THE

FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION

OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

IN FIVE BOOKS.

BOOK SECOND.

ON THE WAY TO A FEDERAL CONVENTION.

1783-1787.

CHAPTER I.

HOW THE LAND RECEIVED THE LEGACY OF WASHINGTON.

JUNE-DECEMBER 1783.

ALL movements conspired to form for the thirteen states a constitution, sooner than they dared to hope and "better than they knew." "The love of union and the resistance to the claims of Great Britain were the inseparable inmates of the same bosom. Brave men from different states, risking life and everything valuable in a common cause, believed by all to be most precious, were confirmed in the habit of considering America as their country and congress as their government." * Acting as one, they had attained independence. Moreover, it was their fixed belief that they had waged battle not for themselves alone, but for the hopes and the rights of mankind; and this faith overleapt the limits of separate commonwealths with the force of a religious conviction. For eighteen years the states had watched together over their liberties; for eight they had borne arms together to preserve them; for more than two they had been confederates under a compact to remain united forever.

The federation excelled every one that had preceded it. Inter-citizenship and mutual equality of rights between all its members gave to it a new character and an enduring unity. The Hebrew commonwealth was intensely exclusive, both by descent and from religion; every Greek republic grew out of families and tribes; the word nation originally implied a common ancestry. All mediæval republics, like the Roman municipalities, rested on privilege. The principle of inter-citi* Marshall in Van Santvoord's Chief Justices of the United States, 314, 315.

zenship infused itself neither into the constitution of the old German empire, nor of Switzerland, nor of Holland. Even when the American people took up arms against Great Britain, congress defined only the membership * of each colony; the articles of confederation first brought in the rule that any one might at will transfer his membership from one state to another. Of old a family, a sept, a clan, a tribe, a nation, a race, owed its unity to consanguinity. Inter-citizenship now took the place of consanguinity; the Americans became not only one people, but one nation. They had framed a union of several states in one confederacy, fortified and bound in with a further union of the inhabitants of every one of them by a mutual and reciprocally perfect naturalization. This intercitizenship, though only in its third year, has been so ratified by national affections, by the national acquisition of independence, by national treaties, by national interests, by national history, that the people possessing it cannot but take one step more, and from an indwelling necessity form above the states a common constitution for the whole.

It was to a nation which had not as yet a self-existent government, and which needed and felt the need of one, that Washington's legacy went forth. The love which was everywhere cherished for him, in itself had become a bond of union. "They are compelled to await the result of his letter," reported Luzerne; "they hope more from the weight of a single citizen than from the authority of the sovereign body." Jonathan Trumbull, the venerable governor of Connecticut, in his prompt reply extolled "this last address which exhibited the foundation principles " of "an indissoluble union of the states under one federal head." # When in the next autumn this faithful war governor, after more than fifty years of service, bade farewell to public life, imitating Washington, he set forth to the legislature of Connecticut, and through them to its people, that the grant to the federal constitution of powers clearly defined, ascertained, and understood, and sufficient

* Journals of Congress, i., 365.

+ Bacon's speech for general naturalization, Spedding's Bacon's Letters and Life, iii., 319. Luzerne to Vergennes, 4 August 1783.

# Jonathan Trumbull to Washington, 10 June 1783.

for all the great purposes of union, could alone lead from the danger of anarchy to national happiness and glory.

*

In June the general assembly of Delaware complied with all parts of the recommendation of congress, coupling the impost with the state's quota of the federal requisition.† To Washington, Nicholas Van Dyke, the governor, on receiving the circular, reported this proof of their zeal for establishing the credit of the union, adding: "The state which declines a similar conduct must be blind to the united interest with which that of the individual states is inseparably connected."‡

Pennsylvania, linking together the North and the South, never hesitated; then and ever after, it made the reasoning and the hopefulness of Washington its own. At a festival in Philadelphia, held near the middle of July, with Dickinson, the president of the state, in the chair, the leading toast was: "New strength to the union;" and, when "Honor and immortality to the principles in Washington's circular letter" was proposed, the company rose twice and manifested their approbation by nine huzzas.

A month later, Dickinson and the council of Pennsylvania sent to the general assembly the valedictory of the commanderin-chief, quoting and enforcing his words, saying: "We most earnestly recommend that the confederation be strengthened and improved. To advance the dignity of the union is the best way to advance the interest of each state. A federal supremacy, with a competent national revenue, to govern firmly general and relative concerns," can alone "ensure the respect, tranquillity, and safety, that are naturally attached to an extensive and well-established empire. All the authorities before mentioned may be vested in a federal council, not only without the least danger to liberty, but liberty will be thereby better secured." The house on the twenty-fifth, joining together the impost and the quota of the state, unanimously ordered the grant of them both, and at a later session thanked Washington specially for his final "circular letter, the inestimable legacy bequeathed to his country."

*Stuart's Trumbull, 604–608.

+ Papers of Old Congress, lxxv. MS.

Nicholas Van Dyke to Washington, 2 July 1783.

# Colonial Records, xiii., 648, 649.

VOL. VI.-8

| Papers of Old Congress, lxxv. MS.