
against the proposed war. The New York opposition represented the
commercial interests. Fifty-eight business men of New York City, headed
by John Jacob Astor, protested against a war. Among these were sixteen
Republicans. The opposition in Rhode Island and Connecticut, which
assumed such a serious aspect during the war, is clearly indicated in
this vote. Regarding the sections as North and South, a distinction
most unfortunately emphasised during the progress of the war, the
popularity of the war in the South may be seen by a table:

                                            House    Senate
  North of Mason and Dixon line  /For........34........ 7
                                 \Against....37........ 9
  South of Mason and Dixon line  /For........45........l3
                                 \Against....11........ 2

Possibly the spectacle of a war favoured by the Southern and Western
people to protect Northern commerce and seamen, a kind of protection
not desired by the people who were being imposed on, no less than the
extraneous nature of these causes, has given rise to the saying current
in the United States that she went to war after the causes were removed
and did not secure anything for which she made war. The war message
of President Madison, sent to Congress on the 1st day of June, 1812,
cited a series of aggressive acts on the part of Great Britain dating
from 1802. The most prominent were the seizure of American seamen and
goods, and the pretended blockade under the orders in council. More
recent and less manifest impositions were described in the disavowal
of agreements made by an accredited minister, Erskine; in the attempt
to dismember the American Union through a secret British agent in the
United States; and the instigation of the Northwest Indians to hostility
by British traders. The message acknowledged that France had also been
guilty of some of these offensive acts, but intimated that they would
be abandoned through negotiations now in progress with that power.

Of these five charges, that concerning the Indians and that charging
intrigue were difficult to prove. Responsibility for Erskine's actions
was easily disavowed through the explanation that he had exceeded his
instructions. The blockades were really withdrawn before war was
declared, although the news had not reached this country. The freedom
of sailors and goods was finally guaranteed by the end of the Napoleonic
wars and consequently were not mentioned in the treaty which closed
the War of 1812. Thus the calendar was cleared, and the saying about
the causes and results of the war substantiated. Sometimes it is called
the "second war for independence." Undoubtedly the treatment which the
United States received from European powers before and after the war
formed a remarkable contrast. Yet the change was due to changed
conditions in Europe rather than to any compulsion wrought by the
hostilities. The most valuable independence gained in the war was in
the national feeling of the people, as will be shown later in this
story.

To the British mind, it must be confessed, this second war with the
United States presented a different aspect. Napoleon had absorbed
France and all her continental neighbours save Prussia, Austria, and
Russia. These with difficulty held back his land forces. To England
was left the duty of keeping him in check upon the sea. War was declared
by the United States just when Napoleon's invasion of Russia demanded
the strictest enforcement of the blockade. England would willingly
have avoided a war with the United States at this time, but felt that
she could surrender neither the blockade nor right of search so
essential to the conquest of Napoleon. It seemed to the English people
that they alone stood between this man and the freedom of the world.
They thought it extremely ungrateful that the Americans should resent
their Orders in Council and other measures considered essential to
their naval supremacy over the French. Granted that these blockades
cut off some of the trade which the Americans as neutrals had secured
during the two decades of European war; they should be willing to
suffer so much in the common cause of liberty against one-man
aggression.

[Illustration: BLANK COMMISSION FOR PRIVATEER IN WAR OF 1812. Under
these commissions, hundreds of private vessels armed themselves and
preyed on the enemy, atoning for the ill success of the American arms
on the land.]

Every resistance to England's coercive measures was considered by her
as a tacit aid to Napoleon. To the English mind, the hostile attitude
of the Americans was a return to the French-American alliance of the
Revolutionary days. The Americans were repaying their debt of
obligations, but with an important difference. Where a King of France
had aided colonists struggling for freedom, the colonists, now grown
to a nation, were aiding the greatest enemy to freedom the world had
yet seen. It was said that it would be simply a just retribution on
America if England should withdraw from the breach and allow Napoleon
to turn his ambitious designs upon the Western Republic. He would not
hesitate to retake Louisiana, according to British opinion, for his
revived American Empire.

Clay had not been the only speaker to indulge in braggadocio and
boasting. In all the debates in Congress, Canada was to be invaded on
the northern boundary and rolled up at each end. In vain the
conservatives showed the neglected condition of the national defences.
Jefferson's policy of economy had reduced the regular army to less
than seven thousand men and had scaled down the navy to fifteen vessels,
carrying a total of 352 guns, and 63 little gunboats, the offspring
of Jefferson's speculative genius. Nor were all these parts of "the
Liliputian navy" ready for commission. Six of the largest frigates,
mounting 170 of the guns, had been allowed to become useless for lack
of repairs. It would require six months' work and a half million dollars
to put them in fighting order. Of the little "mosquito fleet," as
Jefferson's gunboats were contemptuously styled by the Federalists,
102 were drawn up under sheds at the various navy-yards and few of
them seaworthy. Notwithstanding these cold facts, one of the few war
advocates in New England said we needed no regular army to take Canada;
that the militia of his section needed only authority to do the
business; simply give the word of command and the thing was done.
Another brushed aside even the fear of an invasion from Canada by
boasting that even the army of Napoleon which had conquered at
Austerlitz could not march through New England.

According to one speaker in the House, when the storm of war had been
poured on Canada and Halifax, it would sweep through with the resistless
impetuosity of Niagara. "The Author of Nature," cried another, "has
marked our limits in the South by the Gulf of Mexico and on the North
by the regions of eternal frost." This braggadocio, however deplorable
from a present view, may be pardoned as characteristic of young men
and a young nation. It may be charged to the account of European
aggression and British sneers. But it is also significant as marking
the dawn of a feeling of nationality. It showed an appreciation of the
probable effects of new-world isolation, inter-dependence, and destiny.
It was not a far cry from this position to "America for the Americans,"
a few years later.

The new nation terminated the war into which their enthusiasm plunged
them more fortunately than could have been hoped. On the land, it is
true, where the "war-hawks" had placed their boasted strength, little
was accomplished. Upon the high seas, where little dependence was
placed, wonders were accomplished by privateers. No less than 1607
British merchantmen were captured, in addition to sixteen British
war-ships. The Americans in turn lost heavily, a total of probably
1400 vessels of all kinds, but their financial loss was small compared
with that of the enemy. As in many later instances, the genius of the
American for individual initiative proved his salvation.

That an outburst of national pride should follow so many disasters by
land is explicable only through the battle of New Orleans, whose
crowning victory changed the aspect of prior engagements in the public
memory, while it placed a new value on the marksmanship of the American
soldiery. Charges made by veterans of Wellington and of Nelson were
resisted by unorganised American forces, dependent upon individual
initiative and upon skill in shooting. Jackson's motley army was
symbolic of the race composition of America and suggestive of the
recent acquisition of the land in which they were fighting. There were
free negroes, San Domingans, Louisiana Creoles, regular troops, old
French soldiers, and swarthy pirates, backed by the hunters of Tennessee
in their homespun hunting-shirts, and the Kentuckians with their long
knives. The latter boasted of their endurance of hardships and that
they were not of woman born, but were half horse and half alligator.
One stanza of a popular song, much used in a later campaign where the
hero of New Orleans was the main issue, runs:

  "We raised a bank to hide our breasts,
     Not that we thought of dying;
   But then we always liked to rest,
     Unless the game was flying.
   Behind it stood our little force
     None wished it to be greater,
   For every man was half a horse,
     And half an alligator."

Here were demonstrated again the difficulties under which trained
battalions fought in the American backwoods. The experience of Braddock
was repeated during the month consumed by Pakenham in getting his
troops into position. The farmers, who waited at Bunker Hill until the
whites of the enemy's eyes were visible in order to insure a good aim
against troops firing in volleys, lived again in the hunters of the
South at New Orleans. Small wonder that dwelling in memory on these
facts aroused an intense American confidence and even undue self-esteem.

If the stimulating effects of war upon nationality are to be noted in
all these details, the disintegrating effects on political parties are
no less evident. By a reversal of position, both Republicans and
Federalists were being drawn from extreme to medium grounds. Many
conservatives among the Republicans deplored this shifting to the
former views of their opponents. In the actual preparations for war,
the passing of acts for an embargo, for a loan, for increasing the
army and adding to the navy, John Randolph, the overtalented genius
of Roanoke, raised his voice in both derision and prophecy.

"If a writ were to issue," said he, with an eloquence too erratic to be
convincing, "against the Republican party of 1798, it would be
impossible for a constable with a search-warrant to find it. Death,
resignations, and desertions, have thinned its ranks. New men and new
measures have succeeded."

He predicted that a standing army, being created by the Republicans,
would be as fatal to them as it had been to their opponents in 1798.
In one of his frequent speeches, he summed up the principles of the
party in olden days when it was opposed to an army, to burdensome
taxation, and to excessive expenditures. "Such," said he, "were our
opinions in 1798. What has produced the change I do not know, unless
we were then _out_ and now we are _in_." The whole philosophy of the
compulsory force making for nationality through political parties is
expressed in that sentence.




CHAPTER XVII

TRANSFER OF PARTY POLICIES



In predicting defeat as a result of the war measures, Randolph
overlooked the facts of history. No party has ever failed to retain
the affection of the people when making preparations for war; and the
corollary is that no party has ever opposed war successfully. Reasons
for this fact were advanced in describing the war scare of 1798. The
Federalists, losing State after State during Jefferson's administration,
had been temporarily revived in the New England opposition to his
embargo. But the accusation of being unpatriotic, of placing commerce
above love of country, and the suspicion of holding intercourse with
the commercial enemy had driven many from their ranks. John Quincy
Adams, the hope of his father's age, was not the only apostate of the
day. A member from Kentucky taunted the remnant of Federalists in the
House during the war debates with remembrance of New England patriotism.
Said he,

"During embargo days, when our domestic enemies were encouraged by a
proclamation under authority of the King of England, these minions of
royalty, concentrating in the east, talked of the violations of the laws
as virtue; they demoralized the community by raising the floodgates of
civil disorder; they gave absolution to felons and invited the
commission of crime by the omission of duty."

From time to time instances were not wanting to prove that the remnant
of the Federalists was being forced by opposing the Administration
into the former attitude of the Republicans. The most frequently cited
case is that of Josiah Quincy, a Massachusetts member of the House of
Representatives, who became so alarmed over the effect which the
admission of the State of Louisiana would have on the political balance
of the sections that he declared such action virtually dissolved the
Union and freed the States from their moral obligations. Regardless
of the past theories of his party, he declared the Union a partnership
of States into which no new member could be admitted from territory
outside the original domain. He declared the whole question was "whether
the proprietors of the good old United States should manage their own
affairs in their own way, or whether they and their constitution and
their political rights should be trampled under foot by foreigners,
introduced through a breach in the Constitution." The Federal opposition
to the proposed War of 1812 has been described. It was a result of the
"low, grovelling parsimony of the counting-room," as Clay denounced it.

The reversal of party position on both sides was due not to choice,
but to interchange of situation. The very act of conducting the
government on the one hand and of opposing it on the other brought
this exchange. Jefferson, the former advocate of peace, from his
retirement now urged a vigorous policy which involved retaliation on
England, if she burned American cities, by hiring discontented workmen
in London to burn British buildings, by conquering Canada, and, after
dictating terms of peace with Britain, by making war upon Napoleon.
The reversal of party brought consequent exchange of policy. Instead
of Federal encroachment on individual rights, the Republicans must now
become aggressors, and the Federalists protestants. Instead of the
protests coming from Virginia and Kentucky they now emanated from the
New England States. Instead of regarding the State Legislatures as the
ultimate protectors of the States, the resistants now went beyond that
agency and adopted the very expedient so frequently urged by Jefferson,
and the one which Madison testified that he had contemplated in 1799--a
convention of delegates from the States.

Some parts of the resolutions adopted by this convention of twenty-seven
delegates from the five New England States which met at Hartford,
Connecticut, in December, 1814, might easily be supposed to have been
voiced by Virginia and Kentucky fifteen years before, so completely
had parties and sections exchanged.

"It is as much a duty of the state authorities to watch over the rights
_reserved_, as of the United States to exercise the powers which
are _delegated_" was the voice of southern individualism speaking
through a New England convention. "In cases of deliberate, dangerous,
and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty
of a state and the liberties of the people, it is not only the right,
but the duty of such a state to interpose its authority for their
protection."

Thus was the doctrine of "interposition" transferred from South to
North, equalising sections, and conducing to the ultimate making of
the nation.

But the means to be employed were not the same in each case. Resistance
in the Union to unconstitutional acts had been the Republican plan of
1798; withdrawal from a Union, whose government had been grossly and
corruptly administered ever since the first twelve years of prosperity
and happiness, was the Federalist thought of 1814. "Even at this late
hour," said the Hartford Convention report, "let government leave to
New England the remnant of her resources and she is ready and able to
defend her territory." The peaceful dissolution of the Union and the
substitution of "a new form of confederacy among those states which
shall intend to maintain a federal relation to each other" was declared
to be a possibility. A severance of the Union by one or more States
withdrawing against the will of the rest was justified only in case
of absolute necessity. The immediate remedy was to perfect "an
arrangement which may at once be consistent with the honor and interest
of the national government and the security of the states." By the
readjustment which they proposed to make between the States and the
Union, the latter would practically withdraw from the Eastern States
so far as revenue and defence, the two highest attributes of
sovereignty, were concerned.

Ultimately the convention hoped for certain amendments to the
Constitution, Jefferson's remedy again, "to strengthen and if possible
to perpetuate the union of the states," and, incidentally, to curb the
national strength of their opponents. To this end, the two-fifths negro
representation which the slave States had been given in the Constitution
was to be abolished; the extension of Southern power by creating more
States from the Louisiana Purchase was to be curbed by requiring a
two-thirds vote in each House for the admission of a new State into
the Union; Northern commerce was to be protected from future
annihilation by limiting embargoes to sixty days; a two-thirds vote
of both Houses was to be required to declare war or non-intercourse
with a nation; the pro-French element in national politics was to be
curbed by forbidding naturalised persons to hold national office;
future eight-year Jeffersons and Madisons were to be prevented, and
the Virginia presidential trust broken by making a President ineligible
for a second term, and by prohibiting two consecutive Presidents to
be elected from the same State. A complete transition of the fear of
presidential usurpation had been wrought by the burden of war falling
more heavily on one section than the other.

[Illustration: DISLOYALTY OF NEW ENGLAND DURING THE WAR OF 1812. This
cartoon represents Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island
contemplating jumping into the arms of John Bull, while Maine prays
below for guidance. The King says "Oh 'tis my Yankee boys, jump in,
my fine fellows, plenty molasses and codfish, plenty of goods to
smuggle, honours, titles, and nobility into the bargain." Massachusetts,
nearest the King, says "What a dangerous leap! but we must jump, Brother
Conn." Connecticut, in the middle, says "I cannot, Brother Mass. Let
me pray and fast some little longer Little Rhode Island will jump the
first." Rhode Island says "Poor little I! What will become of me? This
leap is of a frightful size. I sink into despondency."]

National finances were seriously impaired by the war. The lending
section refused to support the Administration. Of the loan authorised
in 1814, less than one-half was taken and that at a discount of twenty
per cent. During the same year, the Government defaulted on the interest
due on the national debt. Moneyed men claimed that business had been
so impaired by the embargo and war as to prevent their coming to the
relief of the nation. Unfortunately, strict-construction theory had
cut off the bank which might otherwise have been a source of supply.
A glance at a table of statistics of the commerce and financial standing
of the United States during the embargo and war period will show the
effects of a maritime war and explain the causes of the complaints of
commercial New England. The following sums are in round numbers of
millions of dollars.

                Exports        Imports      National Debt
  1807........... 108........... 138...........  69
  1808...........  22...........  56...........  65
  1811...........  61...........  53...........  48
  1812...........  38...........  77...........  77
  1813...........  27...........  22...........  55
  1814...........  16...........  12...........  81
  1815...........  52........... 113...........  99
  1816...........  81........... 147........... 127

Almost annihilated by the embargo of 1808 and the War of 1812-15, the
exports and imports, when relieved from such incumbrances, leaped to
figures which caused anger and rebellion when contemplated. The prospect
of wiping out the national debt was indefinitely postponed. Increased
burdens of national taxation brought as loud a protest from the
Federalists in 1814 as came from the Republicans in 1798.

Yet the chief grievance voiced by the Hartford Convention was neither
the loss of commerce nor increased national debt. A question had arisen
in the course of the war which brought out the old contention between
the right of the State and the nation, although with parties and
sections exactly reversed. Fear of the abuse of the military power in
the hands of the central authority, which prompted the framers of the
Constitution to limit all appropriation for the army to two years'
duration, had also persuaded them to restrict the national use of the
State militia to three emergencies, viz., to execute the national laws,
to suppress insurrection, and to repel invasion. Test had been made
of the first two uses in suppressing the excise rebellion. The War of
1812 brought out the third. The contemplated invasion of Canada was
the result of no one of these conditions. Objection to using the militia
in carrying on a foreign war had been raised frequently in Congress
during the debates on the war measures. A kindred dispute had arisen
over the right of the national authorities to appoint officers of the
State militia when called into national use. The old Revolutionary
State jealousies over this question seemed to have come to life again.
Among the Federalists, now grown to be sticklers for State rights, was
a representative in Congress from New York, who cried out in debate:

"If it shall come to that, that militia officers are appointed by the
President, I am a militia officer--I will never surrender the state's
rights--I would not be commanded by them--and I say, so help me God, if I
do. Militia were never intended for the United States, but for individual
states, to defend their states' rights."

In the twenty years of peace administration, this question of employing
the militia in a foreign war had never arisen. If the National Government
in 1812 had been ready for war, either in force or finance; if the war had
been favoured in the commercial States where the available wealth of the
country was accumulated; or if the administration had not been embarrassed
constantly by lack of soldiers and revenue, the resistance of New England
to the Federal attempts to control her militia, to recruit her young men,
and even to contemplate drafting her able-bodied citizens might never have
arisen. But if the test had not come, the governors of Massachusetts and
Connecticut would not have put themselves on record as resisting the call
of the President for their quota of militia to serve both inside and
outside the State, and the section would have missed committing itself to
the former ground of its opponent. The creation of a "Federal army" out of
the State militia was now criticised as violently in New England as it had
been in the Southern States during the suppression of the whiskey
insurrection a score of years before.

This refusal of the thickly populated Eastern States, which had been
largely the source of supply in the Revolutionary War, to furnish their
share of soldiery, threw the brunt of the Canadian expeditions upon
the south-western sections, and thus contributed to the Union in another
and less evident manner. The volunteers from those trans-Allegheny
regions would never forget the hardships of their journeys through the
roadless North-west. Frontier militiamen, who hewed their way through
pathless woods and subsisted on roots and berries because there were
no roads on which to bring supplies; officers, who guided their commands
to streams and found them too small in midsummer, when most needed,
to transport their troops; artificers, who built boats on the Great
Lakes and could not get armaments to them,--these men were unlikely
to allow constitutional objections to lie in the way of future
improvements in the Western Territories. They placed the blame for the
failure of the campaigns in those parts to lack of means of
communication. The freshly cut military roads were strewn with the
ruins of flour-barrels, cordage, and various equipment, abandoned in
transit. Fully two-thirds of the flour put down at Fort Meigs could
not be used. The flour on the Harrison campaign cost the Government
not less than eight dollars a barrel. Government commissaries claimed
to have been ruined in their contracts by lack of roadways. Only eight
hundred pack-horses survived of four thousand employed in the Detroit
campaign. The extra expense of one of the northern campaigns would have
built a good road to the inaccessible portion if the need could have been
foreseen. The experience in the war demanded immediate action for the
future public defence, regardless of party interpretation of powers.
Provision for necessary means of communication in the older portions might
safely be left to the States; but for the more recently settled regions,
especially the Territories, only the States united could provide highways
and waterways. The fact that the Union had charge of the Indians in the
Territories made the permission easier to grant. Also, during the war,
many military roads had been constructed, whose constitutionality no one
had time to question. During the intermissions of warfare, soldiers had
been employed in constructing military roads between various posts on the
frontier. John Randolph had several times aroused the wrath of the war-
hawks in Congress by suggesting that the volunteer troops be employed,
when not on campaigns, in building highways and digging canals. He thought
the land forces would make some return in this way for the vast sum to be
expended on them. After the close of hostilities, the regular troops
continued to be employed in such work, receiving extra pay. In various
parts of the United States one may still trace the old "military roads,"
many of them having been made into modern highways. As may be imagined,
they were of great aid in extending another function of national activity
--the postal system.

Waterways were as abundant in the western region during the War of
1812 as they were at any later time. That they were not more frequently
employed as means of transportation was due to the fact that nature,
in the process of time, had placed so many obstacles in them that they
were practically useless. Sand-bars, sunken logs, accumulated driftwood,
and hidden snags made water travel impossible except for light canoes.
During the summer season, when the campaigns were waged most vigorously,
many of the streams were dried up and valueless for transportation
purposes. But small imagination was required to see how man with proper
resources could dredge channels, remove obstacles, and construct dams
which would render these waterways useful during the larger part of
the year. Boats propelled by poles might be guided up the tedious
channels, but the use of steam was impossible until improvements had
been made.

Fulton and Livingston made a success of steam navigation on the majestic
Hudson in 1807. Only five years later, hardy spirits were not wanting
at Pittsburg to equip a vessel with steam and venture down the tortuous
Ohio to New Orleans. But impediments to navigation made such attempts
simply experiments. Three years after the close of the war, the _Walk
in the Water_ was launched on Lake Erie near Buffalo and eventually
reached distant Mackinaw. The ship-building industry had been established
on Lake Erie during the war and needed only the construction of harbours
and placing of lights to open a vast inland commerce.

The strict constructionists were destined to spend many unpleasant
hours over this question of inland commerce. That the Union had control
of ocean or foreign commerce, no one denied. The ocean is common to
all. But fresh water lies inland, among the States. Strict construction
would not allow the central authority to undertake a public work in
an individual State. Clearing waterways and constructing harbours might
have been left to the respective States, if each stream and each lake
had been located entirely within the confines of some State. Interstate
commerce thus began early to play a part in making the Union. In former
days, Congress had granted requests of Rhode Island, Maryland, and
Georgia to be allowed to retain part of their imposts for completing
their public works on rivers and harbours. The privilege was extended
to other State at various times, the expenditures being withheld from
the national revenues. The system was bad and produced frequent delay
and abuse. It was really the Federal Government making the improvements
indirectly. Evidently the work could be carried on more uniformly and
systematically under central management.

Precedent had been established under the compulsion of war. The
Carondelet canal was a private enterprise connecting Lake Pontchartrain
with the city of New Orleans. Congress appropriated a sum of money,
as the war came on, for making the canal navigable for the gunboats
in order to protect New Orleans. Several similar instances might be
cited during the progress of the war. Under such conditions, it was
an easy matter to include in the Army Appropriation bill of 1819 a sum
for making a complete survey of all watercourses tributary to the
Mississippi on its western side, and on its eastern side north of the
Ohio. There was in the same bill an appropriation for making surveys
with maps and charts of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, from the Falls
of the Ohio to New Orleans, "for facilitating and ascertaining the
most practical mode of improving the navigation of those rivers." No
promise was made, but the ultimate purpose was to have the individual
States or the Union improve the navigation of all these waterways. So
insidiously was necessity making the Republicans commit themselves to
the policies of their predecessors, that no one realised they were
preparing by these actions to inaugurate the vast work of public
improvement in the interior of the continent which characterised the
middle period of American history.

Advocates of these national enterprises were encouraged by a clause
in the Bank bill of 1816. In order to compel the State banks to resume
specie payment and to rearrange the national finances after the war,
the Republicans had been compelled to resort to the infamous Hamiltonian
remedy of chartering a United States bank. Only financial desperation
could warrant the adoption of a suggestion which the party had rejected
five years before. Unconstitutionally scarcely had a mention in the
debates on the bill. Republican speakers and writers advocated a bank
as eagerly as they had opposed one in 1791 and 1811. Calhoun was in
favour of a new bank and Webster was opposed to it.

This second bank was chartered, like the first, for twenty years. It
had a similar plan of organisation, although with a larger capital.
It differed most in offering to the National Government, not only a
share of stock, but a "bonus," or gift, of a million and a half dollars
for the privilege of the charter. Visions of internal improvements
made possible by such a handsome gift immediately arose in the minds
of some, although suspicion was the strongest feeling in the minds of
others. The proposition was precisely along the Federalist idea of
invested interests purchasing a monopoly from the Government, and was
viewed in that light by old Republicans. It was denounced as a bribe
similar to that given Parliament by the East India Company. Such
scruples were overcome by comparing the "bonus" to the fee paid the
National Government for a patent, which gave to the holder a monopoly,
or to the free passage granted troops over toll bridges in payment for
a State charter. Undoubtedly the desire to use this money for public
improvements aided in securing the passage of the Bank bill.

These hopes assumed shape in the next session in "An act to set apart
and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," which pledged the
proceeds of the "bonus" for constructing roads and canals, and improving
the navigation of watercourses. It was passed by a close vote in each
branch of Congress, after a long debate in the House upon the powers
of the General Government. This debate showed Calhoun, the future
spokesman of State rights, in favour of extended expenditures in the
various States without constitutional restriction, and Timothy
Pickering, former member of John Adams's Cabinet, in the attitude of
denying the right of the National Government under the implied powers
to expend a dollar without the consent of the State in which the
improvement lay. Neither would he admit that the regulation of commerce
included more than waterways. It was an additional evidence of the
reversal of parties.

The Representatives from the Eastern States generally wished to use
the money to relieve the ordinary burdens of taxation, realising that
the larger part of these improvements would lie beyond the Alleghenies
and, presumably, of no benefit to them. Individual members may have
held great expectations of the gratitude to be gained from their
constituents by securing a share of the bank money. Madison rudely
shattered these in the closing hours of his administration by vetoing
the bill. It was a heroic duty. To such a distance had the party gone
from the confines of strict construction, so resistless had been the
hand of compulsion in the sixteen years of Republican administration,
so powerfully had this internal improvement system affected the cupidity
of the people, so careless had Congress grown of the difference between
the reserved and expressed powers, that Madison felt it necessary to
recall his party to its first principles. In his veto message, he spoke
the almost forgotten language of the old days when he said that the
power to regulate commerce did not extend to enterprises conducted
within the several States; that the efforts of the Union should be
confined to foreign commerce; that any expenditure of the bonus proceeds
under the plea of the common defence would be to give Congress a general
power of legislation. It was the first reaction after the compelling
days of the war. It was not an agreeable or popular task, but it was
done heroically. It was love's labour lost, because it was impossible
for Madison or his successor long to hold in check the demands of the
people for means of communication as they spread toward the West over
the inviting public lands.

Partisan newspapers denied that Madison's action was inconsistent with
prior recommendations of Presidents, with the report of Gallatin, and
with the appropriations for the Cumberland Road. Gallatin's report,
they said, was only a recommendation. The Cumberland National Road was
the result of a bargain between the Federal Government and the State
of Ohio and involved no violence to the Constitution. As for prior
messages, Jefferson, in 1806, had suggested an amendment to cover
internal improvements, and Madison had been careful in 1816 to locate
his proposed national university inside the District of Columbia, which
was entirely under national control. Internal improvements, he had
said in two different messages, should be authorised by an amendment.
At the same time, many of these papers lamented the fact that the hands
of the Union were thus bound, while a few suggested that the obligation
to "provide for the general welfare" would have been fulfilled better
by building roads and canals than by creating a bank and placing upon
the people the burdens of a protective tariff. Having engaged in the
war, they must abide by the compulsion which the war produced.

The few conservative Republicans who clung to the old doctrines of the
party realised with dismay that the financial adjustments following
the war were bound to drag them still farther into the former field
of the enemy. The Jeffersonian commercial war, which had begun with
the embargo of eight years before, had practically cut off the United
States from the European sources of supply. In a crude way her people
began to set up manufactories to supply needed goods. The waterfalls
distributed so abundantly over the Northern States were harnessed for
this purpose. Unconsciously the United States was coming into a
commercial independence even more valuable than the political or
navigation right for which she had contended in two wars. The world's
peace of 1815 released the carrying trade; European goods poured into
America; and the infant manufactures were undersold and threatened
with ruin. As many as twenty vessels arrived in New York during one
day in 1815, hurrying British goods to the reopened American market.

[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT'S TEMPORARY RESIDENCE, 1815. This "octagon"
house in Washington was occupied by President Madison while the White
House was being rebuilt after being burned by the British in the War
of 1812. It is now used as a club house.]

Instantly the public thought turned to a protective tariff, not only
to save the manufactures, but as a retributive measure against England.
"It is now a little more than a year," wrote a correspondent to Niles's
_Register_, "since we closed a contest in arms with Great Britain in
glory. A new struggle has already commenced with the same nation in
the arts as connected with agriculture, commerce, and manufacture."
Another contributor urged the necessity of protecting and cherishing
the manufacture of everything--from a toothpick to a ship, from a
needle to a cannon, a thread of yarn to a bale of cloth--unless we
could exchange some commodity for them. "You spread too much canvas,"
was the reason reported to have been given an American by an Englishman
for certain restrictive measures on American commerce.

"Americanism" showed itself in the press as well as in congressional
debates. Writers contrasted the probable happiness of an imaginary
"Anglo-American province," located on the Atlantic coast-plain,
dependent upon the Old World for its straw hats, boot, shoes, cotton,
linen, and cloth, with an "Economic Republic," located as far inland
as the banks of the Ohio, and depending entirely on home industries.
A rumour that the rebuilt Executive Mansion was to be furnished with
articles from Europe brought an indignant denial from the
Administration. Only porcelain, mirror plate, carpets, and a few minor
articles, such as were not produced in the United States, had been
imported. It was announced that President Monroe had given orders to
use home manufactures as far as possible in furnishing all public
buildings in Washington. The American Society for the Advancement of
Domestic Manufactures was favoured by ex-Presidents Adams, Jefferson,
and Madison, as well as by President Monroe. The Philadelphia Society
for the Promotion of Domestic Industry issued addresses to the people.

Under the influence of the embargo the census of 1810 had been made
to include a survey of American manufactures. It showed that nearly
two hundred million dollars' worth of goods were manufactured annually
in the United States. Undoubtedly this sum had been greatly increased
during the two years of war. Newspapers printed accounts of the large
output of woollen mills in New England, of the starting of glass and
iron factories, of new methods for weaving, of looms to be operated
by steam power, of the discovery of lead, copper, asbestos, and other
mines. The frontier city of Cincinnati reported the establishment of
manufactories of tools, implements, ground mustard, and castor oil.
It was said in 1816 that not less than nineteen million dollars' worth
of woollen goods alone were being produced in the United States, which
must suffer from European competition unless protected. A steam vessel,
so it was reported, built at New York, was about to attempt to cross
the Atlantic to Russia, where Fulton had been given a monopoly of steam
navigation for twenty-five years.

So completely had the New England States alienated themselves from the
Administration by their conduct during the war that an appeal from
them for protecting manufactures in which they were most largely
interested would have had small influence, unless the general condition
of the country had demanded action, as shown above. The Southern States,
which dominated Government, could afford to be magnanimous. They had
permanent protection in their cotton, tobacco, and sugar exports as
the means of their commercial salvation. "Let us be charitable toward
the Hartford conventionists; let us make them feel that they have a
country," said a member of Congress, in discussing the impost bill of
1816, which partook somewhat of the nature of a tariff bill along
Hamiltonian lines, although framed by Jeffersonians. Few speakers
showed a tendency to discuss the proposition from a party standpoint.
"The duty of a paternal government" was referred to as freely as if
the Hamilton days had come again.

As usual in a tariff debate, expediency and self-interest ruled. The
difficulty of reconciling the varied interests in a common measure
seemed at times insurmountable. The South wanted a high duty upon
sugars and a low duty upon coarse cloth. The New England delegates
insisted upon the contrary.

"The order of the day seems to be to catch and keep and huckster
sectional interests without regarding the nation as a whole," wrote a
disgusted member to one of his constituents. "We can unite, as you have
seen, from Maine to Louisiana in favor of voting money into our own
pockets; but I despair of seeing a united vote in favor of our
constituents."

This tariff measure of 1816, the first after the war, was a protective
action in form rather than by intention. The Republicans looked on it
as corrective of the many acts which during the war had almost doubled
the duties to secure revenue. It was a kind of transition from the
tariff policy of the Hamiltonians, nearly twenty years before, to that
of Clay, ten years later. That tariff issues were not yet developed
and sectional interests appreciated is evidenced by the fact that
Calhoun was an earnest advocate of this measure and that Webster voted
against it. A comparison of the votes in House and Senate indicated
slightly the sectional tendency which was to characterise the tariff
question when fully developed.

  VOTES OF APRIL 8 AND APRIL 19, 1816, ON REGULATING DUTIES

                                         House    Senate
  North of Mason and Dixon line /For.......63.......16
                                \Against...14........2
  South of Mason and Dixon line /For.......25........9
                                \Against...40........5

The measure was passed by the vote of the Eastern or manufacturing
States, aided by the South-western States, who were expecting some
kind of paternalistic benefit to their hemp or other products. In the
Senate, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana voted solidly for the tariff,
and in the House these three States furnished nine affirmative to four
negative votes. The five New England States, already strong advocates
for increasing protection, gave in the House seventeen votes in favour
to two against the experiment. Virginia and South Carolina furnished
twenty-seven of the negative votes in the House. Strange to say, South
Carolina, the opposition leader of a later day, gave a majority for
the bill in both branches of Congress.

It is scarcely just to call this tariff of 1816 a protective measure,
since it was entitled "An act to regulate the duties on imports and
tonnage." It was a natural result of the attitude of the "war-hawks,"
isolated from European influence and developing self-reliance and
self-dependence. It was looked upon as reducing the tariff to a peace
basis. The war duties on woollen and cotton goods, rating as high as
thirty per cent., were to be gradually scaled down to half that amount.
But the discrimination in favour of certain goods made easier the
demand for a greater discrimination a few years later, and divided the
party upon the old Hamiltonian policy of protection.




CHAPTER XVIII

SECTIONAL DISCORD OVER TERRITORY



Before the addition of Louisiana, the American settlements west of the
Alleghenies extended in a thin wedge to the Mississippi, having the
British Canadians on the north and the Spanish in the Floridas to the
southward. After Louisiana was added, these settlements constituted
the ligament which bound the older to the newer part. Both British and
Spanish had formerly been on the advance line; now they were on the
American flank. Invasion from each direction had to be guarded against
during the war. The strength of Britain and the fidelity of the
Canadians prevented the conquest and addition of Canada during
hostilities. But the disintegrating power of Spain in the New World
held out hope that eventually the Floridas might be acquired and the
American possessions be rounded out on the Gulf at least. It is safe
to say that from the moment of taking possession of Louisiana the
retention of the Floridas by any foreign power was felt to be an
incongruity.

The Floridas, or the western portion at least, would have been annexed
to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1804 if the
Jeffersonians had been expansionists at heart. Livingston, whose
antecedents were more Federalistic than the majority of Jefferson's
appointees, advised taking immediate possession of the Floridas upon
the assumption that they were part of Louisiana. In this opinion Monroe
concurred, although less ardently. Considering the uncertain boundaries
of "Louisiana," and that such action might offend Britain or Spain in
the critical situation of foreign affairs, Jefferson preferred to await
the process of time and the restless nature of his countrymen.

"It is probable," said he, "that the inhabitants of Louisiana on the
left bank of the Mississippi and inland eastwardly to a considerable
extent will very soon be received under our jurisdiction, and that this
end of West Florida will thus be peaceably gotten possession of. For
Mobile and the eastern end, we must await favorable conjunctures."

Never was prophecy more accurately fulfilled. Spanish power in the New
World disintegrated rapidly after Napoleon dispossessed King Ferdinand.
Americans settled with impunity between the Pearl and the Mississippi
south of the line of thirty-one, which had been agreed upon in 1795
as the boundary between the United States and the Spanish Floridas.
Soon the invaders were in dispute with the Spanish commandant at Baton
Rouge over smuggling and the runaway slaves. Complaints reached Congress
that the commandant at Mobile was collecting toll and harassing American
vessels carrying goods to and from the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers
north of the boundary. The old controversy over the navigation of the
Mississippi had come again on Mobile Bay. In 1810, the American settlers
west of the Pearl set up an independent government at Buhler's Plains
with John Mills and Dr. Steele as officials. The Spanish commandant
and governor were soon after driven out, a petition sent to Congress,
and by proclamation of October 27, 1810, President Madison extended
the authority of the United States over the indefinite region known
as West Florida. The action was based on the Louisiana claim, which
had not been relinquished since the purchase, and on the danger to the
adjacent parts of the United States in the present crisis.

A secret resolution of Congress at the same time authorised the President
to take possession of the remaining Floridas, if England showed a
disposition to seize the land as an aggressive act. Since Spain had come
under the control of France, this action was not an improbability. But
aside from temporarily occupying Pensacola, the British made no attempt to
take the Floridas during the War of 1812, although rumours of that kind
were frequent. Simultaneous with the end of the war came the restoration
of Spanish authority in the Old World and its threatened restoration in
the New. In this chaotic condition of Spanish affairs, President Monroe
ordered a band of freebooters to be driven out of Amelia Island, in East
Florida, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River, near the Georgia boundary.
The troops employed in this work remained on the island, notwithstanding
Spanish protest. General Jackson, being ordered to subdue the Seminole
Indians in Florida, who were harbouring fugitive slaves, invaded the
Spanish territory, cleaned it up in the true Jacksonian manner, hanged two
Englishmen, and "omitted nothing that characterises a haughty conqueror,"
as Onis, the Spanish Minister at Washington, protested. The embarrassed
Administration, through its spokesman, John Quincy Adams, explained that
Jackson intended only to restore order where Spanish authority had failed.
At the same time Adams reopened negotiations by which Spain eventually
ceded the troublesome Floridas to the United States for a money
consideration.

The additions of territory to the national domain, strong Union-making
elements as they are, have had a curious connection one with another.
The navigation of the Mississippi, left unsettled with Spain from the
Peace of 1783, led directly to the attempt to purchase the "island"
of New Orleans, and consequently to the Louisiana acquisition. The
uncertain boundary of Louisiana caused the annexation of West Florida,
and that success made a final settlement of East Florida easier. The
readiness with which the Americans could invade her territory, unchecked
by other powers, made Spain, in her helplessness, consent to this
treaty of 1819, by which the entire Gulf territory from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Mexican province of Texas became American soil. The ethics
of the entire transaction may be questionable. It smacks of invasion,
stretching of claims, a show of force, and soothing balm of gold. What
territorial conquest in the history of the world has been entirely
free from criticism? However, the increase of national prestige and
the stimulation of national pride which resulted are the factors to
be considered in the story of the United States.

The Florida Purchase was a second instance of bringing national prestige
to the Union by the party originally afraid of giving it too much
power. The action brought in its train as many embarrassing questions
and as many demands for the fostering care of government as did the
Louisiana Purchase. Yet precedent made the questions easier to answer
in favour of centralisation and made the steps easier to take by the
scrupulous Jeffersonians.

It is worthy of notice that the people of the Floridas were promised,
in the annexation treaty of 1819, incorporation into the Union "as
soon as may be consistent with the principles of the Federal
Constitution," no time being specified. The Louisianians had found,
as stated heretofore, that the phrase "as soon as possible" in the
treaty of 1803 was capable of a very loose interpretation at the hands
of their new sovereign. They had to wait nine years before the first
portion was admitted to statehood. Perhaps to avoid a deluge of
petitions and protests, such as came from the inhabitants of the
Louisiana Purchase when given a territorial standing, John Quincy Adams
may have invented the new phrase "as soon as consistent." Under this
provision, portions of the Florida Purchase were added to adjacent
States and the residue compelled to wait twenty-five years before
statehood was given to it. The rights of man and citizenship in the
State had again been temporarily lost sight of by the party of which
these were basic principles.

Having been converted into territories, the additions to domain came
directly under the care of the National Government. Bound by national
honour as well as by a regard for the sacredness of statehood to bestow
upon this public land such protection and such improvements as might
encourage migration to it, and thus hasten the time of full rights for
its people, the Republicans might yet have pursued a parsimonious
policy, if increasing migration to the United States had not impelled
them to action to provide homes for the multitude. No such influx from
the Old World had been seen as followed the close of the Napoleonic
wars. It was small compared with the full tide of migration, which set
in about 1845. But it seemed marvellous at the time. Fifteen hundred
were counted in some weeks, mostly Irish and English, with a sprinkling
of French and German. No record was kept of the number of arrivals
until 1820, and statistics are simply approximate.

Viewing the Old World as again under the curse of monarchy, and the
new-comers as refugees from oppression, the Republican party found
itself ready to arrange for the easiest possible disposal of the public
lands. "Let them come," said one writer. "Good and wholesome laws with
the avenues to wealth and independence opened to honest industry will
tame even Mr. Peel's 'Untamably ferocious' Irishmen! as well as suppress
English mobs crying for employment and bread, without the use of the
bayonet." Descriptions of the economic unrest in Europe following the
close of the Napoleonic wars were fully circulated in American
newspapers. The number of bankruptcies, the idle custom-house clerks,
the labouring poor applying at the different sessions for certificates
to migrate to America, the British vessels anticipating desertions by
sailing for the New World with double crews, the steps taken by the
British Government to prevent artisans from leaving, the ruse of coming
through Canada to escape question and detention--all this was delightful
reading for the American public.

Many of the emigrants passed the Allegheny barrier, notwithstanding
the hardships of travel, to make homes in the new States and Territories
of the West and South-west. Birkbeck and his colony of Englishmen came
to southern Illinois. The Rappites planted the community of New Harmony
on the Wabash in Indiana. Congress granted land to a colony of refugees
in Alabama. Numerous towns were laid out on the upper Mississippi and
the Missouri in the Louisiana Purchase. Protecting garrisons were
established far up the Missouri River and at the Falls of St. Anthony,
near the headwaters of the Mississippi, "two thousand miles from the
sea." Buffalo and Erie, names not to be found upon the map before the
war, were now busy ports with a thriving lake commerce. Semi-weekly
posts were carried to Detroit, Green Bay, and far Michilimackinac.

These evidences of the vast extent of the national domain excited both
pride and fear. Unless the distant parts could be more closely cemented,
the days of Western unrest and foreign intrigue might come again. The
demand for government aid to public improvements sprang up anew. Colonel
Johnson, attempting to take a small fleet of steamboats up the Missouri
to the Yellowstone in 1819 to open a new route for trade with China
by way of the Columbia River, was hindered by sand-bars and snags, or
"planters." Various improvements in rivers and the construction of
canals undertaken by different States were reported in Congress.
Government aid in the shape of subscriptions to stock was contemplated
in some cases. Gallatin's report of 1809, recommending the expenditure
of twenty million dollars on public works, was reprinted. The Cumberland
Road was given over three hundred thousand dollars in a single
appropriation. Two and a half million dollars were spent annually on
the navy. Various arguments were used to harmonise these expenditures
with the economic principles of the Republicans. Twenty
ships-of-the-line could be built, it was said, for much less than the
cost of drafting the militia and the losses in a single State during
one year of the recent war. Ten thousand seamen afloat would be of
more service than fifty thousand militia in preventing "a foreign enemy
ever again polluting the shores of the United States." The only danger
to this policy would be in putting such a power into the hands of the
Chief Executive; but this could be averted, it was declared, by the
ballot. National feeling ran high, as it usually does following a war,
over both national defence and home development.

In the midst of this great impetus toward nationality came a sudden
revelation of the sectional discord which it was hoped had been laid
for ever. A vast extent of territory has its advantages in wealth and
population; but it also has its dangers in the differences of climate,
products, and labour thereby engendered. The United States could not
hope to be free from this menace, common to all governments with
extensive domains, until time had proved the necessity for union, and
use had made its burdens appear lighter. Sectional jealousies had been
quieted in the Convention of 1787 by establishing "balances" in
representation and taxation. It was unfortunate to recognise the
existence of sections and to perpetuate them in this manner; but
compromise was the only way possible at the time.

[Illustration: View of the Capitol of the United States. THE CAPITOL
BURNED BY THE BRITISH ARMY. From Torrey's "American Slave Trader."
Justice looks from the sky in retribution upon a nation which permits
the slave trade to be carried on almost within the shadow of the
Capitol.]

Those who believed that compromises were curatives rather than means
of temporary relief as we now see them, must have found hope for the
future in the number of compromises in the convention caused by slavery.
As the years sped by under the Constitution, and the menace failed to
renew its formidable shape, these hopes must have brightened into a
belief that the spectre was laid for ever. The expiration of the twenty
years demanded by South Carolina and Georgia in which to get their
supply of slave labour from Africa drew nigh, and brought forth a
prohibitory law to take effect the first day of the year 1808. The
newer Gulf States in vain demanded an extension of the open door to
place them upon an equal footing with the older States. Yet the law
was never enforced, and it was always possible to get a fresh supply
of slaves even to the time of the Civil War. The blame must be shared
equally by the planters of the Gulf States, who purchased the new
slaves, and by the ship-owners of the free States, whose vessels brought
them from Africa for the profit of the trade. Cupidity will be found,
in the last analysis, to be at the bottom of much of the law-breaking
spirit so unfortunately characteristic of the American people.

The Friends kept up an unceasing petition to Congress to ameliorate
the condition of the slaves or to emancipate them. It was said by some
of the British advocates of emancipation, who began to let their voices
be heard in the States, that the destruction of the public buildings
at Washington during the War of 1812 was a judgment of God upon a
people who permitted a slave market almost within the shadow of the
Capitol. Slavery was always at base an economic question and was now
awaiting some national economic issue before it would manifest its
ugly self. The emancipation plans which had been adopted by the Northern
States were emphasising slavery as a sectional issue. It would make
even more difficult the task of balancing the two sections. So rapidly
had public sentiment accepted the inevitable in the matter of sections,
that by 1820 it was easy to repeat the fearful phrase, "preserving the
balance between the two sections."

It had been possible to preserve this balance in the Senate, where
State representation is equal, by admitting a Northern and a Southern
State contemporaneously. Thus two Senators from each section were
created. In the House of Representatives, where strength depends upon
the distribution of population, no such balance could be maintained.
The attractiveness of the back lands as they were opened to settlement,
the ease with which farms could be secured from the public domain, the
rapid development of water-power, and the increasing immigration from
Europe, caused a rapid growth of population in the trans-Alleghenian
region. In 1800, only one settler had crossed the mountains to fourteen
remaining on the coast-plain. Ten years later one had crossed for every
six remaining behind, and in 1820 the proportion was one to four. There
had been some alarm manifest in the older States in earlier times,
because the power and prestige which they had enjoyed must eventually
be reduced if not lost through the rapidly growing West. But whatever
danger of this nature was realised became of secondary importance by
1820 to the larger question of the unequal distribution of the migrants
in the various parts of the West. Between 1810 and 1820, for instance,
Ohio had increased in population 151.9 per cent. and Tennessee only
61.5 per cent. For every 319 people who sought homes in Illinois during
that period, only 87 had settled in Mississippi. The two States had
been admitted almost simultaneously and had equal attractions. Why
should the one gain more population and have more political strength
than the other? Although statistics for the sparsely populated
territories were not so available, there was no doubt that the Northern
section everywhere was being settled more rapidly than the Southern.

Under such conditions, the maintenance of the senatorial balance of
States between the sections would be impossible. Portions of a Northern
territory would be applying for admission before population had reached
the required number in any Southern part. An additional alarm was felt
because every Northern State admitted thus far, having been formed out
of the North-west Territory, had incorporated in its constitution the
provision of the Ordinance of 1787 that "neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes," should ever
be permitted. That kept the door of the Northern States closed against
the Southern slavery system. Although such action might be held as
mandatory on every State created out of the North-west Territory, it
could not be so held in States made out of the Louisiana Purchase.
Indeed, the treaty of 1803 promised the inhabitants "the free enjoyment
of their liberty; property, and religion." So strongly was the Southern
element entrenched in national affairs, and so slightly had the ethical
views of the Pennsylvania Friends affected the country at large, that
the word "property" was tacitly allowed to cover slaves. Louisiana,
the first trans-Mississippi State, was admitted with a constitution
not prohibiting, and hence permitting slavery. The act changing the
Territory of Louisiana, which covered the remainder of the Louisiana
Purchase, into the Missouri Territory, passed at the same time, left
the Territory open to slavery in the same manner. Slaves could be
legally held on the west of the Mississippi as far north as Canada.

This Territory of Missouri, extending from the southern boundary of
the State of Arkansas to the Canadian line, received its share of
Western migrants. It embraced the heart of the continent. It extended
indefinitely up the Missouri River and the Yellowstone, where its
traders and trappers came into competition with the outposts of the
Hudson Bay and the North-west fur-trading companies, under the
protection of a vast system of British troops and outposts. Still
farther to the north-west the Americans found the Russian Company,
under protection of its Government, taking furs presumably from the
Louisiana country to supply Euro-Asia. It is no wonder that American
traders began to demand similar protection from their Government. Other
industries arising from the rapidly increasing population also demanded
attention.

When the United States took possession of the Louisiana country, the
upper portion contained probably not more than six thousand inhabitants,
about one thousand being slaves. In 1810, it had twenty thousand. A
decade later, as the Territory of Missouri, it had grown to four times
that number and was ready for division and statehood. A petition reached
Congress in 1819, setting forth its claims. It was understood that the
new State would centre about St. Louis, a thriving city of ten thousand
inhabitants, situated just below the mouth of the Missouri, and that
both the Northern and Southern extremes of the vast territory would
be cut off. To make a proper line of demarcation, the Kentucky-Tennessee
boundary of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was extended across
the Mississippi; and the "Arkansas country," which lay to the south
of it, was erected into a separate territory and given that name. A
northern boundary for the proposed state was projected westwardly from
near the mouth of the Des Moines River.

An attempt was made by a few radicals to apply the anti-slavery clause
from the North-west Territory Ordinance of 1787 to the Territory of
Arkansas; but it would so manifestly destroy the balance between the
sections that the project was abandoned. In time Arkansas would become
a slave State. It was presumed by many Northern statesmen that the
boundary line between Arkansas and Missouri would thus be accepted as
a continuation of the line between the two sections, which had been
extended across the continent with the movement of the people. It was
begun when Pennsylvania and all States north adopted some form of
emancipation for their slaves, and neither Maryland nor any State south
thought best to do so. Hence the boundary line between the two States,
run by the geographers, Mason and Dixon, in early days, became the
first sectional line. The Ohio River was made a prolongation of the
unfortunate line through the ordinance creating the North-west
Territory, which forbade slavery north of the river, and the ordinance,
for the South-western Territory, which forbade interference with slavery
south of the river. The westward movement of population now made it
necessary to extend the line across the Louisiana Purchase.

It had been impossible to decide the slavery question when the Territory
of Missouri was created, as was done for the land north of the Ohio,
because it extended over so many degrees of latitude, covering land
both favourable and hostile by climate to the system. It was thought
that about one-fifth of the population was composed of slaves in 1820;
but they were mostly in Arkansas Territory. From a geographical
standpoint, the southern boundary of the proposed State was within
half a degree of being a direct continuation of the Ohio River at its
mouth. It seemed to the Northern people a most reasonable line to
establish between the sections. But the Ohio pursues a south-west
instead of a due west course. By following it, the South had lost two
and a half degrees of territory. The Mason and Dixon line is about
thirty-nine degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, while the mouth
of the Ohio is at thirty-seven degrees. By extending the interstate
boundary line nearest the mouth--viz., that between Kentucky and
Tennessee at thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes--the slavery section
would lose a strip across the Louisiana Purchase as wide as the State
of Kentucky at its greatest width. Thus even the natural features of
the continent seemed to cry out against drawing sectional lines for
a united people. For this reason the Southern element demanded that
the continuation of the line between slavery and free soil should be
drawn along the northern boundary of the proposed State, which was
about one degree north of the old Mason and Dixon line.

The balance of power between the sections in the Senate, which had
been maintained without difficulty thus far, was seriously threatened
by this Missouri question. At the beginning of the Constitutional Union
seven States were clearly destined by their climate and occupation for
free labour, leaving six for slave labour. The latter thus lacked two
senatorial votes of equalling the North from the beginning. The
admission of Vermont and Kentucky, a Northern and a Southern State,
maintained the ratio. It was continued farther by the admission of
Tennessee and Ohio, Louisiana and Indiana, Mississippi and Illinois.
This balance had been thus far an accident, depending upon the time
when a portion of land had sufficient population for statehood; but
it had become such a tacit understanding, that the admission of Alabama
in 1819, it was said, made the sections exactly equal in the number
of Senators. At almost the same time Missouri and Maine were ready.
The latter because of climate must undoubtedly be admitted as a free
State. The former must be given to slavery if the balance between the
two sections was to be maintained. But the extension of the line of
thirty-six thirty would make Missouri a free State. The location of
States heretofore admitted had been so indisputably upon the one side
or the other of the slavery-freedom line that uncertainty was
impossible. Missouri, as has been shown, lay right athwart the
extension.

There had been comparatively little anti-slavery agitation thus far,
being confined to attacks upon the slave trade and an occasional
petition from the Friends; yet the sentiment that slavery was an
economic evil was firmly established in the overstocked border slave
States, and that it was both an economic and moral evil was believed
by a growing number in the Northern States. The "Lower South," or Gulf
States, were thus left as the guardians of a system which the increasing
cultivation of cotton in that region made unusually profitable and,
as they thought, indispensable. Missouri lay far to the north of them,
but the maintenance of political power in the Union was essential to
their future if they read aright the growing hostile sentiment of the
North. Immediate or gradual emancipation had been provided by every
old State in the North, and slavery had been prohibited by the
constitutions of the new Northern States. Feeling the approval of a
good conscience, it was probable that the North would eventually demand
a kindred movement in the South. There is no reformer likely to be so
intolerant as the one who has left off what he considers a bad habit.

The slavery system had been so thoroughly rooted in colonial times and
so freely recognised and protected in the Constitution, that few as
yet contemplated interfering with it in any State where it already
existed. Home rule and individual rights were too sacred for that.
Majority rule had not yet made sufficient headway against individualism.
But the Union had a kind of prenatal control which it could exercise
over States created from Territories. Here was an opportunity to
exercise it. An early attempt was made in Congress on the part of those
hostile to the extension of slavery to make Missouri a free State by
prohibiting "the further introduction of slavery or involuntary
servitude." It was met by a counter amendment from the pro-slavery
people jointly admitting Maine and Missouri with no such restrictions.
This would evidently throw Missouri open to slavery.

The ensuing debates in Congress, covering parts of two sessions, opened
all the sectional dissensions, showed how weak were the ties of unionism
thus far developed, cut sharp lines across political parties, and
shifted the old East and West sectional danger to North and South. The
phrase "Mason and Dixon line" was used to express the sectional
demarcation, transformed to that use, it is said, by John Randolph.
Recrimination and abuse were common. Northern speakers drew insulting
comparisons between the population, wealth, and prosperity of the free
and slave States. They attributed the difference to the blight of
slavery. Southern speakers explained that slavery was a thing of which
a non-resident could not judge properly; that what appeared to an
outsider as a lack of prosperity was the enjoyment of life by a people
not devoted to the sordid aspects of existence; that slavery was a
matter for home rule and did not concern the other half of the Union.
The Northern contingent replied that slavery was a menace to free
labour and that their devotion to all parts of the Union, as well as
their right of self-preservation, warranted their interference. Then
the Southern speakers taunted them with Shays's Rebellion, the whiskey
insurrection, and the Hartford Convention, as proofs of their devotion
to the Union. The people of New York were reproached with wishing to
deprive Southern people of their slave property, although they
themselves still held more than ten thousand slaves and held them under
protection of the State laws. One Southern speaker came very near the
truth when he predicted that the census for 1820 would show fully
twenty thousand slaves still held in bondage in the Northern States.
A long discussion arose over the number of troops each section had
furnished to the Revolutionary War and upon the number of distinguished
men bred in each section. The Bible was quoted freely to attack or
defend human bondage. Resolutions of State Legislatures added their
weight to either side. Some debaters in Congress deplored the "poisoning
of the national affection," seeing in it the revival of the sectional
envy and dislike dormant for the past thirty years. Other hot-blooded
speakers declared that this contest could be ended only by bloodshed.

Looking beneath the unfortunate sectionalism, which was to retard the
growth of the Union for the coming half-century, one sees that the
people faced a new question: had the United States a right to place
an anti-slavery restriction on a sovereign State at the time of
creating it from a Territory? The answer would greatly affect the
relation of the States to the Union. Few States had been admitted
without some conditions, such as the non-taxation of public lands and
the perpetual freedom of navigable waters; but those were of national
importance and different from slavery, which was claimed to be of local
concern. In admitting Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, formed from the
North-west Territory, Congress had provided that their constitutions
should not be repugnant to the Ordinance of 1787. That this did not
mean a rigid adherence to the anti-slavery provision was shown by the
admission of Illinois in 1818 with an apprentice system, which made
slavery possible in that State for twenty-two years to come. A motion
to reject the application of Illinois on this ground was overwhelmingly
defeated. The States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama,
had been created out of the indefinite territory south of the Ohio
River in which Congress had pledged itself to make no law emancipating
slaves. No slavery conditions were placed upon their admission, which
was considered equivalent to an agreement that they were to be slave
States. Louisiana was created out of the Louisiana Purchase and Arkansas
made into a Territory with the same tacit permission, as has been said.
Precedent consequently taught everything and nothing so far as Missouri
was concerned.

The obligations of the Union toward a State were freely discussed;
whether "new states may be admitted by the Congress" meant "must" be
admitted. On a small scale the discussion rehearsed the Hayne-Webster
debate a decade later. Occasional pleas were heard for "the old
Republican doctrine which limited the general government to the
expressed powers and prevented it from encroaching on the young states
or on the free movement of personal property." Various phrases in the
Constitution were quoted both to prove and disprove the power of
Congress to prohibit slavery in a new State. "The citizens of each
state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens
in the several states," it was claimed, would permit the migration of
slaveholders to Missouri with their property. "The migration or
importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall
think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior
to 1808," was said to permit, conversely, such prohibition after that
date. The other side claimed that the clause was intended to refer
solely to slaves imported into the United States and not to interstate
migration. Under the clause that the Congress shall guarantee a
republican form of government to every State, the Declaration of
Independence was quoted to prove that freedom is the natural condition
of a republic and that slaves were held only pending their emancipation.
Such sentiments drew a sharp rebuke from the opposing side. Slaves
might even then be in the gallery, it was said, to overhear such
revolutionary doctrine.

So persistent were members in hunting up and interpreting various
phrases of the Constitution, each to suit his own views, that one
disgusted Republican protested against "a species of special pleading
which hunts for powers in words and sentences taken here and there
from the instrument and patched together forming something like a
pretext for the exercise of power palpably interdicted by the plain
sense and intention of the instrument." The cry of "home rule" for the
State of Missouri on the slavery question was the forerunner of
"squatter sovereignty" two decades later. Calhoun's later plea that
any citizen had the right to migrate to any part of the co-operative
public lands and to carry with him all his property found a first
hearing in this debate on the admission of Missouri.

The equilibrium maintained so carefully in the Senate had long since
disappeared in the House because of the varying distribution of
population. Of the 180 members who considered the Missouri question
in the more popular branch, 104 came from the free States and only 76
from the slave States. The vote of 87 to 76 by which the House finally
forbade slavery in the new State was indicative to some extent of this
proportion, although party lines influenced a few votes. Virginia stood
solidly for slavery, and New York, with one exception, against it. Of
the nineteen votes from Pennsylvania, only one was cast for slavery
in Missouri. Massachusetts was almost as unanimous. North and South
Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi, the future champions of the system,
unanimously opposed placing such restriction on the new State. The
Senate, more nearly balanced, refused to agree with the restrictive
vote of the House. A counter-measure was proposed by the Southern
interests to admit Maine and Missouri jointly, allowing home rule to
each on the slavery question. The majority in the House opposed this
method of evidently opening the new State to slavery. A deadlock between
the two branches was imminent.

Meanwhile a bill had appeared in the Senate to draw the dividing-line
between slavery and freedom across the Louisiana Purchase along
thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, a continuation
of the Kentucky-Tennessee boundary. This would make Missouri a free
State. Considering the triangular shape of the purchase, with the bulk
of land lying to the north of the proposed line, the division was
manifestly unequal. Roughly estimated, the proportions would be about
one to seven. That would mean in time fourteen Northern and two Southern
Senators. It would mean seven times the chances of population for
representation in the House. At last, Henry Clay, Speaker of the House,
who had favoured slavery in Missouri, was able to effect a compromise
whereby thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was accepted as the
dividing-line; but the State of Missouri, which lay to the north of
it, was made an exception and admitted without any restriction and,
consequently, open to slavery. In all the remainder of the vast tract
north of the line slavery was forbidden, as it had been in the Northwest
Territory.

This extension of the slavery-freedom line ran up the Mississippi from
the mouth of the Ohio, passed about the State of Missouri, returned
to her southern boundary, and ran thence to the summit of the Rocky
Mountains. There were now twelve free and twelve slave States in the
Union. The South had gained her point in throwing Missouri open to
slavery and so maintaining the balance of power in the Senate. But she
had paid a heavy penalty for it. That she would remain content with
this unequal distribution; that the next generation would abide by the
compromise when new States were created; that the free migration of
the people with their property could be checked by a parallel of
latitude; that the question of territorial slavery had been settled
by a drawn battle, few could hope or expect.

This dissension over the simple matter of admitting a State to the
Union was a temporary check to the national feeling engendered by the
War of 1812. The spectre of sectionalism was disclosed at the banquet
table. Jefferson compared it to an alarm-bell in the night, when writing
from Monticello to John Adams. "The Missouri question," replied the
retired statesman of Braintree, "I hope, will follow the other waves
under the ship and do no harm." Yet he appreciated the dangers of
sectionalism under unscrupulous leaders. "I am Cassandra enough to
dream," he added, "that another Hamilton, another Burr, might rend
this mighty fabric in twain ... and a few more choice spirits of the
same stamp might produce as many nations in North America as there are
in Europe." The third ex-President, Madison, deplored the "angry and
unfortunate discussion" about Missouri. "Should a state of parties
arise," he said, "founded on geographical boundaries and other physical
and permanent distinctions which happen to coincide with them, what
is to control those great repulsive masses from awful shocks against
each other?" Time alone was needed to bring a sad answer to the inquiry.




CHAPTER XIX

ANNOUNCEMENT OF NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY



The rebirth of nationalism, which followed the War of 1812 in the New
World, was likely sooner or later to come into conflict with the rebirth
of monarchy, which followed the Napoleonic wars in the Old World. The
restoration of the European monarchs had been witnessed by the American
people with a mingling of indignation and despair. Daily the conviction
grew that free government must find a home in America if it survived.
American self-government and a free people were arrayed in popular
thought against European monarchy and nobility. Commenting on the
accumulated wealth of the British nobility, an American editor said:
"Thanks be to Heaven! we have probably not one man in the United States
whose settled income is equal to a half of the least of these. But in
lieu of such great estates, we have a pleasing contrast to offer in
the vast majority we possess of persons who earn or receive from $1,000
to $1,500 a year, and who are the bone and sinew of our country and
the natural republicans of every clime." American newspapers lost no
opportunity of ridiculing European royalty. The cost of maintaining
the nobility was dwelt upon as a burden on the people. The attempt of
George IV. to divorce his Queen furnished a text for many republican
sermons. The coronation of the King in his "holy" and "sacred" vestments
was declared to be ridiculous. "We plain republicans," said one writer,
"cannot understand how there could be anything more like sacrilege in
stealing that mantle than in stealing a sheep."

The Church was prominent in all phases of the restoration of legitimacy
in Europe--a connection incomprehensible in America, where Church and
State had been completely severed in the course of the political
revolution. Disestablishment by statute in Virginia had been followed
by similar action in all States where the Established Church held.
Local constitutions as formed by the States guaranteed not toleration,
but absolute religious freedom. The first amendment to the Constitution
of the United States made this freedom national. The Ordinance for the
North-west Territory extended it to States yet unborn. Washington, as
President, gave assurance of non-interference in the replies which
he framed to addresses from the leading sects. Indeed, it is difficult
to imagine how a State church could have been maintained in the rapid
shifting of the Chief Executive. President Washington was an
Episcopalian, President Adams a Congregationalist, and President
Jefferson a free-thinker, or Unitarian of later times. So thoroughly
had Church and State been divorced in America that some suspicion was
aroused over a manifesto signed at St. Petersburg, on "the day of the
birth of our Saviour," 1816, by the monarchs of Austria, Russia, and
Prussia. It announced that "in conformity with the words of the Holy
Scripture, which commands all men to regard one another as brethren,"
the three agreed to lend each other assistance, aid, and support, and
to govern their subjects in "a spirit of fraternity for the protection
of religion, peace and justice." The exhortation of these monarchs to
their people to fortify themselves in the principles of the Saviour,
no less than the confession that they themselves ruled only by a
delegation of power from Christ, was regarded by the Protestant
Americans as religious cant. The power behind the throne was more
likely force of arms. The provision that other nations professing these
principles should be "received with as much readiness as affection in
this holy alliance" was regarded as a bid and possible conspiracy for
the extension of legitimacy not alone to Europe, but to the colonial
holdings as well.

The United States, although sneering at the legitimacy of European
monarchs and disappointed in seeing their high hopes in the French
Revolution brought to such a defeat, had no vital interest in any
restoration save within the Spanish colonies in America, which had
revolted under Napoleonic interference. British Canada had made no
attempt at revolution and France had no possessions on the American
Continent. The United States had watched eagerly and sympathetically
the spread of revolutionary principles from colony to colony in the
Spanish-American possessions, and the resulting institution of
self-government. Orators vied with each other in picturing the spread
of freedom in the New World. Statesmen drew up constitutions for the
new republics. Clay was given a vote of thanks by the Mexican Congress
for his sentiments expressed for their welfare. Ministers had been
sent to them as rapidly as they showed ability to govern themselves
and to maintain a stable government. Should all this good work be
undone and the hands turned backward on the dial of liberty by
conspiring European monarchs? Should legitimacy cast its blight again
on the New World as it had already done on the Old? Should the Holy
Alliance be allowed to extend its monarchical compulsion to the
Spanish-American republics under the sacred garb of religion?

Speculation was rife in both British and American newspapers concerning
the objects of this holy league, or Holy Alliance, as it began to be
called. To some it smacked of Inquisition days. To others it suggested
a crusade on all republican principles. In the House of Commons
Castlereagh explained that it contemplated no hostility to States
outside the Church and that it was couched in the mildest spirit of
Christian toleration. He confessed that it was drawn up in an unusual
manner, but that it nevertheless gave no grounds whatever for
entertaining the slightest jealousy.

England had assisted in the restoration of monarchy. Would Protestant
England join the Holy Alliance? Would the Alliance turn its attention
to the Spanish-American republics after it had carried out its evident
determination to replace Ferdinand on the Spanish throne? These were
questions asked by the people of the United States. If Europe was to
become the champion of monarchy and legitimacy, why should not America
become the guardian of freedom and republicanism? Undoubtedly the
tendency of Russia to creep quietly down the Pacific coast from her
north-west possessions contributed to the conviction that the offices
of the Holy Alliance could be called into service in that quarter also
if necessary. It is just as true that the struggle for autonomy which
the Greeks were instituting attracted sympathy in America and added
to the conviction that a world struggle was imminent between monarchy
and republicanism.

That destiny had marked the United States for an unparalleled career
had been a common saying since the days of Patrick Henry. But that
isolation from European entanglements was necessary to fulfil it was
equally appreciated. Washington had expressed this conviction in his
farewell address. Jefferson had been goaded into the wish that an ocean
of fire separated the two hemispheres. Madison in 1811, fearing that
Great Britain intended interfering in Florida affairs, questioned
whether the United States should not announce that it could not see,
"without serious inquietude," neighbouring territory pass from Spain
to any other foreign power. "The provinces belonging to this hemisphere
are our neighbors," said President Monroe in a special message to
Congress in 1822. "The foothold which the nations of Europe had in
either America is slipping from under them," wrote ex-President
Jefferson to Monroe, "so that we shall soon be rid of their
neighborhood." "The American continents are no longer subjects for any
new European colonial establishments," said Secretary of State John
Quincy Adams to the Russian Minister, in discussing the proper limits
of Russian America on the north-west coast. The United States
representative to England was authorised by Adams to announce the fact
that the American continents would be no longer subject to European
colonisation. Occupied by civilised, independent nations, they would
be accessible to Europeans and to each other on that footing alone.

The United States "should therefore have a system of her own separate
and apart from that of Europe," replied Jefferson to President Monroe,
who had consulted him in the autumn of 1823 concerning the various
topics to be treated in his annual message to Congress. "While the
last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor
should surely be to make our hemisphere that of freedom." He agreed
upon the advisability of some public notice. "Its object is to introduce
and establish the American system of keeping out of our land all foreign
powers, of never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the
affairs of our nation." Since such a stand might bring war, he advised
Monroe to present the matter to Congress at the coming session in the
shape of a declaration of principles.

These utterances of public men backed by the increasing feeling of
nationality among the people assumed final shape in the announcement
by Monroe in his seventh annual message to Congress, December, 1823,
of the famous "doctrine" which bears his name. It strongly hinted that
the United States would interpose against any European attempt to
interfere with the freedom of the South American republics or to extend
farther the monarchical system to the New World. At the same time, it
denied any intention on the part of the United States of interfering
with European affairs. It meant the future separation of the two
hemispheres so far as control was concerned. The only exceptions at
the time were England in Canada, Spain in the West Indies, and Russia
on the north-west coast. It meant self-preservation for the present
and proper precautions for the future.

The announcement created little comment at home. The people generally
are not in touch with presidential messages unless some concrete case
is involved. The Holy Alliance had taken as yet no overt action toward
the New World. In Europe the announcement attracted more attention.
Before this time, it had been said in the British Commons that the
Congress of Vienna should have seen to the balance of power in the New
as well as the Old World. Another speaker had called attention to the
fact that two German princes could not exchange meadows without
attracting European attention in a congress, but that the United States
was allowed to take any stand or acquire any territory in a vast
continent. But British sentiment had now turned against the Holy
Alliance, and the British press pronounced the Monroe doctrine "noble
and firm, yet temperate and pacific." They contrasted its "manly
plainness" with the Machiavellism and hypocrisy of the European
manifestos. "Intervention in South American affairs," said one writer,
"may now be considered as at rest. The United States would resist by
war and no power is willing to affront both the United States and Great
Britain." The French press belittled the announcement as the personal
expression of "a temporary president of a republic only forty years
old." It also called attention to the fact that this republic, which
was so boldly proclaiming the severance of the Western world, was
bounded on the north by the possessions of the king of England and on
the south by those of the king of Spain--a pretty situation for the
self-appointed protector of the two Americas!

The Monroe doctrine, or "policy" as it should be called, spoke the
sentiment of nationality engendered by the late war and augmented until
it had assumed the cry of "America for Americans!" The acquisition of
Louisiana and the Floridas, the absence of political parties, and the
appreciation of republican blessings were the prime causes. The
announcement marked the climax of unionism for the time. The sectional
fears aroused by the slavery issue in Missouri three years before had
been quieted by a compromise and were now forgotten in a national
alliance against foreign menace. The announcement inaugurated a period
of isolation for the United States, during which she could gain strength
to meet her European rivals on equal ground instead of becoming a tool
for them. Never again would she be caught in an entangling alliance
such as that with France in 1778.

If American national feeling had diminished after the announcement,
the doctrine of American individuality and of American destiny would
have waned and disappeared. That the policy has been expanded until
it covers nearly every phase of foreign relationship in the New World,
that a simple announcement which grew out of a condition has been made
into an expression of American paramount interest, that it has become
a national fetich although unrecognised as a part of international
law,--all this is a fresh indication of the steady growth of national
sentiment and activity.

Just in the full flush of the announcement, a more zealous race with
a more fiery temperament than the Americans might have gone too far.
The temptation was presented most attractively. The South Americans,
the antipodals of the North Americans, saw in the Monroe announcement
a protection from European interference. Several of the republics
planned a congress at the central city of Panama, "to settle a general
system of American policy in relation to Europe, leaving to each section
of the country a perfect liberty of independent self-government." They
hoped for a gathering of "the powers of America" to offset the powers
of Europe. An alliance against an Alliance was the thought. Among the
objects to be considered was "the manner in which all the colonization
of European powers on the American continent shall be resisted, and
their interference in the present contest between Spain and her former
colonies prevented." Since this was simply a re-statement of the Monroe
doctrine, it was presumed that the United States would take a leading
part; but because the abolition of slavery was another point to be
considered, the pro-slavery element in Congress overruled the wish of
President Adams to take part in the meeting. It was also feared that
a participation might involve the United States in the prevailing war
between Spain and the South American republics.

The interesting but profitless field of speculation might be exhausted
in imagining the result if the United States had thus linked herself
to the Spanish Americas in an American alliance. The problem of securing
the trade of those republics, which has occupied the attention of many
statesmen since that day, might have yielded to this solution; but
that any permanent alliance could have been made between peoples of
antagonistic temperament and varying ideals of self-government is far
from likely. Many times since then the growing American spirit has
demanded that Uncle Sam should become the policeman of America; but
the narrow escape in this instance from incurring such an undesirable
task leads to the hope that it will never be assumed.

Leadership in the "let us alone" policy was taken by the United States
as the result of her geographic isolation, as well as her centrality
of location. She was nearest to the new republics and had most to lose.
Eliminating Canada as a British possession and Brazil with an enervating
climate and Latin leadership, the United States was the only power
whose size and resources entitled her to speak with authority on the
question of European interference. The Monroe doctrine was primarily
intracontinental and for immediate self-preservation; secondarily it
was extracontinental and for ultimate self-preservation. England, the
only European New World power remaining of the six whose discoveries
originally entitled them to that distinction, was equally interested
in the preservation of Canada and the freedom of trade which the
independence of the Spanish-American republics made possible. She
rejected the Holy Alliance to support the Monroe doctrine. Without
British co-operation it is doubtful whether the stand could have been
maintained and the Holy Alliance held in check. This cooperation brought
about a speedy _rapprochement_ between the two recent enemies. It was
hastened by the diplomatic skill of Gallatin in arranging for a joint
occupation of the region west of the Rocky Mountains commonly known
as the Oregon country. By the treaties of 1818 and 1827, final decision
was delayed until increasing population should aid in deciding
ownership.

Nationality had been breeding constantly in directions aside from
foreign policy, protective tariffs, and internal improvements. A
literary independence was manifesting itself, although in a crude form.
The sneers of Britain that the Americans were dependent upon Europe
for their literature, although indignantly denied, were largely true.
American publishers had been long accustomed to reprint English works,
upon which, in the absence of an international copyright law, they
paid no royalties. Byron, Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, Keats, Moore,
Hallam, Maria Edgeworth, and Miss Austen were made available to American
readers in this way. In any parlour a young woman would be found who
could sing _Bonnie Doon_ or recite from _The Lady of the Lake_. A
review of _Don Juan_ appeared in a magazine published in central
Kentucky within six weeks after it was first printed in England.
Democracy and nature were the subjects mostly adopted by these English
writers, and they appealed quite naturally to New World readers. As
Lowell, at a later time, said of the Americans of this period:

  "They stole Englishmen's books and thought Englishmen's thoughts;
   With English salt on her tail, our wild Eagle was caught."

[Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING. From the etching by Jacques Reich.]

So dependent were the States, that a publisher who dared to bring out
a native work did so at a financial peril. The first edition of
Trumbull's _Poems_ lost one thousand dollars. Morse's Geography,
text-books, and the classics were the only remunerative publications.
But soon after the War of 1812, evidences of a change were manifest.
The attention of American writers heretofore had been occupied largely
with the rights of man and other political theories borrowed from the
Old World. Democracy had now adjusted itself to the conditions of the
New World and had become practical. Wild-eyed theory had given way to
plain fact. Economic questions, begotten of the new domestic conditions,
were beginning to occupy public attention. Abstract political rights
became secondary to the price and production of cotton, the
encouragement of manufactures, the invention of machinery, means of
transportation, the employment of emigrants, and the economic value
of the slavery system. In 1819, Irving refused a remunerative offer
to contribute to the _London Quarterly_, because it had been unremitting
in its abuse of his countrymen. He preferred to patronise a home
publication.

This declaration of literary independence was indicative of the times.
Between the close of the war and the end of Jackson's second
administration, probably one hundred and fifty periodicals, entirely
separate from the newspapers, were established in the United States.
About one-third of them was of a religious character, and as many more
devoted to some kind of philanthropic purpose, like temperance, African
colonisation, and missionary work. Their nature may be indicated by
such titles as _The New York Mirror_, _The Casket_, _The Evangelical
Guardian_, _The Portico_, _The Lady Book_, _The Boston Pearl_, _The
Cincinnati Mirror_, and _The Family Lyceum_. Many of these lived only
a year or two, yet they show a desire among the people for a native
literature, however crude and sentimental it might be. During this
period also came the evanescent "Annual," a species of vapid literature
borrowed from Germany through England. Upon the centre-table, near the
case of stuffed birds, you could find _The Token_ or _The Pearl_.
Perhaps the giver had preferred _The Casket_ or _The Western Souvenir_.
Symptoms of a more advanced regard were denoted by the choice of the
_Remember Me_.

The largest number of these ephemeral periodicals appeared in New York,
and the next largest in Philadelphia. Boston ranked third. Philadelphia,
the home of Franklin, of Hopkinson, and of Rittenhouse, had been the
literary head of America before the War of 1812. So long as the Ohio
River remained the natural highway to the West, her literary products
found a market which no competitor could take away. But with the
development of other ways, and especially with the opening of the Erie
Canal, New York and Boston gradually won these laurels from her.

Indeed, the West began to supply its own wants. Of these transitory
publications, no less than seventeen were established west of the
Alleghenies. As early as 1803, a literary magazine had been founded
at Lexington, Kentucky, the seat of the Transylvania University and
the centre of culture for the Ohio valley. Even villages aspired to
be "the Athens of the West." Mt. Pleasant and Oxford in the State of
Ohio vied with Rogersville, Tennessee, and Vandalia, Illinois, in
establishing literary magazines and fostering literary pursuits.

All this marks simply a stage in the development of American literature,
as it shows a step in the growth of American nationality. Permanent
literature awaited better printing facilities, larger patronage of
letters, improved postal accommodations, the growth of cities, and
more leisure and more refinement. Prophecies of a true national
awakening are to be sought not alone in the Monroe doctrine, the tariff
and bank issues, and the spread of internal improvements,--political
events which commonly eclipse the intellectual aspects of nationality;
but also in the Unitarian revolt of 1815, led by Channing, which loosed
New England from the stiffening bonds of Calvinism, the Quaker schism
in the Middle States, and the birth of the Campbellites in the West.
The goodness of man was beginning to attract more attention than the
total depravity of man. The _North American Review_ was founded in
1815. Four years later, Irving published the _Sketch-Book_. Bryant's
first volume of poems, treating generally of local themes, appeared
in 1820. During the ensuing ten years Cooper gave out eleven novels,
the scenes of which were laid almost exclusively in America. Only the
world-reform movement of 1830 was needed to develop fully an American
literature.

Although not so immediately connected with the people, this story must
not lose sight of another function of the government of the States
which was steadily making for their unification. The Federal Judiciary,
the one branch of the national frame which the Republicans in their
twenty years of national control had not been able to curb or get
possession of, was following the bias which John Marshall's first
decisions gave to it. Abuses in the Legislative and Executive branches
could be corrected by an appeal to the ballot. Substantial proof of
the efficacy of this corrective was to be found in the Alien and
Sedition laws, according to the Republicans. They claimed to have
appealed to the people in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and
the people had cast the offending party from power. But the Judiciary
was entrenched in life tenure and not susceptible to this remedy. It
was a constant regret to Jefferson to the end of his life that the
corrective measures taken by him and his party against the national
courts had not included an amendment changing the life tenure of the
judges to a definite period of years. The idea of a permanent Judiciary
had been one of the results of the political struggle with Great Britain
preceding the Revolution. Jefferson also regretted that no one in the
Convention of 1787 had thought of changing the vote necessary for
removing a judge by impeachment from two-thirds to a majority.

Year after year, during the Republican administrations, the national
Judiciary had been quietly shoring up by its decisions the fabric of
the Union, as fate compelled the Jeffersonians to erect it. The
"formative decisions" of John Marshall, during his thirty-four years
on the Supreme bench, maintained constantly the rights of the Federal
courts and added to the prerogatives of the Central Government against
the States. Scarcely a decision favoured the reserved rights theory.
By the opinion in Marbury _vs_. Madison, already quoted, the Executive
branch, presumably entirely divorced from the Judiciary, was found to
be under a certain control. The case of Cohens _vs_. Virginia sustained
the power of the Federal court over an appeal from a State court. It
often happened that in a decision, as in the case of Insurance Company
_vs_. Canter, Marshall took occasion to bring out deductions remotely
germane to the pending case, but tending to broaden the scope of the
Federal power. In this instance, he declared that the constitutional
power to make a treaty carried the implied power to acquire territory.
This really gave authority to unauthorised acts of the Republicans in
purchasing Louisiana; but their remedy was an amendment and not a
decision which made the legislative and executive powers still more
dependent upon the judiciary.

Jefferson complained of these "obiter dissertations," which suggested
consolidating actions to other parts of the Federal Government. In the
trial of Aaron Burr for treason, Justice Marshall held that, according
to the Constitution, some overt act was necessary to constitute treason.
This practical release of his former political opponent was to Jefferson
as sore a grievance as Marshall's action in sending to him for certain
papers connected with the case. He declared the latter act a
presumptuous infringement upon the dignity of the Chief Executive.

The case of McCulloch _vs_. Maryland, in 1819, denying the right of
a State to tax a branch of the United States bank, afforded the court
an opportunity of dwelling upon the implied powers in the Constitution
and of giving judicial sanction to the various legislative acts already
done under them. To charter a bank was not among the powers given to
the National Government, but was "implied," as Marshall held. The
decision gave great offence to the particularists and called general
attention to this silent Union-making factor. Various Southern writers
took up pens against this new menace to individual rights. Some State
Legislatures adopted protests. Madison alluded sarcastically to the
"projectile capacity" of the court, whereby it extended the power of
Congress from the exclusive jurisdiction reserve of ten miles square
constituting the District, even to the uttermost parts of the country.
The "twistifications" of Marshall, said Jefferson, showed how
dexterously he could reconcile law to his personal biasses. Indeed,
Jefferson confessed that he did not look for unbiassed opinions between
the National Government, of which the court was so eminent a part, and
individual States, from which they had nothing to fear. "They are then
in fact the corps of sappers and miners," said he, "steadily working
to undermine the independent rights of the States, and to consolidate
all powers in the hands of that Government in which they have so
important a freehold estate." He could see no hope for the future.
Even more would he have despaired if he could have known that this
silent factor in making the Union was to continue until the eighty
years of John Marshall's life were ended, before a strict
constructionist could be appointed to the head of the court and bring
its decisions back to the confines of individualism.

[Illustration: JOHN MARSHALL Chief Justice of the United States, 1801-
1836.]




CHAPTER XX

FULL FRUITS OF AMERICANISM



It is simply a deduction from facts given in the preceding pages to
say that by 1825 the trans-Alleghenian region had come into its own.
It was sufficient to itself in population, resources, and leadership.
The premiership of the Atlantic plain had passed. Foreign relations
were secondary to domestic concerns. The Monroe doctrine was called
out by foreign menace. It was voiced by Eastern statesmen; but it was
based upon the support of the inland people, who had nerved the
Administration to the War of 1812.

The fidelity of the Western people was no longer questioned. The Union
cherished their interests and they supported the Union. Their dealings
were almost exclusively with the Federal Government and not with the
States. The public land, from which their homes had been secured and
their States largely formed, was administered by the central power and
entirely for their accommodation. The land policy of the Government
was unselfish to a marked degree.

The original two million acres of public lands sold to the Ohio Company
was reduced to less than a million. Soon after, another million was
sold to John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, on a speculation, of which
about one-fourth was eventually taken. The State of Pennsylvania
purchased the "Erie triangle," in order to get a north-west frontage
on Lake Erie. These three sales were accomplished under the
Confederation. The price averaged about seventy-five cents an acre.

The care of the public lands had been given to the Treasury Department.
Hamilton, in 1790, presented to Congress an elaborate plan for their
disposal. Under this plan, individuals were to be dealt with as well
as companies. Lots of one square mile, containing 640 acres, were to
be placed upon sale at two dollars per acre. Public offerings were to
be made at Cincinnati, Pittsburg, and Philadelphia. But the hostility
of the Indians reduced the number of purchasers. Prior to 1800, only
a million acres had been disposed of in this manner. A law of that
year provided a system of registers and receivers, to be stationed at
land offices scattered through the North-west Territory. A credit
system was also established, whereby so small a portion as a
half-section could be purchased on instalment payments, with interest
at six per cent. This law made the lands very attractive, as credit
propositions always are. Prospective landholders rushed across the
mountains and stood in line before the register's doors. The saying,
"Doing a land-office business," brings the scene to the imagination.
As the embargo and the War of 1812 cut off men from employment on the
sea and along the coast, their attention was directed to the
possibilities of the public lands. Between 1800 and 1820, nearly twenty
million acres were sold, bringing in cash receipts of over forty-five
million dollars. After 1806, the old certificates and other forms of
government paper were no longer received in payment for lands. The
credit system had been adopted to allow poor men to purchase farms and
pay for them from the products of the land. But it tempted many to
purchase more land than they could pay for. In order to relieve these
creditors, Congress passed no less than fourteen acts. One of these
reduced the price for future purchasers to $1.25 an acre and made it
possible to purchase so small a quantity as eighty acres. This clemency
brought further demands and paved the way for the later pre-emption
acts.

The Ordinance of 1787 had declared that schools and the means of
education should be for ever encouraged, while the Land Ordinance of
1785 provided funds by setting aside a section of land in every township
of the public domain. Endowments had also been made for religious
purposes from the Ohio Company lands and from the Symmes purchase; but
the practice was discontinued thereafter, probably owing to the
difficulty of administering the land without recognising some sect.
After much discussion, Congress decided not to retain the management
of the school lands, but to hand them over to the inhabitants of the
township, the State acting as trustee. This provision was incorporated
in the formative act of every State and Territory until the organisation
of the Oregon Territory. It was a tribute to home rule. Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were the States
benefited in this way before 1825. The States which contained no public
lands were obviously deprived of this resource. The income from the
school lands has been small in each State compared with the sum raised
by local taxation for educational purposes; but the gratitude inuring
to the Central Government for its charity toward what has become almost
a fetich, free education, must be noticed in describing the unification
of the American people.

Mention has been made of the share of land sale receipts under which
the Cumberland Road was begun. The original purpose was to cross the
watershed from the Potomac to the Ohio. In 1820, the great work was
completed to Wheeling, on the Ohio. Three waggons could be drawn abreast
over the greater part of its length. Solid stone bridges arched the
watercourses. The well-paved surface greatly reduced the length of
time required for carrying the mails across the mountains. Rapid stage
lines and freight waggons of large capacity passed to and fro. Droves
of cattle and hogs were frequently met, passing over it to an Eastern
market. More than $1,800,000 had already been spent by the National
Government on its construction, being "advanced" in anticipation of
the land sales.

Here the hand of compulsion showed itself. The States of Indiana,
Illinois, and Missouri, with whom bargains had been made for spending
part of the proceeds of the land sales in building roads to their
borders, complained that a road to the Ohio did not fulfill the
contract. Hence the road was extended through the capitals of these
States, committing the Federal Government for many years to come to
one form at least of internal improvement. The farce of "advancing"
the money was continued a while longer.

Of the four great highways over the Allegheny watershed, contemplated
by Gallatin in his report in 1808, the Cumberland Road was the only
one realised. No excuse similar to the one under which it was begun
ever presented itself, and the party vision was not sufficiently
national to undertake public improvements unless in disguise. The
strict-construction theory that these works should be built by the
individual States threw upon the newer States a burden which they could
ill afford to bear. The West was almost ready to revolt against the
hidebound policy of the Administrations.

Individualism was characteristic of the Southern States as a whole,
but this improvement question broke the ranks of individualism by
allying the newer Southern States with the newer Northern States for
the benefits of national paternalism. To illustrate: a proposition in
1824 to employ the army engineers in making surveys for roads and
canals passed the House without a negative vote from Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, or Alabama. Of the
older States, Maryland and Pennsylvania, interested in opening up the
western parts of their respective domains in this manner, joined
themselves to the Western States and made possible the passage of the
bill. Different speakers deplored this tendency to arouse sectional
animosities; to array the older States, which had made such improvements
from their own resources, against the new States, which would presumably
be the sole gainers by government aid.

Clay was the leader of the Western section. He saw in the situation
possibilities of building up a great following for this American idea.
He declared that the power of Congress to control commerce meant inland
as well as ocean commerce; that the construction of harbours upon the
Great Lakes was as much a duty as the building of harbours along the
seacoast; that dredging a Western river was as constitutional as
clearing an ocean channel. He once said that to make a distinction
between these two kinds of commerce would require an analysis of the
water for each appropriation; if salt, the measure was constitutional;
if fresh water, unconstitutional.

"Two years ago," said he, in pleading for a system of canals for the
western people, "a sea wall, in other words, a marine canal, was
authorized by an act of Congress in New Hampshire, and I doubt not that
many voted for it who have now constitutional scruples on this bill.
Yes, everything may be done for foreign commerce; anything, everything,
on the margin of the ocean. But nothing for domestic trade; nothing for
the great interior of the country."

With his growing Western following, Clay was becoming a thorn in the
side of strict construction. He refused to be bound by theories which
had held at the beginning of the national history. "A new world," said
he, "has come into being since the Constitution was adopted. Are the
narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen States, indeed, of
parts only of the old thirteen States as they existed at foundation
of the Constitution, for ever to remain a rule of its interpretation?"
He had little patience with the Republican theory of adding amendments
to the Constitution to bestow the implied powers. "Man and his
language," said he, "are both defective. We cannot foresee and provide
specifically for all contingencies. If you amend the constitution a
thousand times, the same imperfection of our nature and our language
will attend our new words."

Jefferson complained that Clay had banded the Western and Northern
States together under his banner of national benefits. "The Western
States," said he, "have especially been bribed by local considerations
to abandon their ancient brethren and enlist under banners alien to
them in principle and interest." So rapidly did the demand for
paternalistic measures take possession of the people, that Monroe felt
called upon to re-state the early principles of the party, as Madison
had done a few years before. The former dependencies of the National
Government bade fair to overthrow parental policies. The Cumberland
Road was a bright and shining mark. Appropriations for it could not
be stopped without a confession of inconsistency if not a revolt of
the people. But in 1822 a bill passed both Houses of Congress to collect
tolls on the road for its repair. Monroe vetoed the bill and presented
a long exposition of the Republican policy toward public improvements.
It was the most exhaustive document written on this persistent
Union-making factor. Monroe found a beginning of the reserved power
of the States in the Colonial governments which reserved all powers
not expressly given to the king. The colonies kept those rights when
transforming themselves into States. When creating the Articles of
Confederation, the States gave to them certain of these rights,
carefully specified, and reserved all the rest. The same plan was
followed in framing the Constitution.

"Had the people of the several States," said Monroe, "thought proper to
incorporate themselves into one community, under one government, they
might have done it. They wisely stopped, however, at a certain point,
extending the incorporation to that point, making the national
government thus far a consolidated government, and preserving the state
governments without that limit perfectly sovereign and independent of
the national government."

From an unprejudiced standpoint, this presentation of the historic
facts in the case is difficult to answer. "There were two separate and
independent governments," continued the President, "established over
our union, one for local purposes over each state by the people of the
state, the other for national purposes over all the states by the
people of the United States."

He next proceeded to examine the six powers given to the National
Government, which had been so distorted and incorrectly interpreted
in justifying national expenditures for public improvements that, in
his opinion, they threatened the very existence of the States. These
six enumerated powers and their distortions may be summed up: 1. To
establish post-roads; consequently to construct highways for commerce.
2. To declare war; consequently to provide means for moving troops and
supplies. 3. To regulate commerce; consequently to improve rivers and
build harbours for inland commerce. 4. To pay the debts and provide
for the common defence and general welfare; consequently, to make
appropriations for anything which would benefit the people and
contribute to their defence or welfare. 5. To make all laws necessary
and proper for carrying into effective execution the foregoing powers;
consequently to extend the expressed powers to an unlimited degree by
adding corollaries to them. 6. To dispose of and make all needful rules
and regulations concerning the territory of the United States;
consequently, to appropriate money for public improvements in them.

At the same time that he was attempting to prove that no general system
of improvements was justified by any of these expressed powers, Monroe
was demonstrating the absurdity of the policy of hesitation. The justice
of a toll system no one questioned. Those who use an improvement should
pay for its repair. A toll was sanctioned by generations of practice
and was in use on many State and corporate turnpikes and bridges.
Monroe had travelled the National Road and had seen numerous evidences
of the manner in which the highway was abused by the users and could
fully appreciate the necessity for its protection and repair. Yet his
conscientious scruples could not allow the agency which built the road
to care for it properly by collecting money simply because it must be
done inside the sacred precincts of some State. Neither would he admit
that the States individually could give permission to collect a toll,
although they could and did allow money from the national treasury to
be spent within their limits in constructing the highway originally.
Into what a constitutional maze had strict construction, driven by the
needs of the people, brought the Administration of the United States!

[Illustration: WESTERN END OF THE GREAT ERIE CANAL. Drawn with the
Camera Lucida for Hall's "Etchings of the West." Niagara River appears
in the distance and a lock in the canal nearer at hand. The lack of
natural attractiveness in this scene is an illustration of the interest
in internal improvements.]

A sufficient number of partisans were won by Monroe's exposition to
change their votes and so prevent the passage of the measure over his
veto. But the "toll-gate question" remained for several years to perplex
statesmen and cause long debates, while Congress made appropriations
directly for the repair of the Cumberland Road. Monroe had made public
improvements the fruit of Tantalus to the hungry people by suggesting
in his veto message that he would have no objection to such enterprises
being undertaken by the National Government provided an amendment were
added to the Constitution permitting such action. It was not a new
suggestion. Jefferson, in various presidential messages, had suggested
this way of meeting the demand for these paternalistic benefits. Madison
twice at least followed his example. In the sessions of 1813 and the
following year, two amendments were considered, one giving Congress
power to make roads, and the other to make canals in any State, with
the consent of the State; but no action followed. President Monroe,
in his first message, called attention to the desirability of such an
amendment and a week later a bill to that effect was introduced. It
was unique in providing that appropriations were to be distributed
among the States according to population, a prophecy of the Confederate
States constitution decades later. No less than six attempts to secure
such an amendment followed Monroe's "exposition" and suggestion. Not
one succeeded in passing either House.

The failure to secure this constitutional remedy for the public
improvement fever was a cause of anxiety to Jefferson in the closing
days of his life. In 1824, an amendment of this kind was pending,
together with others limiting the term of the Presidency and abolishing
the electoral system. "If I can see these three great amendments
prevail," said the aged statesman, "I shall consider it as a renewed
extension of the time of the lease, shall live in more confidence, and
die in more hope." He complained of the "irresistible torrent of general
opinion"; thought national appropriations for constructing roads and
canals such a breach of the national compact as would warrant withdrawal
from it; and wrote out for the Virginia Legislature a protest, as he
had done for Kentucky during the Alien and Sedition laws a quarter of
a century before. He also drew a general law to be passed by all State
Legislatures rendering legitimate all national money previously spent
within the State. Its adoption would have been a singular confession
of unconstitutional action. Several State Legislatures in the South
resolved to protest. Their representatives in Congress were resisting
national appropriations, while the Northern and Western States were
getting the advantage of them. Thus did political theory supplement
the work of nature in directing the larger portion of these
appropriations to the northern part of the country. Years after, this
unequal distribution was to constitute a Southern grievance.

This internal improvement contention, arraying the Eastern and Western
States against each other, partly nullified the permanent sectionalism
between the North and the South, and so made for unionism. Louisiana
and Ohio, uniting for improvement appropriations, forgot their
differences of opinion upon constitutional powers, upon home rule or
nationalism, upon freedom or slavery. South Carolina and Massachusetts,
joining hands to prevent these drains upon the treasury for public
works far removed from their borders, forgot for the nonce their
differences upon the question of a tariff. But all such affiliations
and truces were only temporary. Sooner or later the combat was bound
to be renewed between North and South, between peoples alienated by
inheritance, temperament, and products.

Contemporaneous with the debate on national surveys for improvements,
a spirited debate arose on the tariff. It soon showed an unfortunate
tendency to North and South sectional lines, especially when compared
with the post-war-tariff debate of eight years before. Protection in
those intervening years had begun to assume a sectional aspect, although
as yet only in a formative state. The Southern people had begun to
realise that their slave labour was not applicable to factories, and
that they must depend for their goods upon Europe and upon the Northern
States. Under the theory that the consumer pays the duty, the burden
was thought to fall equally upon all parts of the country, unless the
duty should grow into a discrimination upon one kind of goods or those
consumed exclusively in one section. Massachusetts was singular among
Northern States, being opposed to this tariff measure of 1824 because
of the high duty on canvas and other ship-building materials. Some
Southern speakers thought that the duties on cheap dry goods used by
their slaves rather discriminated against them. They pointed to the
fact that New England manufacturers scarcely needed protective
legislation, when the stock in their cotton mills was selling at
sixty-five per cent. above par and was paying heavy dividends. This
conviction grew steadily among certain Southern States for four years,
until a change in the tariff schedule brought one of them to open
revolt.

A comparison of the votes on the tariff measures of 1816 and 1824
exhibits this sectional tendency. In 1816, a protective tariff in the
House gained sixty-three Northern votes to fourteen against it. Eight
years later there were eighty-eight votes for a higher tariff and
nineteen opposed to it. If it had not been for the duty on canvas,
Massachusetts would have viewed the measure favourably and would have
made the vote one hundred to seven. The North was evidently beginning
to appreciate the value of protection. The Southern members in the
House, in 1816, stood less than two to one as opposed to protection.
In 1824, they stood nearly four to one against the policy. The South
was beginning to see that a tariff benefits the manufacturer of goods
more than the producer of raw materials. The Senate shows this sectional
bias even more clearly. The reversal of the vote of the Southern
senators is particularly noticeable.

  SENATE VOTES ON THE TARIFF MEASURES

                               1816    1824
  Northern Senators /For........16......19
                    \Against.....2.......6

  Southern Senators /For.........9.......4
                    \Against.....5......17

The advocates of the measure in the second debate made use of the
national spirit as they had in the first. Clay's "American system,"
as the protective policy began to be called, was declared a remedy for
the commercial depression under which the country suddenly found itself
suffering. Petitions, asking such relief, poured into Congress. The
economic conditions of Europe had become adjusted to peace, a condition
which had not existed since the Constitution had been first put into
execution. The United States began to realise the force of competition.
The distress which prevailed in European countries a few years before
was suddenly transferred to the United States. A barrier to keep out
European goods and secure American interdependence seemed necessary.

Clay came down from the Speaker's chair to the floor of the House to
plead his policy of home production and home consumption, a principle
for which he had fought a duel in his early Kentucky days, when he had
been pronounced a demagogue for advocating dressing in homespun. He
was now accused by the opposition of aiming at a total prohibition of
foreign goods regardless of the resulting distress to the consumer.
"Protection in 1816 has grown to prohibition in 1824," exclaimed a
speaker. "This is the consummation of the 'American policy,'" said
Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, whose brilliant oratory was making
him the rival of Calhoun as the Southern spokesman. "A policy foreign
in all its features, confessedly borrowed from Great Britain, and
Chinese in its character, the policy of kings and tyrants, of
restriction and monopoly." If Britain has at any time since complained
of American protective policy, she must remember that it was inherited
by British colonies, and was fostered by a desire to retaliate on her
with her own methods before she became a freetrader.

The debates on tariff and public improvements of 1824 indicated a
speedy termination of the era of good feeling and a return to some
kind of political parties. This was to be accomplished not by a revival
of the old Federalists and Republicans, but by a division in the ranks
of the leaders. The Republicans, as has been pointed out in preceding
pages, were so transformed as to be scarcely recognisable. Only an
occasional veto and a conservative minority stood between old party
principles and the desires of an expanding people and the demands of
growing industries. The old Republicans were bewildered by the onward
march of events under the hand of compulsion. Familiar landmarks had
disappeared.

"We have our bank," complained one writer, "our standing army, our
permanent navy, with all the officers, sub-officers, and their
connections, ramified throughout the whole nation, all of which appears
to me to be of a piece and in direct hostility with the liberties of the
people. The people seem contented with the government's pursuing a
policy which in 1800 caused a complete revolution."

The announcement of the Monroe doctrine and the culmination of
"Americanism" were contemporary with the cessation of party spirit.
The "era of good feeling," the millennium described by Washington in
his farewell address, was at last realised. Monroe's second election
had come within one electoral vote of being unanimous.

Such unanimity could not continue. Those who believe that parties are
absolutely necessary; that men must have some means of alignment; that
individual following will immediately take the place of dormant national
issues, will find an excellent argument in this "era of good feeling,"
as well as in the ward "boss" of municipal politics. Strict construction
was practically dead, destroyed by its impracticability. But
individualism was still alive. In due time, when the commercial power
of the Gulf States, or "lower South," should become dominant, it would
reappear in the guise of "State rights," a doctrine dimly foreshadowed
by the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, but not brought to a fruition
by those border States.

On the other hand, it was equally true that Clay and the advocates of
his system could never return to the close confines of a limited or
individualistic government. A protective tariff and internal
improvements supplemented each other. Clay's companion in measures,
John Quincy Adams, was an apostate from Federalism, and never at ease
in the strict-construction ranks. Inheritance and early training
cannot be so readily overcome. These two statesmen, representing the
old and the new, the North-east and the South-west, the college-bred
lawyer and the country-bred orator, formed as strange a partnership
under the banner of nationalism as has ever been witnessed.

In using the people to further his American system, Clay was following
the tactics of his former chief, Jefferson, in the early days. But the
Republicans maintained their way as stubbornly and ignored the people
as persistently as the Federalists had done. If Clay had been Monroe's
successor in 1824, a return toward centralisation must have inevitably
followed. Supported by the people, he would have brought unification
a long step forward. Unfortunately, when it came to political strength,
Clay's people were confined to the Western section, where his efforts
in their behalf had made him an idol. He was a legislative hero, so
to speak. But there was a war hero, whose popularity was not measured
so much by a section.

The battle of New Orleans had been the redeeming feature of the War
of 1812, as has been stated. Jackson's popularity had been increased
by his highhanded actions in the Floridas. Popular thought turned to
him as a relief from the professional officeholders, such as Crawford,
Clay, Adams, and Calhoun. Newspapers called attention to the fact that
Jackson had once refused the governorship of East Florida. What offices
had these other candidates for the Presidency ever refused? Jackson's
friends rejoiced when Tennessee made him a Senator in 1824, since his
residence in Washington would enable him to compete with his rivals,
the professional office-holders.

The candidacy of Jackson for the Presidency in 1824 may truly be
regarded as evidence of a coming revolt of the people of the West. It
would have been strange if all this spirit of Americanism had not
brought about a demand for more share in the Government. It was a part
of that general movement for an extension of the suffrage which
characterised the middle period, culminating in the Dorr Rebellion.
In both the Carolinas and Maryland, a freehold of fifty acres of land
or town lots was still required for complete suffrage. Rhode Island
still admitted only a freeholder or his eldest son to citizenship. New
York had only three years before abandoned property qualification for
white men to vote and still demanded from negroes an estate of $250
for this inestimable privilege; so slowly did we slough off the
inherited idea and ancient custom of being admitted to freemen's rights
instead of being born into them.

The revolt of the people also showed itself in a demand for the right
to nominate candidates and to choose electors for the presidential
elections. Since the beginning of the Constitutional Government, many
State Legislatures had assumed that right to themselves. "Each State
shall appoint," says the Constitution, "in such manner as the
Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors." So late as 1820,
six States still refused to allow the people to choose the electors
and, consequently, the President. In five of the States where they
were chosen by the people, voting was done by districts and in the
remainder by a general ticket. Ever since the change in the manner of
casting the electoral votes was made in 1804, attempts had been made
either by an amendment to the Constitution or by national legislation,
to secure a direct and unrestricted vote for the people. It was not
fully accomplished until after the Civil War.

In selecting the candidates to be voted for, the people had still less
power. After Washington's term, candidates had been selected by a
caucus of members of Congress of each party called together at the
seat of government. Since 1800, each President had been influential
in bequeathing the office to his Secretary of State. Virginia, it was
said, had thus been able to retain the Presidency for twenty out of
the twenty-four years during which the Government under the Constitution
had existed. Some claimed that Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe in the
beginning held a conference and agreed upon a protracted retention of
the chief executive position. New York was said to have assisted in
this monopoly of the "mother of Presidents." It had been accomplished
mainly through the caucus system and legislative election. Men like
Hezekiah Niles, editor of the _Register_, now led a revolt against the
"regency at Richmond," and the subordinate "regency at Albany." Niles
claimed that the State Legislatures were created for the purpose of
making laws and not for choosing presidential electors; that in some
cases members were elected far in advance of the presidential election
and could not possibly represent the present wish of the people. These
reformers were unable to secure a popular nomination for presidential
candidates in the election of 1824. Precedent and the office-holders
were too strong. Nominations were made as before by congressional
caucus and State Legislatures; but this agitation, dating directly
from the rebirth of Americanism, bore full fruit within a score of
years.

The case of the people against the politicians was aided by the peculiar
circumstances attending this election of 1824. At the preceding
election, there had been but one candidate. At this election, there
were so many that no one of them had the required majority. Electors
had been pledged in advance, so that it was not a return to the original
idea of a free choice of the best man. Fortunately, the framers of the
Constitution had provided against this contingency by allowing the
House of Representatives, voting by States, to choose the President
from the three candidates having received the highest number of
electoral votes. Jackson, the war hero, headed the list in both popular
and electoral votes. John Quincy Adams, "the secretarial successor,"
had the second highest number of electoral votes, and Crawford, the
candidate of the caucus, the next. With his usual ill-fortune, Clay
had the least and must be dropped. He had carried the three States of
Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri. It was to be presumed that he would throw
his influence in these States to Jackson, his fellow of the South-west.
But the Representatives from these three States gave a total of eleven
votes to Adams, six to Jackson, and two to Crawford. This gave the
States to Adams and made him President. That Clay should have
immediately afterward accepted the first place in Adams's Cabinet is
not strange. Presidents have frequently honoured their rivals in
convention in this way in later times. But it gave the people the
impression that these two politicians had made a "corrupt bargain,"
and this story hampered the entire administration of Adams. No
Administration had met with as much opposition since the stormy four
years of his father.

The strict Republicans asserted that Adams was a "consolidationist,"
and Clay's views of the paternalistic duty of the National Government,
no less than his association with Adams, placed him in the same
category. The new President gave out his political creed in his
inaugural address.

"Whatsoever is of domestic concernment," said he, "unconnected with the
other members of the Union, or with foreign lands, belongs exclusively
to the administration of the State governments. Whatsoever directly
involves the rights and interests of the federative fraternity, or of
foreign powers, is of the resort of this General Government."

At the same time, he expressly stated the various formative actions
of the General Government which had been allowed by the States. He
expressed the hope that "by the same process of friendly, patient, and
persevering deliberation all constitutional objections will ultimately
be removed."

Every annual message of President Adams pleaded for a liberal
interpretation of the powers of Government. Now he advocated more
generous appropriations for the Cumberland Road, now the endowment of
a national university, or the erection of a national monument to
Washington. He suggested the founding of national observatories, the
increase of the navy, the extension of the pensions, the establishing
of a naval academy, the equipping of scientific exploring expeditions,
provisions for civilising the Indians, and a reform in the method of
taking the census.

Every message bore the full imprint of Henry Clay's national improvement
policy, a sentiment in which Adams could readily join. The attention
of Congress was called from time to time to the reports of surveys
made by the engineers under the act of April, 1824. These reports
contemplated roads and canals, river and harbour improvements, "needing
the assistance of means and resources more comprehensive than individual
enterprise can command," as Adams said. He called especial attention
to the fact that from three to four million dollars were being spent
annually on the public works without intrenching upon the necessities
of the Treasury, adding to the public debt, or stopping its gradual
discharge. When the State of New York, grown weary of soliciting
national aid, constructed a canal from the tide-water of the Hudson
to Lake Erie, really around the northern end of the Allegheny Mountains,
Adams seized the opportunity of asking whether the representative
authorities of the whole Union should fall behind the single members
of the confederation in exercising the trust imposed by the people.

Whatever another President might have accomplished by his personal
influence in these appeals was denied to Adams because of his lack of
mingling qualities, and because of the hostility aroused by the manner
of his election. The impression prevailed among the former supporters
of Monroe and among the people of the South-west that "the will of the
people" had been thwarted in some manner and could be vindicated only
by the election of Jackson in 1828. This faction also imagined that
Adams stood for aristocratic New England and Jackson for the democratic
South-west. They were opposed to the protective principle, to internal
improvements, and the continuance in power of the Atlantic coast regime.
Rallying under the standard of Andrew Jackson, "the man of the people,"
they began to call themselves Democratic Republicans, or simply "Jackson
men." Their opponents, embracing Adams and Clay and such minor leaders
as the Administration had been able to collect, considered themselves
as good Republicans as their opponents; but, taking into account their
nationalistic tendencies, called themselves "National Republicans,"
or "Adams men." Unconsciously and even unwillingly, political parties
had been revived.

As the election of 1828 approached, national affairs gave every
indication of the end of an epoch. Those formative events, which seem
to culminate regardless of the wish or will of man, indicated a great
change. The determination to overthrow the Adams-Clay combination
turned the election into a political revolution not unlike that of
1800. Economic conditions assumed a new aspect because of the advent
of "King Cotton," and the sudden ascendency of the "lower South." The
election for two consecutive terms of Calhoun to the Vice-Presidency
showed that Southern leadership had passed from Virginia to South
Carolina. Successful experiments with steam transportation on land
predicted a revolution in the history of internal communication and,
consequently, of internal improvements. The clear diplomatic horizon,
the universal peace except in turbulent South America, and the
successful negotiations in recent treaties foretold an era of insularity
and full fruition of individuality. Political parties had been revived,
but on such divergent lines that they might soon be expected to develop
national policies. Fortunate would the Republic have been if such
legitimate divisions had been the only lines of difference as the great
middle period came on. But sectionalism had yet to run its course,
commercially and territorially, before a true union of interests,
ideals, and affections could be secured.

END OF PART I