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customs, or who desire from the study of the past to shape the future for the advance of man.

§ 2. Hostility to the Federal Constitution.

It was well said by John Quincy Adams that the Constitution was "extorted from the grinding necessity of a reluctant nation.”1 It was accepted by a small majority as the only alternative to disruption and anarchy. Its ratification was the success of the men who were interested in the security of property, the maintenance of order, and the enforcement of obligations against those who desired communism, lawlessness and repudiation. It was a conflict between the cities and the backwoods, between the mountains and the plains.2 And the opposition was led by those cliques and families who had learned to control for their private interests the state patronage of which the new government must necessarily deprive them.3

The battle was waged on the stump and by pamphleteering, and gave birth to that great repository of political science, The Federalist.+

Two States refused to agree until after it had gone into successful operation, and the rest threatened severe retaliation in order to compel their coalition. Five of the other nine ratified with expressions of disapproval of its terms and a demand for subsequent amendments. In but three was it adopted with

§ 2. 1 Jubilee of the Constitution, by John Quincy Adams, p. 55.

2 For an analysis of the vote on the ratification of the Constitution, see The Geographical Distribution of the vote on the Federal Constitution, by O. G. Libby; Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, vol. i, No. 1.

3 See Letters of a Landholder, by Oliver Ellsworth, afterwards Chief Justice of the United States, Letter ii. Ford's Essays on the Constitution, pp. 144, 176.

4 Valuable collections are Pamphlets on the Constitution, and Essays on the Constitution, edited by Paul Leicester Ford. Others may be found in McMaster and Stone on Penn

6

sylvania and The Federal Constitution. The latter contains one which seems to have had more influence than any except the Federalist: The New Roof, by Francis Hopkinson; an excellent imitation of Swift's Tale of a Tub.

5 Massachusetts, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York.

6 New Jersey, Delaware, and Georgia. The last needed protection from an Indian war then threatened; the others, relief from the State imposts at New York and Philadelphia. Delaware, moreover, which was even then a pocket borough, welcomed the political advantage of the permanent security of two seats in the Senate.

out a struggle. In several, success was only obtained by the application of force, threats, or stratagem. In Connecticut, they silenced with tar and feathers an anti-federalist delegate who tried to talk out the Convention. A majority of the New Hampshire

delegates were determined or instructed to vote against ratification, and at the first session the federalists considered a vote for an adjournment of three months a victory. At the second, while some of its opponents were "detained" at dinner, the Constitution was ratified by a snap vote, taken at sharp one o'clock. The legislature of Pennsylvania obtained a quorum to call the State Convention by the unwilling presence of two members, dragged to the meeting by a mob who prevented their leaving the house.9 In the State of New York, a majority of the Convention was anti-federal; and victory was won by the threat of Hamilton, that in case of defeat New York, Kings, and Westchester would ratify the Constitution as an independent state and leave the northern counties alone unprotected from foreign enemies, without any outlet for their commerce to the sea.10

My authority for this is that accomplished student of American history, Paul Leicester Ford, Esq., from whom I have also received other valuable information as to the history of this period.

8 A contemporary undated indorsement on a letter of April 23, 1788, by Paine Wingate to John Sullivan, President of New Hampshire, says:

"You see that all the members did not vote, only 104. The others, Timothy Walker detained at his home in this city, after he had given them a dinner, to prevent them from voting -or a number of them." New Hampshire State Papers, vol. xxi, p. 851. The means of detention are unknown. According to tradition, Judge Walker refused to admit the messenger sent by the Convention to summon the absent members, and when the latter persisted, threatened to set the dogs on him. For this information the writer is indebted to the historian of

The charge was believed, if not

the Convention, Hon. Joseph B. Walker. Daniel Webster's father, Capt. Pelatiah Webster, was a member of the Convention, and in his old age repeated to his family a speech which he claimed that he delivered when he voted for the Constitution (Curtis, Life of Webster, vol. i, p. 10, note). The records show, however, that his constituents instructed him to oppose ratification, and that he did not vote upon the question. (Walker, New Hampshire and the Federal Convention.)

A report of the proceedings and debate is to be found in Proceedings and Debates of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, taken in shorthand by Thomas Lloyd, Philadelphia, 1787, vol. i, p. 115; reprinted and corrected in Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution, by John Bach McMaster and Frederick D. Stone, ch. ii, pp. 27-73.

10 Letter of George Clinton to John

proved, that the Federalists prevented the circulation of the newspapers of the opposition with the mails. And in Pennsylvania and Maryland they suppressed, by purchase and boycott, the reports of the debates in the State Conventions.12

Twice at
So little

The Federal Convention itself held its debates in secret for fear lest the public should become so excited that there would be no hope of any successful result of the deliberations. least was it on the point of breaking up in despair. hope did there seem of any practical result, that at last the sceptic Franklin advised his colleagues to take refuge in prayer.13 Even at the end, it was the belief of the strongest supporters of the Constitution, that it could not hold the country together for more than a few years.14

Elements of discord abounded in that small assembly. The States which were prominent in wealth and population protested against the injustice of vesting the control elsewhere than in a majority of population or of property. The smaller States, which in the Continental Congress and under the Confederation had an equal vote, insisted that they would never surrender the right which they had thus obtained. The communities

Lamb, Clinton MSS., New York State
Library.

11 Pennsylvania and The Federal Constitution by McMaster and Stone.

12 Ibid. My information as to Maryland is also derived from Mr. Ford.

13 Madison Papers, Elliot's Debates, 2d ed., vol. v, p. 253.

14 Gouverneur Morris wrote Walsh, Feb. 5, 1811: Fond, however, as the founders of our national Constitution were of republican government they were not so much blinded by their attachment as not to discern the difficulty, perhaps impracticability, of raising a durable edifice from crumbling materials. History, the parent of political science, had told them that it was almost as vain to expect permanency from democracy

as to construct a palace on the sur-
face of the sea." In the same letter,
Morris said of Hamilton: "General
Hamilton had little share in forming
the Constitution. He disliked it, be-
lieving all republican governments
to be radically defective. He ad-
mired, nevertheless, the British Con-
stitution, which I consider an aris-
tocracy in fact, though a monar-
chy in name.
He heartily

assented, nevertheless, to the Consti-
tution, because he considered it as a
bond which might hold us together
for some time, and he knew that
national sentiment is the offspring of
national existence. He trusted,
moreover, that in the changes and
chances of time we should be in-
volved in some war, which might
strengthen our union and nerve the
executive." See infra, § 8, note 2.

of slaveholders, refused consent to any provisions which endangered their right of property in human chattels. The descendants of the Puritans in the North had conscientious scruples against the recognition of the legality of slavery. The recollection of the oppressions by the Stuarts and the Guelphs and the history of the fall of the republics of Greece and Italy caused a fear in some that any elements of strength which might be vested in the government of the whole would be used as instruments for the suppression of liberty in all its parts. The contemptible position of the United States at home and abroad; their inability to enforce obedience to their laws, to pay their debts, to collect revenues, to negotiate treaties of commerce with foreign governments, and to protect either the individual States or their own Congress from domestic violence, inspired in others the belief that liberty was of far less consequence than stability and security, and made them seek as far as possible to strengthen the central government and remove it from the control of the people. The Constitution was based on compromises, but the results of those compromises have proved so salutary, that but one of them has hitherto been overthrown.

§ 3. Anarchy preceding the Federal Convention. The reaction from the patriotism which carried the Revolution to a successful termination left the people of the United States in the most contemptible position that they have ever occupied. The Articles of Confederation gave Congress power to incur debts, but no means of paying them, except such as might be derived from the voluntary contributions of the several States to meet the requisitions imposed which it could vote but not collect. The result was a bankruptcy of the common treasury, due to a refusal of many States to supply the funds necessary to pay the arrears due to creditors at home and abroad, even to the soldiers who had

§ 3. 1 Between 1782 and 1787, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia paid no taxes. Connecticut and Delaware one-third; Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland about one-half; Virginia three-fifths; Pennsylvania nearly the

whole; and New York, which derived a large revenue from an impost, more than their respective quota. (Hamilton, in the New York legislature, in favor of a national impost, 1 American Museum, 445-448.)

risked their lives and wasted their estates in the struggle with Great Britain. The need of a federal judiciary had been painfully apparent throughout the war, from the technical inconveniences caused by the condemnation of prizes in State courts of admiralty, some of whom would not respect acts of Congress unless first adopted by the individual State legislatures. After the war, the observance of those articles of the Treaty of Peace which protected the property of the Tories and debts due British subjects, was prevented by acts passed by the State legislatures in opposition to them, which in many instances the State courts respected. This gave Great Britain an excuse for keeping garrisons in different posts of the United States and in refusing to conform to other articles by which she was bound. At the same time the debtor class, which had been such an important factor in the revolution,2 manifested a similar desire to avoid payment of debts due citizens of the United States. Stay laws which impeded the collection of judgments, tender laws which permitted debtors to meet their obligations in State bills of credit or land or commodities, at a valuation fixed by juries, and other impediments to creditors, were passed by different legislatures. Many debtors were not satisfied with these palliatives. They demanded nothing short of the cancellation of indebtedness and the destruction of all rights of property. Men re-echoed the doctrines of the levellers in Cromwell's army and applauded the tale in Plutarch of the King of Lacedaemon who burned all promissory notes in the market-place of Sparta.5 Conventions were held where it was claimed that all property ought to be held in common, because all

2 See Sumner's Life of Hamilton, pp. 47-52. John Adams records that, on his return from Congress in 1774, an old client warmly congratulated him upon the glorious work of Congress in once more suspending the courts. Works, vol. ii, p. 420.

3 When Andrew Jackson moved to West Tennessee in 1788, he found but one other lawyer there. The latter had been retained by the members of the debtor class, who were very powerful in that frontier community,

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so that the creditors could not use legal process to collect what was due them.

Attempts were made to drive Jackson from the State for taking collection cases; but he was not to be intimidated, and so obtained an assured practice at his start. Kendall's Life of Jackson, pp. 89-90.

4 The name was then in common use. See Letters of a Federal Farmer, by R. H. Lee, p. 37; Ford's Pamphlets on the Constitution, p. 32.

5 Plutarch's Life of Agis.

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