governor, by direction, communicated the act to the executive authority of the other states, requesting their immediate adoption of similar measures;"* and he sent to the delegates of his own state in congress a report of what had been done. This is the first in the series of measures through which Virginia marshalled the United States on their way to a better union. In the fourth congress Jefferson carried forward the work of Madison with alacrity. The two cherished for each other the closest and the most honorable friendship, agreeing in efforts to bind the states more closely in all that related to the common welfare. In their copious correspondence they opened their minds to each other with frankness and independence. The delegates of Rhode Island insisted that the counteraction of the British navigation acts must be intrusted to each separate state; but they stood alone, Roger Sherman voting against them, and so dividing Connecticut. Then the proposal of the cominittee of which Jefferson was a member and of which all but Gerry were from the South, that congress, with the assent of nine states, might exercise prohibitory powers over foreign commerce for the term of fifteen years, was adopted without opposition.† Keeping in mind that, while the articles of confederation did not directly confer on congress the regulation of commerce by enactments, they granted the amplest authority to frame commercial treaties, Jefferson prepared a plan for intercourse with powers of Europe from Britain to the Ottoman Porte, and with the Barbary states. His draft of instructions + described "the United States as one nation upon the principles of the federal constitution." # In a document of the preceding congress mention had been made of "the federal government," and Rhode Island had forthwith moved to substitute the word union, conceding that there was a union of the states, but not a government; but the motion had been supported by * Journal of House of Delegates for 22 December 1783. Governor Harrison to the governor of Massachusetts, 25 December 1783. MS. +Journals of Congress, iv., 392, 393. Jefferson to John Q. Adams, 30 March 1826. Jefferson, vii., 436. #Secret Journals of Congress, iii., 453. no other state, and by no individuals outside of Rhode Island except Holten and Arthur Lee. This time Sherman and his colleague, James Wadsworth, placed Connecticut by the side of Rhode Island. They were joined only by Arthur Lee, and congress, on the twenty-sixth of March, adopting the words of Jefferson, by the vote of eight states to two, of nineteen individuals to five, decided that in treaties and all cases arising under them the United States form "one nation."* On the principles according to which commercial treaties should be framed America was unanimous. In October 1783 congress had proposed the most perfect equality and reciprocity.† Jefferson, while he would accept a system of reciprocity, reported as the choice of America that there should be no navigation laws; no distinction between metropolitan and colonial ports; an equal right for each party to carry its own products in its own ships into all ports of the other and to take away its products, freely if possible, if not, paying no other duties than are paid by the most favored nation. In time of war there should be an abandonment of privateering; the least possible interference with industry on land; the inviolability of fishermen; the strictest limitation of contraband; free commerce between neutrals and belligerents in articles not contraband; no paper blockades; in short, free trade and a humane international code. These instructions congress accepted, and, to give them effect, Adains, Franklin, and Jefferson were, on the seventh of May, commissioned for two years, with the consent of any two of them, to negotiate treaties of ten or fifteen years' duration. The foreign commercial system of the nation was to be blended with the domestic intercourse of the states. Highways by water and land from Virginia to the West would advance its welfare and strengthen the union. Jefferson opened the subject to Madison,# who, in reply, explained the necessity of a mutual appointment of commissioners by Maryland and Virginia for regulating the navigation of the Potomac. * Secret Journals of Congress for 26 March 1784, iii., 452–454. "The Secret Journals of Congress, iii., 412, 413. Secret Journals of Congress, iii., 484, 485, and 491–499. #Jefferson to Madison, Annapolis, 20 February 1784. good humor into which the cession of the back lands must have put Maryland forms an apt crisis for negotiations.” * In March 1784 Jefferson cautiously introduced the subject to Washington, and then wrote more urgently: “Your future time and wishes are sacred in my eye; but, if the superintendence of this work would be only a dignified amusement to you, what a monument of your retirement would follow that of your public life!" + Washington "was very happy that a man of discernment and liberality like Jefferson thought as he did." More than ten years before he had been a principal mover of a bill for the extension of navigation from tide-water to Will's creek. "To get the business in motion," he writes, "I was obliged to comprehend James river. The plan was in a tolerably good train when I set out for Cambridge in 1775, and would have been in an excellent way had it not met with difficulties in the Maryland assembly. Not a moment ought to be lost in recommencing this business." # He too, like Madison, advised concert with the men of Maryland. Conforming to their advice, Jefferson conferred with Thomas Stone, then one of the Maryland delegates in congress, and undertook by letters to originate the subject in the legislature of Virginia. || Before the end of June the two houses unanimously requested the executive to procure a statue of Washington, to be of the finest marble and best workmanship, with this inscription on its pedestal : "The general assembly of the commonwealth of Virginia have caused this statue to be erected as a monument of affection and gratitude to George Washington, who, to the endowments of the hero uniting the virtues of the patriot, and exerting both in establishing the liberties of his country, has rendered his name dear to his fellow-citizens, and given the world an immortal example of true glory." A *Madison to Jefferson, 16 March 1784. Madison, i., 74. Letters to W., iv., 62–66. The vote, emanating from the affections of the people of Virginia, marks his mastery over the heart of his native state. That mastery he always used to promote the formation of a national constitution. He had hardly reached home from the war when he poured out his inmost thoughts to Harrison, the doubting governor of his commonwealth: "The prospect before us is fair; I believe all things will come right at last; but the disinclination of the states to yield competent powers to congress for the federal government will, if there is not a change in the system, be our downfall as a nation. This is as clear to me as A, B, C. We have arrived at peace and independency to very little purpose, if we cannot conquer our own prejudices. The powers of Europe begin to see this, and our newly acquired friends, the British, are already and professedly acting upon this ground; and wisely too, if we are determined to persevere in our folly. They know that individual opposition to their measures is futile, and boast that we are not sufficiently united as a nation to give a general one. Is not the indignity of this declaration, in the very act of peacemaking and conciliation, sufficient to stimulate us to vest adequate powers in the sovereign of these United States? "An extension of federal powers would make us one of the most wealthy, happy, respectable and powerful nations that ever inhabited the terrestrial globe. Without them, we shall soon be everything which is the direct reverse. I predict the worst consequences from a half-starved, limping government, always moving upon crutches and tottering at every step.' The immensity of the ungranted public domain which had passed from the English crown to the American people invited them to establish a continental empire of republics. Lines of communication with the western country implied its colonization. In the war, Jefferson, as a member of the legislature, had promoted the expedition by which Virginia conquered the region north-west of the Ohio; as governor he had taken part in its cession to the United States. The cession had included the demand of a guarantee to Virginia of the remainder of its territory. This the United States had refused, and Virginia receded from the demand. On the first day of March 1784, 營 Washington to Harrison, 18 January 1784. Sparks, ix., 12 and 13. The four eastern states, New York, and Pennsylvania were for the clause; Jersey would have been for it, but there were but two members, one of whom was sick in his chambers. South Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia! voted against it. North Carolina was divided, as would have been Virginia, had not one of its delegates been sick in bed."* The absent Virginian was Monroe, who for himself has left no evidence of such an intention, and who was again absent when in the following year the question was revived. For North Carolina, the vote of Spaight was neutralized by Williamson. Six states against three, sixteen men against seven, proscribed slavery. Jefferson bore witness against it all his life long. Wythe and himself, as commissioners to codify the laws of Virginia, had provided for gradual emancipation. When, in 1785, the legislature refused to consider the proposal, Jefferson wrote: "We must hope that an overruling Providence is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren." + In 1786, narrating the loss of the clause against slavery in the ordinance of 1784, he said: "The voice of a single individual would have prevented this abominable crime; heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail." + To friends who visited him in the last period of his life he delighted to renew these aspirations of his earlier years.# In a letter written just forty-five days before his death he refers to the ordinance of 1784, saying: "My sentiments have been forty years before the public; although I shall not live to see them consummated, they will not die with me; but, living or dying, they will ever be in my most fervent prayer." || On the twenty-third of April the ordinance for the government of the north-western territory, shorn of its proscription of slavery, was adopted, and remained in force for three years. On the 7th of May, Jefferson reported an ordinance for ascertaining the mode of locating and disposing of the public lands. The continental domain, when purchased of the Indians, was *Jefferson to Madison, 25 April 1784. Jefferson, ix., 279. Ibid., 276. # Oral communication from William Campbell Preston of South Carolina. Jefferson to James Heaton, 20 May 1826. |