The United States of America Part 3

The rendezvous from which the first company started for the Ohio, December 3, 1787.]

The national governor and judges for the Northwest territory in due time created a set of laws, established courts, and erected local governments. The latter was effected by applying the county system, familiar to the people of the Central and Southern States, to the land survey county, and by giving to the township, a unit in the survey system, some of the functions of the New England town. By this happy combination, settlers from any part of the old States would find a local government with whose forms they were to some extent familiar.

The Symmes purchase on the Ohio below the Ohio Company's grant was opened to settlement, as was the Virginia Military tract lying between the two. Through Pittsburg, "the gateway of the west," came a throng of pioneers to float down the Ohio to the land of promise. The United States forts protected them on the northern or "Indian side" of the river. In 1786, no less than 117 boats were counted pa.s.sing Fort Harmar.

So rapidly did the people take possession of this heritage of the Revolutionary struggle that within fifteen years the eastern part was ready to claim the promise of statehood. Eight years later, this new State, Ohio, had pa.s.sed in rank of population the older trans-Alleghanian States of Kentucky and Tennessee. Blessed with contiguous waterways lying in the line of travel, forming the gateway into the West by the down-thrusting arm of Canada, the first State to be created out of the public domain, with definite land surveys instead of tomahawk marks, with an endowed system of public schools, Ohio gained a political pre-eminence among the newer States and a national prestige which has scarcely yet been rivalled.

The solution of the problem of the frontier was thus so easily and permanently solved by the Central Government in its home-making policy that one scarcely appreciates the fear of Washington and others interested in the back country lest it become a refuge for outlaws and banditti. Mingling with the savages, it was feared that these outcasts would create a constant menace to the advance of civilisation. Colonial governors had much difficulty in controlling the "lawless banditti of the borders." The first settlers across the mountains were considered in England as "uncultivated banditti" and as "fanatical and hungry republicans" and the "overplus of Ireland's population." So late as 1835, De Tocqueville, the French commentator on America, declared that Americans who quit the posts of the Atlantic to plunge into the western wilderness were adventurers, impatient of restraint, greedy of wealth, and frequently men expelled from the State in which they were born.

But he had no doubt that in time society would a.s.sume as much stability and regularity in the remote West as it had done upon the coast of the Atlantic ocean.

At the time, the action of Congress called fresh attention to the attractiveness of the back country and the possibilities there when population should warrant the erection of States. Stanzas of Philip Freneau represent the feeling of the day:

"What wonders there shall Freedom show, What mighty _States_ successive grow.

What charming scenes attract the eye On wild Ohio's savage stream.

Here Nature reigns, whose works outvie The boldest pattern art can frame.

The _East_ is half to slaves consigned, And half to slavery more refined."

CHAPTER IV

FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERACY

Scarcely a failure of the Confederation Government can be found which does not lead in the last a.n.a.lysis to the financial situation both during and following the war. Suddenly plunged into the Revolutionary War, drained of ready money by the colonial system, possessed of no mines, mints, nor any resource for securing a medium of exchange except an undependable paper promise to pay, the people of the United States emerged from the war broken in purse and overwhelmed with debt.

According to Jefferson's estimate made at the time, they owed at least sixty-eight millions of dollars. To this fruit of the war he added the four hundred millions of paper money issued by the Federal and State Governments, estimated, in its depreciated condition, at about seventy-two millions more of debt. The ragged Continental soldiers, frequently reduced to seven-tenths of a pound rations, their arrearages of wages paid in Continental currency worth four pence on the dollar, were now about to be discharged to return to their needy families carrying only paper promises of the United States to pay. These certificates could be disposed of only to brokers and that at ruinous rates. What was to become of a veteran who was disabled? Congress had already authorised the several States to look up needy soldiers of the Continental service and pay them five dollars a month, such sums to be deducted from the quotas a.s.sessed on the several States to meet the general expenses. Seven States only had complied, and in these the lists of needy ex-soldiers had been incompletely compiled.

Some soldiers held certificates ent.i.tling them to bounty lands in the back country under the acts of 1776 and 1780, but had no means of journeying thither. Small wonder that mutiny threatened.

"Can you consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution," asked the insurrectionary Newburg addresses, the work of those unwilling to see the army disbanded before being a.s.sured of receiving justice, "and, retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt?

If you can--go--and carry with you the jest of Tories and the scorn of Whigs--the ridicule and, what is worse, the pity of the world. Go--starve --and be forgotten."

Eulogy has exhausted itself in praise of these Revolutionary veterans, who eventually permitted their ranks to be disbanded, instead of joining themselves together illegally to obtain justice, or subsisting themselves upon the country at large. Praise has not been withheld from their general, the Virginia soldier-farmer, who, instead of taking advantage of the dissatisfaction to put himself at the head of an insurrectionary force, chose rather to quiet rebellion and to inspire confidence by his hopefulness.

No sooner had the war ceased and the army melted away, than it was found that peace had its dangers no less than war. Released from the menace of war, the States felt no necessity for paying their respective quotas of expenses to the Central Government, as they had done in varying degrees since the beginning of hostilities. The year following the peace, they paid less than a million and a half of the eleven million asked in previous a.s.sessments. Three States, it was claimed, had paid comparatively nothing. Rhode Island and New Jersey, as if to add insult to injury, attempted to pay their quotas in their paper money, which was not received at par outside the States. Congress had no power of coercion. According to the second of the Articles, each State in the Confederation retained its sovereignty, freedom, and independence. Congress could only make impotent appeals. Governor Randolph, of Virginia, pictured the Congress as saying to his State: "May it please your high mightinesses of Virginia to pay your just proportionate quota of the national debt; we humbly supplicate that it may please you to comply with your federal duties. We implore, we beg your obedience."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PEt.i.tION FROM CONGRESS TO THE STATES. Many such appeals were issued at different times, begging the States in the Confederation to give more power to the Central Government.]

The financial confusion was increased because of the lack of a circulating medium. A mongrel collection of coins could be found, pa.s.sing at varying rates in the different States--English pounds, shillings and pence, Spanish dollars, joes, half-joes, pistoles and moidores, French guineas, carolins and chequins--but no United States coins. Even this money was soon drawn off to Europe, because British exporters demanded cash until the Revolutionary debts had been settled.

That this cash would return to the States was unlikely if one judged from the first year of the peace, during which the United States purchased 1,700,000 pounds worth of goods in England and sent in return only 700,000 worth. In order to secure some kind of money to conduct business, seven of the States began to issue paper money. The troubles arising from a depreciated paper during the Revolution were neither ignored nor forgotten; but no other method presented itself. Congress had power to issue only "bills on the credit of the United States,"

which were not likely to be more acceptable than other kinds of paper.

The hopelessness of managing a bankrupt nation, no doubt, was largely responsible for the deterioration which the membership of Congress suffered. Names prominent at the inception of the rebellion had disappeared from the rolls, and mediocrity ruled. The members personally experienced the financial stringency in the failure of their State Legislatures to pay their salaries. Many were dependent upon the patriotic purse of Haym Salomon, "a Jew broker of Philadelphia," as Madison termed him. There should have been a higher standard of membership in the Confederation Congress than in later times, because it comprised not only the usual legislative functions of the nation, but the executive and judicial as well. The machinery itself was largely to blame. Like many of the devices, that governing the Congress was too strongly set against centralisation to allow free play of the parts. No delegate, for instance, was allowed to serve more than three years out of any six lest his influence grow too great or he become unduly attached to the central power. It frequently happened that good men were thus cast out of service just when their experience made them valuable. Certain States forbade a man to serve two consecutive terms in Congress. Madison was debarred by such a provision in 1784.

Delegates were appointed by the State Legislatures usually for a term of one year to begin with the session on the first Monday of the following November. The term would frequently expire when the State Legislature was not in session, and the State would thus go unrepresented for some time.

If a delegate pleaded the emergency of the case and asked that the rule be waived, as those from Rhode Island did at one time, Congress refused to sanction such a palpable infraction of the Articles. Cases actually occurred where delegates elect did not arrive at the seat of Government until after the expiration of their term of appointment.

Absenteeism was the drag paramount upon Congressional action. No State could be represented by less than two members and retain its power of voting. If only one representative were present, he had no vote. If only two were present, they might differ, in which case the State was counted as "divided," and the vote was lost. Congress once sent a plea to the States urging the necessity of having more than two delegates present. It showed that if each State had only two representatives in Congress, five out of the twenty-six delegates, being only one-fifth, could negative any vote requiring the consent of nine States. Eleven States were represented at the time, nine by two delegates only, and thus it was possible, continued the report, for three men out of the twenty-five, being only one-eighth, to block all action. If three attended from each State, it would require ten, or one-third of the whole, to have as much power.

The derelictness in attendance on some occasions was humiliating and even alarming. When Washington appeared at Annapolis to resign his commission as commander-in-chief, only seven States were represented by the least required number. He faced twenty-one delegates instead of the ninety-one from the thirteen States, who should have graced this memorable occasion. The definitive treaty of peace lay on the table at the time. Nine States were required by the Articles to be present when a treaty was ratified. Unless ratified within six months after it had been signed in Paris, it would be null and void. More than half the precious time had already elapsed. With the greatest difficulty, the required number was secured. Four years later, there was no quorum for a period of three months, the representation at times falling to two States. During the first eleven months of the year 1788, a quorum was present only 129 days. Much of this delinquency was due to the expense of maintaining the delegates which fell upon the individual States. To make the burden as light as possible, two delegates only were commonly sent. They were likely to disagree.

Manifestly the State in which the Congress sat avoided this difficulty, because it could maintain a larger number of delegates at less expense.

To avoid this draft upon the needy treasuries, some of the States adopted the expedient of choosing as representative a resident of the city wherein was located for the moment the seat of government, or some man who had the means and the willingness to serve without pay.

During quite a long period, Delaware was represented by three delegates, only one of whom was a resident of the State. This was in accord with the custom of British representation. It is interesting to imagine the results if it had ever become fixed in the United States.

It may be truly said that the framers of the Articles could not have expected a successful continuous sitting of so large a body of men.

They had not so planned it. The Articles provided that a Committee of States could be appointed at any time, whenever the Congress as a whole might wish to adjourn, by the delegates from each State naming one of their number to serve in this capacity. This was the method of forming a "grand committee" on any important business in Congress. The attempt to give over national affairs to a Committee of States was made in the spring of 1784, after the peace. One trial of the expedient was sufficient. Only eleven States were represented at the time. From these, eleven delegates were selected. According to Monroe, "their powers are confined so that no injury can be effected." He referred to the manner in which the Articles restricted the Committee. The eleven celebrated the beginning of their administration by adjourning for three weeks, "for the benefit of the health of the members." At the end of this vacation, nearly two weeks were consumed in getting nine of the Committee together. A month of regular sessions followed, when suddenly the ever-present dissension concerning the place of meeting broke out. The Southern members of the committee wished to remain at Annapolis. The Northern members wished to adjourn to the cooler climate of New Jersey.

The strife increased until, at the end of two months, the members from New Hampshire, Ma.s.sachusetts, and New Jersey withdrew. Being left without a quorum, the remaining members signed a manifesto, placing the blame on the seceders and departed for their several homes. Franklin compared the action of the Committee to two lighthouse keepers who quarrelled about the task of filling the lamp until the light went out. "There will be an entire interregnum of the federal government for some time against the intention of Congress, I apprehend, as well as against every rule of decorum," wrote the indignant Madison. During this interregnum, a chief clerk was acting as Secretary of Foreign Affairs and General Knox was serving as Secretary of War. They were the only visible parts of the National Government. Madison at first thought that the Committee of States should be censured when Congress rea.s.sembled, but, recognising discretion as the better part, suggested that "we had also better keep this affair out of sight." It was so done. The complete failure of this Committee of States scheme as an executive makeshift was in the end fortunate since it demonstrated clearly the need of a trustworthy and permanent head to the General Government. If it had been even a partial success, it might have been tried again and correction thereby delayed.

The provincialism of the day was well ill.u.s.trated in the strife of the Committee over the place of sitting. A similar controversy characterised well-nigh the entire life of the Congress. Never a session could close or an adjournment be had without this Banquo's ghost appearing. It was feared that the State in which Congress met would in some way get an undue influence and ascendency. At one time, to satisfy sectional jealousy, it was compelled to provide two places of meeting, Annapolis and Philadelphia, by turns. Cities were even projected in the country far removed from State capital influence. In this unsettled condition, the Congress wandered from place to place with insufficient accommodation. Van Berckel, arriving as minister from Holland, could find no house for rent at Princeton and was obliged to live at a tavern in Philadelphia. He contrasted his reception with that given by his Government to John Adams a few years previously. He reported that he hoped in time to locate the new Government and present his credentials. "Vagabondising from one paltry village to another," as Reed, one of their number, put it, the members became a legitimate prey of boarding-house keepers and stablemen. Small wonder that service in the State Governments was considered not only more dignified, but more agreeable in these days of paramount State rights.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIGNATURES TO AN ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY.]

That the capital of the United States to-day occupies a territory independent of a State is the result of sad experience in these early days. When Congress, in 1783, was driven from Philadelphia by some rebellious State troops, who threatened force unless they received their back pay, the village of Princeton was the refuge to which the members fled. Some faithful Continental troops stationed there would protect them. The citizens of the village, grateful for this gift of the G.o.ds, prepared a list of families and the number of guests each could accommodate. They also adopted a long set of resolutions, deprecating the "gross indignities" offered to the Congress at Philadelphia, and pledging with the utmost cheerfulness their lives and fortunes to the Government of the United States. They promised to protect Congress "in whatever way our services may be required, whether in resisting Foreign Invasion or in quelling intestine Tumults." That the National Government of the United States of America should be offered protection by a small New Jersey village is indicative of the progress which nationality had thus far made. Sentiment would in time demand a permanent, independent home. Notwithstanding the prevalent financial depression, small tendency toward economy was manifest among the people or its officials. As long as credit held out, extravagance would prevail. The war had been successfully closed, political freedom had been won, and individual ease and affluence presumably secured.

Short-sighted fashion viewed her immediate gratification as the concomitant of independence. Even the members of Congress were not exempt from temptation. A Rhode Island delegate reported from Congress sitting at Annapolis to the governor of his State:

"The horse races were attended here the week before last, and are all over, as are also the b.a.l.l.s, routs, fandangoes, and plays. I a.s.sure you there has been a merry Winter in this place, according, at least, to accounts for I have seen but little of their diversions. I did not even look upon the horse races, although they were to be seen from the windows in the back room of the State House: nor have I attended a single play, although the theatre has been open twice a week the chief part of the Winter, and the playhouse adjoins the house where I lodge."

Despite this virtuous conduct he did not escape a challenge sent by a fellow-delegate from North Carolina and another from a Virginia delegate. He promptly laid both communications before Congress and was further ostracised.

The Congress was a close corporation. The public was not admitted to its sessions, the debates were never published, and the proceedings rarely appeared in the public prints. Its adjournment of both time and place was so frequent and the beginning of new sessions so delayed that news concerning it rarely found a place in the newspapers. This was in marked contrast with its early history, when the a.s.sembling of delegates at Philadelphia was described in great detail for those days.

Internal dissensions marked the sessions, as indicated by the experience of Howell, of Rhode Island, described by himself above. Members bore their obligations lightly. It was said that at one time when a delegation of Indians arrived at Princeton to make a treaty, a member left for Philadelphia to be married, thus breaking the quorum, and almost precipitating an Indian war.

It is worthy of note that this experience with an executive-legislative- judicial combination of National Government was sufficient to last for all time. Amidst the many changes suggested for the Const.i.tution of the United States since it has been in effect, none has ever been proposed which would hand over the powers of the president to a Congress. Even Jefferson, alarmed by the growth of the executive authority before 1800, never suggested a return to the method whereby the whole administration was at the mercy of a quorum of Congress. The Confederate States in 1861, exasperated into secession by the abuse of the central power, retained the tripart.i.te form in the Government which they planned. Posterity learns by reading the lessons of history.

In the light of a later survey, one may discover many additional defects in the ill-devised Articles of Confederation. Madison once summed up their vices in the failure of the States to comply with the const.i.tutional requirements, in State encroachments of Federal authority, in State violations of national law and treaties, in States trespa.s.sing on the rights of each other, in want of concerted action, in a lack of national guarantee against internal violence, in a want of coercive power in the National Government and the omission of the ratification of the Articles by the people. To these he added the multiplicity, the mutability, and the injustice of many of the State laws. Jefferson, separated by his residence at the court of France from actual contact with the worst days of the Confederation, thought the remaining States had a right to coerce a recalcitrant member "by a naval force, as being easy, less dangerous to liberty, and less likely to produce bloodshed." Yet a suggestion in 1781 for an amendment, giving power to Congress to employ force in compelling States to obey the Articles, met with no favour.

Monroe thought that the Articles were practicable and, with a few alterations, the best plan that could be devised. Hamilton, on the contrary, regarded them as hopeless. Even before they were adopted, he predicted a speedy failure. They were "neither fit for war nor peace," he declared. "They show chiefly a want of power in Congress."

Washington attributed the defects made in framing the Government to too good an opinion of human nature. "Experience has taught us," he said, "that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power." He declared that requisitions made upon the States by the central power became a perfect nullity when thirteen sovereign, independent, disunited States were in the habit of discussing and refusing compliance with them at their option.

"To vest legislative, judicial and executive powers in one and the same body of men and that, too, in a body daily changing its members can never three great departments of sovereignty should be for ever separated and so distributed as to serve as checks on each other."

He would even go farther in giving power to the Central Government.

"As to the separate Legislatures, I would have them considered with relation to the Confederacy in the same light in which counties stand to the State of which they are parts, viz., merely as districts to facilitate the purposes of domestic order and good government." Hamilton shared with Jay a willingness to take such liberties with local rights to secure a more effective National Government.

Such sentiment among public men should have brought about a speedy amendment of the defective parts of the Articles. But, as Washington once said, the people were not yet sufficiently misled. Attempt after attempt was made to secure the necessary unanimous consent to an amendment. Congress begged the States to give over to it the collection of an impost or duty for a limited number of years or for a limited per cent.; to give to it authority to regulate foreign vessels in American ports; and to refrain from levying discriminating duties among themselves. The unanimous consent required by the Articles to make any amendment blocked these and all other proposed reforms. Sometimes twelve States would agree, but before the thirteenth could be won over, another would withdraw its consent. On one occasion, when Rhode Island alone held out, her delegates in Congress wrote to the governor of the State that their "reasonable and firm stand against the all-grasping hand of power in the case of duties had saved the United States!"

Connecticut protested that such an addition to the functions of Congress as the collection of an impost would at one stroke vest that body with the power of the sword and the purse, and leave nothing of the individual States but an empty name. Others argued that with 320 million acres of land, which would bring an average of at least one dollar an acre, the General Government needed no other source of revenue.

Unanimous consent to an amendment could never be secured. This was the lesson taught by the attempts.

Aside from the difficulties arising from the defects of the Confederation experiment, the disorders in the national body were simply reflections of the turbulent spirit prevalent at the time.

Suddenly emerged from the restraining hand of a mother country, misinterpreting the meaning of independence, confounding liberty with license, having lost the law-abiding sense in the treatment of the Tories, grown only too accustomed to the pleasures of mob law, the people were pa.s.sing through the rea.s.sembling period which always follows a civil war. Peace is the normal condition of a people; war is the abnormal. Restraint, taxation, and obedience, it was supposed, had pa.s.sed away with royalty and kingly prerogative. "Taxes and relaxed government agree but ill," observed the laconic Jay. From South Carolina, Edward Rutledge wrote to him, "It is really very curious to observe how the people of this world are made the dupes of a word.

'Liberty' is the motto; every attempt to restrain licentiousness or give efficacy to government is charged audaciously on the real advocates of freedom as an attack on liberty."

Visionists indulged their hopes of universal happiness. The rebellion which Captain Daniel Shays, officer in the late Revolutionary army, headed in Ma.s.sachusetts was aimed directly at closing the courts and preventing the issuing of writs to sell mortgaged farms. But Knox wrote Washington that the creed of the insurgents was that the property of the United States had been saved from Britain by the exertions of all the people and therefore ought to be the common property of all; and that they were determined to annihilate all debts, public and private, and to have agrarian laws, which could be easily effected by the means of unfunded paper money; and that this money should be a legal tender in all cases whatever. The madness had spread to New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, according to Knox, embracing a total of twelve or fifteen thousand "desperate and unprincipled men."

Wild-eyed enthusiasts in Rhode Island secured the pa.s.sage of an "iron-clad oath" to the effect that paper money was as good as gold or silver coin--"compelling people to embrace the doctrine of political transubstantiation of paper into gold and silver," as Jay put it. The militia had to be called out in New Hampshire to disperse a mob besieging the State Legislature at Exeter. "The mob clamoured," said a contemporary, "some for paper money, some equal distribution of property, some annihilation of debts, some rebate of all taxes, and all clamoured against law and government." The disorder spread to Virginia. "In several counties the prisons and court houses and clerks'

offices have been wilfully burnt. In Green Briar, the course of justice has been mutinously stopped and a.s.sociations are entered into against the payment of taxes," wrote Madison to Jefferson in France.

Neither those who caused these troubles, nor those who wept over them, as did Mrs. John Adams in France when news of Shays's Rebellion reached her, could foresee the blessings which would follow; that these eight years of individualism were to form an argument for nationalism to be handed down by intuition to future generations. At the time it seemed that nothing but a miracle could save the Union. "Our affairs seem to lead to some crisis, some revolution--something I cannot foresee or conjecture--I am uneasy and apprehensive; more so than during the war."