1786-1787.
NO SECURITY AFFORDED BY THE CONFEDERATION TO THE STATE
GOVERNMENTS.--SHAYS'S REBELLION IN MASSACHUSETTS, AND ITS KINDRED
DISTURBANCES.
No federative government can be of great permanent value, which is not
so constructed that it may stand, in some measure, as the common
sovereign of its members, able to protect them against internal
disorders, as well as against external assaults. The Confederation
undertook but one of these great duties. It was formed at a time when
the war with England was the great object of concern to the revolted
Colonies, and when they felt only the exigencies which that war created.
Hence its most important powers, as well as its leading purpose,
concerned the common cause of resistance to a foreign domination. A
federal league of States independent of each other, formed principally
for mutual defence against a common enemy, was all that succeeded to the
general superintending power of the British crown, by which the internal
affairs of each of them had always been regulated and controlled, in the
last resort. When the tie was broken by which they had been held to the
parent state, each of them created for itself a new government, resting
for its basis on the popular will, and deriving its authority directly
from the people; but none of them provided for the creation of a power,
external to itself, which might stand as the guarantor and protector of
their new institutions, and secure the principles on which they rested
against violence and overthrow. Yet the constitutions thus formed, from
their peculiar nature, eminently needed the safeguards which such a
power could afford.
These constitutions were admirably constructed. They contained
principles imperfectly known to the ancient governments; found in modern
times only in the government of England; and applied there with far less
consistency and completeness. They embraced the regular distribution of
political power into distinct departments; legislative checks and
balances, by means of two coördinate branches of the legislature; a
judiciary in general holding office during good behavior; and the
representation of the people in the legislature, by deputies of their
own actual election, in which the theory of such representation was more
perfectly carried into practice than it had ever been in the country
from which it was derived. But the fundamental principle on which they
all rested, and without which they could not maintain existence,
required means of defence. They were established upon the great
doctrine, that it is the right of every political society to govern
itself, and for the purposes of such self-government, to create such
constitutions and ordain such fundamental laws as its own judgment and
its own intelligent choice may find best suited to its own interests.
But society can act only by an expression of the aggregate will of its
members; and as there may be members who dissent from the views and
determinations of the great mass of society, and it is therefore
necessary to decide with whom the power of compelling obedience
resides,--since there must be obedience in order that there may be
peace,--nature and reason have determined that this power is to reside
with a majority of the members. The American constitutions, therefore,
are founded wholly upon the principle, that a majority expresses the
will of the whole society, and may establish, change, and abrogate forms
of government at its pleasure.[254] It follows, as a necessary deduction
from this fundamental doctrine, that so soon as society has acted in the
formation and establishment of a government, upon this principle, no
change can take place, but by a new expression of the will of society
through the voice of a majority; and whether a majority desires or has
actually decreed a change, is a fact that must be made certain, and can
only be made certain in one of two modes,--either by the evidence and
through the channels which the society has previously ordained for this
purpose, or by the submission of all its members to a violent and
successful revolution.
The first constitution of Massachusetts did not designate any mode in
which it was to be amended or changed. But no peaceable change can take
place in any government founded on the expressed will of a majority of
the people, consistently with the principle on which it had been
established, until it has been ascertained, in some mode, that a change
is demanded by the same authority. The vital importance of ascertaining
this fact with precision was not so clearly perceived, at that early
period, as it is now.
Seizing upon the newly established doctrine, which made them the sources
of all political power, the people did not at once apprehend the rule
which preserves and upholds that power, and makes the doctrine itself
both practicable and safe. Hence, when troubles arose, individuals were
led to suppose that they had only to declare a grievance, to demand a
change, and to compel a compliance with their demand by force. So far as
they reasoned at all, they persuaded themselves that, as their
government was the creation of the people, by their own direct act,
bodies of the people could assemble in their primary capacity, and, by
obstructing any of its functions which they connected with a particular
grievance, produce a reform, which the people have always a right to
make. By overlooking, in this manner, the only safe and legitimate mode
in which the popular will can be really ascertained, they passed into
the mischiefs of anarchy and rebellion, mistaking the voices of a
minority for the ascertained will of society.
To these tendencies, the recently established governments of New
England, where the spirit of liberty was most vigorous, could oppose no
efficient check; while, in any open outbreak, they were without any
external defender, on whose power they could lean. The Confederation
succeeded to the Revolutionary Congress, as we have more than once had
occasion to observe, with less power than its predecessor might have
exercised. It was formed by a written constitution, yet it was, strictly
speaking, scarcely a government. It was a close union of the States; but
it was a union from which all powers had been jealously withheld which
would have enabled it to interfere with vigor and success between an
insurgent minority of the people of a State and its lawful rulers. The
Revolutionary Congress was once possessed of such large, indefinite
powers, that, upon principles of public necessity, it might have
assumed, in a great emergency, to hold a direct relation to the internal
concerns of any Colony. It was, in fact, looked to, in some degree, for
direction in the formation of the State governments, after it had
broken the bonds of colonial allegiance to the English crown; and it
might very properly have undertaken to support the governments whose
establishment it had recommended. But such a relation between the early
States and the continental power, though it certainly existed in 1776,
was soon lost in the independent and jealous attitude which they began
to occupy, and the Union rapidly assumed a position, where the character
of sovereignty which it appeared to wear when it promulgated the
Declaration of Independence was scarcely to be discerned. At no period
in the history of the Confederation did it act upon the internal
concerns or condition of a State. Its written articles of union hardly
admitted of a construction which would have enabled it to do so, and
certainly contained no express delegation of such a power.
At the same time, some of the State governments, during the period of
which we are treating, were singularly exposed to the dangers of
anarchy. None of them had any standing forces of any consequence, three
years after the peace, and the New England States had no military forces
whatever but their militia. No State could call upon its neighbors for
aid in quelling an insurrection, for their militia would not have obeyed
the summons, if it had been issued; and no State could call upon the
federal government, in such an emergency, with any certainty of success
in the application.[255]
In such a state of things, the year 1786 witnessed an insurrection in
Massachusetts of a very dangerous character, which, from the fortunate
circumstance that her counsels were then guided by a man of singular
energy and firmness of character, she was just able to subdue. The
remote causes of this insurrection lie too far from the path of our main
subject to be more than summarily stated.
At the close of the Revolutionary war, the State of Massachusetts was
oppressed with an enormous debt. At the breaking out of that war, the
debt of the Colony was less than one hundred thousand pounds. The
private debt of the State, in the year 1786, was one million three
hundred thousand pounds, besides two hundred and fifty thousand pounds
due to the officers and soldiers of the State line of the Revolutionary
army. The State's proportion of the federal debt was not less than one
million and a half of pounds.[256] According to the customary mode of
taxation, one third of the whole debt was to be paid by the ratable
polls, which scarcely exceeded ninety thousand.[257] The Revolution had
made the people of Massachusetts familiar with the great general
doctrines of liberty and human rights; but it had given them little
insight into the principles of revenue and finance, and little
acquaintance with the rules of public economy. No sufficient means,
therefore, to relieve the people from direct taxation, by encouraging a
revival of trade and at the same time drawing from it a revenue, were
devised by the legislature. The exports of the State, moreover, had
suffered a fearful diminution. The fisheries, which had been a fruitful
source of prosperity to the colony, had been nearly destroyed by the
war, and the markets of the West Indies and of Europe were now closed to
the products of this lucrative industry, by which wealth had formerly
been drawn from the wastes of the ocean. The State had scarcely any
other commodity to exchange for the precious metals in foreign commerce.
Its agriculture yielded only a scanty support to its population, if it
yielded so much; its manufactures were in a languishing condition; and
its carrying trade had been driven from the seas during the war, and
was afterwards annihilated by the oppressive policy of England, which
succeeded the Peace. The people were every year growing poorer than they
had been the year before, and taxes, onerous taxes, beyond their
resources and always odious, were pressing upon them with a constantly
increasing accumulation, from which the political state of the country
seemed to promise no relief.[258]
But the demand of the tax-gatherer was not the sole burden which
individuals had to encounter. Private debts had accumulated during the
war, in almost as large a ratio as the public obligations. The
collection of such debts had been generally suspended, while the
struggle for political freedom was going on; but that struggle being
over, creditors necessarily became active, and were often obliged to be
severe. Suits were multiplied in the courts of law beyond all former
precedent, and the first effect of this sudden influx of litigation was
to bring popular odium upon the whole machinery of justice. In a state
of society approaching so nearly to a democracy, the class of debtors,
if numerous, must be politically formidable. They had begun to be so
before the close of the war. Their clamors and the supposed necessity of
the case led the legislature, in 1782, to a violation of principle, in a
law known as the Tender Act, by which executions for debt might be
satisfied by certain articles of property, to be taken at an
appraisement. This law was limited in its operation to one year; but in
the course of that year it taught the debtors their strength, and gave
the first signal for an attack upon property. A levelling, licentious
spirit, a restless desire for change, and a disposition to throw down
the barriers of private rights, at length broke forth in conventions,
which first voted themselves to be the people, and then declared their
proceedings to be constitutional. At these assemblies, the doctrine was
publicly broached, that property ought to be common, because all had
aided in saving it from confiscation by the power of England. Taxes were
voted to be unnecessary burdens, the courts of justice to be intolerable
grievances, and the legal profession a nuisance. A revision of the
constitution was demanded, in order to abolish the Senate, reform the
representation in the House, and make all the civil officers of the
government eligible by the people.
A passive declaration of their grievances did not, however, content the
disaffected citizens of Massachusetts. They proceeded to enforce their
demands. The courts of justice were the nearest objects for attack, as
well as the most immediately connected with the chief objects of their
complaints. Armed mobs surrounded the court-houses in several counties,
and sometimes effectually obstructed the sessions of the courts. These
acts were repeated, until, in the autumn of 1786, the insurrection broke
out in a formidable manner in the western part of the State. The
insurgents actually embodied, and in arms against the government, in the
month of December, in the counties of Worcester and Hampshire, numbered
about fifteen hundred men, and were headed by one Daniel Shays, who had
been a captain in the continental army.[259]
The executive chair of the State was at that time filled by James
Bowdoin; a statesman, firm, prudent, of high principle, and devoted to
the cause of constitutional order. In the first stages of the
disaffection, he had been thwarted by a House of Representatives, in
which the majority were strongly inclined to sympathize with the general
spirit of the insurgents; but the Senate had supported him. Afterwards,
when the movement grew more dangerous, the legislature became more
reconciled to the use of vigorous means to vindicate the authority of
the government, and a short time before it actually took the form of an
armed and organized rebellion against the Commonwealth, they had
encouraged the Governor to use the powers vested in him by the
constitution to enforce obedience to the laws. The Executive promptly
met the emergency. A body of militia was marched against the insurgents,
and by the middle of February they were dispersed or captured, with but
little loss of life.
The actual resources of the State, however, to meet an emergency of this
kind, were feeble and few. A voluntary loan, from a few public-spirited
individuals, supplied the necessary funds, of which the treasury of the
State was wholly destitute.[260] At one time, so general was the
prevalence of discontent, even among the militia on whom the government
were obliged to rely, that men were known openly to change sides in the
field, when the first bodies of troops were called out.[261] Had the
government of the State been in the hands of a person less firm and less
careless of popularity than Bowdoin, it would have been given up to
anarchy and civil confusion. The political situation of the country did
not seem to admit of an application to Congress for direct assistance,
and there is no reason to suppose that such an application would have
been effectively answered, if it had been made.[262]
When the news of the disturbances in Massachusetts, in the autumn of
1786, was received in Congress, it happened that intelligence from the
Western country indicated a hostile disposition on the part of several
Indian tribes against the frontier settlements. A resolve was
unanimously adopted, directing one thousand three hundred and forty
additional troops to be raised, for the term of three years, for the
protection and support of the States bordering on the Western territory
and the settlements on and near the Mississippi, and to secure and
facilitate the surveying and selling of the public lands.[263] From the
fact that the whole of these troops were ordered to be raised by the
four New England States, and one half of them by the State of
Massachusetts, and from other circumstances, it is quite apparent that
the object assigned was an ostensible one, and that Congress intended by
this resolve to strengthen the government of that State and to overawe
the insurgents.[264] But this motive could not be publicly announced.
The enlistment went on very slowly, however, until February, when a
motion was made by Mr. Pinckney of South Carolina to stop it altogether,
upon the ground that the insurrection in Massachusetts, the real, though
not the ostensible, object of the resolve, had been crushed. Mr. King of
Massachusetts earnestly entreated that the federal enlistments might be
permitted to go on, otherwise the greatest alarm would be felt by the
government of the State and its friends, and the insurrection might be
rekindled. Mr. Madison advised that the proposal to rescind the order
for the enlistments should be suspended, to await the course of events
in Massachusetts. At the same time, he admitted that it would be
difficult to reconcile an interference of Congress in the internal
controversies of a State with the tenor of the Articles of
Confederation.[265] The whole subject was postponed, and the direct
question of the power of Congress was not acted upon. In the Convention
which framed the Constitution, it was very early declared, that the
Confederation had neither constitutional power, nor means, to interfere
in case of a rebellion in any State.[266]
This generation can scarcely depict to itself the alarm which these
disturbances spread through the country, and the extreme peril to which
the whole fabric of society in New England was exposed. The numbers of
the disaffected in Massachusetts amounted to one fifth of the
inhabitants in several of the populous counties. Their doctrines and
purposes were embraced by many young, active, and desperate men in Rhode
Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, and the whole of this faction in
the four States was capable of furnishing a body of twelve or fifteen
thousand men, bent on annihilating property, and cancelling all debts,
public and private.[267]
But this great peril was not without beneficial consequences. It
displayed, at a critical moment, when a project of amending the Federal
Constitution for other purposes was encountering much opposition, a more
dangerous deficiency than any to which the public mind had hitherto been
turned. While thoughtful and considerate men were speculating upon the
causes of diminished prosperity and the general feebleness of the system
of government, a gulf suddenly yawned beneath their feet, threatening
ruin to the whole social fabric. It was but a short time before, that
the people of this country had shed their blood to obtain constitutions
of their own choice and making. Now, they seemed as ready to overturn
them as they had once been to extort from tyranny the power of creating
and erecting them in its place. It was manifest, that to achieve the
independence of a country is but half of the great undertaking of
liberty;--that, after freedom, there must come security, order, the wise
disposal of power, and great institutions on which society may repose in
safety. It was clear, that the Federal Union alone could certainly
uphold the liberty which it had gained for the people of the States, and
that, to enable it to do so, it must become a government.[268]
From his retreat at Mount Vernon, Washington observed the progress of
these disorders with intense anxiety. To him, they carried the strongest
evidence of a want of energy in the system of the Federal Union. They
did more than all things else to convince him that "a liberal and
energetic constitution, well checked and well watched to prevent
encroachments, might restore us to that degree of respectability and
consequence to which we had the fairest prospect of attaining."[269] He
was kept accurately informed of the state of things in New England, and
the probability that he would be obliged to come forward, and take an
active part in the support of order against civil discord, was directly
intimated to him.[270] He had foreseen the possibility of this; but the
successful issue of the struggle relieved him from the contemplation of
this painful task, and left to him only the duty of giving the whole
weight of his influence and presence in the Convention, which was to
assemble in the following May, for the revision of the Federal
Constitution.
FOOTNOTES:
[254] Gibbon, with that graceful satire which knew how to hit two
objects with the same stroke of his pen, describes hereditary monarchy
as "an expedient which deprives the multitude of the dangerous, and
indeed the ideal, power of giving themselves a master." The historian of
the Decline and Fall began to publish his great work, just as the
American Revolution burst upon the world. Since that sentence was
penned, the experiment of a system, by which the multitude give to
themselves a master, in the constitutional organs of their own will, has
had a fair trial. We may not say that its trial is past, or that the
system is established beyond the possibility of further dangers. But we
may with a just pride point to its escape, in the days of its first
establishment and greatest danger, and to the securities which the
Constitution of the United States now affords, against similar perils,
when they threaten the constitutions of the States.
[255] A power to interfere in the internal concerns of a State would
only have been exercised by a broad construction of the third of the
Articles of Confederation, which was in these words: "The said States
hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other,
for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their
mutual and general welfare; binding themselves to assist each other
against all force offered to or attacks made upon them, or any of them,
on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence
whatever." When this is compared with the clear and explicit provision
in the Constitution, by which it is declared that "the United States
shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of
government," there can be no wonder that a doubt was felt in the
Congress of 1786-87 as to their powers upon this subject. It is true
that the Massachusetts delegation, when they laid before Congress the
measures which had been taken by the State government to suppress the
insurrection, expressed the confidence of the legislature that the
firmest support and most effectual aid would have been afforded by the
United States, had it been necessary, and asserted that such support and
aid were expressly and solemnly stipulated by the Articles of
Confederation. (Journals, XII. 20. March 9, 1787.) But this was clearly
not the case; and it was not generally supposed in Congress that the
power existed by implication. All that was done by Congress towards
raising troops, at the time of the insurrection, was done for the
_ostensible_ purpose of protecting the frontiers against an Indian
invasion, as we shall see hereafter.
[256] Minot's History of the Insurrection, p. 6.
[257] Ibid.
[258] See the next chapter for some particulars respecting the trade of
Massachusetts.
[259] Minot's History of the Insurrection, p. 82 et seq.
[260] Governor Bowdoin's Speech to the Legislature, February 3, 1787.
[261] Minot.
[262] In the spring of 1786, the State had asked the loan from Congress
of sixty pieces of field artillery. The application was refused, by the
negative vote of six States out of eight, one being divided, and the
delegation from Massachusetts alone supporting it. Journals, XI. 65-67.
April 19, 1786.
[263] Journals, XI. 258. October 30, 1786.
[264] It was well understood, for instance, in the legislature of
Virginia, that this was the real purpose; for Mr. Madison says that this
consideration inspired the ardor with which they voted, towards their
quota of the funds called for to defray the expenses of this levy, a tax
on tobacco, which would scarcely have been granted for any other
purpose, as its operation was very unequal. Elliot's Debates, V. 95.
February 19, 1787.
[265] Ibid.
[266] Ibid. 127.
[267] This was the estimate of their numbers formed by General Knox, on
careful inquiry, and by him given to General Washington. See a letter
from General Washington to Mr. Madison. Works, IX. 207.
[268] Washington, writing to Henry Lee in Congress, October 31, 1786,
says: "You talk, my good sir, of employing influence to appease the
present tumults in Massachusetts. I know not where that influence is to
be found, or, if attainable, that it would be a proper remedy for the
disorders. _Influence_ is not _government_. Let us have a government by
which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let us
know the worst at once." Works, IX. 204.
[269] Ibid. 208.
[270] Ibid. 221.