Formation of the Union, 1750-1829 Part 12

[Sidenote: Foreign loans.]

Towards the end of its existence the Confederation found itself on the brink of a default of interest on debts due to foreign governments and bankers. France in 1783 made a final loan of six hundred thousand francs; and from 1783 to 1788 Dutch bankers were found who had sufficient confidence in the government to advance it $1,600,000 on favorable terms.

With the proceeds of these loans the government was able to pay the acc.u.mulated interest on the foreign loans, and thus to keep its credit above water in Europe.

54. DISORDERS IN THE STATES (1781-1788).

[Sidenote: State financial legislation.]

The finances of the States were little better than those of the Union. The States controlled all the resources of the country; they could and did raise taxes, but they appropriated the proceeds to their own pressing necessities; and the meagre sums paid to Congress represented a genuine sacrifice on the part of many States, particularly Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts. Unfortunately the States exercised unlimited powers over their own currency and commercial relations. Times were hard, debts had acc.u.mulated, property had been destroyed by the war. State after State pa.s.sed stay laws delaying the collection of debts; or "tender laws" were enacted, by which property at an appraised value was made a legal tender, Cattle, merchandise, and unimproved real estate were the usual currency thus forced upon creditors. After peace was declared, a second era of State paper-money issues came on, and but four of the thirteen States escaped the craze.

[Sidenote: Weakness of the States.]

[Sidenote: Proposed new states.]

[Sidenote: Insurrections.]

These remedies bore hard on the creditors in other States, created a feeling of insecurity among business men, and gave no permanent relief.

The discontented, therefore, sought a remedy for themselves. The Revolutionary War had left behind it an eddy of lawlessness and disregard of human life. The support of the government was a heavy load upon the people. The States were physically weak, and the State legislatures habitually timid. In several States there were organized attempts to set off outlying portions as independent governments. Vermont had set the example by withdrawing from New York in 1777, and throughout the Confederation remained without representation either in the New York legislature or in Congress. In 1782 the western counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia threatened to break off and form a new State. From 1785 to 1786 the so-called State of "Franklin," within the territory of what is now eastern Tennessee, had a const.i.tution and legislature and governor, and carried on a mild border warfare with the government of North Carolina, to which its people owed allegiance. The people of Kentucky and of Maine held conventions looking toward separation. The year 1786 was marked by great uneasiness in what had been supposed to be the steadiest States in the union. In New Hampshire the opposition was directed against the legislature; but General Sullivan, by his courage, succeeded in quelling the threatened insurrection without bloodshed. In Ma.s.sachusetts in the fall of 1786 concerted violence prevented the courts from sitting; and an organized force of insurgents under Captain Shays threatened to destroy the State government. As a speaker in the Ma.s.sachusetts convention of 1788 said, "People took up arms; and then if you went to speak to them you had the musket of death presented to your breast. They would rob you of your property, threaten to burn your houses; obliged you to be on your guard night and day.... How terrible, how distressing was this!... Had any one that was able to protect us come and set up his standard, we should all have flocked to it, even though it had been a monarch." The a.r.s.enal at Springfield was attacked. The State forces were met in the open field by armed insurgents. Had they been successful, the Union was not worth one of its own repudiated notes. The Ma.s.sachusetts authorities were barely able to restore order, and Congress went beyond its const.i.tutional powers in an effort to a.s.sist.

55. SLAVERY (1777-1788).

[Sidenote: Anti-slavery spirit.]

[Sidenote: Emanc.i.p.ation acts.]

[Sidenote: Southern sentiment.]

One evidence that the States were still sound and healthful was the pa.s.sage of Emanc.i.p.ation acts. The Revolutionary principles of the rights of man, the consent of the governed, and political equality, had been meant for white men; but it was hard to deny their logical application to the blacks. New anti-slavery societies were formed, particularly in Pennsylvania; but the first community to act was Vermont. In the Declaration of Rights prefixed to the Const.i.tution of 1777 it was declared that since every man is ent.i.tled to life, liberty, and happiness, therefore "no ... person born in this country, or brought here over sea, ought to be holden by law to serve any person as a servant, slave, or apprentice" after he arrives at the age of maturity. A few years later this was supplemented by an act abolishing the inst.i.tution of slavery outright. The number of slaves in Vermont was inconsiderable, but in 1780 two States, Ma.s.sachusetts and Pennsylvania, took similar action, affecting several thousand persons. The Ma.s.sachusetts const.i.tution of 1780 declared that "all men are born free and equal." This clause was a few years later interpreted by the courts to mean that after 1780 no person could legally be held as a slave. In Pennsylvania in the same year a gradual Emanc.i.p.ation Act was pa.s.sed, under which persons then in bondage were to serve as slaves during their lives; their children, born after 1780, were eventually to become free; and no person was to be brought into the State and sold as a slave. Within four years New Hampshire and Connecticut pa.s.sed similar Emanc.i.p.ation Acts. In Rhode Island the number of slaves, 3,500, was considerable in proportion to the population, and that State therefore made a distinct sacrifice for its principles by its act of 1785.

Thus at the expiration of the Confederation in 1788, all the States north of Maryland, except New York and New Jersey, had put slavery in process of extinction; those two States followed in 1799 and 1804. Many Southern statesmen hoped that the inst.i.tution was dying out even in the South.

Jefferson in 1787 wrote: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that G.o.d is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever." Some steps were taken, particularly in Virginia and Kentucky, for the amelioration of the condition of the blacks; and the slave-trade was forbidden in most of the States of the Union during this period.

56. FOREIGN RELATIONS AND COMMERCE (1781-1788).

[Sidenote: Relations with England.]

In no respect, not even in finance, was the weakness of the Confederation so evident as in the powerlessness of Congress to pa.s.s commercial laws, and its consequent inability to secure commercial treaties. In 1785 John Adams was sent as minister to Great Britain, and was received with civility by the sovereign from whom he had done so much to tear the brightest jewel of his crown; but when he endeavored to come to some commercial arrangement, he could make no progress. It is easy now to see that the best policy for Great Britain would have been in every way to encourage American commerce; the Americans were accustomed to trade with England; their credits and business connections were established with English merchants; the English manufactured the goods most desired by America. When the Whigs were driven out of power in 1783, the last opportunity for such an agreement was lost. July 2, 1783, an Order in Council was issued, restraining the West India trade to British ships, British built; and on March 26, 1785, the Duke of Dorset replied to the American commissioners who asked for a treaty: "The apparent determination of the respective States to regulate their own separate interests renders it absolutely necessary, towards forming a permanent system of commerce, that my court should be informed how far the commissioners can be duly authorized to enter into any engagement with Great Britain which it may not be in the power of any one of the States to render totally useless and inefficient."

[Sidenote: Loyalists.]

[Sidenote: British debts.]

[Sidenote: Posts.]

There were other reasons why the British continued to subject American ships in English ports to discriminations and duties from which the vessels of most other powers were exempt. The treaty of 1783 had provided that Congress would recommend to the States just treatment of the loyalists; the recommendation was made. Most of the States declined to comply; men who had been eminent before the Revolution returned to find themselves distrusted, and sometimes were mobbed; their estates, which in most cases had been confiscated, were withheld, and they could obtain no consideration. This was unfriendly, but not a violation of any promise.

The action of the States in placing obstacles in the way of collecting debts due to British merchants before the Revolution was a vexatious infraction of the treaty. Five States had pa.s.sed laws for the partial or complete confiscation of such debts, and even after the treaty Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts pa.s.sed similar Acts. As an offset, the British minister in 1786 declared that the frontier posts would not be surrendered so long as the obstacles to the collection of British debts were left standing.

[Sidenote: The Spanish treaty.]

The only other power with which the United States desired commercial relations without possessing them was Spain. The Eastern States were very anxious to obtain privileges of trade. The Spanish were willing to grant them, but made it a condition that the Americans should not have the right of free navigation of the lower Mississippi. Jay, acting under the instruction of Congress, in 1786 negotiated a treaty in which he agreed to the Spanish conditions. Instantly the West was aroused, and violent threats were made by the people of Kentucky and the adjacent region that if that treaty went into effect they would withdraw from the Union. "The tendency of the States," said Madison, a few months later, "to violations of the laws of nations and treaties ... has been manifest.... The files of Congress contain complaints already from almost every nation with which treaties have been formed."

57. DISINTEGRATION OF THE UNION (1786, 1787).

[Sidenote: The Confederation violated.]

[Sidenote: Danger of anarchy.]

The year 1786 marks a crisis in the development of the Union. The inefficiency of Congress was reflected in the neglect of const.i.tutional duties by the States: Rhode Island recalled her delegates, and refused to appoint new members; New Jersey felt so much injured by a New York tariff that an act was pa.s.sed taxing the lighthouse established by New York on Sandy Hook; Ma.s.sachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia already had raised troops on their own account and for their own purposes, in violation of the Articles of Confederation. Davie, of North Carolina, a little later declared that the "encroachments of some States on the rights of others, and of all on those of the Confederation, are incontestable proofs of the weakness and imperfections of that system." Of the requisition of that year for $2,000,000 in specie, only about $400,000 was paid. Some States offered their own depreciated notes, and New Jersey refused to make any contribution until the offensive New York Acts were withdrawn. In May, 1786, Charles Pinckney on the floor of Congress declared that "Congress must be invested with more powers, or the federal government must fall."

58. REORGANIZATION ATTEMPTED (1781-1787).

[Sidenote: Five percent scheme.]

[Sidenote: Revenue scheme.]

Before the Articles of Confederation had gone into effect, Congress had already proposed a radical amendment; and within three years it suggested two others. The first proposition, made February 3, 1781, was that the States allow Congress to levy an import duty of five per cent, the proceeds to be applied "to the discharge of the princ.i.p.al and interest of the debts already contracted ... on the faith of the United States for supporting the present war." In the course of about a year twelve States had complied with this reasonable request. Rhode Island alone stood out, and the plan failed. Forthwith Congress presented another financial scheme, which was called a "general revenue plan." April 12, 1783, it asked the States to allow Congress to lay low specific import duties for twenty-five years, to be collected by officers appointed by the States.

The States were further recommended to lay some effective taxes, the proceeds to be set aside for government requisitions. The effect was precisely the same as before. Twelve States agreed; but the opposition of New York prevented the first part of the plan from being carried out. Not a single State had condescended to pay attention to the second request.

[Sidenote: Commerce amendment.]

Apparently abandoning any hope of an adequate revenue, Congress, on April 30, 1784, proposed a third amendment, that the States should permit it to pa.s.s commercial laws discriminating against foreign powers which refused to make commercial treaties. This was aimed at Great Britain. Washington urged the measure in vigorous language. "We are," said he, "either a united people, or we are not so. If the former, let us in all matters of national concern act as a nation which has a national character to support." Yet he could not bring even Virginia to agree to the plan, and it quickly failed.

[Sidenote: Schemes of revision.]

A poor const.i.tution, which could be amended only by unanimous vote, was likely to stifle the nation. A few feeble suggestions were heard that the experiment of republican government be given over; others urged that the Americans be brought within one centralized government. Alexander Hamilton would have established a government "controlling the internal police of the States, and having a federal judiciary." Upon the last of his three schemes, dated 1783, is written: "Intended to be submitted to Congress, but abandoned for want of support." Even Washington's vastly greater influence had no effect. In a circular letter to the governors, dated June, 1783, he says: "It is indispensable to the happiness of the individual States that there should be lodged somewhere a supreme power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the confederated republic."

Yet not a State would take the initiative in reforming the const.i.tution.

From 1784 to 1786 pamphlets began to appear in which more definite suggestions were made for a new government. Pelatiah Webster proposed a government with enlarged powers, and a legislature of two houses. "If they disagree," said he, "let them sit still until they recover their good humor." The method in which the new government was to enforce its powers was put in a quaint and incisive form. "My principle is," said Webster, "the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Every person ... who shall disobey the supreme authority shall be answerable to Congress." The idea that the const.i.tution needed radical amendment had at last found a lodgment in the public mind.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FEDERAL CONSt.i.tUTION (1787-1789).

59. REFERENCES.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES.--P. L. Ford, _Bibliography and Reference List of the Const.i.tution_; Justin Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History_, VII.

256-266; W. E. Foster, _References to the Const.i.tution_, 15, 21; Channing and Hart, _Guide_, ---- 154-156; A. B. Hart, _Federal Government_, ---- 38, 469.

HISTORICAL MAPS.--As in -- 48 above, -- 69 below.

GENERAL ACCOUNTS.--J. B. McMaster, _People of the United States_, I.

416-524; R. Hildreth, _United States_, III. 482-546; T. Pitkin, _United States_, II. 218-316; H. C. Lodge, _Washington_, II. ch. I.; J. Story, _Commentaries_, ---- 272-372; J. Schouler, _United States_, I. 31-70; Geo.

Tucker, _United States_, I. 347-383; Justin Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History_, VII. ch. iv.; H. Von Hoist, _Const.i.tutional History_, I. 47-63; J. S. Landon, _Const.i.tutional History_, 59-96; F. A. Walker, _Making of the Nation_, chs. ii., iii.