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of slaveholders refused consent to any provisions which endangered their right of property in human chattels. The descendants of the Puritans in the North had conscientious scruples against the recognition of the legality of slavery. The recollection of the oppressions by the Stuarts and the Guelphs and the history of the fall of the republics of Greece and Italy caused a fear in some that any elements of strength which might be vested in the government of the whole would be used as instruments for the suppression of liberty in all its parts. The contemptible position of the United States at home and abroad; their inability to enforce obedience to their laws, to pay their debts, to collect revenues, to negotiate treaties of commerce with foreign governments, and to protect either the individual States or their own Congress from domestic violence, inspired in others the belief that liberty was of far less consequence than stability and security, and made them seek as far as possible to strengthen the central government and remove it from the control of the people. The Constitution was based on compromises, but the results of those compromises have proved so salutary, that but one of them has hitherto been overthrown.

§ 3. Anarchy preceding the Federal Convention. Te reaction from the patriotism which carried the Revolution to a successful termination left the people of the United States in the most contemptible position that they have ever occupied. The Articles of Confederation gave Congress power to incur debts, but no means of paying them, except such as might be derived from the voluntary contributions of the several States to meet the requisitions imposed which it could vote but not collect. The result was a bankruptcy of the common treasury, due to a refusal of many States to supply the funds necessary to pay the arrears due to creditors at home and abroad, even to the soldiers who had

§ 3. 1 Between 1782 and 1787, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia paid no taxes. Connecticut and Delaware one-third; Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland about one-half; Virginia three-fifths; Pennsylvania nearly the

whole; and New York, which derived a large revenue from an impost, more than their respective quota. (Hamilton, in the New York legislature, in favor of a national impost, 1 American Museum, 445-448.)

risked their lives and wasted their estates in the struggle with Great Britain. The need of a federal judiciary had been painfully apparent throughout the war, from the technical inconveniences caused by the condemnation of prizes in State courts of admiralty, some of whom would not respect acts of Congress unless first adopted by the individual State legislatures. After the war, the observance of those articles of the Treaty of Peace which protected the property of the Tories and debts due British subjects, was prevented by acts passed by the State legislatures in opposition to them, which in many instances the State courts respected. This gave Great Britain an excuse for keeping garrisons in different posts of the United States and in refusing to conform to other articles by which she was bound. At the same time the debtor class, which had been such an important factor in the revolution,2 manifested a similar desire to avoid payment of debts due citizens of the United States.3 Stay laws which impeded the collection of judgments, tender laws which permitted debtors to meet their obligations in State bills of credit or land or commodities, at a valuation fixed by juries, and other impediments to creditors, were passed by different legislatures. Many debtors were not satisfied with these palliatives. They demanded nothing short of the cancellation of indebtedness and the destruction of all rights of property. Men re-echoed the doctrines of the levellers in Cromwell's army and applauded the tale in Plutarch of the King of Lacedaemon who burned all promissory notes in the market-place of Sparta.5 Conventions were held where it was claimed that all property ought to be held in common, because all

2 See Sumner's Life of Hamilton, pp. 47-52. John Adams records that, on his return from Congress in 1774, an old client warmly congratulated him upon the glorious work of Congress in once more suspending the courts. Works, vol. ii, p. 420.

3 When Andrew Jackson moved to West Tennessee in 1788, he found but one other lawyer there. The latter had been retained by the members of the debtor class, who were very powerful in that frontier community,

so that the creditors could not use legal process to collect what was due them.

Attempts were made to drive Jackson from the State for taking collection cases; but he was not to be intimidated, and so obtained an assured practice at his start. Kendall's Life of Jackson, pp. 89-90.

4 The name was then in common use. See Letters of a Federal Farmer, by R. H. Lee, p. 37; Ford's Pamphlets on the Constitution, p. 32.

5 Plutarch's Life of Agis.

had aided in saving it from confiscation by the power of England. Taxes were voted to be needless burdens, courts of justice to be intolerable grievances, and lawyers a common nuisance. These doctrines were embraced by at least twelve thousand men in the New England States, with correspondents in the South, prepared to enforce them by the ballot if that were practicable, otherwise by an appeal to arms. Such an appeal was made in Massachusetts in the fall of 1786, by the outbreak known as Shay's Rebellion. Fifteen hundred men under the leadership of Captain Daniel Shay met in the counties of Worcester and Hampshire. The courts of justice were the first objects of their attack, and their sessions were forcibly closed. When the first body of militia met them on the field, many of the militiamen changed sides and joined the insurgents. Congress had no power under the Articles of Confederation to afford relief.9 When the rebellion was threatened it refused even the loan of arms.10

6 See Madison's remarks in the Federal Convention. Madison Papers, Elliot's Debates, 2d ed., vol. v, p. 463. 7 Curtis' Constitutional History of the United States, vol. i, p. 181.

8 This was the estimate of General Knox. See a letter from Washington to Madison, Washington's Works, 1st ed., p. 207, cited by Curtis, ibid., vol. i, p. 184. At about the same time attempts similar to that of Shay were made in New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Maryland.

9"A power to interfere in the internal concerns of State could only have been exercised by a broad construction of the third of the Articles of Confederation, which was in these words: The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare; binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other

When the civil war broke out

pretence whatever.' When this is compared with the clear and explicit provision in the Constitution, by which it is declared that the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government,' there can be no wonder that a doubt was felt in the Congress of 1786-87 as to their powers upon this subject. It is true that the Massachusetts delegation, when they laid before Congress the measures which had been taken by the State government to suppress the insurrection, expressed the confidence of the legis lature that the firmest support and most effectual aid would have been afforded by the United States, had it been necessary, and asserted that such support and aid were expressly and solemnly stipulated by the Articles of Confederation (Journals, xii, 20, March 9, 1787). But this was clearly not the case; and it was not generally supposed in Congress that the power existed by implication." Ibid., p. 178, note 1.

10 When the insurrection was threat

and it seemed as if Shay's followers would win in Massachusetts, and similar attempts were made by debtors to close the courts in other States, a vote passed to raise troops, avowedly for another purpose, who might be used to suppress the insurrection; 11 but the success of Governor Bowdoin and the State militia caused the abandonment of the attempt.12

It was small wonder that Congress hesitated to overleap its powers to afford protection to a State when it had found that it was unable to protect itself. Three years before, a squad of eighty mutineers, justly indignant at not having received their pay, had made the Congress of the United States flee from Philadelphia to Trenton.13

ened, Massachusetts had asked the loan of sixty pieces of field artillery. The application was refused by the negative vote of six States, one being divided, and the delegation from Massachusetts alone supported it. Journals, 65-67, April 19, 1787; Curtis, ibid., p. 182.

the

11 When Congress received news of the actual outbreak, taking the excuse of an alleged hostility on the part of certain Indian tribes, they unanimously resolved to raise one thousand three hundred and forty additional troops in the New England States, one-half of them by the State of Massachusetts, to serve for the term of three years, for the protection and support of the western States and the Mississippi settlements, and to secure and facilitate the surveying and selling of the public lands; but really for the purpose of aiding the State of Massachusetts in quelling the insurrection. Journals, xi, p. 258, Oct. 30, 1786. Ibid., p. 182. See also Madison Papers, Elliot's Debates, 2d ed., vol. v, p. 95.

12 See Remarks on the Proposed Plan of a Federal Government, by Alexander Contee Hanson, afterwards chancellor of Maryland, Ford's Pamphlets on the Constitution, p. 244.

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13 Madison has given the following account of this occurrence: "On the 19th of June," 1783, Congress received information from the Executive Council of Pennsylvania that eighty soldiers, who would probably be followed by others, were on the way from Lancaster to Philadelphia, in spite of the expostulations of their officers, declaring that they would proceed to the seat of Congress and demand justice, and intimating designs against the bank. A committee, of which Colonel Hamilton was chairman, was appointed to confer with the executive of Pennsylvania, and to take such measures as they should find necessary. After a conference, the committee reported that it was the opinion of the executive that the militia of Philadelphia would probably not be willing to take arms before they should be provoked by some actual outrage; that it would hazard the authority of government to make the attempt; and that it would be necessary to let the soldiers come into the city, if the officers who had gone out to meet them could not stop them. The next day the soldiers arrived in the city, led by their sergeants, and professing to have no other object than to obtain a settlement of ac

Unable to command either the purse or the sword, Congress was abandoned by the ablest statesmen and politicians in the country. The State legislatures alone could raise by taxation the money which they appropriated, and in them and the offices which they created ambitious men preferred to seek employment. Congress was so much despised that it became almost impossible to collect a quorum, and more than twenty-five delegates were rarely found there.14 At no time before the Federal Constitution were all the States represented at once.15

The ill effects resulting from the inability of the United States to regulate commerce were, however, those which were most se

counts, which they supposed they had a better chance for at Philadelphia than at Lancaster. On the 21st they were drawn up in the street before the State House, where Congress were assembled. The Executive Council of the State, sitting under the same roof, was called on for the proper interposition. The president of the State (Dickinson) came in and explained the difficulty of bringing out the militia of the place for the suppression of the mutiny. He thought that, without some outrages on persons or property, the militia could not be relied on. General St. Clair, then in Philadelphia, was sent for, and desired to use his interposition, in order to prevail on the troops to return to the barracks. But his report gave no encouragement. In this posture of things it was proposed by Mr. Izard that Congress should adjourn. Colonel Hamilton proposed that General St. Clair, in concert with the Executive Council of the State, should take order for terminating the mutiny. Mr. Reed moved that the general should endeavor to withdraw the mutineers, by assuring them of the disposition of Congress to do them justice. Nothing, however, was done. The soldiers remained in their position, occasionally uttering offensive words and pointing

their muskets at the windows of the hall of Congress. At the usual hour of adjournment the members went out, without obstruction, and the soldiers retired to their barracks. In the evening Congress reassembled, and appointed a committee to confer anew with the executive of the State. This conference produced nothing but a repetition of the doubts concerning the disposition of the militia to act, unless some actual outrage were offered to persons or property, the insult to Congress not being deemed

a

sufficient provocation. On the 24th, the efforts of the State authority being despaired of, Congress were summoned by the president to meet at Trenton." The mutiny was afterwards suppressed by marching troops into Pennsylvania under Major-General Howe. Journals, viii, 281. (Curtis' Constitutional History of the United States, vol. i, p. 149, note 1.) See also Madison Papers, Elliot's Debates, 2d ed., vol. v, pp. 92–94.

14 Curtis' History of the Constitution, vol. i, pp. 153, 228.

15 Report of a committee appointed to devise means for procuring a full representation in Congress, made Nov. 1, 1783. Journals, vol. viii, pp. 480-482, cited by Curtis, ibid., vol. i, p. 154, note.

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