The Critical Period of American History Part 4

Nothing, however, could prevent the story of the Newburgh affair from being published all over the country, and it greatly added to the distrust with which the army was regarded on general principles. What might have happened was forcibly suggested by a miserable occurrence in June, about two months after the disbanding of the army had begun. Some eighty soldiers of the Pennsylvania line, mutinous from discomfort and want of pay, broke from their camp at Lancaster and marched down to Philadelphia, led by a sergeant or two. They drew up in line before the state house, where Congress was a.s.sembled, and after pa.s.sing the grog began throwing stones and pointing their muskets at the windows. They demanded pay, and threatened, if it were not forthcoming, to seize the members of Congress and hold them as hostages, or else to break into the bank where the federal deposits were kept. The executive council of Pennsylvania sat in the same building, and so the federal government appealed to the state government for protection. The appeal was fruitless. President d.i.c.kinson had a few state militia at his disposal, but did not dare to summon them, for fear they should side with the rioters. The city government was equally listless, and the townsfolk went their ways as if it were none of their business; and so Congress fled across the river and on to Princeton, where the college afforded it shelter. Thus in a city of thirty-two thousand inhabitants, the largest city in the country, the government of the United States, the body which had just completed a treaty browbeating England and France, was ignominiously turned out-of-doors by a handful of drunken mutineers. The affair was laughed at by many, but sensible men keenly felt the disgrace, and asked what would be thought in Europe of a government which could not even command the services of the police. The army became more unpopular than ever, and during the summer and fall many town-meetings were held in New England, condemning the Commutation Act.

Are we not poor enough already, cried the farmers, that we must be taxed to support in idle luxury a riotous rabble of soldiery, or create an aristocracy of men with gold lace and epaulets, who will presently plot against our liberties? The Ma.s.sachusetts legislature protested; the people of Connecticut meditated resistance. A convention was held at Middletown in December, at which two thirds of the towns in the state were represented, and the best method of overruling Congress was discussed. Much high-flown eloquence was wasted, but the convention broke up without deciding upon any course of action. The matter had become so serious that wise men changed their minds, and disapproved of proceedings calculated to throw Congress into contempt. Samuel Adams, who had almost violently opposed the grant of half-pay and had been dissatisfied with the Commutation Act, now came completely over to the other side. Whatever might be thought of the policy of the measures, he said, Congress had an undoubted right to adopt them. The army had been necessary for the defence of our liberties, and the public faith had been pledged to the payment of the soldiers. States were as much bound as individuals to fulfil their engagements, and did not the sacred Scriptures say of an honest man that, though he sweareth to his own hurt, he changeth not? Such plain truths prevailed in the Boston town-meeting, which voted that "the commutation is wisely blended with the national debt." The agitation in New England presently came to an end, and in this matter the course of Congress was upheld.

[Sidenote: Order of the Cincinnati.]

In order fully to understand this extravagant distrust of the army, we have to take into account another incident of the summer of 1783, which gave rise to a discussion that sent its reverberation all over the civilized world. Men of the present generation who in childhood rummaged in their grandmothers' cosy garrets cannot fail to have come across scores of musty and worm-eaten pamphlets, their yellow pages crowded with italics and exclamation points, inveighing in pa.s.sionate language against the wicked and dangerous society of the Cincinnati. Just before the army was disbanded, the officers, at the suggestion of General Knox, formed themselves into a secret society, for the purpose of keeping up their friendly intercourse and cherishing the heroic memories of the struggle in which they had taken part. With the fondness for cla.s.sical a.n.a.logies which characterized that time, they likened themselves to Cincinnatus, who was taken from the plough to lead an army, and returned to his quiet farm so soon as his warlike duties were over. They were modern Cincinnati. A const.i.tution and by-laws were established for the order, and Washington was unanimously chosen to be its president. Its branches in the several states were to hold meetings each Fourth of July, and there was to be a general meeting of the whole society every year in the month of May. French officers who had taken part in the war were admitted to membership, and the order was to be perpetuated by descent through the eldest male representatives of the families of the members. It was further provided that a limited membership should from time to time be granted, as a distinguished honour, to able and worthy citizens, without regard to the memories of the war. A golden American eagle attached to a blue ribbon edged with white was the sacred badge of the order; and to this emblem especial favour was shown at the French court, where the insignia of foreign states were generally, it is said, regarded with jealousy. No political purpose was to be subserved by this order of the Cincinnati, save in so far as the members pledged to one another their determination to promote and cherish the union between the states. In its main intent the society was to be a kind of masonic brotherhood, charged with the duty of aiding the widows and the orphan children of its members in time of need. Innocent as all this was, however, the news of the establishment of such a society was greeted with a howl of indignation all over the country. It was thought that its founders were inspired by a deep-laid political scheme for centralizing the government and setting up a hereditary aristocracy. The press teemed with invective and ridicule, and the feeling thus expressed by the penny-a-liners was shared by able men accustomed to weigh their words.

Franklin dealt with it in a spirit of banter, and John Adams in a spirit of abhorrence; while Samuel Adams pointed out the dangers inherent in the principle of hereditary transmission of honours, and in the admission of foreigners into a secret a.s.sociation possessed of political influence in America. What! cried the men of Ma.s.sachusetts. Have we thrown overboard the effete inst.i.tutions of Europe, only to have them straightway introduced among us again, after this plausible and surrept.i.tious fashion? At Cambridge it was thought that the general sentiment of the university was in favour of suppressing the order by act of legislature. One of the members, who was a candidate for senator in the spring of 1784, found it necessary to resign in order to save his chances for election. Rhode Island proposed to disfranchise such of her citizens as belonged to the order, albeit her most eminent citizen, Nathanael Greene, was one of them. aeda.n.u.s Burke, a judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, wrote a violent pamphlet against the society of the Cincinnati under the pseudonym of Ca.s.sius, the slayer of tyrants; and this diatribe, translated and amplified by Mirabeau, awakened dull echoes among readers of Rousseau and haters of privilege in all parts of Europe. A swarm of brochures in rejoinder and reb.u.t.ter issued from the press, and the nineteenth century had come in before the controversy was quite forgotten.

It is easy for us now to smile at this outcry against the Cincinnati as much ado about nothing, seeing as we do that in the absence of territorial jurisdiction or especial political privileges an order of n.o.bility cannot be created by the mere inheritance of empty t.i.tles or badges. For example, since the great revolution which swept away the landlordship and fiscal exemptions of the French n.o.bility, a marquisate or a dukedom in France is of scarcely more political importance than a doctorate of laws in a New England university. Men were nevertheless not to be blamed in 1783 for their hostility toward that ghost of the hereditary principle which the Cincinnati sought to introduce. In a free industrial society like that of America it had no proper place or meaning; and the attempt to set up such a form might well have been cited in ill.u.s.tration of the partial reversion toward militancy which eight years of warfare had effected. The absurdity of the situation was quickly realized by Washington, and he prevailed upon the society, in its first annual meeting of May, 1784, to abandon the principle of hereditary membership. The agitation was thus allayed, and in the presence of graver questions the much-dreaded brotherhood gradually ceased to occupy popular attention.

The opposition to the Cincinnati is not fully explained unless we consider it in connection with Nicola's letter, the Newburgh address, and the flight of Congress to Princeton. The members of the Cincinnati were pledged to do whatever they could to promote the union between the states; the object of the Newburgh address was to enlist the army in behalf of the public creditors, and in some vaguely-imagined fashion to force a stronger government upon the country; the letter of Nicola shows that at least some of the officers had harboured the notion of a monarchy; and the weakness of Congress had been revealed in the most startling manner by its flight before a squad of mutineers. It is one of the lessons of history that, in the virtual absence of a central government for which a need is felt, the want is apt to be supplied by the strongest organization in the country, whatever that may happen to be. It was in this way that the French army, a few years later, got control of the government of France and made its general emperor. In 1783, if the impotence of Congress were to be as explicitly acknowledged as it was implicitly felt, the only national organization left in the country was the army, and when this was disbanded it seemed nevertheless to prolong its life under a new and dangerous form in the secret brotherhood of the Cincinnati. The cession of western lands to the confederacy was, moreover, completed at about this time, and one of the uses to which the new territory was to be put was the payment of claims due to the soldiers. It was distinctly feared, as is shown in a letter from Samuel Adams to Elbridge Gerry, that the members of the Cincinnati would acquire large tracts of western land under this arrangement, and, importing peasants from Germany, would grant farms to them on terms of military service and fealty, thus introducing into America the feudal system. In order to forestall any such movement, it was provided by Congress that in any new states formed out of the western territory no person holding a hereditary t.i.tle should be admitted to citizenship.

[Sidenote: Congress finds itself unable to carry out the provisions of the treaty.]

[Sidenote: Persecution of Tories.]

From the weakness of Congress as ill.u.s.trated in its inability to raise money to pay the public debt and meet the current expenses of government, and from the popular dread of military usurpation which went along with the uneasy consciousness of that weakness, we have now to turn to another group of affairs in which the same point is still further ill.u.s.trated and emphasized. We have seen how the commissioners of the United States in Paris had succeeded in making a treaty of peace with Great Britain on extremely favourable terms. So unpopular was the treaty in England, on account of the great concessions made to the Americans, that, as we have seen, the fall of Lord Shelburne's ministry was occasioned thereby. As an offset to these liberal concessions, of which the most considerable was the acknowledgment of the American claim to the northwestern territory, our confederate government was pledged to do all in its power to effect certain concessions which were demanded by England. That the American loyalists, whose property had been confiscated by various state governments, should be indemnified for their losses was a claim which, whatever Americans might think of it, England felt bound in honour to urge. That private debts, due from American to British creditors, should be faithfully discharged was the plainest dictate of common honesty. Congress, as we have seen, was bound by the treaty to recommend to the several states to desist from the persecution of Tories, and to give them an opportunity of recovering their estates; and it had been further agreed that all private debts should be discharged at their full value in sterling money. It now turned out that Congress was powerless to carry out the provisions of the treaty upon either of these points. The recommendations concerning the Tories were greeted with a storm of popular indignation. Since the beginning of the war these unfortunate persons had been treated with severity both by the legislatures and by the people. Many had been banished; others had fled the country, and against these refugees various harsh laws had been enacted. Their estates had been confiscated, and their return prohibited under penalty of imprisonment or death. Many others, who had remained in the country, were objects of suspicion and dislike in states where they had not, as in New York and the Carolinas, openly aided the enemy or taken part in Indian atrocities. Now, on the conclusion of peace, in utter disregard of Congress, fresh measures of vengeance were taken against these "fawning spaniels," as they were called, these "tools and minions of Britain." An article in the "Ma.s.sachusetts Chronicle" expressed the common feeling: "As Hannibal swore never to be at peace with the Romans, so let every Whig swear, by his abhorrence of slavery, by liberty and religion, by the shades of departed friends who have fallen in battle, by the ghosts of those of our brethren who have been destroyed on board of prison-ships and in loathsome dungeons, never to be at peace with those fiends the refugees, whose thefts, murders, and treasons have filled the cup of woe." Tons of pamphlets, issued under the customary Latin pseudonyms, were filled with this truculent bombast; and like sentiments were thundered from the pulpit by men who had quite forgotten for the moment their duty of preaching reconciliation and forgiveness of injuries. Why should not these wretches, it was sarcastically asked, be driven at once from the country? Of course they could not desire to live under a free government which they had been at such pains to destroy. Let them go forthwith to his majesty's dominions, and live under the government they preferred.

It would never do to let them stay here, to plot treason at their leisure; in a few years they would get control of all the states, and either hand them over to Great Britain again, or set up a Tory despotism on American soil. Such was the rubbish that pa.s.sed current as argument with the majority of the people. A small party of moderate Whigs saw its absurdity, and urged that the Tories had much better remain at home, where they had lost all political influence, than go and found unfriendly colonies to the northward. The moderate Whigs were in favour of heeding the recommendation of Congress, and acting in accordance with the spirit of the treaty; and these humane and sensible views were shared by Gadsden and Marion in South Carolina, by Theodore Sedgwick in Ma.s.sachusetts, and by Greene, Hamilton, and Jay. But any man who held such opinions, no matter how conspicuous his services had been, ran the risk of being accused of Tory sympathies. "Time-serving Whigs" and "trimmers" were the strangely inappropriate epithets hurled at men who, had they been in the slightest degree time-servers, would have shrunk from the thankless task of upholding good sense and humanity in the teeth of popular prejudice.

[Sidenote: The Trespa.s.s Act of New York, 1784.]

In none of the states did the loyalists receive severer treatment than in New York, and for obvious reasons. Throughout the war the frontier had been the scene of atrocities such as no other state, save perhaps South Carolina, had witnessed. Cherry Valley and Minisink were names of horror not easily forgotten, and the fate of Lieutenant Boyd and countless other victims called loudly for vengeance. The sins of the Butlers and their bloodthirsty followers were visited in robbery and insult upon unoffending men, who were like them in nothing but in being labelled with the epithet "Tory." During the seven years that the city of New York had been occupied by the British army, many of these loyalists had found shelter there. The Whig citizens, on the other hand, had been driven off the island, to shift as best they might in New Jersey, while their comfortable homes were seized and a.s.signed by military orders to these very Tories. For seven years the refugee Whigs from across the Hudson had looked upon New York with feelings like those with which the mediaeval exile from Florence or Pisa was wont to regard his native city. They saw in it the home of enemies who had robbed them, the prison-house of gallant friends penned up to die of wanton ill-usage in foul ships' holds in the harbour. When at last the king's troops left the city, it was felt that a great day of reckoning had arrived. In September, 1783, two months before the evacuation, more than twelve thousand men, women, and children embarked for the Bahamas or for Nova Scotia, rather than stay and face the troubles that were coming. Many of these were refined and cultivated persons, and not all had been actively hostile to the American cause; many had simply accepted British protection. Against those who remained in the city the returning Whigs now proceeded with great severity. The violent party was dominant in the legislature, and George Clinton, the governor, put himself conspicuously at its head. A bill was pa.s.sed disfranchising all such persons as had voluntarily stayed in neighbourhoods occupied by the British troops; their offence was called misprision of treason. But the council vetoed this bill as too wholesale in its operation, for it would have left some districts without voters enough to hold an election. An "iron-clad oath"

was adopted instead, and no one was allowed to vote unless he could swear that he had never in anywise abetted the enemy. It was voted that no Tory who had left the state should be permitted to return; and a bill was pa.s.sed known as the Trespa.s.s Act, whereby all persons who had quit their homes by reason of the enemy's presence might recover damages in an action of trespa.s.s against such persons as had since taken possession of the premises. Defendants in such cases were expressly barred from pleading a military order in justification of their possession. As there was scarcely a building on the island of New York that had not thus changed hands during the British occupation, it was easy to foresee what confusion must ensue. Everybody whose house had once been, for ever so few days, in the hands of a Tory now rushed into court with his action of trespa.s.s. Damages were rated at most exorbitant figures, and it became clear that the misdeeds of the enemy were about to be made the excuse for a carnival of spoliation, when all at once the test case of Rutgers _v._ Waddington brought upon the scene a st.u.r.dy defender of order, an advocate who was soon to become one of the foremost personages in American history.

[Sidenote: Alexander Hamilton.]

Of all the young men of that day, save perhaps William Pitt, the most precocious was Alexander Hamilton. He had already given promise of a great career before the breaking out of the war. He was born on the island of Nevis, in the West Indies, in 1757. His father belonged to that famous Scottish clan from which have come one of the most learned metaphysicians and one of the most original mathematicians of modern times. His mother was a French lady, of Huguenot descent, and biographers have been fond of tracing in his character the various qualities of his parents. To the shrewdness and persistence, the administrative ability, and the taste for abstract reasoning which we are wont to find a.s.sociated in the highest type of Scottish mind he joined a truly French vivacity and grace. His earnestness, sincerity, and moral courage were characteristic alike of Puritan and of Huguenot.

In the course of his short life he exhibited a remarkable many-sidedness. So great was his genius for organization that in many essential respects the American government is moving to-day along the lines which he was the first to mark out. As an economist he shared to some extent in the shortcomings of the age which preceded Adam Smith, but in the special department of finance he has been equalled by no other American statesman save Albert Gallatin. He was a splendid orator and brilliant writer, an excellent lawyer, and a clear-headed and industrious student of political history. He was also eminent as a political leader, although he lacked faith in democratic government, and a generous impatience of temperament sometimes led him to prefer short and arbitrary by-paths toward desirable ends, which can never be securely reached save along the broad but steep and arduous road of popular conviction. But with all Hamilton's splendid qualities, nothing about him is so remarkable as the early age at which these were developed. At the age of fifteen a brilliant newspaper article brought him into such repute in the little island of Nevis that he was sent to New York to avail himself of the best advantages afforded by the King's College, now known as Columbia. He had at first no definite intention of becoming an American citizen, but the thrilling events of the time appealed strongly to the earnest heart and powerful intelligence of this wonderful boy. At a gathering of the people of New York in July, 1774, his generous blood warmed, till a resistless impulse brought him on his feet to speak to the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude. It was no company of half-drunken idlers that thronged about him, but an a.s.semblage of grave and responsible citizens, who looked with some astonishment upon this boy of seventeen years, short and slight in stature, yet erect and Caesar-like in bearing, with firm set mouth and great, dark, earnest eyes. His eloquent speech, full of sense and without a syllable of bombast, held his hearers entranced, and from that day Alexander Hamilton was a marked man. He began publishing anonymous pamphlets, which at first were attributed by some to Jay, and by others to Livingston. When their authorship was discovered, the loyalist party tried in vain to buy off the formidable youth. He kept up the pamphlet-war, in the course of which he wofully defeated Dr. Cooper, the Tory president of the college; but shortly afterward he defended the doctor's house against an angry mob, until that unpopular gentleman had succeeded in making his escape to a British ship. Hamilton served in the army throughout the war, for the most part as aid and secretary to Washington; but in 1781 he was a colonel in the line, and stormed a redoubt at Yorktown with distinguished skill and bravery. He married a daughter of Philip Schuyler, began the practice of law, and in 1782, at the age of twenty-five, was chosen a delegate to Congress.

[Sidenote: The case of Rutgers _v._ Waddington.]

In 1784, when the Trespa.s.s Act threw New York into confusion, Hamilton had come to be regarded as one of the most powerful advocates in the country. In the test case which now came before the courts he played a part of consummate boldness and heroism. Elizabeth Rutgers was a widow, who had fled from New York after its capture by General Howe. Her confiscated estate had pa.s.sed into the hands of Joshua Waddington, a rich Tory merchant, and she now brought suit under the Trespa.s.s Act for its recovery. It was a case in which popular sympathy was naturally and strongly enlisted in behalf of the poor widow. That she should have been turned out of house and home was one of the many gross instances of wickedness wrought by the war. On the other hand, the disturbance wrought by the enforcement of the Trespa.s.s Act was already creating fresh wrongs much faster than it was righting old ones; and it is for such reasons as this that both in the common law and in the law of nations the principle has been firmly established that "the fruits of immovables belong to the captor as long as he remains in actual possession of them." The Trespa.s.s Act contravened this principle, and it also contravened the treaty. It moreover placed the state of New York in an att.i.tude of defiance toward Congress, which had made the treaty and expressly urged upon the states to suspend the legislation against the Tories. On large grounds of public policy, therefore, the Trespa.s.s Act deserved to be set aside by the courts, and when Hamilton was asked to serve as counsel for the defendant he accepted the odious task without hesitation. There can be no better proof of his forensic ability than his winning a verdict, in such a case as this, from a hostile court that was largely influenced by the popular excitement. The decision nullified the Trespa.s.s Act, and forthwith ma.s.s meetings of the people and an extra session of the legislature condemned this action of the court. Hamilton was roundly abused, and his conduct was attributed to unworthy motives.

But he faced the people as boldly as he had faced the court, and published a letter, under the signature of Phocion, setting forth in the clearest light the injustice and impolicy of extreme measures against the Tories. The popular wrath and disgust at Hamilton's course found expression in a letter from one Isaac Ledyard, a hot-headed pot-house politician, who signed himself Mentor. A war of pamphlets ensued between Mentor and Phocion. It was genius pitted against dulness, reason against pa.s.sion; and reason wielded by genius won the day. The more intelligent and respectable citizens reluctantly admitted that Hamilton's arguments were unanswerable. A club of boon companions, to which Ledyard belonged, made the same admission by the peculiar manner in which it proposed to silence him. It was gravely proposed that the members of the club should pledge themselves one after another to challenge Hamilton to mortal combat, until some one of them should have the good fortune to kill him!

The scheme met with general favour, but was defeated by the exertions of Ledyard himself, whose zeal was not ardent enough to condone treachery and murder. The incident well ill.u.s.trates the intense bitterness of political pa.s.sion at the time, as Hamilton's conduct shows him in the light of a most courageous and powerful defender of the central government. For nothing was more significant in the verdict which he had obtained than its implicit a.s.sertion of the rights of the United States as against the legislature of a single state.

[Sidenote: Emigration of Tories.]

In spite of the efforts of such men as Hamilton, life was made very uncomfortable for the Tories. In some states they were subjected to mob violence. Instances of tarring and feathering were not uncommon. The legislature of South Carolina was honourably distinguished for the good faith with which it endeavoured to enforce the recommendation of Congress; but the people, unable to forget the smoking ruins of plundered homes, were less lenient. Notices were posted ordering prominent loyalists to leave the country; the newspapers teemed with savage warnings; and finally, of those who tarried beyond a certain time, many were shot or hanged to trees. This extremity of bitterness, however, did not long continue. The instances of physical violence were mostly confined to the first two or three years after the close of the war. In most of the states the confiscating acts were after a while repealed, and many of the loyalists were restored to their estates. But the emigration which took place between 1783 and 1785 was very large. It has been estimated that 100,000 persons, or nearly three per cent. of the total white population, quit the country. Those from the southern states went mostly to the Bahamas and Florida; while those from the north laid the foundation of new British states in New Brunswick and Upper Canada. Many of these refugees appealed to the British government for indemnification for their losses, and their claims received prompt attention. A parliamentary commission was appointed to inquire into the matter, and by the year 1790 some $16,000,000 had been distributed among about 4,000 sufferers, while many others received grants of crown-lands, or half-pay as military officers, or special annuities, or appointments in the civil service. On the whole, the compensation which the refugees received from Parliament seems to have been much more ample than that which the ragged soldiers of our Revolutionary army ever received from Congress.

[Sidenote: Congress is unable to enforce payment of debts to British creditors. England retaliates by refusing to surrender the western posts.]

While the political pa.s.sions resulting in this forced emigration of loyalists were such as naturally arise in the course of a civil war, the historian cannot but regret that the United States should have been deprived of the services of so many excellent citizens. In nearly all such cases of wholesale popular vengeance, it is the wrong individuals who suffer. We could well afford to dispense with the border-ruffians who abetted the Indians in their carnival of burning and scalping, but the refugees of 1784 were for the most part peaceful and unoffending families, above the average in education and refinement. The vicarious suffering inflicted upon them set nothing right, but simply increased the ma.s.s of wrong, while to the general interests of the country the loss of such people was in every way damaging. The immediate political detriment wrought at the time, though it is that which here most nearly concerns us, was perhaps the least important. Since Congress was manifestly unable to carry out the treaty, an excuse was furnished to England for declining to fulfil some of its provisions. In regard to the loyalists, indeed, the treaty had recognized that Congress possessed but an advisory power; but in the other provision concerning the payment of private debts, which in the popular mind was very much mixed up with the question of justice to the loyalists, the faith of the United States was distinctly pledged. On this point also Congress was powerless to enforce the treaty. Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina had all enacted laws obstructing the collection of British debts; and in flat defiance of the treaty these statutes remained in force until after the downfall of the Confederation. The states were aware that such conduct needed an excuse, and one was soon forthcoming. Many negroes had left the country with the British fleet: some doubtless had sought their freedom; others, perhaps, had been kidnapped as booty, and sold to planters in the West Indies. The number of these black men carried away by the fleet had been magnified tenfold by popular rumour. Complaints had been made to Sir Guy Carleton, but he had replied that any negro who came within his lines was presumably a freeman, and he could not lend his aid in remanding such persons to slavery. Jay, as one of the treaty commissioners, gave it as his opinion that Carleton was quite right in this, but he thought that where a loss of slaves could be proved, Great Britain was bound to make pecuniary compensation to the owners. The matter was wrangled over for several years, in the state legislatures, in town and county meetings, at dinner-tables, and in bar-rooms, with the general result that, until such compensation should be made, the statutes hindering the collection of debts would not be repealed. In retaliation for this, Great Britain refused to withdraw her garrisons from the western fortresses, which the treaty had surrendered to the United States. This measure was very keenly felt by the people. As an a.s.sertion of superior strength, it was peculiarly galling to our weak and divided confederacy, and it also wrought us direct practical injury. It encouraged the Indian tribes in their depredations on the frontier, and it deprived American merchants of an immensely lucrative trade in furs. In the spring of 1787 there were advertised for sale in London more than 360,000 skins, worth $1,200,000 at the lowest estimate; and had the posts been surrendered according to the treaty, all this would have pa.s.sed through the hands of American merchants. The London fur-traders were naturally loth to lose their control over this business, and in the language of modern politics they brought "pressure" to bear on the government to retain the fortresses as long as possible. The American refusal to pay British creditors furnished an excellent excuse, while the weakness of Congress made any kind of reprisal impossible; and it was not until Washington's second term as president, after our national credit had been restored and the strength of our new government made manifest, that England surrendered this chain of strongholds, commanding the woods and waters of our northwestern frontier.

CHAPTER IV.

DRIFTING TOWARD ANARCHY.

[Sidenote: Barbarous superst.i.tions about trade.]

At the close of the eighteenth century the barbarous superst.i.tions of the Middle Ages concerning trade between nations still flourished with scarcely diminished vitality. The epoch-making work of Adam Smith had been published in the same year in which the United States declared their independence. The one was the great scientific event, as the other was the great political event of the age; but of neither the one nor the other were the scope and purport fathomed at the time. Among the foremost statesmen, those who, like Shelburne and Gallatin, understood the principles of the "Wealth of Nations" were few indeed. The simple principle that when two parties trade both must be gainers, or one would soon stop trading, was generally lost sight of; and most commercial legislation proceeded upon the theory that in trade, as in gambling or betting, what the one party gains the other must lose. Hence towns, districts, and nations surrounded themselves with walls of legislative restrictions intended to keep out the monster Trade, or to admit him only on strictest proof that he could do no harm. On this barbarous theory, the use of a colony consisted in its being a customer which you could compel to trade with yourself, while you could prevent it from trading with anybody else; and having secured this point, you could cunningly arrange things by legislation so as to throw all the loss upon this enforced customer, and keep all the gain to yourself. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all the commercial legislation of the great colonizing states was based upon this theory of the use of a colony. For effectiveness, it shared to some extent the characteristic features of legislation for making water run up hill. It r.e.t.a.r.ded commercial development all over the world, fostered monopolies, made the rich richer and the poor poorer, hindered the interchange of ideas and the refinement of manners, and sacrificed millions of human lives in misdirected warfare; but what it was intended to do it did not do. The st.u.r.dy race of smugglers--those despised pioneers of a higher civilization--thrived in defiance of kings and parliaments; and as it was impossible to carry out such legislation thoroughly without stopping trade altogether, colonies and mother countries contrived to increase their wealth in spite of it. The colonies, however, understood the animus of the theory in so far as it was directed against them, and the revolutionary sentiment in America had gained much of its strength from the protest against this one-sided justice. In one of its most important aspects, the Revolution was a deadly blow aimed at the old system of trade restrictions. It was to a certain extent a step in realization of the n.o.ble doctrines of Adam Smith. But where the scientific thinker grasped the whole principle involved in the matter, the practical statesmen saw only the special application which seemed to concern them for the moment. They all understood that the Revolution had set them free to trade with other countries than England, but very few of them understood that, whatever countries trade together, the one cannot hope to benefit by impoverishing the other.

This point is much better understood in England to-day than in the United States; but a century ago there was little to choose between the two countries in ignorance of political economy. England had gained great wealth and power through trade with her rapidly growing American colonies. One of her chief fears, in the event of American independence, had been the possible loss of that trade. English merchants feared that American commerce, when no longer confined to its old paths by legislation, would somehow find its way to France and Holland and Spain and other countries, until nothing would be left for England. The Revolution worked no such change, however. The princ.i.p.al trade of the United States was with England, as before, because England could best supply the goods that Americans wanted; and it is such considerations, and not acts of Parliament, that determine trade in its natural and proper channels. In 1783 Pitt introduced into Parliament a bill which would have secured mutual unconditional free trade between the two countries; and this was what such men as Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison desired. Could this bill have pa.s.sed, the hard feelings occasioned by the war would soon have died out, the commercial progress of both countries would have been promoted, and the stupid measures which led to a second war within thirty years might have been prevented.

But the wisdom of Pitt found less favour in Parliament than the dense stupidity of Lord Sheffield, who thought that to admit Americans to the carrying trade would undermine the naval power of Great Britain. Pitt's measure was defeated, and the regulation of commerce with America was left to the king in council. Orders were forthwith pa.s.sed as if upon the theory that America poor would be a better customer than America rich.

[Sidenote: Ship-building in New England.]

[Sidenote: British navigation acts and orders in council directed against American commerce.]

The carrying trade to the West Indies had been one of the most important branches of American industry. The men of New England were famous for seamanship, and better and cheaper ships could be built in the seaports of Ma.s.sachusetts than anywhere in Great Britain. An oak vessel could be built at Gloucester or Salem for twenty-four dollars per ton; a ship of live-oak or American cedar cost not more than thirty-eight dollars per ton. On the other hand, fir vessels built on the Baltic cost thirty-five dollars per ton, and nowhere in England, France, or Holland could a ship be made of oak for less than fifty dollars per ton. Often the cost was as high as sixty dollars. It was not strange, therefore, that before the war more than one third of the tonnage afloat under the British flag was launched from American dock-yards. The war had violently deprived England of this enormous advantage, and now she sought to make the privation perpetual, in the delusive hope of confining British trade to British keels, and in the belief that it was the height of wisdom to impoverish the nation which she regarded as her best customer. In July, 1783, an order in council proclaimed that henceforth all trade between the United States and the British West Indies must be carried on in British-built ships, owned and navigated by British subjects. A serious blow was thus dealt not only at American shipping, but also at the interchange of commodities between the states and the islands, which was greatly hampered by this restriction. During the whole of the eighteenth century the West India sugar trade with the North American colonies and with Great Britain had been of immense value to all parties, and all had been seriously damaged by the curtailment of it due to the war. Now that the artificial state of things created by the war was to be perpetuated by legislation, the prospect of repairing the loss seemed indefinitely postponed. Moreover, even in trading directly with Great Britain, American ships were only allowed to bring in articles produced in the particular states of which their owners were citizens,--an enactment which seemed to add insult to injury, inasmuch as it directed especial attention to the want of union among the thirteen states. Great indignation was aroused in America, and reprisals were talked of, but efforts were first made to obtain a commercial treaty.

[Sidenote: John Adams tries in vain to negotiate a commercial treaty.]

In 1785 Franklin returned from France, and Jefferson was sent as minister in his stead, while John Adams became the first representative of the United States at the British court. Adams was at first very courteously received by George III., and presently set to work to convince Lord Carmarthen, the foreign secretary, of the desirableness of unrestricted intercourse between the two countries. But popular opinion in England was obstinately set against him. But for the Navigation Act and the orders in council, it was said, all ships would by and by come to be built in America, and every time a frigate was wanted for the navy the Lords of Admiralty would have to send over to Boston or Philadelphia and order one. Rather than do such a thing as this, it was thought that the British navy should content itself with vessels of inferior workmanship and higher cost, built in British dock-yards. Thirty years after, England gathered an unexpected fruit of this narrow policy, when, to her intense bewilderment, she saw frigate after frigate outsailed and defeated in single combat with American antagonists. Owing to her exclusive measures, the rapid improvement in American shipbuilding had gone on quite beyond her ken, until she was thus rudely awakened to it.

With similar short-sighted jealousy, it was argued that the American share in the whale-fishery and in the Newfoundland fishery should be curtailed as much as possible. Spermaceti oil was much needed in England: complaints were rife of robbery and murder in the dimly lighted streets of London and other great cities. But it was thought that if American ships could carry oil to England and salt fish to Jamaica, the supply of seamen for the British navy would be diminished; and accordingly such privileges must not be granted the Americans unless valuable privileges could be granted in return. But the government of the United States could grant no privileges because it could impose no restrictions. British manufactured goods were needed in America, and Congress, which could levy no duties, had no power to keep them out.

British merchants and manufacturers, it was argued, already enjoyed all needful privileges in American ports, and accordingly they asked no favours and granted none.

Such were the arguments to which Adams was obliged to listen. The popular feeling was so strong that Pitt could not have stemmed it if he would. It was in vain that Adams threatened reprisals, and urged that the British measures would defeat their own purpose. "The end of the Navigation Act," said he, "as expressed in its own preamble, is to confine the commerce of the colonies to the mother country; but now we are become independent states, instead of confining our trade to Great Britain, it will drive it to other countries:" and he suggested that the Americans might make a navigation act in their turn, admitting to American ports none but American-built ships, owned and commanded by Americans. But under the articles of confederation such a threat was idle, and the British government knew it to be so. Thirteen separate state governments could never be made to adopt any such measure in concert. The weakness of Congress had been fatally revealed in its inability to protect the loyalists or to enforce the payment of debts, and in its failure to raise a revenue for meeting its current expenses.

A government thus slighted at home was naturally despised abroad.

England neglected to send a minister to Philadelphia, and while Adams was treated politely, his arguments were unheeded. Whether in this behaviour Pitt's government was influenced or not by political as well as economical reasons, it was certain that a political purpose was entertained by the king and approved by many people. There was an intention of humiliating the Americans, and it was commonly said that under a sufficient weight of commercial distress the states would break up their feeble union, and come straggling back, one after another, to their old allegiance. The fiery spirit of Adams could ill brook this contemptuous treatment of the nation which he represented. Though he favoured very liberal commercial relations with the whole world, he could see no escape from the present difficulties save in systematic retaliation. "I should be sorry," he said, "to adopt a monopoly, but, driven to the necessity of it, I would not do things by halves.... If monopolies and exclusions are the only arms of defence against monopolies and exclusions, I would venture upon them without fear of offending Dean Tucker or the ghost of Dr. Quesnay." That is to say, certain commercial privileges must be withheld from Great Britain, in order to be offered to her in return for reciprocal privileges. It was a miserable policy to be forced to adopt, for such restrictions upon trade inevitably cut both ways. Like the non-importation agreement of 1768 and the embargo of 1808, such a policy was open to the objections familiarly urged against biting off one's own nose. It was injuring one's self in the hope of injuring somebody else. It was perpetuating in time of peace the obstacles to commerce generated by a state of war. In a certain sense, it was keeping up warfare by commercial instead of military methods, and there was danger that it might lead to a renewal of armed conflict. Nevertheless, the conduct of the British government seemed to Adams to leave no other course open. But such "means of preserving ourselves," he said, "can never be secured until Congress shall be made supreme in foreign commerce."

[Sidenote: Reprisal impossible; the states impose conflicting duties.]

It was obvious enough that the separate action of the states upon such a question was only adding to the general uncertainty and confusion. In 1785 New York laid a double duty on all goods whatever imported in British ships. In the same year Pennsylvania pa.s.sed the first of the long series of American tariff acts, designed to tax the whole community for the alleged benefit of a few greedy manufacturers. Ma.s.sachusetts sought to establish committees of correspondence for the purpose of entering into a new non-importation agreement, and its legislature resolved that "the present powers of the Congress of the United States, as contained in the articles of confederation, are not fully adequate to the great purposes they were originally designed to effect." The Ma.s.sachusetts delegates in Congress--Gerry, Holton, and King--were instructed to recommend a general convention of the states for the purpose of revising and amending the articles of confederation; but the delegates refused to comply with their instructions, and set forth their reasons in a paper which was approved by Samuel Adams, and caused the legislature to reconsider its action. It was feared that a call for a convention might seem too much like an open expression of a want of confidence in Congress, and might thereby weaken it still further without accomplishing any good result. For the present, as a temporary expedient, Ma.s.sachusetts took counsel with New Hampshire, and the two states pa.s.sed navigation acts, prohibiting British ships from carrying goods out of their harbours, and imposing a fourfold duty upon all such goods as they should bring in. A discriminating tonnage duty was also laid upon all foreign vessels. Rhode Island soon after adopted similar measures. In Congress a scheme for a uniform navigation act, to be concurred in and pa.s.sed by all the thirteen states, was suggested by one of the Maryland delegates; but it was opposed by Richard Henry Lee and most of the delegates from the far south. The southern states, having no ships or seamen of their own, feared that the exclusion of British compet.i.tion might enable northern ship-owners to charge exorbitant rates for carrying their rice and tobacco, thus subjecting them to a ruinous monopoly; but the gallant Moultrie, then governor of South Carolina, taking a broader view of the case, wrote to Bowdoin, governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, a.s.serting the paramount need of harmonious and united action. In the Virginia a.s.sembly, a hot-headed member, named Thurston, declared himself in doubt "whether it would not be better to encourage the British rather than the eastern marine;" but the remark was greeted with hisses and groans, and the speaker was speedily put down. Amid such mutual jealousies and misgivings, during the year 1785 acts were pa.s.sed by ten states granting to Congress the power of regulating commerce for the ensuing thirteen years. The three states which refrained from acting were Georgia, South Carolina, and Delaware. The acts of the other ten were, as might have been expected, a jumble of incongruities. North Carolina granted all the power that was asked, but stipulated that when all the states should have done likewise their acts should be summed up in a new article of confederation. Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland had fixed the date at which the grant was to take effect, while Rhode Island provided that it should not expire until after the lapse of twenty-five years. The grant by New Hampshire allowed the power to be used only in one specified way,--by restricting the duties imposable by the several states. The grants of Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia were not to take effect until all the others should go into operation. The only thing which Congress could do with these acts was to refer them back to the several legislatures, with a polite request to try to reduce them to something like uniformity.

[Sidenote: Commercial war between different states.]

Meanwhile, the different states, with their different tariff and tonnage acts, began to make commercial war upon one another. No sooner had the other three New England states virtually closed their ports to British shipping than Connecticut threw hers wide open, an act which she followed up by laying duties upon imports from Ma.s.sachusetts.

Pennsylvania discriminated against Delaware, and New Jersey, pillaged at once by both her greater neighbours, was compared to a cask tapped at both ends. The conduct of New York became especially selfish and blameworthy. That rapid growth which was so soon to carry the city and the state to a position of primacy in the Union had already begun. After the departure of the British the revival of business went on with leaps and bounds. The feeling of local patriotism waxed strong, and in no one was it more completely manifested than in George Clinton, the Revolutionary general, whom the people elected governor for nine successive terms. From a humble origin, by dint of shrewdness and untiring push, Clinton had come to be for the moment the most powerful man in the state of New York. He had come to look upon the state almost as if it were his own private manor, and his life was devoted to furthering its interests as he understood them. It was his first article of faith that New York must be the greatest state in the Union. But his conceptions of statesmanship were extremely narrow. In his mind, the welfare of New York meant the pulling down and thrusting aside of all her neighbours and rivals. He was the vigorous and steadfast advocate of every illiberal and exclusive measure, and the most uncompromising enemy to a closer union of the states. His great popular strength and the commercial importance of the community in which he held sway made him at this time the most dangerous man in America. The political victories presently to be won by Hamilton, Schuyler, and Livingston, without which our grand and pacific federal union could not have been brought into being, were victories won by most desperate fighting against the dogged opposition of Clinton. Under his guidance, the history of New York, during the five years following the peace of 1783, was a shameful story of greedy monopoly and sectional hate. Of all the thirteen states, none behaved worse except Rhode Island.

A single instance, which occurred early in 1787, may serve as an ill.u.s.tration. The city of New York, with its population of 30,000 souls, had long been supplied with firewood from Connecticut, and with b.u.t.ter and cheese, chickens and garden vegetables, from the thrifty farms of New Jersey. This trade, it was observed, carried thousands of dollars out of the city and into the pockets of detested Yankees and despised Jerseymen. It was ruinous to domestic industry, said the men of New York. It must be stopped by those effective remedies of the Sangrado school of economic doctors, a navigation act and a protective tariff.

Acts were accordingly pa.s.sed, obliging every Yankee sloop which came down through h.e.l.l Gate, and every Jersey market boat which was rowed across from Paulus Hook to Cortlandt Street, to pay entrance fees and obtain clearances at the custom-house, just as was done by ships from London or Hamburg; and not a cart-load of Connecticut firewood could be delivered at the back-door of a country-house in Beekman Street until it should have paid a heavy duty. Great and just was the wrath of the farmers and lumbermen. The New Jersey legislature made up its mind to retaliate. The city of New York had lately bought a small patch of ground on Sandy Hook, and had built a light-house there. This light-house was the one weak spot in the heel of Achilles where a hostile arrow could strike, and New Jersey gave vent to her indignation by laying a tax of $1,800 a year on it. Connecticut was equally prompt.

At a great meeting of business men, held at New London, it was unanimously agreed to suspend all commercial intercourse with New York.

Every merchant signed an agreement, under penalty of $250 for the first offence, not to send any goods whatever into the hated state for a period of twelve months. By such retaliatory measures, it was hoped that New York might be compelled to rescind her odious enactment. But such meetings and such resolves bore an ominous likeness to the meetings and resolves which in the years before 1775 had heralded a state of war; and but for the good work done by the federal convention another five years would scarcely have elapsed before shots would have been fired and seeds of perennial hatred sown on the sh.o.r.es that look toward Manhattan Island.

[Sidenote: Disputes about territory; disasters in the valley of Wyoming, 1784.]

To these commercial disputes there were added disputes about territory.

The chronic quarrel between Connecticut and Pennsylvania over the valley of Wyoming was decided in the autumn of 1782 by a special federal court, appointed in accordance with the articles of confederation. The prize was adjudged to Pennsylvania, and the government of Connecticut submitted as gracefully as possible. But new troubles were in store for the inhabitants of that beautiful region. The traces of the ma.s.sacre of 1778 had disappeared, the houses had been rebuilt, new settlers had come in, and the pretty villages had taken on their old look of contentment and thrift, when in the spring of 1784 there came an acc.u.mulation of disasters. During a very cold winter great quant.i.ties of snow had fallen, and lay piled in huge ma.s.ses on the mountain sides, until in March a sudden thaw set in. The Susquehanna rose, and overflowed the valley, and great blocks of ice drifted here and there, carrying death and destruction with them. Houses, barns, and fences were swept away, the cattle were drowned, the fruit trees broken down, the stores of food destroyed, and over the whole valley there lay a stratum of gravel and pebbles. The people were starving with cold and hunger, and President d.i.c.kinson urged the legislature to send prompt relief to the sufferers.

But the hearts of the members were as flint, and their talk was incredibly wicked. Not a penny would they give to help the accursed Yankees. It served them right. If they had stayed in Connecticut, where they belonged, they would have kept out of harm's way. And with a blasphemy thinly veiled in phrases of pious unction, the desolation of the valley was said to have been contrived by the Deity with the express object of punishing these trespa.s.sers. But the cruelty of the Pennsylvania legislature was not confined to words. A scheme was devised for driving out the settlers and part.i.tioning their lands among a company of speculators. A force of militia was sent to Wyoming, commanded by a truculent creature named Patterson. The ostensible purpose was to a.s.sist in restoring order in the valley, but the behaviour of the soldiers was such as would have disgraced a horde of barbarians. They stole what they could find, dealt out blows to the men and insults to the women, until their violence was met with violence in return. Then Patterson sent a letter to President d.i.c.kinson, accusing the farmers of sedition, and hinting that extreme measures were necessary. Having thus, as he thought, prepared the way, he attacked the settlement, turned some five hundred people out-of-doors, and burned their houses to the ground. The wretched victims, many of them tender women, or infirm old men, or little children, were driven into the wilderness at the point of the bayonet, and told to find their way to Connecticut without further delay. Heartrending scenes ensued. Many died of exhaustion, or furnished food for wolves. But this was more than the Pennsylvania legislature had intended. Patterson's zeal had carried him too far. He was recalled, and the sheriff of Northumberland County was sent, with a posse of men, to protect the settlers. Patterson disobeyed, however, and withdrawing his men to a fortified lair in the mountains, kept up a guerilla warfare. All the Connecticut men in the neighbouring country flew to arms. Men were killed on both sides, and presently Patterson was besieged. A regiment of soldiers was then sent from Philadelphia, under Colonel Armstrong, who had formerly been on Gates's staff, the author of the incendiary Newburgh address. On arriving in the valley, Armstrong held a parley with the Connecticut men, and persuaded them to lay down their arms; a.s.suring them on his honour that they should meet with no ill treatment, and that their enemy, Patterson, should be disarmed also. Having thus fallen into this soldier's clutches, they were forthwith treated as prisoners. Seventy-six of them were handcuffed and sent under guard, some to Easton and some to Northumberland, where they were thrown into jail.

Great was the indignation in New England when these deeds were heard of.

The matter had become very serious. A war between Connecticut and Pennsylvania might easily grow out of it. But the danger was averted through a very singular feature in the Pennsylvania const.i.tution. In order to hold its legislature in check, Pennsylvania had a council of censors, which was a.s.sembled once in seven years in order to inquire whether the state had been properly governed during the interval. Soon after the troubles in Wyoming the regular meeting of the censors was held, and the conduct of Armstrong and Patterson was unreservedly condemned. A hot controversy ensued between the legislature and the censors, and as the people set great store by the latter peculiar inst.i.tution, public sympathy was gradually awakened for the sufferers.

The wickedness of the affair began to dawn upon people's minds, and they were ashamed of what had been done. Patterson and Armstrong were frowned down, the legislature disavowed their acts, and it was ordered that full reparation should be made to the persecuted settlers of Wyoming.[4]

[Sidenote: Troubles in the Green Mountains, 1777-84.]