Lowndes, following the lead of the opposition of Virginia, had recommended another convention in which every objection could be met on fair grounds, and adequate remedies applied.* The proposal found no acceptance; but he persevered in cavilling and objecting. At last John Rutledge impatiently expressed a hope that Lowndes would find a seat in the coming convention, and pledged himself there to prove that all those grounds on which he dwelt amounted to no more than mere declamation; that his boasted confederation was not worth a farthing; that if such instruments were piled up to his chin they would not shield him from one single national calamity; that the sun of this state, so far from being obscured by the new constitution, would, when united with twelve other suns, astonish the world by its lustre." +

The resolution for a convention to consider the constitution was unanimously adopted. In the rivalry between Charleston and Columbia as its place of meeting, Charleston carried the day by a majority of one vote.

The purest spirit of patriotism and union and veneration for the men of the revolution pervaded South Carolina at the time of her choice of delegates. Foremost among them were the venerable Christopher Gadsden and John Rutledge, Moultrie and Motte, William Washington, Edward Rutledge, the three Pinckneys, Grimké, and Ramsay; the chancellor and the leading judges of the state; men chiefly of English, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and Huguenot descent; a thorough representation of the best elements and culture of South Carolina.

The convention organized itself on the thirteenth of May, with Thomas Pinckney, then Governor of South Carolina, as president. The ablest man in the opposition was Edanus Burke; but the leader in support of the Virginia malcontents was Sumter. A week's quiet consideration of the constitution by paragraphs showed the disposition of the convention, when on the twenty-first Sumter, as a last effort of those who wished to act with Virginia, made a motion for an adjournment for five months, to give time for the further consideration of the federal convention. A few gave way to the hope of conciliating by moderation; but after debate the motion Elliot, iv., 316, 317.

* Elliot, iv., 290. + Elliot, iv., 312.

received only eighty-nine votes against one hundred and thirtyfive. Three or four amendments were recommended; and then, at five o'clock in the evening of the twenty-third, the constitution was ratified by one hundred and forty-nine votes against seventy-three-more than two to one.* As the count was declared, the dense crowd in attendance, carried away by a wild transport of joy, shook the air with their cheers.

When order was restored, the aged Christopher Gadsden said: "I can have but little expectation of seeing the happy effects that will result to my country from the wise decisions of this day, but I shall say with good old Simeon: Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation of my country." +

The delegates of South Carolina to the federal convention received a vote of thanks. Those in the opposition promised as good citizens to accept the result. In 1765 South Carolina was one of the nine states to meet in convention for resistance to the stamp-act; and now she was the eighth state of the nine required for the adoption of the constitution.

When the astonishing tidings reached New Hampshire, her people grew restless to be the state yet needed to assure the new bond of union; but for that palm she must run a race with Virginia.

* Elliot, iv., 318, 338-340

Penn. Packet, 14 June 1788.

CHAPTER V.

THE CONSTITUTION IN VIRGINIA AND IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

FROM MAY 1785 To 25 JUNE 1788.

FROM Virginia proceeded the southern opposition to the consolidation of the union. A strife in congress, in which the North was too much in the wrong to succeed, united the five southernmost states together in a struggle which endangered the constitution.

In May 1785, Diego Gardoqui arrived, charged with the affairs of Spain, and seemingly empowered to fix the respective limits and adjust other points between two countries which bordered on each other from the Atlantic to the headspring of the Mississippi. On the twentieth of July 1785 congress invested Secretary Jay with full powers to negotiate with Gardoqui,† instructing him, however, previous to his making or agreeing to any proposition, to communicate it to congress. The commission was executed, and negotiations immediately began. Jay held the friendship of Spain most desirable as a neighbor; as a force that could protect the United States from the piracies of the Barbary powers and conciliate the good-will of Portugal and Italy; as a restraint on the influence of France and of Great Britain; and as the ruler of dominions of which the trade offered tempting advantages. He therefore proposed that the United States, as the price of a treaty of reciprocity in commerce, should forego the navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five or thirty years.

On the third of August 1786, Jay appeared before congress

* Diplomatic Correspondence, vi., 81-97. Secret Journals, iii., 569, 570. Secret Journals, iii., 568-570.

and read an elaborate paper, in which he endeavored to prove that the experiment was worth trying.* The proposal sacrificed a vitally important right of one part of the union to a commercial interest of another; yet the instruction which made the right to the navigation of the Mississippi an ultimatum in any treaty with Spain was, after three weeks' reflection, repealed by a vote of seven northern states against Maryland and all south of it.

On the twenty-fifth of August, Secretary Jay was enjoined in his plan of a treaty with the king of Spain to stipulate the right of the United States to their territorial bounds, and the free navigation of the Mississippi from its source to the ocean as established in their treaties with Great Britain; and neither to conclude nor to sign any treaty with the Spanish agent until he should have communicated it to congress and received their approbation.+

The members of the southern states were profoundly alarmed. On the twenty-eighth Charles Pinckney, supported by Carrington, in their distrust of Jay, sought to transfer the negotiation to Madrid; but in vain. The delegates of Virginia, Grayson at their head, strove to separate the commercial questions from those on boundaries and navigation. "The surrender or proposed forbearance of the navigation of the Mississippi," they said, "is inadmissible upon the principle of the right, and upon the highest principles of national expedience. In the present state of the powers of congress, every wise statesman should pursue a system of conduct to gain the confidence of the several states in the federal council, and thereby an extension of its powers. This act is a dismemberment of the government. Can the United States then dismember the government by a treaty of commerce? But Jay, supported by the North, persisted. ‡

Monroe still loyally retained his desire that the regulation of commerce should be in the hands of the United States, and his opinion that without that power the union would infallibly tumble to pieces; but now he looked about him for means to strengthen the position of his own section of the country; and *Diplomatic Correspondence, vi., 177. + Secret Journals, iii., 586.

Secret Journals, iv., 87-110.

to Madison on the third of September he wrote: "I earnestly wish the admission of a few additional states into the confederacy in the southern scale." "There is danger," reported Otto to Vergennes, † "that the discussion may become the germ of a separation of the southern states." Murmurs arose that plans were forming in New York for dismembering the confederacy and throwing New York and New England into one government, with the addition, if possible, of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. "Even should the measure triumph under the patronage of nine states or even the whole thirteen," wrote Madison in October, "it is not expedient because it is not just." The next legislature of Virginia unanimously resolved "that nature had given the Mississippi to the United States, that the sacrifice of it would violate justice, contravene the end of the federal government, and destroy confidence in the federal councils necessary to a proper enlargement of their authority."

The plan could not succeed, for it never had the consent of Spain; and if it should be formed into a treaty, the treaty could never obtain votes enough for its ratification. In the new congress, New Jersey left the North; Pennsylvania, of which a large part lay in the Mississippi valley, became equally divided; and Rhode Island began to doubt. But already many of Virginia's "most federal" statesmen were extremely disturbed; Patrick Henry, who had hitherto been the champion of the federal cause, refused to attend the federal convention that he might remain free to combat its result; and an uncontrollable spirit of distrust drove Kentucky to listen to Richard Henry Lee, and imperilled the new constitution.

The people of Virginia, whose undisputed territory had ample harbors convenient to the ocean, and no western limit but the Mississippi, had never aspired to form a separate republic. They had deliberately surrendered their claim to the north-west territory; and true to the idea that a state should not be too large for the convenience of home rule, they seconded the desire of Kentucky to become a commonwealth by itself. The opinion of Washington that the constitution would * Monroe to Madison, 3 September 1786. Otto to Vergennes, 10 September 1786.

Madison, i., 250.