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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The United States of America Part I
+by Ediwn Erle Sparks
+
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+Title: The United States of America Part I
+
+Author: Ediwn Erle Sparks
+
+Release Date: October, 2004  [EBook #6665]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 10, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-LATIN-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PART I ***
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
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