THE FIRST CONGRESS
The confederate Congress, at its final session in 1788, had fixed the
time for the election of President and Vice-President under the
Constitution, and the time and place for the meeting of the first
Congress of the new government. The day appointed was the first
Wednesday of the following March, and, as that date fell on the fourth
of the month, a precedent was established which has ever since been
observed in the installation of a new President. The place was not so
easily determined. The choice lay between New York and Philadelphia, and
the struggle was prolonged, not because the question of the temporary
seat of government was of much moment, but because of the influence the
decision might have upon the future settlement of the permanent place
for the capital.
No quorum of the new Congress was present at New York on March 4, 1789,
and neither house was organized until early in April. On the 23rd
Washington arrived; and on the 30th he took the oath of office as first
President of the United States, standing on the balcony of Federal
Hall, at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, a site now occupied by
another building used as the subtreasury. A week before, when the
ceremonies proper for such an occasion were a subject of discussion in
Congress, the question of fitting titles for the President and
Vice-President came up for consideration. It was decided that when the
President arrived the Vice-President should meet him at the door of the
senate chamber, lead him to the chair, and then, in a formal address,
inform him that the two houses were ready to witness the administration
of the oath of office. "Upon this," says John Adams in a letter written
three years afterward, "I arose in my place and asked the advice of the
Senate, in what form I should address him, whether I should say 'Mr.
Washington,' 'Mr. President,' 'Sir,' 'May it please your Excellency,' or
what else? I observed that it had been common while he commanded the
army to call him 'His Excellency,' but I was free to own it would appear
to me better to give him no title but 'Sir,' or 'Mr. President,' than to
put him on a level with a governor of Bermuda, or one of his own
ambassadors, or a governor of any one of our States."
Thereupon the question went to a conference committee of both houses,
who reported that no other title would be proper for either President or
Vice-President, at any time, than those which were given by the
Constitution. To this report the Senate disagreed and appointed a new
committee. This proposed that the President should be called "His
Highness the President of the United States and Protector of their
Liberties." When wise men are absurd they presume on their prerogative.
The Senate accepted the report, but the House had the good sense to
reject it, consenting, however, to leave the question in abeyance. On
these proceedings Mr. Madison thus commented in a letter to Jefferson:--
"My last inclosed copies of the President's inaugural speech, and
the answer of the House of Representatives. I now add the answer of
the Senate. It will not have escaped you that the former was
addressed with a truly republican simplicity to George Washington,
President of the United States. The latter follows the example,
with the omission of the personal name, but without any other than
the constitutional title. The proceeding on this point was, in the
House of Representatives, spontaneous. The imitation by the Senate
was extorted. The question became a serious one between the two
houses. J. Adams espoused the cause of titles with great
earnestness. His friend, R. H. Lee, although elected as a
republican enemy to an aristocratic Constitution, was a most
zealous second. The projected title was, His Highness the President
of the United States and the Protector of their Liberties. Had the
project succeeded, it would have subjected the President to a
severe dilemma, and given a deep wound to our infant government."
Washington has sometimes been accused of wishing for the title of "His
Highness," and of having suggested it. Had this been true, Madison
would have been certain to know it, and he was quite incapable of
asserting in that case that such a title would have been to the
President "a severe dilemma." About Mr. Adams he was perhaps mistaken,
as he might easily have been, since he was not a member of the Senate,
and probably heard only a confused report of how the question was
brought before that body. As Mr. Adams's letter, quoted just now, shows,
he regarded the charge as a calumny and resented it. He gave them,
according to his own statement, no other opinion than that he preferred
"Sir," or "Mr. President," as a more proper address than "Excellency," a
title then, as now, pertaining to governors of States. He probably took
no further part in the debate, but it is not impossible that he may in
private have avowed a preference for some other and higher title than
either "Mr. President" or "Your Excellency." "For," he said in the
explanatory letter to his friend, "I freely own that I think decent and
moderate titles, as distinctions of offices, are not only harmless, but
useful in society; and that in this country, where I know them to be
prized by the people as well as their magistrates as highly as by any
people or any magistrates in the world, I should think some distinction
between the magistrates of the national government and those of the
state governments proper." A distinction might be proper enough if there
were to be any titles whatever; but certainly they were the wiser who
preferred good homespun to threadbare old clothes. Had rags of that sort
been made a legal uniform, it is almost appalling to reflect upon the
absurdities to which the national fondness for titles would have carried
us.
From March 4 to April 1, though the House of Representatives met daily,
there were not members enough present to make a quorum. The first real
business brought before the House, except that relating to its
organization, was introduced by Madison, two days after the
inauguration. It was a proposition to raise a revenue by duties on
imports, and by a tonnage duty on all vessels, American and foreign,
bringing goods, wares, or merchandise into the United States. The
essential weakness of the late Confederacy was, first of all, to be
remedied by uniform rules for the regulation of trade. Revenue must be
provided for the support of government, and that in a way which should
not be oppressive to the people. Commerce, Mr. Madison said, "ought to
be as free as the policy of nations will admit," but government must be
supported, and taxes the least burdensome and most easily collected are
those derived from duties on imports. He agreed, however, as he said on
the second day of the debate, with those who would so adjust the duties
on foreign goods as to protect the "infant manufactories" of the
country. With little interruption this subject was debated for the first
six weeks of the opening session of the First Congress. No other could
have been hit upon to test so thoroughly the strength of the new bond
of union. It was to brush aside all those trade regulations in the
several States which each had hitherto thought essential to its
prosperity. Every interest in the country was to be considered, and
their different, sometimes opposing, claims to be reconciled.
New England was sure that, should the tax on molasses be too high, the
distilleries would be shut up, and a great New England industry
destroyed. Nor would the injury stop there. The fisheries, as well as
the distilleries, would be ruined. For three fifths of the fish put up
for the West Indies could find no market anywhere else; and a market
existed there only because molasses was taken in exchange. A prohibitory
duty on that article, or a duty that should seriously interfere with its
importation, would wellnigh destroy the fisheries. What then would
become of the nursery of American seamen? With no seamen there would be
no shipbuilding. What sadder picture than this of a New England without
rum, without codfish, without seamen, and without ships! One can easily
conceive that even in that restrained and dignified First Congress there
was no want of serious and alarmed expostulation, and even some
threatening talk from such men as the tranquil Goodhue, the thoughtful
and scholarly Ames, and the impulsive Gerry.
Then the South, for her part, was alarmed lest, among other things, too
high a tonnage duty should leave her tobacco, her rice and indigo,
rotting in the fields and warehouses for want of ships to take them to
market. She had no ships of her own and could have none, and she invited
the ships of the rest of the world to come for her products and bring in
return all she needed for her own consumption. The picture of the
possible ruin of New England was as nothing to that of the Southern
planter scanning the horizon with weary eyes in vain for the sight of a
sail, while behind him was a dangerous crowd of hungry blacks with
nothing to do. That desolation seemed complete to the southernmost
States when it was also proposed to levy a tax of ten dollars upon every
slave imported. In short, the whole subject bristled with difficulties.
The problem was nothing more nor less than how to tax everything, and at
the same time convince everybody that the scheme was for the general
good, while nobody's special interests were sacrificed. The "infant
industries," to which Mr. Madison alluded, really received no special
consideration in the final adjustment, and they were too feeble then
even to cry for nursing. They have grown stronger since, though they are
"infants" still; and they should never cease to be grateful to him who,
however unwittingly, gave them a name to live by for a hundred years.
But the most remarkable part of the debate was that upon the proposition
of Mr. Parker of Virginia to impose a duty upon the importation of
slaves. Could the progress of events have been foreseen, that proposal
might have been regarded as meant to protect an "infant industry" of the
northernmost slave States. But the wildest imagination then could not
conceive of the domestic slave trade of a few years later, when a chief
source of the prosperity of Virginia would be her perennial crop of
young men and women to be shipped for New Orleans and a market. But Mr.
Parker had no ulterior motive when he avowed his regret that the
Constitution had failed to prohibit the importation of slaves from
Africa, and hoped that the duty he proposed would prevent, in some
degree, a traffic which he pronounced "irrational and inhuman." It would
have been difficult to have found a Virginian of that day who would not
have taken down his shotgun on hearing that there were miscreants
prowling about his kitchen doors in the hope of buying up the strongest
young people of his household for export to the Southwest.
Judging from the imperfect report of the debate upon the subject, it
would seem that the bargain relative to the slave trade, made in the
Constitutional Convention of two years before between New England and
the two southernmost States, might still hold good. Or there may have
been a new bargain; or, perhaps, both sides trusted to a tacit
recognition of the eternal fitness of things, and made common cause
where legislation threatened at the same time the distillery and the
slave-ship.[11] At any rate, the extreme Southerners expressed surprise
at the audacity which would disturb a compromise of the Constitution;
the extreme Northerners deprecated it as quite uncalled for in any
consideration of the subject of revenue. The principle of Mr. Parker's
motion, Mr. Sherman of Connecticut thought, was to correct a moral evil;
the principle of the bill before the House was to raise a revenue. At
some other time he would be willing to consider the question of taxing
the importation of negroes on the ground of humanity and policy; but it
was a sufficient reason with him for not admitting it as an object of
revenue that the burden would fall upon two States only. Fisher Ames of
Massachusetts could only take counsel of his conscience. From his soul,
he said, he detested slavery; and--forgetting, apparently, that this
tax was provided for by the Constitution--he doubted whether imposing it
"would not have the appearance of authorizing the practice" of trading
in slaves. This was his reason for wishing to postpone the subject. But
Mr. Livermore of New Hampshire was more ingenious still. If the imported
negroes were goods, wares, or merchandise, they would come within the
title of the bill, and be taxed under the general rule of five per
centum, which would be about the same rate as ten dollars a head; but if
they were not goods, wares, or merchandise, then such importation could
not properly be included in the consideration of the question of a
revenue from duties on such articles of trade.
Mr. Madison came to the help of his colleague, and brushed aside the
sophistries of the New England allies of the slave traders. If there
were anything wanting in the title of the bill to cover this particular
duty, it was easy to add it. If the question was not one of taxation
because it was one of humanity, it would be quite as difficult to deal
with it under any other bill for levying a duty as under this. If the
tax seemed unjust because it bore heavily upon a single class, that
would be a good reason for remitting many taxes which there was no
hesitation in imposing. If ten dollars seemed a heavy duty, a little
calculation would show that it was only about the proposed _ad valorem_
duty of five per centum on most other importations. "It is to be
hoped," he added, "that by expressing a national disapprobation of this
trade we may destroy it, and save ourselves from reproaches, and our
posterity the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled with
slaves." "If there is any one point," he continued, "in which it is
clearly the policy of this nation, so far as we constitutionally can, to
vary the practice obtaining under some of the state governments, it is
this.... It is as much the interest of Georgia and South Carolina as of
any in the Union. Every addition they receive to their number of slaves
tends to weaken and render them less capable of self-defense.... It is a
necessary duty of the general government to protect every part of the
empire against danger, as well internal as external. Everything,
therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may be a local
affair, yet, if it involves national expense or safety, becomes of
concern to every part of the Union, and is a proper subject for the
consideration of those charged with the general administration of the
government." No Northern man, except Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts,
supported this measure; and none from the Southern States, except three
of the Virginia members, with Madison leading. As the foreign slave
trade was protected in the Constitution for twenty years by a bargain
between the two southernmost States and New England, so now the same
influence staved off the imposition of the tax which was a part of the
consideration to be given for that constitutional protection of the
trade. It is not a creditable fact; but it is, nevertheless, a fact and
a representative one in the history of the United States. And it is to
Madison's great honor that he had neither part nor lot in it.
After six weeks of earnest debate, an amicable and satisfactory
agreement was made to impose a moderate duty upon pretty much everything
imported, except slaves from Africa. It was literally a tariff for
revenue; but it was a settlement that settled nothing definitely, except
that the provision of the Constitution for a tax of ten dollars on
imported slaves should be a dead letter. Thenceforth the policy of free
trade was established, so far as African slaves were concerned, till the
traffic was supposed to cease by constitutional limitation and Act of
Congress in 1808.[12]
The determination to protect the commercial interests of the country,
beyond the point of mere revenue, was more manifest in fixing the rate
of duty upon tonnage than in duties upon importations. It was generally
agreed, after much debate, that American commerce had better be in
American hands, and a difference of twenty cents a ton was made between
the tax upon domestic and that upon foreign ships, as a measure of
protection to American shipping. Mr. Madison proposed to make it still
larger, but the House would only agree to increase it to forty cents on
ships belonging to powers with which the United States had no treaties.
The Senate, however, refused to admit this distinction, and insisted
that all foreign ships should be subject to the same tonnage duty
without regard to existing treaties. The House assented, lest the bill
should be lost altogether. This proposed differential duty on foreign
vessels was as clearly aimed at Great Britain as if that power had been
named in the bill. Nor, indeed, was there any attempt at concealment;
for it was openly avowed that America had no formidable rival except the
English, who already largely controlled the commerce of the United
States. In the debates and in the final decision of the question is
shown clearly enough the difference of opinion and of feeling, which
soon made the dividing line between the two great parties of the first
quarter of a century under the Constitution. Nobody then foresaw how
bitter that difference of party was to be, nor what disastrous
consequences would follow it.
Mr. Madison was among the most zealous of those who insisted upon a
discrimination against Great Britain. He thought it should be made for
the dignity no less than for the interest of the United States. He had
no fear, he said, "of entering into a commercial warfare with that
nation." England, he believed, could do this country no harm by any
peaceful reprisals she could devise. She supplied the United States with
no article either of necessity or of luxury that the people of the
United States could not manufacture for themselves. He called those
"Anglicists" who did not agree with him, and who believed that it was in
the power of Great Britain to hinder or to help immensely the prosperity
of the United States. It was not of so much moment what America bought
of England as it was that England should consent to free trade with her
colonies; and on every account it was wiser to conciliate than to defy
Great Britain; wiser to induce her to enter into a friendly commercial
alliance than to provoke her to retaliate upon the feeble commerce of
this country, upon which she had so strong a grip. Madison had shown
himself, before this time, half credulous of the charges of a leaning
toward England, and toward monarchy, made by those who wanted a congress
of petty states against those who wanted a strong national government.
If, however, there were Anglicism on one side, so there was quite as
much Gallicism, if not a good deal more, on the other. In writing to
Jefferson of the probability that the Senate would make no
discrimination in the tonnage duties, he said that in that case "Great
Britain will be quieted in the enjoyment of our trade as she may please
to regulate it, and France discouraged from her efforts at a competition
which it is not less our interest than hers to promote." Whatever may be
thought of this first concession of the new government to England, it is
quite as much the coming party leader as the statesman who speaks here.
It may not be doubted that he sincerely thought it to be, as he said,
"impolitic, in every view that can be taken of the subject, to put Great
Britain at once on the footing of the most favored nation." But the
relation of American interests to English interests was evidently
already associated in his mind with the relations of France and England,
so soon to be the absorbing question in American politics.
The impost act was followed by others hardly less important in putting
the new Constitution into operation under its first Congress. The
direction of business seems, by common consent, to have been intrusted
to Mr. Madison among the many able men of that body; doubtless because
of his thorough familiarity with the Constitution, and of his
methodical ways. He was sure to bring things forward in their due order,
to provide judiciously for the more immediate needs. The impost bill
secured the means to work with; the next necessity was to organize the
machinery to do the work. Resolutions to create the executive
departments of Foreign Affairs, of the Treasury, and of War were offered
by Mr. Madison. These were required in general terms by the
Constitution, with a single officer at the head of each, to be appointed
by the President "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." The
manner of the appointment of subordinate officers was provided for by
the Constitution, but the manner of their removal from office was not.
Was the tenure of office to be good behavior? Were the incumbents
removable, with or without cause? If the power of removal existed, did
it vest in the power that appointed, that is, in the President and
Senate conjointly, or in the President alone?
As the Constitution was silent, the question had to be settled on its
own merits. With all the arguments that could be urged, either on one
side or the other, we are familiar enough in our time, coming up as the
question so often does in changes in state constitutions and municipal
charters, and in the discussion of the necessity for civil service
reform. There is this essential difference, however, between now and
then: we know the mischiefs that come from the power of official
removal, which were then only dimly apprehended. The power of removal
from office belonged, Mr. Madison believed, rightfully to the chief
magistrate, and, if by some unhappy chance the wrong man should find his
way to that position and abuse the power intrusted to him, "the wanton
removal of meritorious officers would," he said, "subject the President
to impeachment and removal from his own high trust."
Lofty political principles like these may still be found in the
platforms of modern political parties,--
"The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out."
But Mr. Madison believed, at least, that he believed in them. There is
in politics as in religion an accepted doctrine of justification by
faith; and this, perhaps, sustained him when, twelve years later, as
Jefferson's secretary of state, he learned from his chief that, as
"Federalists seldom died and never resigned," party necessities must
find a way of supplementing the law of nature. Jefferson was a little
timid in applying the remedy, but Madison lived long enough to see
Jackson boldly remove, in the course of his administration, about two
thousand office-holders, whose places he wanted as rewards for his own
political followers. From that time to this, there has not been a
President who might not, if Madison's doctrine was sound, have been
impeached for a "wanton" abuse of power.
Though the Constitution had been adopted by the States, it was not
without objections by some of them. To meet these objections Mr. Madison
proposed twelve amendments declaratory of certain fundamental popular
rights, which, it was thought by many persons, were not sufficiently
guarded by the original articles. This, also, was left to him to do, no
doubt because of his thorough knowledge of the Constitution and of the
points wherein it was still imperfect, as well as those wherein it had
better not be meddled with. The amendments, as finally agreed to after
long debate, were essentially those which he proposed, and in due time
ten of them were ratified by the States. The two that were not accepted
referred only to the number of representatives in the House, and to the
pay of members of Congress.
It was hoped that the selection of a place for the permanent seat of
government would be made by this Congress. There was much talk of the
centres of wealth, of territory, and of population then, and of where
such centres might be in the future. But the question was really a
sectional one. The Northern members were accused of having made a
bargain out of doors with the members of the Middle States. The bargain,
however, was only this: that, inasmuch as it was hopeless that the
actual centre should be chosen as the site for a capital city, a place
as near as possible to it should be insisted upon. The South, on the
other hand, determined that the seat of government should be within the
boundaries of the Southern States. That was a foregone conclusion with
them, that needed no bargain. The nearest navigable river to the centre
of population was the Delaware; but the jealousy of New York stood in
the way of any selection that favored Philadelphia. The Susquehanna was
proposed. It empties into Chesapeake Bay. North of it was, as Mr.
Sherman showed, a population of 1,400,000; and south of it, 1,200,000.
The South wanted the capital on the Potomac, not because it was the
centre of population then, but because it might be at some future time,
from the growth of the West. On the other hand, it was insisted that the
population south of the Potomac was then only 960,000, while north of it
there were 1,680,000 people, and that it was no more accessible from the
West than the Susquehanna was. To many members, moreover, this talk of
the great future of the West seemed hardly worthy of consideration. It
was "an unmeasurable wilderness," and "when it would be settled was past
calculation," Fisher Ames said. "It was," he added, "perfectly romantic
to make this decision depend upon that circumstance. Probably it will be
near a century before these people will be considerable." He was nearer
right when he said in the same speech "that trade and manufactures will
accumulate people in the Eastern States in proportion of five to three,
compared with the Southern. The disproportion will, doubtless, continue
to be much greater than I have calculated. It is actually greater at
present, for the climate and negro slavery are acknowledged to be
unfavorable to population, so that husbandry as well as commerce and
manufactures will give more people in the Eastern than in the Southern
States." It was, however, finally resolved by the House "that the
permanent seat of the government of the United States ought to be at
some convenient place on the banks of the river Susquehanna in the State
of Pennsylvania;" and a bill accordingly was sent to the Senate.
Had the Senate agreed to this bill, there are some luminous pages of
American history that would never have been written; for the progress of
events would have taken quite another direction had the influences
surrounding the national capital for the first half of this century been
Northern instead of Southern. But the Senate did not agree. For "the
convenient place on the banks of the Susquehanna" it substituted ten
miles square on the river Delaware, beginning one mile from Philadelphia
and including the village of Germantown. To this amendment the House
agreed, and there, but for Madison, the matter would have ended. He had
labored earnestly for the site on the Potomac; but failing in that, he
hoped to postpone the question till the next session of Congress, when
the representatives from North Carolina would be present. He moved a
proviso that the laws of Pennsylvania should remain in force within the
district ceded by the State till Congress should otherwise provide by
law. It seems to have been accepted without consideration, a single
member only saying that he saw no necessity for it. At any rate, whether
that was Mr. Madison's motive or not, time was gained, for it compelled
the return of the bill to the Senate. This was on September 28, and the
next day the session was closed by adjournment till the following
January.
When in that next session the bill came back from the Senate to the
House, a member from South Carolina said, in the course of debate, that
"a Quaker State was a bad neighborhood for the South Carolinians." The
Senate had also come to that conclusion, for the bill now proposed that
the capital should be at Philadelphia for ten years only, and should
then be removed to the banks of the Potomac. It was done, Madison wrote
to Monroe, by a single vote, for two Southern senators voted against it.
But the two senators from North Carolina were now present, and the
majority of one was made sure of somehow.
So much was gained by gaining time, and Madison thought the passage of
the bill through the House was possible, "but attended with great
difficulties." Did he know how these difficulties were to be overcome?
"If the Potomac succeeds," he adds, "it will have resulted from a
fortuitous coincidence of circumstances which might never happen again."
What the "fortuitous coincidence" was he does not explain; but the term
was a felicitous euphuism to cover up what in the blunter political
language of our time is called "log-rolling."
The reader of this series of biographies is already familiar with
Hamilton's skillful barter of votes for the Potomac site of the capital
in exchange for votes in favor of his scheme for the assumption of the
state debts. Madison seems not to have been ignorant of the progress of
that bargain, with which Jefferson was afterward so anxious to prove
that he had nothing to do. Madison earnestly opposed the assumption of
the state debts from first to last; but, when he saw that the measure
was sure to pass the House, he wrote to Monroe: "I cannot deny that the
crisis demands a spirit of accommodation to a certain extent. If the
measure should be adopted, I shall wish it to be considered as an
unavoidable evil, and _possibly_ not the worst side of the dilemma." In
other words, he was willing to assent silently to what he believed to be
a great injustice to several of the States, provided that the bargain
should be a gain to his own State. If Hamilton and Jefferson were
sinners in this business, Madison will hardly pass for a saint.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: Eleven years afterward, when the question of prohibiting
the carrying on the slave trade from American ports came up, one John
Brown of Rhode Island said in Congress, "Our distilleries and
manufactories were all lying idle for want of an extended commerce. He
had been well informed that on those coasts [African] New England rum
was much preferred to the best Jamaica spirits, and would fetch a better
price. Why should it not be sent there, and a profitable return be made?
Why should a heavy fine and imprisonment [of slave traders] be made the
penalty for carrying on a trade so advantageous?" Sixty years later
still, there was another Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, who was a
member of the Committee of the Kansas Aid Society of New England. He was
about to withdraw from it for want of time to attend to its
duties,--had, indeed, actually sent in his resignation,--when news came
of the doings of another John Brown at Harper's Ferry. The resignation
was instantly recalled, with the remark that it was not a time for
Browns to seem to be backward on the question of slavery. Such is the
irony of coincidence in names.]
[Footnote 12: The subsequent legislation on this subject is a curious
exemplification of the ingenuity with which any law obnoxious to the
owners of slaves was got rid of, when it was clear that it could not be
defeated by force of numbers. In 1806 a final attempt was made to impose
the duty of ten dollars upon slaves imported, and a resolution passed in
favor of it. This was referred to a committee, with instructions to
bring in a bill. A bill was reported and pushed so far as a third
reading, when it was recommitted, which put it off for a year. When it
next appeared it was a bill for the prohibition of the importation of
slaves, in accordance with the constitutional provision that the traffic
should cease in 1808. The new question, after some debate, in which
there was no allusion to the tax, was postponed for further
consideration. But it never again came before the House. A month later,
February 13, 1807, a bill from the Senate, providing that the foreign
slave trade should cease on the first day of the following January, was
received and immediately concurred in, and that seems to have been
silently accepted as disposing of the whole subject. No tax was ever
paid; but the importation of slaves, notwithstanding the law to put an
end to importation in 1808, continued at the rate, it was estimated, of
about fifteen thousand a year. Probably it never ceased altogether till
the beginning of the rebellion of 1860.]