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14

IN THE SOUTHWEST.

the State, were equally anti-federal. Here, as in other States, the Tories generally favored the Constitution, and for that reason, if for no other, their local enemies, the Whigs, opposed it.' The State illustrated a paradox in the political history of the times; that of a people who had stubbornly opposed the Revolution now no less vigorously favoring a national government based on republican principles. The geographical situation of Georgia made its people anxious for the new plan. Theirs was the most troublesome frontier; their slaves were escaping into the Floridas; war with Spain might break out at any time; hostilities with the Creeks and Choctaws were continuous, and therefore a strong national government came to them as a welcome relief and a promise of peace.

But public opinion of the new Constitution was based on some other grounds. The attitude of the people of the States to paper money, to the public credit and the obligations of contracts, public and private, as discussed in their support of local legislative measures, is undoubtedly a more trustworthy sign of the times. The evils of paper money were clearly recognized by the Federal Convention, and it made every effort to crush them. The federal and anti-federal districts in the States coincided quite accurately with the division of the people as friends or foes of fiat money.

In New Hampshire, in 1786, an emission of bills of credit, on land security, to the amount of fifty thousand pounds, had been made by the vote of fifty-three to twelve. Of the twelve who opposed, eleven came from federal towns, and twenty-seven who favored the emission from anti-federal.2 In Massachusetts, of the towns that supported Daniel Shays and also paper money in 1786, when

1 Libby, 34.

2 Libby, 53.

OPPOSITION IN CONNECTICUT.

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later the acceptance of the Constitution was the issue, two were federal and twenty-two anti-federal, and of the towns opposing Shays and fiat money, twenty, in 1788, were federal and eight anti-federal.1 These facts support the estimate which General Knox furnished to Washington that four-fifths of the anti-federal party in the State were, in one way or another, concerned in the Shays movement.2

The little opposition to the Constitution which existed in Connecticut was maintained almost solely by men holding fiat money views. The paper money proclivities of the people of Rhode Island had elected a legislature which had refused to send delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, and these proclivities were no less intense now that its work was before the State for its approval. The strength of the paper money men in New York lay almost solely outside of the city. No vote against a paper money bill could be depended on from a member north of New York county. The chamber of commerce, which reflected the opinion of the New York merchants, was inflexibly opposed to paper issue. Even in New Jersey, where federal views prevailed, the test of a fiat money bill drew the line between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. No friends of such a measure could be found among the people adjoining New York or Philadelphia and depending for their prosperity upon commerce. In New Jersey, it was without exception the debtor class that opposed the new plan.5

In Delaware, the opposition of the paper money men

1 Libby, 57.

2 Knox to Washington, February 10, 1788; Convention, 1788 (Edition, Boston, 1856), 410.

a Libby, 58.

4 Libby, 59. Libby, 61.

Massachusetts

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to the Constitution was restrained, in great measure, by their sense of the obvious advantage to the State of an early ratification; but the Anti-Federalists here were all paper money men. In Pennsylvania, the fiat money party was also anti-federal to a man. They firmly believed that there was not gold and silver enough to meet public obligations, and that a paper-money system lightened the burdens of land taxation, and compelled the rich to pay most of the taxes. In 1785, the vote in favor of a funding bill enrolled seventeen members in opposition, and, of these, thirteen were from counties which were federal in 1788.1 That the new Constitution forbade States to issue bills of credit aroused the hostility of most of the inhabitants of Pennsylvania, living west of Lancaster.

The demand for paper money in Maryland had long been loud and vehement, but an issue had been prevented by the Senate. The Maryland Senate was chosen by an electoral college, and the method was praised by Madison in the Federal Convention as an agency checking and balancing the tumultuous legislation of the lower House. Doubtless had it not been for the conservatism of the Senate, the paper money faction in Maryland would have controlled the State. At the head of this faction was Luther Martin, who threatened secession if the Senate should not comply with the demands of the House.2 But the weight of the commercial class in Maryland had been sufficient to hold the Senate to a conservative course. The antifederal minority adhered solidly to the leadership of Martin 3

From the evidence which reaches us it appears that in

1 Pennsylvania Gazette, March 23, 1785; Libby, 63.

2 See Bancroft's Pamphlet on the Legal Tender Decisions, Entitled, "A Plea for the Constitution of the United States of America, 1886."

• Libby, 65.

ATTITUDE OF PARTIES.

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Virginia, men holding federal opinions were uniformly opposed to paper money issues, and that the most vehement opponents to the Constitution were men who, like Patrick Henry, were suspected of favoring bills of credit. There is no doubt that Virginians whose estates were hopelessly involved, looked to paper money issues for relief and were active Anti-Federalists.1 In the Carolinas and Georgia the same differences prevailed. The advocates of legal tender laws, there, were Anti-Federalists, and these were generally of the debtor class. In Georgia, the members of assembly who favored paper issues came from the back country, while the opponents of these issues came from the larger towns. In all the States the men who wished to escape paying their taxes and their debts, who, as Hamilton said, would cheat their creditors,2 were quite without exception, Anti-Federalists.

No truer description of the attitude of the people to the new Constitution has been drawn than by the historian Hildreth. "The federal party with Washington and Hamilton at its head, represented the experience, the prudence, the practical wisdom, the discipline, the conservative reason and instincts of the country. The opposition headed by Jefferson, expressed its hopes, wishes, theories, many of them enthusiastic and impracticable, and more especially its passions, its sympathies and antipathies, its impatience at restraint. The Federalists had their strength in those narrow districts were a concentrated population had produced and contributed to maintain that complexity of institutions, and that reverence for social order, which, in proportion as men are brought into contiguity become necessaries of existence. The ultra democratical ideas of the opposition prevailed in all that

1 Libby, 66-67.

2 Hamilton's Works (Lodge's Edition), I, 401.

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QUESTION OF RATIFICATION.

more extensive region in which the dispersion of population and the despotic authority vested in individuals over families of slaves kept society in a state of immaturity and made legal restraints the more unknown in proportion as their necessity was less felt." This description of the two parties in 1801 applies to them with slight modification as they existed at the time of their beginning, when the ratification of the Constitution was the issue between them. When Congress submitted it to the States in 1787, its fate depended upon the relative strength of the paper money men and the sound money men; of the urbane population and the rural population; of the commercial class and of the farming class; of the older communities and of the people in the newer on the frontier.

In Delaware, petitions had been pouring in upon the general assembly,' which met on the twenty-fourth of October, that it speedily call a convention to ratify. Early in December, one assembled at Dover, and, almost without debate, freely and entirely approved the Constitution, ratifying it unanimously. But though Delaware was the first to ratify, it was not the first State to convene, for the Pennsylvania convention had assembled on the twentieth of November. The legislature had not waited for the action of Congress.

On the morning following the adjournment of the Federal Convention, the eight delegates from Pennsylvania, headed by Franklin, formally presented the new Constitution to the legislature, and Franklin, in an appropriate

1 Sharf's Delaware, I, 269; and Pennsylvania Packet, November 17, 1787.

2 Ratified December 6, signed December 7, 1787; Documentary History, II, 25. The convention consisted of thirty members and among them were Richard Bassett of Kent and Gunning Bedford of New Castle counties, who had been delegates to the Federal Convention.

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