Another question between Maryland and Virginia remained for solution. The charter to Lord Baltimore, which Virginia had resisted as a severance of her territory, bounded his jurisdiction by the "further bank" of the Potomac. When both states assumed independence, Virginia welcomed her northern neighbor to the common war for liberty by releasing every claim to its territory, but she reserved the navigation of the border stream. To define with exactness their respective rights on its waters, the Virginia legislature, in June 1784, led the way by naming George Mason, Edmund Randolph, Madison, and Alexander Henderson as their commissioners to frame, "in concert with commissioners of Maryland, liberal, equitable, and mutually advantageous regulations touching the jurisdiction and navigation of the river." * Maryland gladly accepted the invitation, and in the following March the joint commission was to meet at Alexandria, hard by Mount Vernon. In this manner, through the acts and appropriations of the legislature of Virginia, Washington connected the interests and hopes of her people with the largest and noblest conceptions, and to the states alike on her southern and her northern border and to the rising empire in the West, where she would surely meet New York and New England, she gave the weightiest pledges of inviolable attachment to the union. To carry forward these designs, the next step must be taken by congress, which should have met at Trenton on the first day of November 1784, but, from the tardy arrival of its members, was not organized until the thirtieth. It was the rule of congress that its president should be chosen in succession from each one of the different states. Beginning with Virginia, it had proceeded through them all except New Hampshire, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Georgia. But now the rule, which in itself was a bad one, was broken,† and Richard Henry Lee was elected president. The rule of rotation was never again followed; but this want of fidelity to a custom that had long been respected tended to increase the jealousy of the small states. Before Christmas and before finishing any important business, congress, not finding sufficient accommodations in Trenton, ad * Journals of House of Delegates for 28 June 1784. † Madison, i., 117. Otto to Vergennes, 15 June 1786. MS. journed to the eleventh of January 1785, and to New York as its abode. Congress had put at its head the most determined and the most restlessly indefatigable opponent of any change whatever in the articles of confederation. Lee renewed intimate relations with Gerry, the leading member of congress from Massachusetts. He sought to revive his earlier influence in Boston through Samuel Adams. The venerable patriot shared his jealousy of conferring too great powers on a body far removed from its constituents, but had always supported a strict enforcement of the just authority of government, and he replied: "Better it would have been for us to have fallen in our highly famed struggle for our rights than now to become a contemptible nation." * The harbor at the mouth of the Hudson was at that time the most convenient port of entry for New Jersey and Connecticut, and the State of New York, through its custom-house, levied on their inhabitants as well as on its own an ever increasing revenue by imposts. The collector was a stubborn partisan. The last legislature had elected to the fifth congress Jay, Robert R. Livingston, Egbert Benson, and Lansing, of whom, even after Jay became the minister for foreign affairs, a majority favored the founding of a nation. But the opinions of the president of congress, who was respected as one of the most illustrious statesmen of Virginia, assisted to bring about a revolution in the politics of New York.† On the nineteenth of March 1785 its legislature appointed three "additional delegates" to congress, of whom Haring and Melancton Smith, like Lansing, opposed federal measures; and for the next four years the state of New York obstinately resisted a thorough revision of the constitution. Of the city of New York, the aspirations for a national union could not be repressed. On the fourteenth of December 1784, soon after the organization of congress, Washington, with a careful discrimination between the office of that body and the functions of the states, urged through its president that congress should have the western waters well explored, their capacities for navigation * S. Adams to R. H. Lee, 23 December 1784. Jay to Washington, 27 June 1786. Letters to Washington, iv., 136. ascertained as far as the communications between Lake Erie and the Wabash, and between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, and a complete and perfect map made of the country at least as far west as the Miamis, which run into the Ohio and Lake Erie. And he pointed out the Miami village as the place for a very important post for the union. The expense attending such an undertaking could not be great; the advantages would be unbounded. 'Nature," he said, "has made such a display of her bounty in those regions that the more the country is explored the more it will rise in estimation. The spirit of emigration is great; people have got impatient; and, though you cannot stop the road, it is yet in your power to mark the way. A little while and you will not be able to do either." * In the same week in which the legislature of New York reversed its position on national policy, Washington renewed his admonitions to Lee on planting the western territory. "The mission of congress will now be to fix a medium price on these lands and to point out the most advantageous mode of seating them, so that law and good government may be administered, and the union strengthened and supported. Progressive seating is the only means by which this can be effected;" and, resisting the politicians who might wish to balance northern states by southern, he insisted that to mark out but one new state would better advance the public welfare than to mark out ten. † On the eleventh of March William Grayson took his seat for the first time as a member of congress. He had been educated in England at Oxford, and had resided at the Temple in London. His short career furnishes only glimpses of his character. In 1776 he had been an aide-de-camp to Washington, with whom he kept up affectionate relations; in 1777 he commanded a Virginia regiment and gained honors at Monmouth. His private life appears to have been faultless; his public acts show independence, courage, and a humane and noble nature. In the state legislature of the previous winter he was chairman of the committee to which Washington's re * Washington to R. H. Lee, 14 December 1784. Sparks, ix., 80, 81. port on the negotiations with Maryland had been referred.* The first evidence of his arrival in New York is a letter of the tenth of March 1785, to his former chief, announcing that Jefferson's ordinance for disposing of western lands, which had had its first reading in May 1784, had been brought once more before congress. Not Washington alone had reminded congress of its duties to the West. Informed by Gerry of the course of public business, Timothy Pickering, from Philadelphia, addressed most earnest letters to Rufus King. He complained that no reservation of land was made for the support of ministers of the gospel, nor even for schools and academies, and he further wrote: "Congress once made this important declaration, 'that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'; and these truths were held to be self-evident. To suffer the continuance of slaves till they can gradually be emancipated, in states already overrun with them, may be pardonable because unavoidable without hazarding greater evils; but to introduce them into countries where none now exist can never be forgiven. For God's sake, then, let one more effort be made to prevent so terrible a calamity! The fundamental constitutions for those states are yet liable to alterations, and this is probably the only time when the evil can certainly be prevented." Nor would Pickering harbor the thought of delay in the exclusion of slavery. "It will be infinitely easier," he said, "to prevent the evil at first than to eradicate it or check it in any future time." + The sixteenth of March was fixed for the discussion of the affairs of the West. The report that was before congress was Jefferson's scheme for "locating and disposing of land in the western territory;" and it was readily referred to a committee of one from each state, Grayson being the member from Virginia and King from Massachusetts. King, seconded by Ellery of Rhode Island, proposed that a part of the rejected antislavery clause in Jefferson's ordinance for the government of Journals Virginia House of Delegates, 99. Pickering to King, 8 March 1785. Pickering's Pickering, i., 509, 510. the western territory should be referred to a committee;* all that related to the western territory of the three southern states was omitted; and so, too, was the clause postponing the prohibition of slavery. On the question for committing this proposition, the four New England states, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, voted unanimously in the affirmative; Maryland by a majority, McHenry going with the South, John Henry and William Hindman with the North. For Virginia, Grayson voted aye, but was overpowered by Hardy and Richard Henry Lee. The two Carolinas were unanimous for the negative. Houston of Georgia answered no, but being on that day the sole representative of Georgia, his vote was not counted. So the vote stood eight states against three; eighteen members against eight; and the motion was forthwith committed to King, Howell, and Ellery. + On the sixth of April, King from his committee reported his resolution, which is entirely in his own handwriting, and which consists of two clauses: it allowed slavery in the Northwest until the first day of the year 1801, but no longer; and it "provided that always, upon the escape of any person into any of the states described in the resolve of congress of the twentythird day of April 1784, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the thirteen original states, such fugitive might be lawfully reclaimed and carried back to the person claiming his labor or service, this resolve notwithstanding." | * The original motion of Rufus King for the reference, in his handwriting, is preserved in Papers of Old Congress, vol. xxxi. Journals of Congress, iv., 481, 482. It is indorsed in the handwriting of Charles Thomson: "Motion for preventing slavery in new states, 16 March 1785. Referred to Mr. King, Mr. Howell, Mr. Ellery." # It is to be found in Papers of Old Congress, xxxi., 329, and is indorsed in the handwriting of Rufus King: "Report on Mr. King's motion for the exclusion of slavery in the new states." And it is further indorsed in the handwriting of Charles Thomson: "Mr. King, Mr. Howell, Mr. Ellery. Entered 6 April 1785, read. Thursday, April 14, assigned for consideration." The printed copy of this report of King is to be found in Papers of Old Congress, xxxi., 331, and is indorsed in the handwriting of Charles Thomson: "To prevent slavery in the new states. Included in substance in the ordinance for a temporary government passed the 13 July 1787." |