SENTIMENT OF THE COUNTRY.

7

which would involve the complete surrender of State sovereignty, nor is there evidence of serious apprehension that republican principles were in danger. From the best evidence we have, it seems that at the time when the Constitution went to the States, public opinion in Virginia was uncertain. In New England and the middle States, where the greater number of newspapers were published, controversies over the new plan immediately sprang up and continued to the end. The opposition centered its attack upon the omission of a Bill of Rights. In New England generally, the plan was favorably received, though Rhode Island was an exception. New York was divided; New Jersey was reported favorable; in Pennsylvania there was a strong opposition. Maryland was said to be decidedly in favor of the Constitution; Georgia too, was supposed to be friendly; the news was less encouraging from the Carolinas,1 though it was not thought that the Constitution would be seriously opposed in South Carolina. Foreign observers could not understand why there should be any opposition; to them the alternative in America was consolidation or anarchy.2 Undoubtedly the mass of the people who gave any attention to the matter, associated the name of Washington with the new plan, and already selected him as the head of the new government. That his life was spared at this time made the more perfect Union possible.

But the public was not left undisturbed by the opposition. Richard Henry Lee was indefatigable in hostile speaking and writing, and on his way home from Congress,

1 Madison to Randolph, October 21, 1787; Carrington to Jefferson, October 23, 1787; Gouverneur Morris to Washington, October 30, 1787; Elliot, I, 505.

2 Lord Dorchester and Lord Sydney, November 8, 1787. 3 A. Donald to Jefferson, November 12, 1787.

8

FEDERALISTS AND ANTI-FEDERALISTS.

not only harangued the populace, as at Wilmington, Delaware,1 cautioning against hasty adoption, but also distributed inflammatory letters2 which were the most popular and probably most influential of all attacks against the plan.3

Already the names Federalists and Anti-Federalists were used to distinguish the friends and the enemies of the plan. The policy of the Anti-Federalists was to persuade the people that the Constitution violated the principles of republican government, and, especially, that it antagonized and endangered the State constitutions. The Anti-Federalists did not tell the people how faithfully the Philadelphia Convention had labored to avoid antagonism with these State instruments. As we have followed the making of the plan we have seen how closely it conformed to precedents in the State constitutions, but these instruments were not as familiar to the people as one might perhaps imagine, for they were no more freely circulated than the decisions of the courts. It was the policy of the Federalists to persuade the people that the Constitution not only was constructed on republican principles, but that it conformed closely to the State instruments and could not fail to remedy the defects of the Confederation, secure the common defense and promote the general welfare. Even at this early period the population of the country was divided into two classes, the urban and the rural. The first inhabited the coast region and

4

1 Samuel Powell to Washington, November 13, 1787.

2 Signed "Federal Farmer."

8 His letters from a "Federal Farmer" to the "Republican" are reprinted in Paul Leicester Ford's collection of Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, published during its discussion by the people; Brooklyn, New York, 1888.

This is the general argument of the Federalist, see Nos. I-XXIII.

dwelt along the important navigable rivers. The second was more or less isolated, either within the recesses of the interior of the States, or inhabiting western and inaccessible parts of the country, and was thus removed, as it were by nature, from the active affairs of the world. The federal and anti-federal areas were distinct political sections.1

In New Hampshire, the federal area lay along the coast and in the Connecticut valley; the inhabitants of which region were fully alive to an adequate protection of commerce. The Connecticut river settlement, indeed, may be said to have faced the south and to have been economically a part of the central Massachusetts and Connecticut belt. The sentiments of its people were overwhelmingly in favor of the new plan. The anti-federal element in the State consisted chiefly of the Scotch-Irish communities west of the Merrimac river, a region shut off from the sea.2 The seaboard district in Massachusetts was overwhelmingly federal, but the middle and western portions of the State were equally anti-federal. Here were to be found Daniel Shays's friends and followers, who composed fourfifths of the opposition, all of whom favored the repudiation, or sealing of debts, public and private, and an unlimited use of paper money.3 In Connecticut, a State, whose people depended largely upon commerce, the sentiment in favor of the new plan was almost unanimous; and the little opposition was political rather than economic. The State

1 See the Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution, 1787-1788, by Orin Grant Libby, M. L. Fellow in History; Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, June, 1894. This monograph presents the results of diligent and intelligent examination of the condition of the country at the time.

2 Libby, pp. 7-12.

3 Libby, 12-14.

10

NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY.

was quite at the mercy of New York, and contributed about one-third1 of the tax,-amounting in the aggregate to upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which that State collected in tariff duties at its great port. The new plan would abolish the cause of this grievance.2

Rhode Island, which at this time was in the hands of fiat money men, was quite lost to reason, and practically unanimous in its opposition.3 New York State was a wilderness, except in the Hudson Valley. The city of New York was federal, but the remainder of the State, with slight exceptions, anti-federal. As the traveler, starting from Federal Hall, went northward, he speedily found himself in an anti-federal community, which reached quite to Albany. New York city gave the State an opportunity to monopolize the commerce of Connecticut and New Jersey, and it had long profited by the monopoly. But its gains through imposts on its neighbors was as great a grievance to New Jersey as to Connecticut. Yet, almost without exception, the mercantile class in New York was friendly to the plan, and was only surpassed in zeal by the young lawyers, who by reason of youth, of obscurity and the lack of family connections, had no prospect of a career in State politics. The people of New Jersey, who were in much the same position as those of Connecticut, were quite unanimously in favor of the Constitution. When the Articles of Confederation had been submitted to its legislature, this body had demanded that the regulation of commerce should be vested in the general government, and to this opinion it had always held. The new plan completely

1 Ellsworth in the Connecticut Convention; Elliot, II, 189. 2 Libby, 16.

3 Madison to Washington, October 14, 1787; and to Jefferson, October 24, 1787; Works, I, 342-355.

4 See Vol. I, p. 235.

PENNSYLVANIA, DELAWARE.

11

met this demand and assured the State relief from the imposts levied by New York.

Pennsylvania was a divided State. In Philadelphia, the commercial class welcomed the new plan, but the traveler could not go thirty miles westward from the Delaware before encountering many evidences of the anti-federal opinions, held almost to a man by the inhabitants of the western counties. About Pittsburg centered the influence of the Scotch-Irish emigrants. They were satisfied with the constitution of the State, which was distinguished from the prevailing American type in having only one House. But, as in New York, it was the office-holding class in the State, who declaimed most loudly against the new Constitution. In the eastern and older part of Pennsylvania, where the English and German element predominated, where most of the population was found, and the wealth and influence of the State were centered, opinion was strongly federal.

1

Delaware, in its early history a part of Pennsylvania, was in close commercial association with Philadelphia. Its principal city, Wilmington, had prospered even under the restrictions that had so long injured the country. The people of the State were homogeneous, and since all danger to its equality in the Senate had vanished, it had everything to gain and nothing to lose by approving the new plan. Federalism in Delaware, therefore, rested on the double foundation of politics and economy.

Maryland was a commercial State, and therefore public opinion inclined to be federal. The mercantile interests, centering at Baltimore, and extending thence in all directions tended to unify opinion. Whatever the political leaders of the State may have thought as individuals, it

1 Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution, McMaster and Stone, 10.