FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERACY
Scarcely a failure of the Confederation Government can be found which
does not lead in the last analysis to the financial situation both
during and following the war. Suddenly plunged into the Revolutionary
War, drained of ready money by the colonial system, possessed of no
mines, mints, nor any resource for securing a medium of exchange except
an undependable paper promise to pay, the people of the United States
emerged from the war broken in purse and overwhelmed with debt.
According to Jefferson's estimate made at the time, they owed at least
sixty-eight millions of dollars. To this fruit of the war he added the
four hundred millions of paper money issued by the Federal and State
Governments, estimated, in its depreciated condition, at about
seventy-two millions more of debt. The ragged Continental soldiers,
frequently reduced to seven-tenths of a pound rations, their arrearages
of wages paid in Continental currency worth four pence on the dollar,
were now about to be discharged to return to their needy families
carrying only paper promises of the United States to pay. These
certificates could be disposed of only to brokers and that at ruinous
rates. What was to become of a veteran who was disabled? Congress had
already authorised the several States to look up needy soldiers of the
Continental service and pay them five dollars a month, such sums to
be deducted from the quotas assessed on the several States to meet the
general expenses. Seven States only had complied, and in these the
lists of needy ex-soldiers had been incompletely compiled.
Some soldiers held certificates entitling them to bounty lands in the
back country under the acts of 1776 and 1780, but had no means of
journeying thither. Small wonder that mutiny threatened.
"Can you consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution," asked the
insurrectionary Newburg addresses, the work of those unwilling to see
the army disbanded before being assured of receiving justice, "and,
retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt?
If you can--go--and carry with you the jest of Tories and the scorn of
Whigs--the ridicule and, what is worse, the pity of the world. Go--starve
--and be forgotten."
Eulogy has exhausted itself in praise of these Revolutionary veterans,
who eventually permitted their ranks to be disbanded, instead of joining
themselves together illegally to obtain justice, or subsisting
themselves upon the country at large. Praise has not been withheld
from their general, the Virginia soldier-farmer, who, instead of taking
advantage of the dissatisfaction to put himself at the head of an
insurrectionary force, chose rather to quiet rebellion and to inspire
confidence by his hopefulness.
No sooner had the war ceased and the army melted away, than it was
found that peace had its dangers no less than war. Released from the
menace of war, the States felt no necessity for paying their respective
quotas of expenses to the Central Government, as they had done in
varying degrees since the beginning of hostilities. The year following
the peace, they paid less than a million and a half of the eleven
million asked in previous assessments. Three States, it was claimed,
had paid comparatively nothing. Rhode Island and New Jersey, as if to
add insult to injury, attempted to pay their quotas in their paper
money, which was not received at par outside the States. Congress had
no power of coercion. According to the second of the Articles, each
State in the Confederation retained its sovereignty, freedom, and
independence. Congress could only make impotent appeals. Governor
Randolph, of Virginia, pictured the Congress as saying to his State:
"May it please your high mightinesses of Virginia to pay your just
proportionate quota of the national debt; we humbly supplicate that
it may please you to comply with your federal duties. We implore, we
beg your obedience."
[Illustration: A PETITION FROM CONGRESS TO THE STATES. Many such appeals
were issued at different times, begging the States in the Confederation
to give more power to the Central Government.]
The financial confusion was increased because of the lack of a
circulating medium. A mongrel collection of coins could be found,
passing at varying rates in the different States--English pounds,
shillings and pence, Spanish dollars, joes, half-joes, pistoles and
moidores, French guineas, carolins and chequins--but no United States
coins. Even this money was soon drawn off to Europe, because British
exporters demanded cash until the Revolutionary debts had been settled.
That this cash would return to the States was unlikely if one judged
from the first year of the peace, during which the United States
purchased 1,700,000 pounds worth of goods in England and sent in return
only 700,000 worth. In order to secure some kind of money to conduct
business, seven of the States began to issue paper money. The troubles
arising from a depreciated paper during the Revolution were neither
ignored nor forgotten; but no other method presented itself. Congress
had power to issue only "bills on the credit of the United States,"
which were not likely to be more acceptable than other kinds of paper.
The hopelessness of managing a bankrupt nation, no doubt, was largely
responsible for the deterioration which the membership of Congress
suffered. Names prominent at the inception of the rebellion had
disappeared from the rolls, and mediocrity ruled. The members personally
experienced the financial stringency in the failure of their State
Legislatures to pay their salaries. Many were dependent upon the
patriotic purse of Haym Salomon, "a Jew broker of Philadelphia," as
Madison termed him. There should have been a higher standard of
membership in the Confederation Congress than in later times, because
it comprised not only the usual legislative functions of the nation,
but the executive and judicial as well. The machinery itself was largely
to blame. Like many of the devices, that governing the Congress was
too strongly set against centralisation to allow free play of the
parts. No delegate, for instance, was allowed to serve more than three
years out of any six lest his influence grow too great or he become
unduly attached to the central power. It frequently happened that good
men were thus cast out of service just when their experience made them
valuable. Certain States forbade a man to serve two consecutive terms
in Congress. Madison was debarred by such a provision in 1784.
Delegates were appointed by the State Legislatures usually for a term of
one year to begin with the session on the first Monday of the following
November. The term would frequently expire when the State Legislature was
not in session, and the State would thus go unrepresented for some time.
If a delegate pleaded the emergency of the case and asked that the rule be
waived, as those from Rhode Island did at one time, Congress refused to
sanction such a palpable infraction of the Articles. Cases actually
occurred where delegates elect did not arrive at the seat of Government
until after the expiration of their term of appointment.
Absenteeism was the drag paramount upon Congressional action. No State
could be represented by less than two members and retain its power of
voting. If only one representative were present, he had no vote. If
only two were present, they might differ, in which case the State was
counted as "divided," and the vote was lost. Congress once sent a plea
to the States urging the necessity of having more than two delegates
present. It showed that if each State had only two representatives in
Congress, five out of the twenty-six delegates, being only one-fifth,
could negative any vote requiring the consent of nine States. Eleven
States were represented at the time, nine by two delegates only, and
thus it was possible, continued the report, for three men out of the
twenty-five, being only one-eighth, to block all action. If three
attended from each State, it would require ten, or one-third of the
whole, to have as much power.
The derelictness in attendance on some occasions was humiliating and
even alarming. When Washington appeared at Annapolis to resign his
commission as commander-in-chief, only seven States were represented
by the least required number. He faced twenty-one delegates instead
of the ninety-one from the thirteen States, who should have graced
this memorable occasion. The definitive treaty of peace lay on the
table at the time. Nine States were required by the Articles to be
present when a treaty was ratified. Unless ratified within six months
after it had been signed in Paris, it would be null and void. More
than half the precious time had already elapsed. With the greatest
difficulty, the required number was secured. Four years later, there
was no quorum for a period of three months, the representation at times
falling to two States. During the first eleven months of the year 1788,
a quorum was present only 129 days. Much of this delinquency was due
to the expense of maintaining the delegates which fell upon the
individual States. To make the burden as light as possible, two
delegates only were commonly sent. They were likely to disagree.
Manifestly the State in which the Congress sat avoided this difficulty,
because it could maintain a larger number of delegates at less expense.
To avoid this draft upon the needy treasuries, some of the States
adopted the expedient of choosing as representative a resident of the
city wherein was located for the moment the seat of government, or
some man who had the means and the willingness to serve without pay.
During quite a long period, Delaware was represented by three delegates,
only one of whom was a resident of the State. This was in accord with
the custom of British representation. It is interesting to imagine the
results if it had ever become fixed in the United States.
It may be truly said that the framers of the Articles could not have
expected a successful continuous sitting of so large a body of men.
They had not so planned it. The Articles provided that a Committee of
States could be appointed at any time, whenever the Congress as a whole
might wish to adjourn, by the delegates from each State naming one of
their number to serve in this capacity. This was the method of forming
a "grand committee" on any important business in Congress. The attempt
to give over national affairs to a Committee of States was made in the
spring of 1784, after the peace. One trial of the expedient was
sufficient. Only eleven States were represented at the time. From
these, eleven delegates were selected. According to Monroe, "their
powers are confined so that no injury can be effected." He referred
to the manner in which the Articles restricted the Committee. The
eleven celebrated the beginning of their administration by adjourning
for three weeks, "for the benefit of the health of the members." At
the end of this vacation, nearly two weeks were consumed in getting
nine of the Committee together. A month of regular sessions followed,
when suddenly the ever-present dissension concerning the place of
meeting broke out. The Southern members of the committee wished to
remain at Annapolis. The Northern members wished to adjourn to the
cooler climate of New Jersey.
The strife increased until, at the end of two months, the members from
New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New Jersey withdrew. Being left
without a quorum, the remaining members signed a manifesto, placing
the blame on the seceders and departed for their several homes. Franklin
compared the action of the Committee to two lighthouse keepers who
quarrelled about the task of filling the lamp until the light went
out. "There will be an entire interregnum of the federal government
for some time against the intention of Congress, I apprehend, as well
as against every rule of decorum," wrote the indignant Madison. During
this interregnum, a chief clerk was acting as Secretary of Foreign
Affairs and General Knox was serving as Secretary of War. They were
the only visible parts of the National Government. Madison at first
thought that the Committee of States should be censured when Congress
reassembled, but, recognising discretion as the better part, suggested
that "we had also better keep this affair out of sight." It was so
done. The complete failure of this Committee of States scheme as an
executive makeshift was in the end fortunate since it demonstrated
clearly the need of a trustworthy and permanent head to the General
Government. If it had been even a partial success, it might have been
tried again and correction thereby delayed.
The provincialism of the day was well illustrated in the strife of the
Committee over the place of sitting. A similar controversy characterised
well-nigh the entire life of the Congress. Never a session could close
or an adjournment be had without this Banquo's ghost appearing. It was
feared that the State in which Congress met would in some way get an
undue influence and ascendency. At one time, to satisfy sectional
jealousy, it was compelled to provide two places of meeting, Annapolis
and Philadelphia, by turns. Cities were even projected in the country far
removed from State capital influence. In this unsettled condition, the
Congress wandered from place to place with insufficient accommodation. Van
Berckel, arriving as minister from Holland, could find no house for rent
at Princeton and was obliged to live at a tavern in Philadelphia. He
contrasted his reception with that given by his Government to John Adams a
few years previously. He reported that he hoped in time to locate the new
Government and present his credentials. "Vagabondising from one paltry
village to another," as Reed, one of their number, put it, the members
became a legitimate prey of boarding-house keepers and stablemen. Small
wonder that service in the State Governments was considered not only more
dignified, but more agreeable in these days of paramount State rights.
[Illustration: SIGNATURES TO AN ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF PRINCETON,
NEW JERSEY.]
That the capital of the United States to-day occupies a territory
independent of a State is the result of sad experience in these early
days. When Congress, in 1783, was driven from Philadelphia by some
rebellious State troops, who threatened force unless they received
their back pay, the village of Princeton was the refuge to which the
members fled. Some faithful Continental troops stationed there would
protect them. The citizens of the village, grateful for this gift of
the gods, prepared a list of families and the number of guests each
could accommodate. They also adopted a long set of resolutions,
deprecating the "gross indignities" offered to the Congress at
Philadelphia, and pledging with the utmost cheerfulness their lives
and fortunes to the Government of the United States. They promised to
protect Congress "in whatever way our services may be required, whether
in resisting Foreign Invasion or in quelling intestine Tumults." That
the National Government of the United States of America should be
offered protection by a small New Jersey village is indicative of the
progress which nationality had thus far made. Sentiment would in time
demand a permanent, independent home. Notwithstanding the prevalent
financial depression, small tendency toward economy was manifest among
the people or its officials. As long as credit held out, extravagance
would prevail. The war had been successfully closed, political freedom
had been won, and individual ease and affluence presumably secured.
Short-sighted fashion viewed her immediate gratification as the
concomitant of independence. Even the members of Congress were not
exempt from temptation. A Rhode Island delegate reported from Congress
sitting at Annapolis to the governor of his State:
"The horse races were attended here the week before last, and are all
over, as are also the balls, routs, fandangoes, and plays. I assure you
there has been a merry Winter in this place, according, at least, to
accounts for I have seen but little of their diversions. I did not even
look upon the horse races, although they were to be seen from the
windows in the back room of the State House: nor have I attended a
single play, although the theatre has been open twice a week the chief
part of the Winter, and the playhouse adjoins the house where I lodge."
Despite this virtuous conduct he did not escape a challenge sent by
a fellow-delegate from North Carolina and another from a Virginia
delegate. He promptly laid both communications before Congress and was
further ostracised.
The Congress was a close corporation. The public was not admitted to
its sessions, the debates were never published, and the proceedings
rarely appeared in the public prints. Its adjournment of both time and
place was so frequent and the beginning of new sessions so delayed
that news concerning it rarely found a place in the newspapers. This
was in marked contrast with its early history, when the assembling of
delegates at Philadelphia was described in great detail for those days.
Internal dissensions marked the sessions, as indicated by the experience
of Howell, of Rhode Island, described by himself above. Members bore
their obligations lightly. It was said that at one time when a
delegation of Indians arrived at Princeton to make a treaty, a member
left for Philadelphia to be married, thus breaking the quorum, and
almost precipitating an Indian war.
It is worthy of note that this experience with an executive-legislative-
judicial combination of National Government was sufficient to last for
all time. Amidst the many changes suggested for the Constitution of
the United States since it has been in effect, none has ever been
proposed which would hand over the powers of the president to a
Congress. Even Jefferson, alarmed by the growth of the executive
authority before 1800, never suggested a return to the method whereby
the whole administration was at the mercy of a quorum of Congress. The
Confederate States in 1861, exasperated into secession by the abuse
of the central power, retained the tripartite form in the Government
which they planned. Posterity learns by reading the lessons of history.
In the light of a later survey, one may discover many additional defects
in the ill-devised Articles of Confederation. Madison once summed up
their vices in the failure of the States to comply with the
constitutional requirements, in State encroachments of Federal
authority, in State violations of national law and treaties, in States
trespassing on the rights of each other, in want of concerted action,
in a lack of national guarantee against internal violence, in a want
of coercive power in the National Government and the omission of the
ratification of the Articles by the people. To these he added the
multiplicity, the mutability, and the injustice of many of the State
laws. Jefferson, separated by his residence at the court of France
from actual contact with the worst days of the Confederation, thought
the remaining States had a right to coerce a recalcitrant member "by
a naval force, as being easy, less dangerous to liberty, and less
likely to produce bloodshed." Yet a suggestion in 1781 for an amendment,
giving power to Congress to employ force in compelling States to obey
the Articles, met with no favour.
Monroe thought that the Articles were practicable and, with a few
alterations, the best plan that could be devised. Hamilton, on the
contrary, regarded them as hopeless. Even before they were adopted,
he predicted a speedy failure. They were "neither fit for war nor
peace," he declared. "They show chiefly a want of power in Congress."
Washington attributed the defects made in framing the Government to
too good an opinion of human nature. "Experience has taught us," he
said, "that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the
best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a
coercive power." He declared that requisitions made upon the States
by the central power became a perfect nullity when thirteen sovereign,
independent, disunited States were in the habit of discussing and
refusing compliance with them at their option.
"To vest legislative, judicial and executive powers in one and the same
body of men and that, too, in a body daily changing its members can
never three great departments of sovereignty should be for ever
separated and so distributed as to serve as checks on each other."
He would even go farther in giving power to the Central Government.
"As to the separate Legislatures, I would have them considered with
relation to the Confederacy in the same light in which counties stand
to the State of which they are parts, viz., merely as districts to
facilitate the purposes of domestic order and good government." Hamilton
shared with Jay a willingness to take such liberties with local rights
to secure a more effective National Government.
Such sentiment among public men should have brought about a speedy
amendment of the defective parts of the Articles. But, as Washington
once said, the people were not yet sufficiently misled. Attempt after
attempt was made to secure the necessary unanimous consent to an
amendment. Congress begged the States to give over to it the collection
of an impost or duty for a limited number of years or for a limited
per cent.; to give to it authority to regulate foreign vessels in
American ports; and to refrain from levying discriminating duties among
themselves. The unanimous consent required by the Articles to make any
amendment blocked these and all other proposed reforms. Sometimes
twelve States would agree, but before the thirteenth could be won over,
another would withdraw its consent. On one occasion, when Rhode Island
alone held out, her delegates in Congress wrote to the governor of the
State that their "reasonable and firm stand against the all-grasping
hand of power in the case of duties had saved the United States!"
Connecticut protested that such an addition to the functions of Congress
as the collection of an impost would at one stroke vest that body with
the power of the sword and the purse, and leave nothing of the
individual States but an empty name. Others argued that with 320 million
acres of land, which would bring an average of at least one dollar an
acre, the General Government needed no other source of revenue.
Unanimous consent to an amendment could never be secured. This was the
lesson taught by the attempts.
Aside from the difficulties arising from the defects of the
Confederation experiment, the disorders in the national body were
simply reflections of the turbulent spirit prevalent at the time.
Suddenly emerged from the restraining hand of a mother country,
misinterpreting the meaning of independence, confounding liberty with
license, having lost the law-abiding sense in the treatment of the
Tories, grown only too accustomed to the pleasures of mob law, the
people were passing through the reassembling period which always follows
a civil war. Peace is the normal condition of a people; war is the
abnormal. Restraint, taxation, and obedience, it was supposed, had
passed away with royalty and kingly prerogative. "Taxes and relaxed
government agree but ill," observed the laconic Jay. From South
Carolina, Edward Rutledge wrote to him, "It is really very curious to
observe how the people of this world are made the dupes of a word.
'Liberty' is the motto; every attempt to restrain licentiousness or
give efficacy to government is charged audaciously on the real advocates
of freedom as an attack on liberty."
Visionists indulged their hopes of universal happiness. The rebellion
which Captain Daniel Shays, officer in the late Revolutionary army,
headed in Massachusetts was aimed directly at closing the courts and
preventing the issuing of writs to sell mortgaged farms. But Knox wrote
Washington that the creed of the insurgents was that the property of
the United States had been saved from Britain by the exertions of all
the people and therefore ought to be the common property of all; and
that they were determined to annihilate all debts, public and private,
and to have agrarian laws, which could be easily effected by the means
of unfunded paper money; and that this money should be a legal tender
in all cases whatever. The madness had spread to New Hampshire,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island, according to Knox, embracing a total
of twelve or fifteen thousand "desperate and unprincipled men."
Wild-eyed enthusiasts in Rhode Island secured the passage of an
"iron-clad oath" to the effect that paper money was as good as gold
or silver coin--"compelling people to embrace the doctrine of political
transubstantiation of paper into gold and silver," as Jay put it. The
militia had to be called out in New Hampshire to disperse a mob
besieging the State Legislature at Exeter. "The mob clamoured," said
a contemporary, "some for paper money, some equal distribution of
property, some annihilation of debts, some rebate of all taxes, and
all clamoured against law and government." The disorder spread to
Virginia. "In several counties the prisons and court houses and clerks'
offices have been wilfully burnt. In Green Briar, the course of justice
has been mutinously stopped and associations are entered into against
the payment of taxes," wrote Madison to Jefferson in France.
Neither those who caused these troubles, nor those who wept over them,
as did Mrs. John Adams in France when news of Shays's Rebellion reached
her, could foresee the blessings which would follow; that these eight
years of individualism were to form an argument for nationalism to be
handed down by intuition to future generations. At the time it seemed
that nothing but a miracle could save the Union. "Our affairs seem to
lead to some crisis, some revolution--something I cannot foresee or
conjecture--I am uneasy and apprehensive; more so than during the war."
Jay was never given to exaggeration of thought or expression; he must
have been deeply impressed to write those words to Washington. "What
a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable
of governing ourselves," replied the equally conservative farmer of
Mt. Vernon, "and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty
are merely ideal and fallacious." To Jefferson in France, Washington
confessed that the General Government, if it could be called a
government, was shaken to its foundation, and that unless a remedy
were soon applied anarchy would inevitably ensue. "The question whether
it be possible and worth while to preserve the union of the States
must be speedily decided some way or other." said Madison. "If some
strong props are not applied, it will quickly tumble to the ground."
He thought he detected a propensity to return to monarchy in some
leading minds; but he thought that "the bulk of the people would
probably prefer the lesser evil of a partition of the union into three
more practicable and energetic governments." Monroe, always inclined
to be suspicious of the Northern section, was "certain" that conferences
were held in New York between New Englanders and New Yorkers upon the
subject of the separation of the States east of the Hudson and their
erection into a separate government.
Franklin, appearing in the midst of these disorders from his nine
years' residence in France, felt the necessity of counteracting the
despairing feeling among the friends of America in Europe and of
checking the rejoicing among her enemies. He, therefore, filled his
letters with descriptions of American prosperity, crops, prices, and
happiness. "In short," he wrote, "all among us may be happy, who have
happy dispositions, such being necessary to happiness even in Paradise."
At the same time, acting in his new station as president of the State
of Pennsylvania, he was endeavouring to arrest "a number of disorderly
people" who had collected near the line separating Pennsylvania and
New York. "They are impatient of regular government," he wrote in
seeking the co-operation of the governor of New York, "and seize upon
and presume to dispose of lands contrary to and in defiance of the
laws. Their number is recruited daily by vagabonds from all quarters."
The disorder arose from the long-standing controversy between
Pennsylvania and Connecticut over possession of the Wyoming valley--a
dispute which the Federal Government had been unable to settle.
The general public had long since lost respect for the National
Government and its Congress. Even Washington referred to it as the
half-starved, limping Government, that appears always moving upon
crutches and tottering at every step. The chief difficulty was not to
ascertain the remedies needed, but how to apply them. As early as 1780,
Hamilton had thought Congress had the right to reassume the powers of
sovereignty it had appropriated with the silent consent of the States
during the pressing times of the war; or, if the application must be
external, that the people might meet in a convention of delegates
empowered and instructed to conclude a new and effective federation.
Few were ready to go as far as the impetuous Hamilton in thus virtually
overthrowing the "Articles of perpetual union" which were legally
binding although inefficient. To amend them according to their own
provisions would be legitimate if it could be accomplished.
[Illustration: SIGNATURES OF DELEGATES TO ANNAPOLIS CONVENTION.
Hamilton, Reed, Dickinson, Randolph, and Madison were the most prominent
members of this abortive meeting, which led eventually to the
Philadelphia Convention.]
This was considered by the majority of people the proper method; but
when the experiment was tried at Annapolis in 1786 of a meeting of
commissioners to devise a uniform regulation of trade and to report
such an amendment to their States for ratification, only twelve
delegates could be gotten together representing five States. Even the
State of Maryland, in which the meeting was held, failed to send a
representation. Each of the delinquent States had an excuse. The
commissioners who did go to Annapolis, headed by Hamilton, Dickinson,
and Madison, could only issue an appeal for another meeting of delegates
from the several States the following year in the more central city
of Philadelphia, empowered to consider not only the commercial troubles
but to "devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary
to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the
exigencies of the Union."
It can scarcely be said that the failure at Annapolis was either a
surprise or a disappointment, because few had expected success. "The
expedient is no doubt liable to objections," said Madison, one of the
Virginia delegates, "and will probably miscarry. I think, however, it
is better than nothing." The object was unfortunately limited to
considering the commercial friction between the States and to regulating
their foreign relations. The conviction had become general that only
an extended amendment of the frame of National Government could correct
the difficulties in the commercial functions and in many other needed
particulars. The thought that the proposed convention, if the
proposition should be generally taken up, would include such a revision
of the Articles of Confederation, served also to soften the blow of
the Annapolis failure.