The Nation in a Nutshell Part 4

[Sidenote: Valley Forge.]

But the colonists, though waxing in strength, were not yet able to cope in a prolonged and active campaign with the royal army. Philadelphia, like New York, had to be given up. The terrible winter months spent at Valley Forge formed one of the saddest and most heroic romances of the Revolution. The army lived in huts, which, as Lafayette exclaimed, "were no gayer than dungeons." Bread and clothing were sadly wanting. The cold was intense, and almost unremitting. The Pilgrims during their first winter at Plymouth were scarcely more comfortless.

[Sidenote: Bennington.]

It was early in the following year (1777) that General Burgoyne made an offensive movement southward from Canada, by way of Lake Champlain and Fort Ticonderoga. A portion of his troops were sent to Bennington to capture some stores collected there by the Vermont patriots. A vigorous defence of these stores by the intrepid Stark resulted in the repulse, first of the British, then of the Hessian troops. The next scene in the drama was what may be called the second decisive action of the war. Burgoyne, with his whole force of five thousand men, encamped at Saratoga. There he was confronted by General Horatio Gates, who engaged him in two battles, which, however uncertain their immediate issue, were followed by a retreat on Burgoyne's part. The Americans succeeded in turning his flank, and hemming him in; and then came the surrender of Burgoyne and his entire force.

[Sidenote: Surrender of Burgoyne.]

The consequences of this event were of far greater moment than the elimination from the contest of an able British general and five thousand well drilled British and mercenary soldiers. It silenced the complaints which were growing loud against the inactivity of Washington.

It once more harmonized the colonial counsels, which were becoming seriously discordant. It inspired new effort throughout the colonies.

And it decided France to make open cause with the struggling patriots.

To the masterly diplomacy of Franklin we owe it that the great European rival of England threw the weight of her sympathy and material a.s.sistance on our side.

[Sidenote: Charleston Taken.]

[Sidenote: Capture of Stony Point.]

From the moment of Burgoyne's surrender, the tide of the war was fitful, but on the whole, towards American success. There were still vicissitudes, now and then an apparent back-sliding; Charleston was taken by Clinton; ma.s.sacres by Indians took place in Pennsylvania; the progress of the cause at times seemed grievously slow. On the other hand, "mad" Anthony Wayne a.s.saulted and took Stony Point, on the Hudson; Paul Jones made vigorous havoc with the British war-ships, conquering the _Serapis_ and carried terror to the English by approaching close to their coast with his doughty _Bonhomme Richard_; Marion and Sumter kept up constant hostilities with the British in South Carolina; and the vexatious character of the war was evidently wearying the patience, and wearing upon the determination, of the royal government.

[Sidenote: Surrender of Cornwallis.]

The final scene of the war, at least that which most obtrusively stands forth in its panorama, was the siege and capture of Yorktown, in Virginia, and the surrender of General Lord Cornwallis with seven thousand troops. On this occasion the Americans had the aid of a corps of French troops under Count Rochambeau, while the French Admiral de Gra.s.se guarded York River. The siege was so vigorous that in ten days Lord Cornwallis found himself unable to hold the town. But for a propitious rain-storm, he might yet have saved his army, and thus protracted the war. His attempt to leave Yorktown under cover of night was, however, frustrated by the outburst of a tempest; and he was forced to send word to Washington that he would surrender.

[Sidenote: Peace.]

This he did, with all the customary formalities of war, on the 19th of October, 1781. By this act seven thousand British troops, the largest force left on American soil, were withdrawn from the conflict. It was the death-blow to British hopes. The war dragged on, however, for two years more. The royalist troops held New York, Charleston, and Savannah, but did not venture upon aggressive projects. At last, a treaty was made at Paris, on the 3d of September, 1783, by the conditions of which Great Britain grudgingly acknowledged the independence of the United States of America.

[Sidenote: The Revolutionary Heroes.]

There would be no justice in presenting even an outline of the American Revolution, without referring to its triumphs of statesmanship and diplomacy, as well as its triumphs of military achievement. Washington, Greene, Stark, Putnam, Wayne, Lafayette, De Kalb, Steuben, Schuyler, and their fellow-soldiers, performed a great part, and that which was the most brilliant and conspicuous, in accomplishing our liberties. But in the Congress were patriots quite as devoted, and not less efficient; while Franklin, during his sojourn abroad, exercised with great skill the delicate and subtle generalship of diplomacy. It would have been easy for the statesmen of the Revolution to render all of Washington's efforts vain and futile. The triumph of unworthy ambitions in the colonial counsels might well have brought wreck and ruin upon the cause.

[Sidenote: Revolutionary Statesmanship.]

Had the revolutionary statesmen lacked capacity or courage, they would have loaded the army with a burden which it probably could not have supported. The marvel of the period was the almost undisturbed unity, readiness, and practical energy of every branch of the public service; the devotion of each one in his own sphere to the common end; the general co-operation in the means by which that end was to be reached; the remarkable rarity of treason, even of self-seeking; the steadfast exercise, amid the comfortlessness of camps and the temptations of the council-hall of the highest and worthiest public virtues.

VIII. THE CONFEDERATION AND CONSt.i.tUTION.

[Sidenote: The Confederation.]

[Sidenote: Bond of the States.]

The Confederation was designed as a temporary civil machine, with which to conduct a war common to the colonies. The Const.i.tution was the later and permanent bond, combining the States under a single government.

Without the confederation, there would have been chaos in the revolution; without the const.i.tution, there would have remained the weakness arising from the division and rivalry of States. It is most interesting to observe the gradual manner in which our civil government crystallized out of the original elements offered by the colonies; and it is wonderful to see with what wise deliberation and patriotic earnestness States differing so widely in manners, in religion, in colonial system, and even in blood and race, were brought together in harmonious coalition, bound with a bond which the greatest civil war of modern times failed to sever, and which it seems only to have confirmed and strengthened.

[Sidenote: Early Confederations.]

There were, indeed, local confederations before those which, in 1774, enabled a congress to meet at Philadelphia, and which, in 1777, established articles for a more regular, though still a temporary, civil enginery with which to bring the war to a successful conclusion. More than a century before the first meeting of the Continental Congress, the idea of a confederation had been agitated among the New England colonies. In 1643 a confederation of those colonies was agreed upon at Boston, with twelve organic articles, for the common protection and defence. Here was the very beginning of American unions; and in its features may be discovered traces of the democratic principles of the Pilgrims.

[Sidenote: Declaration of Rights.]

A general congress of all the colonies met at New York in 1690, for purposes of conference, when the Stamp Act was promulgated.

Ma.s.sachusetts invited the colonies to meet in a general congress, which a.s.sembled at New York in 1765, adopted a declaration of rights, a.s.serted the sole right of taxation to rest in the colonies, and pa.s.sed other important resolutions. Eleven years before this, commissioners from nearly all of the colonies had met at Albany, and before this body Benjamin Franklin submitted his famous "project of union." Other conferences and congresses were held between 1765 and 1774; but it was early in September of the latter year that the first formal Continental Congress met, at Philadelphia, mainly to concert measures for resisting the arbitrary acts of the mother country. The rules which guided its deliberations were few and simple; but even so early we find Patrick Henry arguing upon the great question of the rights of the States, which has been a bone of contention in this country from that time to this.

[Sidenote: Articles of Confederation Adopted. ]

The first formal articles of confederation, after several ineffectual attempts, were adopted on the 15th of November, 1777, when the States were in the midst of the war of independence; but they were not formally ratified by all of the colonies until 1781, when Maryland at last agreed to them. These articles contained the germs of nationality, the crude material out of which the much broader and wiser const.i.tution was afterwards framed. The second article provided for the complete "sovereignty, independence, and freedom," of the several States, in all powers not expressly delegated to Congress.

[Sidenote: Restrictions on the States. ]

It was declared that the confederation was a mutual league for protection and defence; that each State should deliver fugitives from justice to the others, and accord full faith to the judicial records of the others; that each State should have the right to recall its delegates, and that no State should be represented in Congress by less than two nor more than seven delegates; that no State should send emba.s.sies to foreign powers, confer t.i.tles of n.o.bility, lay imports inconsistent with treaties of the United States, keep vessels of war or military forces in time of peace without the consent of Congress, a certain quota of militia excepted, or engage in war except in certain specified exigencies.

These, with many minor regulations, were the organic rules under which our civil government was carried on from 1777 to 1788, when the const.i.tution came into force. The confederation was supplied with an executive chosen by Congress, comprising secretaries of foreign affairs, war, and finance. It was evident, however, that this league, while it had well served a temporary purpose, was quite inadequate to the purpose of a permanent bond of union. "We are one nation to-day," said Washington, "and thirteen to-morrow; who will treat with us on these terms?"

[Sidenote: Steps towards a Const.i.tution.]

The first formal step towards establishing a const.i.tution was the meeting, in the autumn of 1786, of commissioners from Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, at Annapolis. They conferred together, and reported to Congress a recommendation that a body, comprising delegates from all the States, and empowered to frame an organic instrument, should be convened early in the following year.

Congress adopted the scheme, and the const.i.tuent convention was called.

[Sidenote: The Const.i.tuent Convention.]

This famous a.s.sembly met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and its deliberations continued until the middle of September. Among its members were many of the most eminent statesmen and soldiers of the Revolutionary period.

[Sidenote: Members of the Convention.]

George Washington, pre-eminent in war, and to be still pre-eminent in times of peace, presided over the convention, and was one of the guiding spirits of its labors. Of the thirty-eight delegates who signed the const.i.tution, six--Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, James Wilson, and George Clymer--had previously signed the Declaration of Independence. It was in the const.i.tutional convention that Alexander Hamilton's genius for statesmanship became conspicuous to the whole nation; while Madison, the future President, achieved therein a large reputation.

[Sidenote: The Non-signers.]

Among others, the two Pinckneys from South Carolina, John d.i.c.kinson, Jonathan Dayton, Rufus King, Gouverneur Morris, Jared Ingersoll, and John Rutledge, were eminent in various spheres of public life. Some of the members of the convention refused to, or for some reason did not, sign the const.i.tution after it was completed and drafted. These were Elbridge Gerry and Caleb Strong of Ma.s.sachusetts, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, John Lansing and Robert Yates of New York, William C. Houston of New Jersey, Luther Martin and John Francis Mercer of Maryland, George Mason, James McClung, Edmund Randolph, and George Wythe of Virginia, William R. Davis of North Carolina, William Houston and William Pierce of Georgia.

[Sidenote: Issues in the Convention.]

The discussions on the proposed const.i.tution were long, earnest, sometimes heated, and revealed the presence of widely divergent opinions. Four plans, or projects, were submitted severally by Edmund Randolph, William Paterson, Charles Pinckney, and Alexander Hamilton, differing widely in the political systems recommended. Throughout, the struggle was between those who desired to preserve a large degree of independence to the States, and those who wished to make a strong national government; and the crisis of the struggle came upon the question whether the States should have equal votes in the Senate, or should be represented in that body, as in the House of Representatives, according to population.

This was warmly debated for several days, the venerable Roger Sherman and Hamilton sustaining the principle of State equality, and Madison and Rufus King as vigorously opposing it. At last the former party prevailed, after a report in favor of State equality in the Senate said to have been moved in committee by Dr. Franklin. Other phases of the same contention occurred in the discussion of the article specially defining the powers of Congress. It was the object of the "States'

rights" party to limit these as much as possible, and of the nationalist party to give them a broad range.

[Sidenote: The Const.i.tution a Compromise.]

[Sidenote: Powers of Congress.]

Thus, after labors extending through nearly four months, the const.i.tution issued from the hands of its framers with the marks of compromise and concession on almost every section. On the one hand, the States were to vote as equals in the second and upper branch of Congress, and reserved to themselves local self-government and all powers not expressly set forth in the instrument. On the other, Congress was clothed with authority to lay uniform taxes and imposts, to provide for the common defence, to borrow money on the credit of the nation, to regulate foreign commerce, to make naturalization and bankruptcy laws, to coin money, to establish post-offices and roads, to declare war and raise armies and a navy, to const.i.tute courts, to organize and call out the militia, and to "execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrection, and repel invasions."

Animated, too, by the true republican spirit, the framers of the const.i.tution inserted in it that no bill of attainder or _ex-post-facto_ law should be pa.s.sed; that the writ of _habeas corpus_ should only be suspended in cases of extreme necessity; and that no t.i.tle of n.o.bility should either be granted by the government or accepted by a citizen of the United States.