NATIONAL CENTRALISATION
No one can accuse Hamilton of failing to take advantage of these
formative years in giving the new Government a strong bias toward
centralisation. Although opposed by Jefferson, Madison, and Richard
Henry Lee, Hamilton had the assistance of Knox, and frequently of
Randolph, in the Cabinet, as well as Fisher Ames and others in Congress.
He also possessed the esteem and confidence of the President, and the
advantage which the commercial environment of New York as well as the
influence of the Schuyler family alliance could give him.
Among his numerous suggestions to Congress for cancelling eventually
the eighty million dollars of the national debt, to which business men
of the Northern States were subscribing freely, was an excise. Although
this debt, the "Hamiltonian debt," as the Jeffersonians called it, was
an iniquitous burden saddled upon the common people, an excise was to
them a most offensive way of meeting it. Being for the most part
agriculturists and country people, accustomed in regions far from
markets to manufacture their grain into spirits, they were not likely
to be persuaded that the consumer pays the tax in the end. It was a
direct tax, and, although constitutional, in form the most obvious and
objectionable. To have an inspector prying into your private affairs
in this manner was in ill-accord with the freedom for which America
stood. To put a tax on a still and its product was to them equivalent
to taxing their hand-mills and the meal or flour thus produced.
Having secured the passage of the excise tax as a permanent source of
income, Hamilton turned to meet the most pressing national obligations.
To pay the interest on the foreign debt, he had arranged a loan from
Holland. To provide money for circulation at home he revived the
oft-repeated project of a national mint, which should coin gold, silver,
and copper coins of a decimal denomination, the gold bearing a ratio
to the silver of one grain to fifteen grains. This ratio he arrived
at by making a computation of the respective amounts of these two
metals available in the world. It is interesting to note that the ratio
has changed but little in a century. Hamilton also drew up an exhaustive
report on the sources and conditions of American manufactures, with
a strong plea for the encouragement, by a protective tariff, of such
industries as had already been established.
The influence of Hamilton and the Federalist majority in both branches
of Congress made possible the adoption of these so-called "Hamilton
measures" as rapidly as they were suggested by him. They have been
praised, and justly praised, because they restored the public credit
of the National Government both at home and abroad. The receipts for
the first time met the expenditures. Never before had the national
resources been so adequately provided and so judiciously administered.
Hamilton's financial measures must also be praised because they first
demonstrated the efficiency of the new Government over the old form.
They made the first serious inroads on the affection which the people
had uniformly bestowed upon the individual States. They mark great
steps toward the centralisation of the National Government at a time
when they were most needed.
Nor did Hamilton, in his great constructive statesmanship, neglect the
details of his department, although a complete organisation awaited
the painstaking Gallatin a few years later. The States were divided
into fifty-nine collection districts regardless of State lines except
as they suited the purpose. Each district was supplied with all the
machinery necessary for collecting the duties levied by Congress from
time to time. Since the Treasury Department was so closely connected
with foreign commerce, Congress placed under its control all
lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers, as soon as they might
be ceded by the individual States in which they were located and which
had constructed them. At the time, no other disposition was possible;
but few foresaw the resulting effect upon the unification of the States.
By another act, the Treasury Department was given charge of the
registration and clearing of vessels. A duty of six cents a ton was
placed upon the carrying capacity of American vessels, and fifty cents
a ton upon foreign vessels. The fondness for discriminating in favour
of home interests was manifested so early and in so many different
directions that it could scarcely have been generic; it must have been
absorbed in the mother's milk of British colonialism in the eighteenth
century.
The necessity for these measures was so manifest, and the popularity
and the novelty of the new Government at first so attractive, that
little resistance was met with in passing them and still less in
enforcing them. Resistance to national measures and neglect of national
duty were no longer a menace to national existence, because the nation
now possessed the power of compulsion in a Federal judiciary. Upon the
day named in the judiciary act, the first Monday in February, 1790,
the Supreme Court held its initial meeting in the court-room of the
New York Exchange, which had been prepared for its use. According to
the newspapers "the jury from the district court attended; some of the
members of Congress, and a number of respectable citizens also." Several
meetings of the Supreme and district courts were held at this session,
a seal was adopted by the former, and several attorneys admitted to
practice before it; but there were no cases to be heard. The term
closed with a banquet given by the grand jury of the district court
to the justices and officers of both courts at Fraunce's Tavern in
Cortland Street. So gradually did appellate and original cases find
their way into the Supreme Court that three sessions were held before
it had a case on its docket. The legislative function of government
was, at that time, the most important and formed the basis of popular
hope. Time has gradually transferred this dignity and trust to the
judiciary department, whilst the legislative--national, State, and
municipal alike--has lost in public confidence and esteem.
The Federal judiciary, as the most novel feature, was apt, in making
a place for itself, to come into conflict with older agencies. Within
three years it gave a hearing to a citizen of South Carolina, who had
sued the sovereign State of Georgia on a money claim for damages.
Although the Constitution implicitly gave jurisdiction to the Supreme
Court over controversies between a State and citizens of another State,
the Legislature of South Carolina refused to pay attention to the suit,
insisting that the retained sovereignty of the State could not be
impaired by a clause of the Constitution. By four to one, the justices
of the Supreme Court held that South Carolina, by the act of entering
the Federal Union, was bound by all provisions of the Constitution.
Justice Wilson, of Pennsylvania, thought the question involved even
a higher point--do the people of the United States form a nation? Many
commentators on the Constitution before its adoption, including even
Hamilton himself, in commenting on this clause had assured the people
that it was not rational to suppose a sovereign State could be dragged
before the national tribunal. Yet it had been done within three years
after being put in force.
It is indicative of the prevalence of State-sovereignty feeling at the
time to note the general alarm caused by this decision. An eleventh
amendment to the Constitution, forbidding a State to be sued before
the Federal courts by non-residents, immediately passed the Senate by
a vote of twenty-three to two and the House by eighty-one to nine. It
was ratified by every State except New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Tennessee. The speed with which this remedy was applied gave confidence
in amendments for the future. But the number of amendments must be
endless if each aggression of the judiciary was to be met in this
manner.
The last toast at the judiciary banquet of 1790 was a wish that the
convention of Rhode Island, called for the early spring, would "soon
introduce the stray sister to her station in the happy national family
of America." Rhode Island represented the extreme of selfishness
resulting from State control of commerce. Through her ports passed not
only her own imports and products, but those of the adjacent parts of
Connecticut and Massachusetts. This geographical situation of the State
magnified her commercial interests, and made her unwilling to surrender
them to the Union. The country people were equally wedded to paper
money, and opposed every suggestion of giving over the right of issuing
money exclusively to the Central Government. The State fell into
disrepute. "Rhode Island can be relied upon for nothing that is good,"
said Madison in his despair. "In rebellion against integrity, plundering
all the world by her paper money, and notorious for her uniform
opposition to every federal duty," was the character given her by
Governor Randolph, of Virginia, when by popular vote she refused to
come into the Union under the Constitution. Fables were composed which
described twelve people desirous of building a new house and hanging
a recalcitrant thirteenth man by his garter to a limb near his cabin.
A "Southern planter" was reported to have offered the services of his
slaves to aid in shovelling Rhode Island into the sea.
North Carolina had also been late in assenting, but simply because her
first convention was turned from immediate ratification by the temporary
delusion of holding another constitutional convention to incorporate
the proposed amendments in the Constitution. The general sentiment of
the country had pronounced against running the risk of another
convention which was unlikely to produce anything more acceptable.
Hence the favourable action of North Carolina was simply a question
of time necessary to call another convention. This State was doubly
assured to the Federalists after favourable action in Virginia, to
which she was closely bound by family ties. The hope was well grounded,
for the first act, passed by the second session of the new Congress,
in the autumn of 1789, was to extend the impost, tonnage, and other
acts of the first session over North Carolina, whose ratification,
without amendments, reached New York during the adjournment. Rhode
Island was now the only recalcitrant. She still held out for
individualism and complete sovereignty. Had Congress a right or the
power to coerce her into the Union? Whatever action Congress might
take was destined to become important in the later discussions upon
the right of a State to withdraw from the partnership now being formed.
Fortunately, the opinion of the House upon this point is beyond
question. In the middle of the first session a motion made by a member
from New York to take up the case of the rebellious Rhode Island had
been voted down because it threatened a "delicate situation" for the
House and was best left to time and the State itself. Although the
recalcitrant sister was a maritime State, "situated in the most
convenient manner for the purpose of smuggling and defrauding our
revenue," nevertheless, as Madison said, "it would be improper to
express a desire on an occasion when a free agency ought to be employed,
which would carry with it all the force of a command." One searches
equally in vain through the correspondence of the men at the head of
government for suggestions of coercion. President Washington, although
exasperated to a point where his Virginia temper declared that the
majority of the people of Rhode Island had bid adieu to every principle
of honour, common-sense, and decency, refused to send any message to
the friends of the Constitution in that State other than his hopes
that the Legislature would call a convention.
Nevertheless, it was impossible long to continue such an anomalous
thing as a foreign State surrounded by the United States. The governor
of Rhode Island had become alarmed and early sent to the President and
Congress of the "eleven United States of America" assurance of the
steadfast adherence of his State to the principles of the Confederation
formed in the hour of danger, and begged that they should not be
considered altogether as foreigners. Although Rhode Island was speaking
a past language in such words, Congress by special enactment relieved
her from all duties except on rum, loaf-sugar, and chocolate until
January, 1790. When that time arrived, the governor pleaded for a
renewal of the privilege, stating that the Legislature had just called
a convention to reconsider the Constitution. Waiting several months
longer, the Senate passed a bill by a vote of thirteen to eight to
treat the goods of Rhode Island as if coming from a foreign country
and to demand from her a sum of money to be credited to her account
with the Union. In the midst of the consideration of this measure by
the House, further action was stopped by the arrival of the official
ratification of the Constitution by Rhode Island in a regular convention
at Newport by the narrow majority of two votes. "This event," wrote
Washington to one of his European correspondents, "will enable us to
make a fair experiment of a Constitution which was framed solely with
a view to promote the happiness of a people. Its effects have hitherto
equalled the expectations of its most sanguine friends." Rhode Island
escaped being coerced into the Union by an act of Congress; but she
was coerced by the higher law of self-preservation. Surrounded by
States in the Union, cut off from the natural channels of trade with
them, she must have perished of commercial starvation in the growing
trade of the nation, if she had been subjected to the discriminations
which Congress placed on the commerce of foreign nations.
The adoption of an efficient government and the institution of a central
control produced an immediate effect on commerce. Interstate strife
ceased. In eighteen months more than twenty million dollars' worth of
goods had gone abroad. Great Britain and her dependencies bought almost
one-half these American products and produce, with France a second.
Then came Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Denmark, Africa,
the East Indies, and Sweden in decreasing order. Even the northwest
coast of North America purchased some ten thousand dollars' worth of
goods from the new republic. Tobacco, rice, flour, wheat, and corn
were the chief articles of export. Manufactured articles were of minor
value. The total amount of iron sent out was little over three thousand
tons, as against three hundred thousand tons exported in 1900. Furniture
to the value of $8351 went abroad, of which $30 worth went to Spain
and the remainder to the West Indies.
During this same first fiscal year under the new Government, dutiable
goods to the amount of nearly seventy-four million dollars came into
the various ports of the United States. Brown sugar from the French
West Indies led the list, molasses from the same source ranking second.
Tarred cordage from England came next, with coffee from the French
West Indies, dried fish from Canada, distilled spirits from the British
West Indies, in order. This revival of trade did much to quiet the
predictions of those who still imagined the new Government must fail.
The second year gave them still less ground to stand on. It showed
that the United States custom-houses had collected over three million
dollars on imported goods, the largest collections being in the State
of Pennsylvania, with New York second, and Massachusetts third. This
was a larger sum than had been realised from all taxable sources for
the eight years preceding the Constitution government. Nearly $150,000
had been realised from charging tonnage upon vessels entering and
leaving American ports. The future of the finances of the National
Government was assured. Those who had so long begged that the power
of collecting duties might be given to it now felt their judgment
vindicated. The obligation incurred to France for loans and supplies
amounting to over ten million dollars, a debt of honour especially
pressing, was being paid so rapidly that by 1795 the entire balance
was advanced and the obligation cancelled.
Prospects brightened for the future. "I sincerely rejoice in the
prosperity of your country," wrote Hartley, from London, to Jay, with
whom he had negotiated the peace of 1783. "You must not expect to find
it otherwise than checkered with good and ill; such is the lot of human
life. To be as happy as any people in the world is a lot you must not
expect to exceed." In reply Jay said: "Whether the United States will
be more or less happy than other nations, God only knows; I am inclined
to think they will be, because in my opinion more light and knowledge
are diffused through the mass of the people of this country than any
other." Brissot de Warville, a French traveller, was impressed by the
American vessels venturing to the North-west coast for furs and peltry.
Thinking that point not far from the head of the Mississippi, he
predicted that Americans would soon find a short intracontinental way
to the Pacific. He also predicted that these traders would soon open
a new route between the Atlantic and the Pacific by the lake of
Nicaragua. "No sea is impenetrable," he said, "to the navigating genius
of the Americans. You see their flag everywhere displayed; you see
them exploring all islands, studying their wants, and returning to
supply them."
External commerce was not allowed to monopolise the attention of the
Americans, now at peace with the world and themselves. The Constitution
gave to the Central Government the exercise and care of several
functions heretofore left to the States. As rapidly as possible, a
mint was established to produce gold, silver, and copper coins. Laws
punishing the counterfeiting of the coin were passed. The existing
military system was recognised and the postal establishment with the
routes and offices of the previous year adopted. The pensions paid to
invalided veterans of the wars by the States were assumed by the nation.
Commissioners were appointed to treat with Indians in the United States
territories. Provision for making a count of the people was made. Steps
for the adequate protection of the frontier were taken. Commissioners
were appointed to lay out the capital city on lands granted by Virginia
and Maryland. The provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, modified to
meet the new conditions, were re-enacted.
Of less importance than many of these functions bestowed by the
Constitution on the Federal Government, but even farther-reaching, was
the indefinite power to "promote the progress of science and useful
arts" by encouraging authors and inventors. The right of an inventor
to a protection on his product had been saved from the monopolies so
freely granted to companies in the time of James I. It was one of the
birthrights of Englishmen brought to the American colonies. The right
of an author to the benefit of his productions was allowed in the
common law. Colonial legislatures had been accustomed to encourage
both authors and inventors by rewards of money as well as by exclusive
rights for a limited term of years. The Legislatures of various States
continued the practice after the Revolution, although there was no
system of inter-recognition of patents between the States. Fitch, the
steam-navigation experimenter, secured exclusive rights on his steamboat
from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and
even then was unprotected in the remaining States. This power so
evidently belonged to the national instead of State governments, that
it was never questioned in the convention, although it had not been
included in the Articles of Confederation. Indeed, so essential was
the necessity for the development of home resources felt to be that
at one time the convention had considered transferring from the States
to the Federal Government the general practice of "establishing public
institutions, rewards, and immunities for the promotion of agriculture,
commerce, and manufactures."
This paternalism was eventually confined in the Constitution to patents
and copyrights. Within a fortnight after the beginning of the House
sessions, David Ramsey, the South Carolina historian, petitioned
Congress for the sole right to sell his books for a limited term of
years. He was followed by Hannah Adams, the Massachusetts writer,
Jedediah Morse, the geographer, and others. Instead of granting such
petitions by individual bills, as the State Legislatures had done,
Congress enacted a general copyright law which gave to any applicant
exclusive control of his writings for fourteen years.
Simultaneously with the petition from Ramsey, which led to the first
copyright law, came one from John Churchman asking for exclusive right
to sell spheres, maps, charts, and tables on the principles of magnetism
which he had invented after "several years' labour, close application,
and great expense." Soon after came requests for such rights from Fitch
for a boat propelled by steam, from Rumsey for one propelled by setting
poles, and from Stroebel for another to run on wheels without the use
of oars. Other inventors asked for patents on a machine for raising
water to run a waterwheel, on one for making nails, for producing power
by using a weight, for curing the bite of a mad dog, for counting the
revolutions of a wheel, for a reaper and thresher, and for a
lightning-rod on an umbrella. In the second session Congress passed
an act making the members of the Cabinet, except the busy Secretary
of the Treasury, a board to hear petitions and to grant sole rights
to inventors for fourteen years.
The necessity for uniform action deprived the States of both copyright
and patent control and gave it to the central agency--powers trivial
in themselves, but potent in the unforeseen work of transferring the
trust and gratitude of men of learning and ability from their several
States to the Union. "The encouragement of learning" is sufficiently
indefinite to become a giant by interpretation. This was apparent in
the very first session of Congress. To his petition concerning his
magnetic maps and charts, Churchman had added a prayer for "the
patronage of Congress" in undertaking a voyage to Baffin's Bay for
studying the cause of the variation of the magnetic needle--a problem
handed down from Columbus. The proposition was defeated in the House,
although only five to eight hundred dollars was suggested, because of
the deranged condition of the national finances. Only one member
expressed a doubt as to the constitutional power of Congress to do
more than reward inventors by patents. Although the Constitution
explicitly confined the encouragement to granting of exclusive rights
to the use of the invention, the cause of defeat was not the lack of
constitutional power, but the lack of means.
Washington, the friend in Virginia of every movement for the public
benefit, showed no fear lest Government assume too much power in this
particular. Years before, he had voted in the Legislature of his own
State to give exclusive right to a stage-owner to carry passengers
over a road because "he had expended a considerable sum of money in
the purchase of carriages and horses ... which will be productive of
considerable public convenience and utility ... and therefore it is
reasonable that he should possess for a reasonable time any emoluments
resulting therefrom." Once, in complaining to Jay that the
Postmaster-General under the Confederation had delayed the Virginia
mails by using horses and showing an antipathy to patronising the
stages, Washington had said: "It has often been understood by wise
politicians and enlightened patriots that giving a facility to the
means of travelling for strangers and of intercourse for citizens was
an object of legislative concern and a circumstance highly beneficial
to any country." Now, in his message to the second session of the First
Congress, he took occasion to suggest to the members "the advancement
of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures," and "the promotion of
science and literature." He advised them to consider whether these
desirable objects could be "best promoted by affording aids to
seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a
national university, or by any other expedient." These simple and, at
the time, unsuspected phases of paternalism must not be ignored in an
examination of the growth of the Union. The most rigid of the
strict-construction Presidents became helpless before them, or never
foresaw their possibilities. From such small beginnings came the various
scientific expeditions, the investigations for the benefit of
agriculture, the printing and distribution of books, the distribution
of garden seeds, the vast donations of land and money for higher
education, and the many other ways in which the Union has expanded
under no other warrant than the simple requirement in the Constitution
that Congress "promote the progress of science and useful arts by
securing for a limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive
right to their respective writings and discoveries."
In his early messages to Congress, Washington was accustomed to call
the attention of members to "facilitating the intercourse between
distant parts of our country by a due attention to the post-offices
and post roads." This was no new power given to the Central Government
as was the right to encourage learning, but it had even more
possibilities of extension through interpretation. The monopoly of
carrying the mails, now generally claimed by all governments, may be
traced to the assumed prerogatives of the Stuarts in England. A few
attempts had been made in the dependent days by individual colonies
to regulate the carriage of letters, but the provisions of an act of
Parliament in Queen Anne's reign for appointing deputy postmasters-
general in the colonies placed the posts directly under the care of the
royal Government.
The use of the mails without government censorship was essential to
the patriots in the American Revolution for carrying out their plans.
Nearly a year before independence, the Continental Congress set up a
revolutionary postal system to replace the express riders which they
had thus far used. Franklin, the colonial deputy for America, who had
brought the posts to a high proficiency before he was dismissed for
sympathising with his countrymen, was placed in charge. Gradually these
"constitutional" post-riders and postmasters supplanted the royal
officials, and Congress in time inherited the monopoly. The Articles
sanctioned this assumption by giving Congress the sole and exclusive
power over the transportation of the mails passing from one State to
another, collecting sufficient postage to pay for the same, but tacitly
leaving to each State the control of its internal postal system. So
little did the postal system develop under this arrangement that, with
the exception of an extension fortnightly to Pittsburg and the
establishment of a few cross-lines, the main line in 1789, extending
from Portland, in Maine, to Savannah, Georgia, had improved but little
since Franklin established it years before. There were only seventy-five
post-offices in the whole United States in 1789, and they collected
less than $40,000 a year.
So essential to the intelligence and happiness of the people did a
well-regulated postal system appear, and so properly an interstate
agency, that no opposition was heard in the convention to that clause
of the Constitution which said: "Congress shall have power to establish
post-offices." In the second and in the final draft of the document
the words "and post roads" were added, by a vote of six States to five,
without debate, according to Madison's notes. In the series of papers
now known as the _Federalist_, Madison, when attempting to quiet the
fears of the people upon the possibility of the Central Government
securing too much power under the Constitution, said of this provision:
"The power of establishing post-roads must, in every view, be a harmless
power." Little could he foresee that within ten years he would be
called upon by his great chief, Jefferson, to decide whether "to
establish" meant to lay out a road, to construct it, or simply to adopt
an existing one. "Does the power to _establish_ post roads given you
by the Constitution mean that you shall _make_ the roads or only
_select_ from those already made, those on which there shall be a
post?" wrote Jefferson, taking Madison to task for this fresh assumption
of power in the Congress of which the latter was a member. "We have
thought hitherto that the roads of a state could not be so well
administered even by the state legislature as by the magistracy of the
county on the spot. How will it be when a member from New Hampshire
is to make out a road for Georgia?" Really, the carrying of the mails
was a power not expressed, but deduced, if fine distinctions were to
be made.
Still another power was expressly given to the Union which had not
existed under the Confederation and had never been exercised--the right
to create new States from original soil; to speak into existence rivals
of the agencies through which the Union itself had been created. When
the States gave this right to the Central Government, they furnished
a weapon most deadly to their continued supremacy. "No state shall be
deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States," declared
the Articles. It was to guard against this danger that the States in
ceding their western land, and the Central Government in accepting it,
had mutually agreed to convert it into States of a limited size as
rapidly as population would warrant. As has been shown, unsuccessful
steps had been taken under the Confederation to carry out this
agreement, "without the least colour of constitutional authority," as
Hamilton said in the _Federalist_.
The law of balance, if not of retribution, finds an illustration in
the manner in which the fear of the States lest they give the Union
too much power over the lands led eventually to a greater loss of
power. Their jealousy of each other prevented the land being held by
any one of them. They could not hold it severally, neither could they
so dispose of it. When they thought of converting it in time into new
States, no workable plan could be devised for such a disposition unless
they acted jointly. The control had to be given to the Union. For these
reasons, the Union became the parent of all the States except the
original thirteen and Texas. It was inevitable that the sympathy of
the people during the preliminary condition of a Territory should be
weaned away from the original States and their allegiance gradually
transferred to their benefactor, the Union. Unfortunately for State
supremacy, the process did not end, as then seemed probable, with the
Mississippi, but was prolonged for a century by new accessions of
territory.
The new Congress had not long to wait for an opportunity of fulfilling
the promise made almost ten years before. In his second message, the
President sent to Congress a petition for statehood from an authorised
convention of the people inhabiting the district of Kentucky, together
with a permission to that end from the parent State, Virginia. Both
papers had been inherited from the old Congress. As the President said,
they contained "sentiments of warm attachment to the Union and its
present government." Such a happy termination of the sixteen years'
contest between the trans-Alleghenians and their parent State, as well
as such a final contradiction to the repeated rumours of the secession
of Kentucky, caused the speedy enactment of a law "that upon the
aforesaid first day of June, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two,
the said new state by the name and style of the state of Kentucky shall
be received and admitted into this Union as a new and entire member
of the United States of America." A few days later it was decreed in
another simple law that Vermont should be admitted on March 4, 1791.
New York, the parent State, had agreed to release her on payment of
thirty thousand dollars. Vermont secured the prior admission because
her application named no day, as that of Kentucky did. In the creation
of these two States, the nascent Union was not only adding to its
strength, but was removing for ever two of the most alarming cases of
possible secession which had thus far menaced it.