History of the United States Volume Ii Part 16

CHAPTER II.

FEDERALISM AND ANTI-FEDERALISM

[1790]

Early in the life of our Const.i.tution two parties rose, which, under various names, have continued ever since. During the strife for and against adoption, those favoring this had been styled Federalists, and their opponents, Anti-Federalists. After adoption--no one any longer really antagonizing the Const.i.tution--the two words little by little shifted their meaning, a man being dubbed Federalist or Anti-Federalist according to his preference for strong national government or for strong state governments. The Federalist Party gave birth to the Whig Party, and this to the modern Republican Party. The Anti-Federalists came to be called "Republicans," then "Democratic-Republicans," then simply "Democrats."

The central plank of the federalist platform was vigorous single nationality. In aid of this the Federalists wished a considerable army and navy, so that the United States might be capable of ample self-defence against all foes abroad or at home. Partly as a means to this, partly to build up national feeling, unity, self-respect, and due respect for the nation abroad, they sought to erect our national credit, which had fallen so low, and to plant it on a solid and permanent basis.

As still further advancing these ends they proposed so to enforce regard for the national authority and laws and obedience to them, that within its sphere the nation should be absolutely and beyond question paramount to the State.

In many who cherished them these n.o.ble purposes were accompanied by a certain aristocratic feeling and manner, a carelessness of popular opinion, an inclination to model governmental polity and administration after the English, and an impatience with what was good in our native American ideas and ways, which, however natural, were unfortunate and unreasonable. Puffed up with pride at its victory in carrying the Const.i.tution against the opposition of the ignorant ma.s.ses, this party developed a haughtiness and a lack of republican spirit amounting in some cases to deficient patriotism.

The early Federalists were of two widely different stripes. There were among them Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Jay; and there were the interested and practical advocates of the same, made up of business men and the wealthy and leisurely cla.s.ses, who, without intending to be selfish, were governed in political sympathy and action mainly by their own interests.

The greatest early Anti-Federalists were Jefferson, Madison, and Randolph, all of whom had been ardent for the Const.i.tution. The party as a whole, indeed, not only acquiesced in the re-creation of the general Government, but was devotedly friendly to the new order. But while Republicans admitted that a measure of governmental centralization was indispensable, they prized the individual State as still the main pillar of our political fabric, and were hence jealous of all increased function at the centre. It became more and more their theory that the States, rather than the individuals of the national body politic, had been the parties to the Const.i.tution, so making this to be a compact like the old Articles, and the government under it a confederacy as before 1789.

Another issue divided the parties, that between the strict and the more free interpretation of the Const.i.tution--between the close constructionists and the liberal constructionists. The question dividing them was this: In matters relating to the powers of the general Government, ought any unclear utterance of the Const.i.tution to be so explained as to enlarge those powers, or so as to confine them to the narrowest possible sphere? Each of the two tendencies in construction has in turn brought violence to our fundamental law, but the sentiment of nationality and the logic of events have favored liberality rather than narrowness in interpreting the parchment. When in charge of the government, even strict constructionists have not been able to carry out their theory. Thus Jefferson, to purchase Louisiana, was obliged, from his point of view, to transcend const.i.tutional warrant; and Madison, who at first opposed such an inst.i.tution as unconst.i.tutional, ended by approving the law which chartered the Second United States Bank.

The Federalists used to argue that Article I, Section VIII., the part of the Const.i.tution upon which debate chiefly raged, could not have been intended as an exhaustive statement of congressional powers. The Government would be unable to exist, they urged, to say nothing of defending itself and accomplishing its work, unless permitted to do more than the eighteen things there enumerated. They further insisted that plain utterances of the Const.i.tution presuppose the exercise by Congress of powers not specifically enumerated, explicitly authorizing that body to make all laws necessary for executing the enumerated powers "and all other powers vested in the Government of the United States or in any department or officer thereof."

In reply the Anti-Federalists made much of the t.i.tles "United States,"

"Federal," and the like, in universal use. They appealed to concessions as to the nature of our system made by statesmen of known national sympathies. Such concessions were plentiful then and much later. Even Webster in his immortal reply to Hayne calls ours a government of "strictly limited," even of "enumerated, specified, and particularized"

powers. Two historical facts told powerfully for the anti-federalist theory. One was that the government previous to 1789 was unquestionably a league of States; the other was that many voted for the present Const.i.tution supposing it to be a mere revision of the old. Had the reverse been commonly believed, adoption would have been more than doubtful.

CHAPTER III.

DOMESTIC QUESTIONS OF WASHINGTON'S ADMINISTRATIONS

[1790-1791]

I. Tariff.--Upon declaring their independence the United States threw open their ports, inviting trade from all nations. During the Revolution foreign commerce had become an important interest, and at its close the inclination of all, the more so from memory of England's accursed navigation acts, would have been to leave it untrammelled. Several motives, however, induced resort to a restrictive policy which, beginning with 1789, and for years expected to be temporary, has been pursued with little deviation ever since. Of course the Government needed revenue, and the readiest means of securing this was a tax on imports. Rates were made low, averaging until 1808 only 11-1/4 per cent.

As a consequence the revenues were large.

The movers of this first tariff, especially Hamilton, also wished by means of it to make the central Government felt as a positive power throughout the land. It had this effect. All custom-houses pa.s.sed to the United States, and United States officers appeared at every port, having an authority, in its kind, paramount to that of state functionaries.

A stronger consideration still was to retaliate against England. In spite of America's political independence the old country was determined to retain for her merchant marine its former monopoly here. Orders in council practically limited all the commerce of England and her remaining colonies with this country to English ships, although, from the relations of the two lands and the nature of their productions, our chief foreign trade must still be with England. There was no way to meet this selfish policy but to show that it was a game which we too could play.

Besides, however we behaved toward the mother-land, we needed to be prepared for war, because it was evident that George III. and his ministers had only too good a will to reduce us again to subjection if opportunity offered. Should we, by taxing imports, become independent in the production of war material, a fresh struggle for life would be much more hopeful than if we continued dependent upon foreign lands for military supplies.

II. Funding the Debt.--In the first years after they had set up their new const.i.tution the people of this country staggered under a terrible financial load. Besides the current expenses of Government, there were: 1, the federal debt due abroad, over thirteen million dollars, including arrears; 2, the federal debt held at home, about forty-two and one-half million; 3, the state revolutionary debts, aggregating nearly twenty-five million. Each of these sums was largely made up of unpaid interest.

The foreign debt Congress unanimously determined to pay in full. In respect to the domestic federal debt two opinions prevailed. Hamilton was for liquidating this also to the last copper. But these securities had mostly changed hands since issue, so that dollar for dollar payment would not advantage original holders but only speculators. As soon as Hamilton's recommendation became public this cla.s.s of paper rose from about fifteen cents per dollar to fifty cents, and enterprising New York firms hurried their couriers, relay horses, and swift packets to remote parts of the Union to buy it up. Madison, supported by a strong party, proposed, therefore, to pay only original debtors at par, allowing secondary holders barely the highest market value previous to the opening of the question in Congress. He was overruled, however, and this part of the debt, too, was ordered paid according to its literal terms.

Even the motion that the United States should a.s.sume and discharge the state debts finally prevailed, though against most violent and resolute opposition. This came especially from Virginia, who had gone far in the payment of her own war debt, and thought it unjust to have to help the delinquent States. Her objection was strengthened by the fact that most of the debt was owned in the North. The victory was secured by what is now termed a "deal," northern votes being promised in favor of a southern location for the national capital, in return for enough southern votes to pa.s.s the bill a.s.suming state debts.

These gigantic measures had origin in the mind of Hamilton. To many they appeared and appear today like a grand government job. But they worked well, laying the foundation of our national credit. Interest arrears and back installments of the foreign debt were to be paid at once with the proceeds of a fresh loan, supplemented by income from customs and tonnage. The remaining debt was to be refunded. Federal stocks shot up in value, moneyed interests became attached to the Government, and the nation began to be looked to as a more reliable bulwark of sound finance than any of the States.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Alexander Hamilton.

From a painting by John Trumbull in the Trumbull Gallery at Yale College.

III. The Excise.--Unexpectedly productive as the tariff had proved, public income still fell short of what these vast operations required.

Direct taxation or a higher tariff being out of the question, Hamilton proposed, and Congress voted, an excise on spirits, from nine to twenty-five cents a gallon if from grain, from eleven to thirty if from imported material, as mola.s.ses. Excise was a hated form of tax, and this measure awakened great opposition in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and New England, and most of all in Pennsylvania, in whose western counties distilling was the staple industry.

Here, far from the seats of power, even the state government had a.s.serted itself little. The general Government was defied. A meeting in Washington County voted to regard as an enemy any person taking office under the excise law. September 6, 1791, a revenue officer was tarred and feathered. Other such cases followed. Secret societies were formed to oppose the law. Whippings and even murders resulted. At last there was a veritable reign of terror. The President proceeded slowly but with firmness, accounting this a good opportunity vividly to reveal to the people the might of the new Government. Militia and volunteers were called out, who arrived in the rebellious districts in November, 1794.

Happily, their presence sufficed. The opposition faded away before them, not a shot being fired on either side.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Several men working with a large still.]

Illicit Distillers warned of the Approach of Revenue Officers.

IV. The Bank.--The Secretary of the Treasury pleaded for a United States Bank as not only profitable to Government but indispensable to the proper administration of the national finances. Congress acquiesced, yet with so violent hostility on the part of many that before approving the Charter Act Washington required the written opinions of his official advisers. Jefferson powerfully opposed such an inst.i.tution as unconst.i.tutional, his acute argument being the a.r.s.enal whence close constructionists have gotten their weapons ever since. Randolph sided with Jefferson, Knox with Hamilton. The President at last signed, agreeing with Hamilton in the view that Congress, being the agent of a sovereignty, is not, within any sphere of action const.i.tutionally open to it, shut up to specific or enumerated modes of attaining its ends, but has choice among all those that nations customarily use. The Supreme Court has proceeded on this doctrine ever since. The bank proved vastly advantageous. Three-fourths of every private subscription to its stock had to be in government paper, which raised this to par, while it naturally became the interest of all stockholders to maintain and increase the stability and credit of the Government.

CHAPTER IV.

RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND

[1793]

In 1789 France adopted a const.i.tution. Provoked at this, the friends of absolute monarchy withdrew from France, and incited the other powers of Europe to interpose in effort to restore to Louis XVI. his lost power.

The result was that Louis lost his head as well as his power, and that France became a republic. War with all Europe followed, which elevated that matchless military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte, first to the head of France's armies, then to her throne, to be toppled thence in 1814, partly by his own indiscretions, partly by the forces combined against him.

From the beginning to the end of this revolutionary period abroad, European politics determined American politics, home as well as foreign, causing dangerous embarra.s.sment and complications. War having in February, 1793, been declared by England and France against each other, what att.i.tude the United States should a.s.sume toward each became a pressing question. Washington's proclamation of neutrality, April 22, 1793, in effect, though not so meant, annulled our treaty of 1778 with France, which bound us to certain armed services to that monarchy in case of a rupture between her and England. Washington's paper alleged that "the duty and interests of the United States" required impartiality, and a.s.sumed "to declare the disposition of the United States to observe" this.

"The proclamation," wrote Jefferson, "was in truth a most unfortunate error. It wounds the popular feelings by a seeming indifference to the cause of liberty. And it seems to violate the form and spirit of the Const.i.tution by making the executive magistrate the organ of the 'disposition' 'the duty' and 'the interest' of the nation in relation to war and peace--subjects appropriated to other departments of the Government."

"On one side," says Mr. Rives, in his "Life of Madison," "the people saw a power which had but lately carried war and desolation, fire and sword, through their own country, and, since the peace, had not ceased to act toward them in the old spirit of unkindness, jealousy, arrogance, and injustice; on the other an ally who had rendered them the most generous a.s.sistance in war, had evinced the most cordial dispositions for a liberal and mutually beneficial intercourse in peace, and was now set upon by an unholy league of the monarchical powers of Europe, to overwhelm and destroy her, for her desire to establish inst.i.tutions congenial to those of America."

The more sagacious opponents of the administration believed true policy as well as true honesty to demand rigid and p.r.o.nounced adherence to the letter of the French treaty. They were convinced from the outset that France would vanquish her enemies, and that close alliance with her was the sure and the only sure way to coerce either Great Britain to justice or Spain to a reasonable att.i.tude touching the navigation of the Mississippi; while by offending France, they argued, we should be forced to wrestle single-handed with England first, then with victorious France, meantime securing no concession whatever from Spain.

This was a shrewd forecast of the actual event. The Federalists, dest.i.tute of idealism, proved to have been overawed by the prestige of England and to have underestimated the might which freedom would impart to the French people. After Napoleon's great campaign of 1796-97, Pitt seeks peace, which the French Directory feels able to decline. In 1802 the Peace of Amiens is actually concluded, upon terms dictated by France. Had we been still in France's friendship, the two republics might have compelled England's abandonment of that course which evoked the war of 1812. As it was, ignored by England, to whom, as detailed below, we cringed in consenting to Jay's treaty, we were left to encounter the French navy alone, escaping open and serious war with France only by a readiness to negotiate which all but compromised our dignity. The Mississippi we had at last to open with money.

The federalist leaning toward Great Britain probably did not, to so great an extent as was then alleged and widely believed, spring from monarchical feeling. It was due rather to old memories, as pleasant as they were tenacious, that would not be dissociated from England; to the individualistic tendencies of republicanism, alarming to many; and to conservative habits of political thinking, the dread of innovation and of theory. The returned Tories had indeed all become Federalists, which fact, with many others, lent to this att.i.tude the appearance of deficient patriotism, of sycophancy toward our old foe and persecutor.

Great Britain had refused to surrender the western posts according to the peace treaty of 1783, unjustly pleading in excuse the treatment of loyalists by our States. Not only the presence but the active influence of the garrisons at these posts encouraged Indian hostilities. England had also seized French goods in American (neutral) vessels, though in pa.s.sage to the United States, and treated as belligerent all American ships plying between France and her West Indian colonies, on the ground that this commerce had been opened to them only by the pressure of war.

The English naval officers were instructed to regard bread-stuffs as contraband if bound for France, even though owned by neutrals and in neutral ships; such cargoes, however, to be paid for by England, or released on bonds being given to land them elsewhere than in France. In this practice England followed France's example, except that she actually paid for the cargoes, while France only promised.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

John Jay.