WELDING THE NATION
The doubt, the drifting, the incongruities and inconsistencies, the
mistakes and follies which marked the five years after 1783 form what
has been well called "The Critical Period of American History." They
proved that the conquests of peace may not only be more difficult than
the conquests of war, but that they may outlast those of war. Who
should be the builders of the Ship of State? Those who had courage
and clear vision, who loved justice, who were patient and humble and
unflagging, and who believed with an ineluctable conviction that
righteousness exalteth a nation; they were the simple fishermen who
in the little church at Torcello predicted the splendor and power of
Venice; they were the stern pioneers of Plymouth and Boston who laid
the foundations of an empire greater than that of Rome.
It happened that during the American Revolution and immediately
afterward, a larger number of such men existed in what had been the
American Colonies than anywhere else at any other time in history. At
the beginning of the Revolution, within a few weeks of the Declaration
of Independence, some of these men, impelled by a common instinct,
adopted Articles of Confederation which should hold the former
Colonies together and enable them to maintain a common front against
the enemy during the war. The Congress controlled military and civic
affairs, but the framers of the Articles were wary and too timid to
grant the Congress sufficient powers, with the result that Washington,
who embodied the dynamic control of the war, was always most
inadequately supported; and as he fared, so fared his subordinates.
At the end of the war the Americans found that they had won, not only
freedom, but also Independence, the desire for which was not among
their original motives. Each of the thirteen States was independent;
they all felt the need of a union which would enable them to protect
themselves; of a common coinage and postage; of certain common laws
for criminal and similar cases; of a common government to direct their
affairs with other nations. But by habit and by training each was
local rather than National in its outlook. The Georgian had nothing
in common with the men of Massachusetts Bay whose livelihood depended
upon fisheries, or with the Virginian of the Western border, to whom
his relations with the Indians were his paramount concern. The Rhode
Islander, busy with his manufactures, knew and cared nothing for the
South Carolinian with his rice plantations. How to find a common
denominator for all these? That was the business of them all.
The one thing which Washington regarded as likely and against which he
wished to have every precaution taken, was a possible attempt of
the English to pick a quarrel over some small matter and bring on
a renewal of the war. Fortunately for the Americans, this did not
happen. Washington knew our weakness so well that he could see how
easy it would be for a bold and determined enemy to do us great if not
fatal harm. But he did not know that the English themselves were in
an almost desperate plight. By Rodney's decisive victory at sea they
began to recover their ascendancy against the Coalition, but it was
then too late to disavow the treaty. In Parliament George III had been
defeated; the defeat meaning a very serious check to the policy which
he had pursued for more than twenty years to fix royal tyranny on the
British people. King George's system of personal government, himself
being the person, had broken down and he could not revive it. Nearly
seventy years were to elapse before Queen Victoria, who was as putty
in the hands of her German husband, Prince Albert, rejoiced that she
had restored the personal power of the British sovereign to a pitch it
had not known since her grandfather George III.
The American Revolution had illustrated the fatal weakness of the
Congress as an organ of government, and the Articles merely embodied
the vagueness of the American people in regard to any real régime. The
Congress has been much derided for its shortcomings and its blunders,
although in truth not so much the Congress, as those who made it, was
to blame. They had refused, in their timidity, to give it power to
exercise control. It might not compel or enforce obedience. It did
require General Washington during the war to furnish a regular report
of his military actions and it put his suggestions on file where
many of them grew yellow and dusty; but he might not strike, do that
decisive act by which history is born. Their timidity made them see
what he had accomplished not nearly so plainly as the dictator on
horseback whom their fears conjured up.
During the war the sense of a common danger had lent the Congress a
not easily defined but quite real coherence, which vanished when
peace came, and the local ideals of the States took precedence. Take
taxation. Congress could compute the quota of taxes which each State
ought to pay, but it had no way of collecting or of enforcing payment.
It took eighteen months to collect five per cent of the taxes laid in
1783. Of course a nation could not go on with such methods. No law
binding all the States could be adopted unless every one of the
thirteen States assented. Unanimity was almost unattainable; as when
Governor Clinton of New York withheld his approval of a measure to
improve a system of taxation to which the other twelve States had
assented; so Rhode Island, the smallest of all, blocked another reform
which twelve States had approved. Our foreign relations must be
described as ignominious. Jefferson had taken Franklin's place as
Minister to France, but we had no credit and he could not secure the
loan he was seeking. John Adams in London, and John Jay in Madrid,
were likewise balked. Jay had to submit to the closing of the lower
Mississippi to American shipping. He did this in the hope of thereby
conciliating Spain to make a commercial treaty which he thought
was far more important than shipping. Our people in the Southwest,
however, regarded the closing of the river as portending their ruin,
and they threatened to secede if it were persisted in. Pennsylvania
and New Jersey threw their weight with the Southerners and Congress
voted against the Jay treaty. That was the time when the corsairs of
the Barbary States preyed upon American shipping in the Mediterranean
and seized crews of our vessels and sold them into slavery in Northern
Africa. That there was not in the thirteen States sufficient feeling
of dignity to resent and punish these outrages marks both their
dispersed power and lack of regard for National honor.
After 1783 the States, virtually bankrupt at home, discordant, fickle,
and aimless, and without credit or prestige abroad, were filled with
many citizens who recognized that the system was bad and must be
amended. The wise among them wrote treatises on the remedies they
proposed. The wisest went to school of experience and sought in
history how confederations and other political unions had fared.
Washington wrote for his own use an account of the classical
constitutions of Greece and Rome and of the more modern states; of the
Amphictyonic Council among the ancient, and the Helvetic, Belgic, and
Germanic among the more recent. John Adams devoted two massive volumes
to an account of the medieval Italian republics. James Madison studied
the Achaian League and other ancient combinations. There were many
other men less eminent than these--there was a Peletiah Webster, for
instance.
Washington viewed the situation as a pessimist. Was it because the
high hopes that he had held during the war, that America should be the
noblest among the nations, had been disappointed, or was it because he
saw farther into the future than his colleagues saw? On May 18, 1786,
he writes intimately to John Jay:
... We are certainly in a delicate situation; but my fear is that
the people are not yet sufficiently _misled_ to retract from
error. To be plainer, I think there is more wickedness than
ignorance mixed in our councils. Under this impression I scarcely
know what opinion to entertain of a general convention. That it
is necessary to revise and amend the Articles of Confederation, I
entertain no doubt; but what may be the consequences of such an
attempt is doubtful. Yet something must be done, or the fabric
must fall, for it certainly is tottering.
Ignorance and design are difficult to combat. Out of these proceed
illiberal sentiments, improper jealousies, and a train of evils
which oftentimes in republican governments must be sorely felt
before they can be removed. The former, that is ignorance, being
a fit soil for the latter to work in, tools are employed by them
which a generous mind would disdain to use; and which nothing but
time, and their own puerile or wicked productions, can show
the inefficacy and dangerous tendency of. 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! it is really mortifying.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, xi, 31.]
One of the chief causes of the discontents which troubled the public
was the increasing number of persons who had been made debtors after
the war by the more and more pressing demands of their creditors.
These debtors knew nothing about economics; they only knew that
they were being crushed by persons more lucky than themselves. In
Massachusetts they broke out in actual rebellion named after the man
who led it, Daniel Shays. They were put down by the more or less
doubtful appeal to veterans of the National Army, but their ebullition
was not forgotten as a symptom of a very dangerous condition. In 1786
representatives from five States met in a convention at Annapolis
to consider the hard times and the troubles in trade. Washington,
Hamilton, and Madison were thought to be behind the convention, which
accomplished little, but made it clear that a large general convention
ought to meet and to discuss the way of securing a strong central
government. This convention was discussed during that summer and
autumn, and a call was issued for a meeting in the following spring
at Philadelphia. Virginia turned first to Washington to be one of its
delegates, but he had sincere scruples against entering public life
again. He wrote to James Madison on November 18th:
Although I had bid adieu to the public walks of life in a public
manner, and had resolved never more to tread upon public ground,
yet if, upon an occasion so interesting to the well-being of the
confederacy, it should have appeared to have been the wish of the
Assembly to have employed me with other associates in the business
of revising the federal system, I should, from a sense of
obligation I am under for repeated proof of confidence in me, more
than from any opinion I should have entertained of my usefulness,
have obeyed its call; but it is now out of my power to do so with
any degree of consistency.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 87.]
Washington's disinclination to abandon the quiet of Mount Vernon
and the congenial work he found there, and to be plunged again into
political labors, was perhaps his strongest reason for making this
decision. But a temporary aggravation ruled him. The Society of the
Cincinnati, of which he was president, had aroused much odium in the
country among those who were jealous or envious that such a special
privileged class should exist, and among those who really believed
that it had the secret design of establishing an aristocracy if not
actually a monarchy. Washington held that its original avowed purpose,
to keep the officers who had served in the Revolution together, would
perpetuate the patriotic spirit which enabled them to win, and might
be a source of strength in case of further ordeals. But when he found
that public sentiment ran so strongly against the Cincinnati, he
withdrew as its president and he told Madison that he would vote to
have the Society disbanded if it were not that it counted a minority
of foreign members. Stronger than a desire for a private life and for
the ease of Mount Vernon was his sense of duty as a patriot; so that
when this was strongly urged upon him he gave way and consented.
Spring came, the snows melted in the Northern States, and through the
month of April the delegates to this Convention started from their
homes in the North and in the South for Philadelphia. The first
regular session was held on May 25th, although some of the delegates
did not arrive until several weeks later. They sat in Independence
Hall in the same room where, eleven years before, the Declaration of
Independence had been adopted and signed. Of the members in the new
Convention, George Washington was easily the first. His commanding
figure, tall and straight and in no wise impaired by eight years'
campaigns and hardships, was almost the first to attract the attention
of any one who looked upon that assembly. He was fifty-five years old.
Next in reputation was the patriarch, Benjamin Franklin, twenty-seven
years his senior, shrewd, wise, poised, tart, good-natured; whose
prestige was thought to be sufficient to make him a worthy presiding
officer when Washington was not present. James Madison of Virginia was
among the young men of the Convention, being only thirty-six years
old, and yet almost at the top of them all in constitutional learning.
More precocious still was Alexander Hamilton of New York, who was
only thirty, one of the most remarkable examples of a statesman who
developed very early and whom Death cut off before he showed any
signs of a decline. One figure we miss--that of Thomas Jefferson of
Virginia, tall and wiry and red-curled, who was absent in Paris as
Minister to France.
Massachusetts sent four representatives, important but not
preëminent--Elbridge Gerry, Nathaniel Gorham, Rufus King, and Caleb
Strong. New York had only two besides Hamilton; Robert Yates and John
Lansing. Pennsylvania trusted most to Benjamin Franklin, but she sent
the financier of the Revolution, Robert Morris, and Gouverneur Morris;
and with them went Thomas Mifflin, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimmons,
Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson--all conspicuous public men at the time,
although their fame is bedraggled or quite faded now. Wilson ranked as
the first lawyer of the group. Of the five from little Delaware sturdy
John Dickinson, a man who thought, was no negligible quantity.
Connecticut also had as spokesmen two strong individualities--Roger
Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. Maryland spoke through James McHenry and
Daniel Carroll and three others of greater obscurity. Virginia had
George Washington, President of the Convention, and James Madison,
active, resourceful, and really accomplishing; and in addition to
these two: Edmund Randolph, the Governor; George Mason, Washington's
hard-headed and discreet lawyer friend; John Blair, George Wythe, and
James McClurg. From South Carolina went three unusual orators, John
Rutledge, C.C. Pinckney and Charles Pinckney, and Pierce Butler.
Georgia named four mediocre but useful men.
In this gathering of fifty-five persons, the proportion between those
who were preëminent for common sense and those who were remarkable for
special knowledge and talents was very fairly kept. Most of them had
had experience in dealing with men either in local government offices
or in the army. Socially, they came almost without exception from
respectable if not aristocratic families. Of the fifty-five,
twenty-nine were university or college bred, their universities
comprising Oxford, Glasgow, and Edinburgh besides the American
Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia. The two
foremost members, Washington and Franklin, were not college bred.
Among the fifty-five we do not find John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,
who, as I have said, were in Europe on official business. John Jay
also was lacking, because, as it appears, the Anti-Federalists did
not wish him to represent them in the Convention; but his influence
permeated it and the wider public, who later read his unsigned
articles in "The Federalist." Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and Richard
Henry Lee stayed at home. General Nathanael Greene, the favorite
son of Rhode Island, would have been at the Convention but for his
untimely death a few weeks before the preceding Christmas.
Owing to delays the active business of the Convention halted, although
for at least a fortnight the members who had come promptly carried on
unofficial discussions. Washington, being chosen President without a
competitor, presided, with perhaps more than his habitual gravity and
punctilio. The members took their work very seriously. The debates
lasted five or six hours a day, and, as they were continued
consecutively until the autumn, there was ample time to discuss many
subjects. The Convention adopted strict secrecy as its rule, so that
its proceedings were not known by the public nor was any satisfactory
report of them kept and published. At the time there was objection to
this provision, and now, after more than a century and a third, we
must regret that we can never know many points in regard to the
actual give and take of discussion in this the most fateful of all
assemblies. But from Madison's memoranda and reminiscences we can
infer a good deal as to what went on.
The wisdom of keeping the proceedings secret was fully justified. The
framers of the Constitution knew that it was to a large degree a new
experiment, that it would be subjected to all kinds of criticism, but
that it must be judged by its entirety and not by its parts; and that
therefore it must be presented entire. At the outset some of the
members, foreseeing opposition, were for suggesting palliatives and
for sugar-coating. Some of the measures they feared might excite
hostility. To these suggestions Washington made a brief but very noble
remonstrance which seemed deeply to impress his hearers. And no one
could question that it gave the keynote on which he hoped to maintain
the business of the Convention. "It is too probable that no plan we
propose will be adopted," Washington said very gravely. "Perhaps
another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the
people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward
defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest
can repair; the event is in the hand of God."[1] Among the obstacles
which seemed very serious--and many believed they would wreck the
Convention--was the question of slavery. By this time all the northern
part of the country favored its abolition. Even Virginia was on that
side. For practical planters like George Washington knew that it was
the most costly and least productive form of labor. They opposed it on
economic rather than moral grounds. Farther South, however, especially
in South Carolina where the negroes seemed to be the only kind
of laborers for the rice-fields, and in those regions where they
harvested the cotton, the whites insisted that slavery should be
maintained. The contest seemed likely to be very fierce between the
disputants, and then, with true Anglo-Saxon instinct, they sought
for a compromise. The South had regarded slaves as chattels. The
compromise brought forward by Madison consisted in agreeing that five
slaves should count in population as three. By this curious device a
negro was equivalent to three fifths of a white man. Such a compromise
was, of course, illogical, leaving the question whether negroes were
chattels or human beings with even a theoretical civil character
undecided. But many of the members, who saw the illogic quite plainly,
voted for it, being dazzled if not seduced by the thought that it was
a compromise which would stave off an irreconcilable conflict at least
for the present; so Washington, who wished the abolition of slavery,
voted for the compromise along with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the
South Carolinian who regarded slavery as higher than any of the Ten
Commandments.
[Footnote 1: Fiske, _Critical Period_, 250.]
The second compromise referred to the slave trade, which was
particularly defended by South Carolina and Georgia. The raising of
rice and indigo in those States caused an increasing death-rate among
the slaves. The slave trade, which brought many kidnapped slaves from
Africa to those States was needed to replenish the number of slaves
who died. Virginia had not yet become an important breeding-place of
slaves who were sold to planters farther south. The members of the
Convention who wished to put an end to this hideous traffic proposed
that it should be prohibited, and that the enforcement of the
prohibition should be assigned to the General Government. Pinckney,
however, keen to defend his privileged institution and the special
interests of his State, bluntly informed the Convention that if they
voted to abolish the slave trade, South Carolina would regard it as a
polite way of telling her that she was not wanted in the new Union. To
think of attempting to form a Union without South Carolina amazed them
all and made them pliable. Although there was considerable opposition
to giving the General Government control over shipping, this provision
was passed. The Northerners saw in it the germs of a tariff act which
would benefit their manufacturers, and they agreed that the slave
trade should not be interfered with before 1808 and that no export tax
should be authorized.
The third compromise affected representation. The Convention had
already voted that the Congress should consist of two parts, a Senate
and a House of Representatives. By a really clever device each State
sent two members to the Senate, thus equalizing the small and large
States in that branch of the Government. The House, on the other hand,
represented the People, and the number of members elected from each
State corresponded, therefore, to the population.
As I do not attempt to make even a summary of the details of the
Convention, I should pass over many of the other topics which it
considered, often with very heated discussion. The fundamental problem
was how to preserve the rights of the States and at the same time give
the Central Government sufficient power. By devices which actually
worked, and for many years continued to work, this conflict was
smoothed over, although sixty years later the question of State
rights, intertwined with that of slavery, nearly split the Nation in
the War of Secession. There was much question as to the term for
which the President should be elected and whether by the People or by
Congress. Some were for one, two, three, four, ten, and even fifteen
years. Rufus King, grown sarcastic, said: "Better call it twenty--it's
the average reign of princes." Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur
Morris stood for a life service with provision for the President's
removal in case of malfeasance. These gentlemen, in spite of their
influence in the Convention, stirred up a deep-seated enmity to their
plan. Few instincts were more general than that which drew back from
any arrangement which might embolden the monarchists to make a man
President for a ten or fifteen years' term or for life. This could not
fail to encourage those who wished for the equivalent of an hereditary
prince. The Convention soon made it evident that they would have none
but a short term, and they chose, finally, four years. There was a
debate over the question of his election; should he be chosen directly
by the legislature, or by electors? The strong men--Mason,
Rutledge, Roger Sherman, and Strong--favored the former; stronger
men--Washington, Madison, Gerry, and Gouverneur Morris--favored the
latter, and it prevailed. Nevertheless, the Electoral College thus
created soon became, and has remained, as useless as a vermiform
appendix.
Towards the end of the summer the Convention had completed its first
draft of the Constitution; then they handed their work over to a
Committee for Style and Arrangement, composed of W.S. Johnson of North
Carolina, Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Madison, and King. Then, on
September 17th, the Constitution of the United States was formally
published. This document, done "by the Unanimous Consent of the States
present," was sent to the Governor or Legislature of each State with
the understanding that its ratification by nine States would be
required before it was proclaimed the law of the land.
In his diary for Monday, the seventeenth of September, 1787,
Washington makes this entry:
Met in Convention, when the Constitution received the unanimous
consent of 11 States and Colo. Hamilton's from New York [the only
delegate from thence in Convention], and was subscribed to by
every member present, except Governor Randolph and Colo. Mason
from Virginia, & Mr. Gerry from Massachusetts.
The business being thus closed, the members adjourned to the City
Tavern, dined together, and took a cordial leave of each other.
After which I returned to my lodgings, did some business with,
and received the papers from the Secretary of the Convention, and
retired to meditate on the momentous wk. which had been executed,
after not less than five, for a large part of the time six and
sometimes 7 hours sitting every day, [except] Sundays & the ten
days adjournment to give a Comee. [Committee] opportunity & time
to arrange the business for more than four months.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 155.]
One likes to think of Washington presiding over that Convention for
more than four months, seeing one suggestion after another brought
forward and debated until finally disposed of, he saying little except
to enforce the rules of parliamentary debate. No doubt his asides (and
part of his conversation) frankly gave his opinion as to each measure,
because he never disguised his thoughts and he seems to have voted
when the ballots were taken--a practice unusual to modern presiding
officers except in case of a tie. His summing-up of the Constitution,
which he wrote on the day after the adjournment in a hurried letter to
Lafayette, is given briefly in these lines:
It is the result of four months' deliberation. It is now a child
of fortune, to be fostered by some and buffeted by others. What
will be the general opinion, or the reception of it, is not for me
to decide; nor shall I say anything for or against it. If it be
good, I suppose it will work its way; if bad, it will recoil on
the framers.
A month later, in the seclusion of Mount Vernon, he spread the same
news before his friend General Knox:
... The Constitution is now before the judgment-seat. It has,
as was expected, its adversaries and supporters. Which will
preponderate is yet to be decided. The former more than probably
will be most active, as the major part of them will, it is to be
feared, be governed by sinister and self-important motives, to
which everything in their breasts must yield....
The other class, he said, would probably ask itself whether the
Constitution now submitted was not better than the inadequate and
precarious government under which they had been living. If there
were defects, as doubtless there were, did it not provide means for
amending them? Then he concludes with a gleam of optimism:
... Is it not likely that real defects will be as readily
discovered after as before trial? and will not our successors be
as ready to apply the remedy as ourselves, if occasion should
require it? To think otherwise will, in my judgment, be ascribing
more of the amor patriae, more wisdom and more virtue to
ourselves, than I think we deserve.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 173.]
Nearly five months later, February 7, 1788, he wrote Lafayette what we
may consider a more deliberate opinion:
As to my sentiments with respect to the merits of the new
constitution, I will disclose them without reserve, (although by
passing through the post-office they should become known to
all the world,) for in truth I have nothing to conceal on that
subject. It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that
the delegates from so many different States (which States you
know are also different from each other), in their manners,
circumstances, and prejudices, should unite in forming a system of
national government, so little liable to well-founded objections.
Nor am I yet such an enthusiastic, partial, or indiscriminating
admirer of it, as not to perceive it is tinctured with some real
(though not radical) defects. The limits of a letter would not
suffer me to go fully into an examination of them; nor would the
discussion be entertaining or profitable. I therefore forbear to
touch upon it. With regard to the two great points (the pivots
upon which the whole machine must move), my creed is simply,
1st. That the general government is not invested with more powers,
than are indispensably necessary to perform the functions of a
good government; and consequently, that no objection ought to be
made against the quantity of power delegated to it.
2nd. That these powers (as the appointment of all rulers will for
ever arise from, and at short, stated intervals recur to, the free
suffrage of the people), are so distributed among the legislative,
executive, and judicial branches, into which the general
government is arranged, that it can never be in danger of
degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any
other despotic or oppressive form, so long as there shall remain
any virtue in the body of the people.
I would not be understood, my dear Marquis, to speak of
consequences, which may be produced in the revolution of ages, by
corruption of morals, profligacy of manners and listlessness for
the preservation of the natural and unalienable rights of mankind,
nor of the successful usurpations, that may be established at
such an unpropitious juncture upon the ruins of liberty, however
providently guarded and secured; as these are contingencies
against which no human prudence can effectually provide. It will
at least be a recommendation to the proposed constitution, that it
is provided with more checks and barriers against the introduction
of tyranny, and those of a nature less liable to be surmounted,
than any government hitherto instituted among mortals hath
possessed. We are not to expect perfection in this world; but
mankind, in modern times, have apparently made some progress in
the science of government. Should that which is now offered to the
people of America, be found on experiment less perfect than it
can be made, a constitutional door is left open for its
amelioration.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 218-21.]
Thus was accomplished the American Constitution. Gladstone has said of
it in well-known words that, just "as the British Constitution is the
most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long
gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is so
far as I can see the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given
time by the brain and purpose of man."[1] Note that Gladstone does
not name a single or an individual man, which would have been wholly
untrue, for the American Constitution was struck off by the wisdom and
foresight of fifty-five men collectively. There were among them two
or three who might be called transcendent men. It gained its peculiar
value from the fact that it represents the composite of many divergent
opinions and different characters.
[Footnote 1: W.E. Gladstone, _North American Review_, September,
1878.]
Just before the members broke up at their final meeting in
Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin amused them with a characteristic
bit of raillery. On the back of the President's black chair, a
half sun was carved and emblazoned. "During all these weeks," said
Franklin, "I have often wondered whether that sun was rising or
setting. I know now that it is a rising sun."
The first State to ratify the Constitution was Delaware, on December
6, 1787. Pennsylvania followed on December 12th, and New Jersey
on December 18th. Ratifications continued without haste until New
Hampshire, the ninth State, signed on June 21, 1788. Four days later,
Virginia, a very important State, ratified. New York, which had been
Anti-Federalist throughout, joined the majority on July 26th. North
Carolina waited until November 21st, and little Rhode Island, the
last State of all, did not come in until May 29, 1790. But, as the
adherence of nine States sufficed, the affirmative action of New
Hampshire on June 21, 1788, constituted the legal beginning of the
United States of America.
No test could be more winnowing than that to which the Constitution
was subjected during more than eighteen months before its adoption. In
each State, in each section, its friends and enemies discussed it at
meetings and in private gatherings. In New York, for instance, it was
only the persistence of Alexander Hamilton and his unfailing oratory,
unmatched until then in this country, that routed the Anti-Federalists
at Poughkeepsie and caused the victory of the Federalists in the
State. In Virginia, Patrick Henry, who had said on the eve of the
Revolution, "I am not a Virginian, but an American," still held out.
Nevertheless, the more the people of the country discussed the matter,
the surer was their conviction that Washington was right when he
intimated that they must prefer the new Constitution unless they could
show reason for supposing that the anarchy towards which the old order
was swiftly driving them was preferable.
During the autumn of 1788 peaceful electioneering went on throughout
the country. Among the last acts of that thin wraith, the Continental
Congress, was a decree that Presidential Electors should be chosen
on the first Wednesday of January, 1789; that they should vote for
President on the first Wednesday in February, and that the new
Congress should meet on the first Wednesday in March. The State of New
York, where Anti-Federalists swarmed, did not follow the decree--with
the result that that State, which had been behindhand in signing the
Declaration of Independence, failed through the intrigues of the
Anti-Federalists to choose electors, and so had no part in the choice
of Washington as President of the United States. The other ten States
performed their duty on time. They elected Washington President by a
unanimous vote of sixty-nine out of sixty-nine votes cast.
The Vice-Presidential contest was perplexing, there being many
candidates who received only a few votes each. Many persons thought
that it would be fitting that Samuel Adams, the father of the
Revolution, should be chosen to serve with Washington, the father of
his country; but too many remembered that he had been hostile to the
Federalists until almost the end of the preliminary canvass and so
they did not think that he ought to be chosen. The successful man was
John Adams, who had been a robust Patriot from the beginning and had
served honorably and devotedly in every position which he had held
since 1775.
On April 14th Washington's election was notified to him, and on the
16th he bade farewell to Mount Vernon, where he had hoped to pass the
rest of his days in peace and home duties and agriculture, and he rode
in what proved to be a triumphal march to New York. That city was
chosen the capital of the new Nation. Streams of enthusiastic and
joyous citizens met and acclaimed him at every town through which
he passed. At Trenton a party of thirteen young girls decked out
in muslin and wreaths represented the thirteen States, and perhaps
brought to his mind the contrast between that day and thirteen years
before when he crossed the Delaware on boats amid floating cakes of
ice and the pelting of sleet and rain. On April 23d he entered New
York City. A week later at noon a military escort attended him from
his lodging to Federal Hall at the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets,
where a vast crowd awaited him. Washington stood on a balcony. All
could witness the ceremony. The Secretary of the Senate bore a Bible
upon a velvet cushion, and Chancellor Livingston administered the oath
of office. Washington's head was still bowed when Livingston shouted:
"Long live George Washington, President of the United States!" The
crowds took up the cheer, which spread to many parts of the city and
was repeated in all parts of the United States.