A Brief History of the United States Part 24

The question then arose whether slaves should be counted as population.

The Southern delegates said yes; the Northern, no. It was finally agreed that direct taxes and representatives should be apportioned according to population, and that three fifths of the slaves should be counted as population. This was the second compromise.

The convention agreed that Congress should regulate foreign commerce. But the Southern members objected that by means of this power Congress might pa.s.s navigation acts limiting trade to American ships, which might raise freights on exports from the South. Many Northern members, on the other hand, wanted the slave trade stopped. These two matters were therefore made the basis of another compromise, by which Congress could pa.s.s navigation acts, but could not prohibit the slave trade before 1808.

THE CONSt.i.tUTION RATIFIED.--When the convention had finished its work (September 17, 1787), the Const.i.tution [21] was sent to the old (Continental) Congress, which referred it to the states, and the states, one by one, called on the people to elect; delegates to conventions to ratify or reject the new plan of government. In a few states it was accepted without any demand for changes. In others it was vigorously opposed as likely to set up too strong a government. In Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, and Virginia adoption was long in doubt. [22]

By July, 1788, eleven states had ratified, and the Const.i.tution was in force as to these States. [23]

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT.--The Continental Congress then appointed the first Wednesday in January, 1789, as the day on which electors of President should be chosen in the eleven states; the first Wednesday in February as the day on which the electors should meet and vote for President; and the first Wednesday in March (which happened to be the 4th of March) as the day when the new Congress should a.s.semble at New York and canva.s.s the vote for President.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FEDERAL HALL, ON WALL STREET, NEW YORK. From an old print.]

WASHINGTON THE FIRST PRESIDENT.--When March 4 came, neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives had a quorum, and a month went by before the electoral votes were counted, and Washington and John Adams declared President and Vice President of the United States. [24]

Some time now elapsed before Washington could be notified of his election.

More time was consumed by the long journey from Mount Vernon to New York, where, on April 30, 1789, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall, he took the oath of office in the presence of a crowd of his fellow-citizens.

SUMMARY

1. The treaty of peace defined the boundaries of our country; but Great Britain continued to hold the forts along the north, and Spain to occupy the country in the southwest.

2. Seven of the thirteen states claimed the country west of the mountains.

3. The other six, especially Maryland, denied these claims, and this dispute delayed the adoption of the Articles of Confederation till 1781.

4. By the year 1786 the lands northwest of the Ohio had been ceded to Congress.

5. In 1787, therefore, Congress formed the Northwest Territory.

6. Certain states, meantime, were settling disputes as to their boundaries in the east.

7. We had trouble with Spain over the right to use the lower Mississippi River, and with Great Britain over matters of trade.

8. Six years' trial proved that the government of the United States was too weak under the Articles of Confederation.

9. In 1787, therefore, the Const.i.tution was framed, and within a year was ratified by eleven states.

10. In 1789 Washington and Adams became President and Vice President, and government under the Const.i.tution began.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LIBERTY BELL.]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Both France and Spain had tried to shut us out of the Mississippi valley. Read Fiske's Critical Period of American History, pp. 17-25.

[2] By the treaty of 1783 Congress provided that all debts due British subjects might be recovered by law, and that the states should be asked to pay for confiscated property of the Loyalists. But the states would not permit the recovery of the debts nor pay for the property taken from the Loyalists. Great Britain, by holding the forts along our northern frontier, controlled the fur trade and the Indians, and ruled the country about the forts. These were Dutchman's Point, Point au Fer, Oswegatchie, Oswego, Niagara, Erie, Detroit, Mackinaw.

[3] To understand her conduct we must remember that in 1764, shortly after the French and Indian War, Great Britain made 32 28' north lat.i.tude (through the mouth of the Yazoo, p. 143) the north boundary of West Florida; and although Great Britain in her treaty with us made 31 the boundary between us and West Florida, Spain insisted that it should be 32 28'. Spain's claim to the Northwest, founded on her occupation of Fort St.

Joseph (p. 183), had not been allowed; she was therefore the more determined to expand her claims in the South.

[4] The states claiming such lands by virtue of their colonial charters were Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. New York had acquired the Iroquois t.i.tle to lands in the West.

Her claim conflicted with those of Virginia, Connecticut, and Ma.s.sachusetts. The claims of Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts covered lands included in the Virginia claim--Maryland denied the validity of all these claims, for these reasons: (1) the Mississippi valley belonged to France till 1763; (2) when France gave the valley east of the Mississippi to Great Britain in 1763, it became crown land; (3) in 1763 the king drew the line around the sources of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, and forbade the colonists to settle beyond that line (p. 143).

[5] The Articles were not to go into effect till every state signed.

Maryland was the thirteenth state to sign.

[6] Virginia reserved ownership of a large tract called the Virginia Military Lands. It lay in what is now Ohio between the Scioto and Little Miami rivers (map, p. 201), and was used to pay bounties to her soldiers of the Revolution.

[7] Connecticut reserved the ownership (and till 1800 the government) of a tract 120 miles long, west of Pennsylvania. Of this "Western Reserve of Connecticut," some 500,000 acres were set apart in 1792 for the relief of persons whose houses and farms had been burned and plundered by the British. The rest was sold and the money used as a school fund.

[8] When the settlers on the Watauga (pp. 181, 182) heard of this, they became alarmed lest Congress should not accept the cession, and forming a new state which they called Franklin, applied to Congress for admission into the Union. No attention was given to the application. North Carolina repealed the act of cession, arranged matters with the settlers, and in 1787 the Franklin government dissolved.

[9] The favorite time for the river trip was from February to May, when there was high water in the Ohio and its tributaries the Allegheny and Monongahela. Then the voyage from Pittsburg to Louisville could be made in eight or ten days. An observer at Pittsburg in 1787 saw 50 flatboats depart in six weeks. Another man at Fort Finney counted 177 pa.s.sing boats with 2700 people in eight months.

[10] In order to encourage enlistment in the army, Congress had offered to give a tract of land to each officer and man who served through the war.

The premium in land, or gift, over and above pay, was known as land bounty.

[11] Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 505- 519. All the land bought by the Ohio Company was not for its use. A large part was for another, known as the Scioto Company, which sent an agent to Paris and sold the land to a French company. This, in turn, sold in small pieces to Frenchmen eager to leave a country then in a state of revolution. In 1790, accordingly, several hundred emigrants reached Alexandria, Virginia, and came on to the little square of log huts, with a blockhouse at each corner, which the company had built for them and named Gallipolis. Most of them were city-bred artisans, unfit for frontier life, who suffered greatly in the wilderness.

[12] The land was included in the limits laid down in the charter of Ma.s.sachusetts; but that charter was granted after the Dutch were in actual possession of the upper Hudson. In 1786 a north and south line was drawn 82 miles west of the Delaware. Ownership of the land west of that line went to Ma.s.sachusetts; but jurisdiction over the land, the right to govern, was given to New York.

[13] Connecticut, under her sea-to-sea grant from the crown, claimed a strip across northern Pennsylvania, bought some land there from the Indians (1754), and some of her people settled on the Susquehanna in what was known as the Wyoming Valley (1762 and 1769). The dispute which followed, first with the Penns and then with the state of Pennsylvania, dragged on till a court of arbitration appointed by the Continental Congress decided in favor of Pennsylvania.

[14] Because of Champlain's discovery of the lake which now bears his name (p. 115), the French claimed most of Vermont; on their early maps it appears as part of New France, and as late as 1739 they made settlements in it. About 1750 the governor of New Hampshire granted land in Vermont to settlers, and the country began to be known as "New Hampshire Grants"; but in 1763 New York claimed it as part of the region given to the Duke of York in 1664. This brought on a bitter dispute which was still raging when, in 1777, the settlers declared New Hampshire Grants "a free and independent state to be called New Connecticut." Later the name was changed to Vermont. But the Continental Congress, for fear of displeasing New York, never recognized Vermont as a state.

[15] Each state was bound to pay its share of the annual expenses; but they failed or were unable to do so.

[16] Why would not Great Britain make a trade treaty with us? Read Fiske's _Critical Period_, pp. 136-142; also pp. 142-147, about difficulties between the states.

[17] Congress asked for authority to do three things: (1) to levy taxes on imported goods, and use the money so obtained to discharge the debts due to France, Holland, and Spain; (2) to lay and collect a special tax, and use the money to meet the annual expenses of government; and (3) to regulate trade with foreign countries.

[18] The story of Shays's Rebellion is told in fiction in Bellamy's _Duke of Stockbridge_. Read McMaster's _History of the People of the U. S._, Vol. I, pp. 313-326.

[19] All the states except Rhode Island.

[20] One had written the Albany Plan of Union; some had been members of the Stamp Act Congress; some had signed the Declaration of Independence, or the Articles of Confederation; two had been presidents and twenty-eight had been members of Congress; seven had been or were then governors of states. In after times two (Washington and Madison) became Presidents, one (Elbridge Gerry) Vice President, four members of the Cabinet, two Chief Justices and two justices of the Supreme Court, five ministers at foreign courts, and many others senators and members of the House of Representatives. One, Franklin, has the distinction of having signed the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France (1778), the treaty of peace with Great Britain (1783), and the Const.i.tution of the United States, the four great doc.u.ments in our early history.

[21] Every student should read the Const.i.tution, as printed near the end of this book or elsewhere, and should know about the three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial; the powers of Congress (Art. I, Sec. 8), of the President (Art. I, Sec. 7; Art. II, Secs. 2 and 3), and of the United States; courts (Art. III); the princ.i.p.al powers forbidden to Congress (Art. I, Sec. 9) and to the states (Art. I, Sec.

10); the methods of amending the Const.i.tution (Art. V); the supremacy of the Const.i.tution (Art. VI).

[22] To remove the many objections made to the new plan, and enable the people the better to understand it, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay wrote a series of little essays for the press, in which they defended the Const.i.tution, explained and discussed its provisions, and showed how closely it resembled the state const.i.tutions. These essays were called _The Federalist_, and, gathered into book form (in 1788), have become famous as a treatise on the Const.i.tution and on government. Those who opposed the Const.i.tution were called Anti-Federalists, and they wrote pamphlets and elaborate series of letters in the newspapers, signed by such names as Cato, Agrippa, A Countryman. They declared that Congress would overpower the states, that the President would become a despot, that the Courts would destroy liberty; and they insisted that amendments should be made, guaranteeing liberty of speech, freedom of the press, trial by jury, no quartering of troops in time of peace, liberty of conscience.

Read McMaster's _History of the People of the U. S._, Vol. I, pp.

490-491; 478-479.

[23] Because the Const.i.tution provided that it should go into force as soon as nine states ratified it. North Carolina and Rhode Island did not ratify till some months later, and, till they did, were not members of the new Union.