Volume I Part 39 (1/2)
[976] Jefferson to Meusnier, Jan. 24, 1786; _Works_: Ford, v, 8.
[977] Jefferson to Madison, Dec. 20, 1787; _ib._, 373-74. Jefferson concluded, prophetically, that when the people ”get piled upon one another, in large cities, as in Europe, they will become as corrupt as Europe.” (_Ib._)
[978] Jefferson to Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785; _ib._, iv, 469.
[979] Jefferson to Stuart, Jan. 25, 1786; _ib._, v, 74.
[980] See _infra_, chap. IX.
[981] For a careful study of this important but neglected subject see Professor Edward Payson Smith's paper in Jameson, 46-115.
CHAPTER IX
THE STRUGGLE FOR RATIFICATION
The plot thickens fast. A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America. (Was.h.i.+ngton.)
On Sunday, June 1, 1788, the dust lay deep in the streets of the little town of Richmond. Mult.i.tudes of horses were tethered here and there or stabled as best the Virginia Capital's meager accommodations permitted.
Cavalcades of mounted men could be seen from Shockoe Hill, wending their way over the imperfect earthen roads from every direction to the center of interest.[982] Some of these had come hundreds of miles and arrived in the garb of the frontier, pistol and hanger at belt.[983] Patrick Henry, prematurely old at fifty-two, came in a one-horse, uncovered gig; Pendleton, aged, infirm, and a cripple, arrived in a phaeton.[984]
As we have seen, it was very hard for members of Virginia's Legislature to get to the seat of the State Government even from counties not far distant; and a rainy season, or even one week's downpour during the latter part of May, would have kept large numbers of the members of the Virginia Convention from reaching their destination in time and perhaps have decided the impending struggle[985] before it began. The year's great social and sporting event added to the throng and colored the dark background of political anxiety and apprehension with a faint tinge of gayety.[986]
Although seven months had elapsed since the Federal Convention had finished its work, there was, nevertheless, practically no accurate knowledge among the people of the various parts of the ”New Plan” of government. Even some members of the Virginia State Convention had never seen a copy of the Const.i.tution until they arrived in Richmond to deliberate upon it and decide its fate.[987] Some of the most inquiring men of this historic body had not read a serious or convincing argument for it or against it.[988] ”The greater part of the members of the [Virginia] convention will go to the meeting without information on the subject,” wrote Nicholas to Madison immediately after the election of delegates.[989]
One general idea, however, had percolated through the distances and difficulties of communication to the uninformed minds of the people--the idea that the new Const.i.tution would form a strong, consolidated National Government, superior to and dominant over the State Governments; a National Sovereignty overawing State Sovereignties, dangerous to if not entirely destructive of the latter; a general and powerful authority beyond the people's reach, which would enforce contracts, collect debts, impose taxes; above all, a bayonet-enforced rule from a distant point, that would imperil and perhaps abolish ”liberty.”[990]
So a decided majority of the people of Virginia were against the proposed fundamental law;[991] for, as in other parts of the country, few of Virginia's ma.s.ses wanted anything stronger than the weak and ineffective Government of the State and as little even of that as possible. Some were ”opposed to any system, was it even sent from heaven, which tends to confirm the union of the States.”[992] Madison's father reported the Baptists to be ”generally opposed to it”; and the planters who went to Richmond to sell their tobacco had returned foes of the ”new plan” and had spread the uprising against it among others ”who are no better acquainted with the necessity of adopting it than they themselves.”[993] At first the friends of the Const.i.tution deceived themselves into thinking that the work of the Philadelphia Convention met with approval in Virginia; but they soon found that ”the tide next took a sudden and strong turn in the opposite direction.”[994] Henry wrote to Lamb that ”Four-fifths of our inhabitants are opposed to the new scheme of government”; and he added that south of the James River ”I am confident nine-tenths are opposed to it.”[995]
That keen and ever-watchful merchant, Minton Collins, thus reported to the head of his commercial house in Philadelphia: ”The New Federal Const.i.tution will meet with much opposition in this State [Virginia] for many pretended patriots has taken a great deal of pains to poison the minds of the people against it.... There are two Cla.s.ses here who oppose it, the one is those who have power & are unwilling to part with an atom of it, & the others are the people who owe a great deal of money, and are very unwilling to pay, as they are afraid this Const.i.tution will make them _Honest Men_ in spite of their teeth.”[996]
And now the hostile forces are to meet in final and decisive conflict.
Now, at last, the new Const.i.tution is to be really _debated_; and debated openly before the people and the world. For the first time, too, it is to be opposed in argument by men of the highest order in ability, character, and standing--men who cannot be hurried, or bullied, or shaken, or bought. The debates in the Virginia Convention of 1788 are the only masterful discussions on _both_ sides of the controversy that ever took place.
While the defense of the Const.i.tution had been very able in Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts (and later in New York was to be most brilliant), the attack upon it in the Virginia Convention was nowhere equaled or approached in power, learning, and dignity. Extravagant as the a.s.sertion appears, it nevertheless is true that the Virginia contest was the only real _debate_ over the whole Const.i.tution. It far surpa.s.sed, especially in presenting the reasons against the Const.i.tution, the discussion in the Federal Convention itself, in weight of argument and attractiveness of presentation, as well as in the ability and distinction of the debaters.
The general Federal Convention that framed the Const.i.tution at Philadelphia was a secret body; and the greatest pains were taken that no part of its proceedings should get to the public until the Const.i.tution itself was reported to Congress. The Journals were confided to the care of Was.h.i.+ngton and were not made public until many years after our present Government was established. The framers of the Const.i.tution ignored the purposes for which they were delegated; they acted without any authority whatever; and the doc.u.ment, which the warring factions finally evolved from their quarrels and dissensions, was revolutionary.[997] This capital fact requires iteration, for it is essential to an understanding of the desperate struggle to secure the ratification of that then unpopular instrument.
”Not one legislature in the United States had the most distant idea when they first appointed members for a [Federal] convention, entirely commercial ... that they would without any warrant from their const.i.tuents, presume on so bold and daring a stride,” truthfully writes the excitable Gerry of Ma.s.sachusetts in his bombastic denunciation of ”the fraudulent usurpation at Philadelphia.”[998] The more reliable Melancton Smith of New York testifies that ”previous to the meeting of the Convention the subject of a new form of government had been little thought of and scarcely written upon at all.... The idea of a government similar to” the Const.i.tution ”never entered the minds of the legislatures who appointed the Convention and of but very few of the members who composed it, until they had a.s.sembled and heard it proposed in that body.”[999]
”Had the idea of a total change [from the Confederation] been started,”
a.s.serts the trustworthy Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, ”probably no state would have appointed members to the Convention.... Probably not one man in ten thousand in the United States ... had an idea that the old s.h.i.+p [Confederation] was to be destroyed. Pennsylvania appointed princ.i.p.ally those men who are esteemed aristocratical.... Other States ... chose men princ.i.p.ally connected with commerce and the judicial department.” Even so, says Lee, ”the non-attendance of eight or nine men” made the Const.i.tution possible. ”We must recollect, how disproportionately the democratic and aristocratic parts of the community were represented” in this body.[1000]
This ”child of fortune,”[1001] as Was.h.i.+ngton called the Const.i.tution, had been ratified with haste and little or no discussion by Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Georgia. The princ.i.p.al men in the first three Commonwealths felt that the Const.i.tution gave those States large commercial advantages and even greater political consequence;[1002] and Georgia, with so small a population as to be almost negligible, felt the need of some strong Government to defend her settlers against the Indians. It is doubtful whether many of the people of these four States had read the Const.i.tution or had heard much about it, except that, in a general way, they were to be better off under the new than under the old arrangement. Their ratification carried no weight other than to make up four of the nine States necessary to set the new system in motion.
In other States its friends had whipped up all possible speed. Not a week had pa.s.sed after the Federal Convention had laid the proposed Const.i.tution before Congress when a resolution was introduced in the Legislature of Pennsylvania for the election, within five weeks,[1003]
of delegates to a State Convention to ratify the ”New Plan.” When its opponents, failing in every other device to delay or defeat it, refused to attend the sessions, thus breaking a quorum, a band of Const.i.tutionalists ”broke into their lodgings, seized them, dragged them though the streets to the State House and thrust them into the a.s.sembly room with clothes torn and faces white with rage.” And there the objecting members were forcibly kept until the vote was taken. Thus was the quorum made and the majority of the Legislature enabled to ”pa.s.s”
the ordinance for calling the Pennsylvania State Convention to ratify the National Const.i.tution.[1004] And this action was taken before the Legislature had even received from Congress a copy of that doc.u.ment.
The enemies in Pennsylvania of the proposed National Government were very bitter. They said that the Legislature had been under the yoke of Philadelphia--a charge which, indeed, appears to be true. Loud were the protests of the minority against the feverish haste. When the members of the Pennsylvania Convention, thus called, had been chosen and had finished their work, the Anti-Const.i.tutionalists a.s.serted that no fair election had really taken place because it ”was held at so early a period and want of information was so great” that the people did not know that such an election was to be held; and they proved this to their own satisfaction by showing that, although seventy thousand Pennsylvanians were ent.i.tled to vote, only thirteen thousand of them really had voted and that the forty-six members of the Pennsylvania Convention who ratified the Const.i.tution had been chosen by only sixty-eight hundred voters. Thus, they pointed out, when the State Convention was over, that the Federal Const.i.tution had been ratified in Pennsylvania by men who represented less than one tenth of the voting population of the State.[1005]
Indeed, a supporter of the Const.i.tution admitted that only a small fraction of the people did vote for members of the Pennsylvania State Convention; but he excused this on the ground that Pennsylvanians seldom voted in great numbers except in contested elections; and he pointed out that in the election of the Convention which framed the State's Const.i.tution itself, only about six thousand had exercised their right of suffrage and that only a little more than fifteen hundred votes had been cast in the whole Commonwealth to elect Pennsylvania's first Legislature.[1006]