Part 2 (1/2)
”What a constancy, what a magnanimity, what a surprising persistence against fortune!... Was.h.i.+ngton, the chief of a nation in arms, doing battle with distracted parties; calm in the midst of conspiracy; serene against the open foe before him and the darker enemies at his back; Was.h.i.+ngton, inspiring order and spirit into troops hungry and in rags; stung by ingrat.i.tude, but betraying no anger, and every ready to forgive; in defeat invincible, magnanimous in conquest and never so sublime as on that day when he laid down his victorious sword and sought his n.o.ble retirement-here, indeed, is a character to admire and revere; a life without a stain, a fame without a flaw.”
A year after the Articles of Confederation had been adopted, the war came to an end by a preliminary treaty on November 30, 1782.
Now follows the least known chapter in American history. It was a period of travail, of which the Const.i.tution of the United States and the present American nation were born. The government slowly succ.u.mbed from its own weakness to its inevitable death. Only the shreds and patches of authority were left. Gradually the union fell apart. Of the Continental Congress only fifteen members, representing seven colonies, remained to transact the affairs of the new nation. The army, which previously to the termination of the war had dissolved by the hundreds, was now unpaid and in a stale of revolt. Measure after measure was proposed in Congress to raise money to pay the interest on the bonded indebtedness, which was in arrears, and to provide funds for the most necessary expenses, but these failed, in Congress for the want of the necessary nine votes or, if enacted, the States treated the requisitions with indifference. The currency of the United States had fallen almost as low as the Austrian kronen, and men derisively plastered the walls of their houses with the worthless paper of the Continental Congress. Adequate authority no longer remained to carry out the terms of the treaties with England and France, and they were nullified by the failure of the infant nation to comply with its own obligations and the consequent refusal of the other contracting parties to comply with theirs. The government made a call upon the States to raise $8,000,000 for the most vital needs, but only $400,000 was actually received. Then Congress asked the States to vest in it the power to levy a tax of five per cent, on imports for a limited period, but, after waiting two years for the action of the States, less than nine concurred. The States were then asked to pledge their own internal revenue for twenty-five years to meet the national indebtedness, but this could only be done by unanimous consent, and while twelve States concurred, Rhode Island refused and the measure was defeated. It was again the infinite folly of the liberum veto which, prior to the great part.i.tion, condemned Poland to chronic anarchy.
The impotence of the new government, which was still sitting in Philadelphia, can be measured by the fact that on June 9, 1783, word came that eighty soldiers were on their way to Philadelphia to demand relief. They stacked their arms in front of the State House, where the Congress was then sitting, and refused to disband, when requested by Col. Alexander Hamilton, as the representative of the Congress, to do so. When Congress appealed to the government of Pennsylvania for protection, it was advised that the Pennsylvania militia was likewise insubordinate. The Congress then hastily fled by night and became a fugitive.
The impotence of the Confederation can be measured by the fact that in the last fourteen months of its existence its receipts were less than $400,000, while the interest on the foreign debt alone was over $2,400,000, and the interest on the internal debt was five-fold greater.
In the absence of any government and in the period of general prostration it was not unnatural that the spirit of Bolshevism grew with alarming rapidity. It even permeated the officers of the Army. In March, 1783, an anonymous communication was sent to Was.h.i.+ngton's officers to meet in secret conference to take some action, possibly to overthrow the government. A copy fell into Was.h.i.+ngton's hands and, while he forbade the a.s.semblage of the officers under the anonymous call, he himself directed the officers to a.s.semble. He unexpectedly appeared at the meeting and, being no speaker, he had reduced his appeal to writing. As he adjusted his spectacles to read it, he pathetically said: ”I have not only grown gray but blind in your service.” He then made a touching appeal to them not to increase by example the spreading spirit of revolt. The very sight of their old commander turned the hearts of the revolting element and the officers remained loyal to their n.o.ble leader.
Where the spirit of disaffection was thus found in high places it naturally prevailed more widely among the ma.s.ses who had been driven to frenzy by their sufferings. This culminated in a revolt in Ma.s.sachusetts under the leaders.h.i.+p of an old soldier named Shays, and it spread with such rapidity that not only did one-fifth of the people join in attempting to overthrow the remnant of established authority in Ma.s.sachusetts, but it rapidly spread to other States. The offices of government and the courthouses were seized, the collection of debts was forbidden, and private property was forcibly appropriated to meet the common needs.
Chaos had come again. It filled Was.h.i.+ngton's heart with disgust and despair. After surrendering his commission to the pitiful remnant of the government he had retired to Mount Vernon, and for a time declined to act further as the leader of his people. Thus, in October, 1785, he wrote James Warren, of Ma.s.sachusetts:
”The war, as you have very justly observed, has terminated most advantageously for America, and a fair field is presented to our view; but I confess to you freely, my dear sir, that I do not think we possess wisdom or justice enough to cultivate it properly. Illiberality, jealousy, and local policy mix too much in all our public councils for good government of the union. In a word, the Confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance, and Congress a nugatory body, their ordinances being little attended to.... By such policy as this the wheels of government are clogged, and our brightest prospects, and that high expectation which was entertained of us by the wondering world, are turned into astonishment; and, from the high ground on which we stood, we are descending into the vale of confusion and darkness.”
Again he wrote to George Mason:
”I have seen without despondency, even for a moment, the hours which America has styled its gloomy ones, but I have beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities that I thought our liberties in such imminent danger as at present. Indeed, we are verging so fast to destruction that I am feeling that sense to which I have been a stranger until within these three months.”
Again in 1786 he writes:
”I think often of our situation, and view it with concern. From the high ground we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen, so lost, is mortifying; but everything of virtue has, in a degree, taken its departure from our land.... What, gracious G.o.d, is man that there should be such inconsistency, and perfidiousness in his conduct! It was but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the Const.i.tutions under which we now live, and now we are unsheathing our swords to overturn them. The thing is so unaccountable that I hardly know how to realize it or to persuade myself that I am not under an illusion of a dream.”
It was, however, the darkest hour before the dawn, and again it was Was.h.i.+ngton who became his country's saviour. In 1785, some commissioners from the States of Virginia and Maryland visited Mount Vernon to pay their respects to the well-loved commander. After conferring with him upon the chaos of the times, they decided to issue a call for a general conference of the representatives of the States to be held on September 11, 1786, at Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss how far the States themselves could agree on common regulations of commerce. At the appointed time the delegates a.s.sembled from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York and New Jersey, and finding themselves too few in number to achieve the great objective, the convention contented itself by issuing another call, drafted by Alexander Hamilton, then under thirty years of age, to all the States to send delegates to a convention to be held in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May, 1787, ”to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as should appear to them necessary to render the Const.i.tution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.”
The dying Congress tardily approved of this suggestion, but finally, on January 21, 1787, grudgingly adopted a resolution that- ”It is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a convention of delegates, who shall have been appointed by the several States, be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and conformed to by the States, render the Federal Const.i.tution adequate to the exigency of the government and the preservation of the union.”
It will be noted by the italicized portions of the resolution that this impotent body thus vainly attempted to cling to the shadow of its vanished authority by stating that the proposed const.i.tutional convention should merely revise the worthless Articles of Confederation and that such amendments should not have validity until adopted by Congress as well as by the people of the several States. How this mandate was disregarded and how the convention was formed, and proceeded to create a new government with a new Const.i.tution, and how it achieved its mighty work, will be the subject of the next lecture.
Antic.i.p.ating the masterly ability with which a seemingly impotent and dying nation plucked from the nettle of danger the flower of safety, let me conclude this first address by quoting the words of de Tocqueville, in his remarkable work Democracy in America, where he says:
”The Federal Government, condemned to impotence by its Const.i.tution and no longer sustained by the presence of common danger ... was already on the verge of destruction when it officially proclaimed its inability to conduct the government and appealed to the const.i.tuent authority of the nation.... It is a novelty in the history of a society to see a calm and scrutinizing eye turned upon itself, when apprised by the legislature that the wheels of government are stopped; to see it carefully examine the extent of the field and patiently wait for two years until a remedy was discovered, which it voluntarily adopted, without having ever wrung a tear or a drop of blood from mankind.”
II. The Great Convention
Now follows a notable and yet little known scene in the drama of history. It reveals a people who, without shedding a drop of blood, calmly and deliberately abolished one government, subst.i.tuted another, and erected it upon foundations which have hitherto proved enduring. Even the superstructure slowly erected upon these foundations has suffered little change in the most changing period of the world's history, and until recently its additions, few in number, have varied little from the plans of the original architects. The Const.i.tution is to-day, not a ruined Parthenon, but rather as one of those Gothic masterpieces, against which the storms of pa.s.sionate strife have beaten in vain. The foundations were laid at a time when disorder was rampant and anarchy widely prevalent. As I have already shown in my first lecture, credit was gone, business paralysed, lawlessness triumphant, and not only between cla.s.s and cla.s.s, but between State and State, there were acute controversies and an alarming disunity of spirit. To weld thirteen jealous and discordant States, demoralized by an exhausting war, into a unified and efficient nation against their wills, was a seemingly impossible task. Frederick the so-called Great had said that a federal union of widely scattered communities was impossible. Its final accomplishment has blinded the world to the essential difficulty of the problem.
The time was May 25, 1787; the place, the State House in Philadelphia, a little town of not more than 20,000 people, and, at that time, as remote, measured by the facilities of communication, to the centres of civilization as is now Vladivostok.
The dramatis personae in this drama, though few in numbers, were, however, worthy of the task.
Seventy-two had originally been offered or given credentials, for each State was permitted to send as many delegates as it pleased, inasmuch as the States were to vote in the convention as units. Of these, the greatest actual attendance was fifty-five, and at the end of the convention a saving remnant of only thirty-nine remained to finish a work which was to immortalize its partic.i.p.ants.
While this notable group of men contained a few merchants, financiers, farmers, doctors, educators, and soldiers, of the remainder, at least thirty-one were lawyers, and of these many had been justices of the local courts and executive officers of the commonwealths. Four had studied in the Inner Temple, at least five in the Middle Temple, one at Oxford under the tuition of Blackstone and two in Scottish Universities. Few of them were inexperienced in public affairs, for of the original fifty-five members, thirty-nine had been members of the first or second Continental Congresses, and eight had already helped to frame the const.i.tutions of their respective States. At least twenty-two were college graduates, of whom nine were graduates of Princeton, three of Yale, two of Harvard, four of William and Mary, and one each from the Universities of Oxford, Columbia, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. A few already enjoyed world-wide fame, notably Doctor Franklin, possibly the most versatile genius of the eighteenth century and universally known and honoured as a scientist, philosopher, and diplomat, and George Was.h.i.+ngton, whose fame, even at that day, had filled the world with the n.o.ble purity of his character.
It was a convention of comparatively young men, the average age being little above forty. Franklin was the oldest member, being then eighty-one; Dayton, the youngest, being twenty-seven. With the exception of Franklin and Was.h.i.+ngton, most of the potential personalities in the convention were under forty. Thus, James Madison, who contributed so largely to the plan that he is sometimes called ”The Father of the Const.i.tution,” was thirty-six. Charles Pinckney, who, unaided, submitted the first concrete draft of the Const.i.tution, was only twenty-nine, and Alexander Hamilton, who was destined to take a leading part in securing its ratification by his powerful oratory and his very able commentaries in the Federalist papers, was only thirty.
Above all they were a group of gentlemen of substance and honour, who could debate for four months during the depressing weather of a hot summer without losing their tempers, except momentarily-and this despite vital differences-and who showed that genius for toleration and reconciliation of conflicting views inspired by a common fidelity to a great objective that is the highest mark of statesmans.h.i.+p. They represented the spirit of representative government at its best in avoiding the cowardice of time-servers and the low cunning of demagogues. All apparently were inspired by a fine spirit of self-effacement. Selfish ambition was conspicuously absent. They differed, at times heatedly, but always as gentlemen of candour and honour. The very secrecy of their deliberations, of which I shall presently speak, is ample proof how indifferent they were to popular applause and the civium ardor prava jubentium.