THE LEAGUE OF FRIENDSHIP.
[Sidenote: The several states have never enjoyed complete sovereignty.]
That some kind of union existed between the states was doubted by no
one. Ever since the assembling of the first Continental Congress in 1774
the thirteen commonwealths had acted in concert, and sometimes most
generously, as when Maryland and South Carolina had joined in the
Declaration of Independence without any crying grievances of their own,
from a feeling that the cause of one should be the cause of all. It has
sometimes been said that the Union was in its origin a league of
sovereign states, each of which surrendered a specific portion of its
sovereignty to the federal government for the sake of the common
welfare. Grave political arguments have been based upon this alleged
fact, but such an account of the matter is not historically true. There
never was a time when Massachusetts or Virginia was an absolutely
sovereign state like Holland or France. Sovereign over their own
internal affairs they are to-day as they were at the time of the
Revolution, but there was never a time when they presented themselves
before other nations as sovereign, or were recognized as such. Under the
government of England before the Revolution the thirteen commonwealths
were independent of one another, and were held together, juxtaposed
rather than united, only through their allegiance to the British crown.
Had that allegiance been maintained there is no telling how long they
might have gone on thus disunited; and this, it seems, should be one of
our chief reasons for rejoicing that the political connection with
England was dissolved when it was. A permanent redress of grievances,
and even virtual independence such as Canada now enjoys, we might
perhaps have gained had we listened to Lord North's proposals after the
surrender of Burgoyne; but the formation of the Federal Union would
certainly have been long postponed, and when we realize the grandeur of
the work which we are now doing in the world through the simple fact of
such a union, we cannot fail to see that such an issue would have been
extremely unfortunate. However this may be, it is clear that until the
connection with England was severed the thirteen commonwealths were not
united, nor were they sovereign. It is also clear that in the very act
of severing their connection with England these commonwealths entered
into some sort of union which was incompatible with their absolute
sovereignty taken severally. It was not the people of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, and so on through the list, that declared their
independence of Great Britain, but it was the representatives of the
United States in Congress assembled, and speaking as a single body in
the name of the whole. Three weeks before this declaration was adopted,
Congress appointed a committee to draw up the "articles of
confederation and perpetual union," by which the sovereignty of the
several states was expressly limited and curtailed in many important
particulars. This committee had finished its work by the 12th of July,
but the articles were not adopted by Congress until the autumn of 1777,
and they were not finally put into operation until the spring of 1781.
During this inchoate period of union the action of the United States was
that of a confederation in which some portion of the several
sovereignties was understood to be surrendered to the whole. It was the
business of the articles to define the precise nature and extent of this
surrendered sovereignty which no state by itself ever exercised. In the
mean time this sovereignty, undefined in nature and extent, was
exercised, as well as circumstances permitted, by the Continental
Congress.
[Sidenote: The Continental Congress; its extraordinary character.]
A most remarkable body was this Continental Congress. For the
vicissitudes through which it passed, there is perhaps no other
revolutionary body, save the Long Parliament, which can be compared with
it. For its origin we must look back to the committees of correspondence
devised by Jonathan Mayhew, Samuel Adams, and Dabney Carr. First
assembled in 1774 to meet an emergency which was generally believed to
be only temporary, it continued to sit for nearly seven years before its
powers were ever clearly defined; and during those seven years it
exercised some of the highest functions of sovereignty which are
possible to any governing body. It declared the independence of the
United States; it contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with
France; it raised and organized a Continental army; it borrowed large
sums of money, and pledged what the lenders understood to be the
national credit for their repayment; it issued an inconvertible paper
currency, granted letters of marque, and built a navy. All this it did
in the exercise of what in later times would have been called "implied
war powers," and its authority rested upon the general acquiescence in
the purposes for which it acted and in the measures which it adopted.
Under such circumstances its functions were very inefficiently
performed. But the articles of confederation, which in 1781 defined its
powers, served at the same time to limit them; so that for the remaining
eight years of its existence the Continental Congress grew weaker and
weaker, until it was swept away to make room for a more efficient
government.
[Sidenote: The articles of confederation.]
John Dickinson is supposed to have been the principal author of the
articles of confederation; but as the work of the committee was done in
secret and has never been reported, the point cannot be determined. In
November, 1777, Congress sent the articles to the several state
legislatures, with a circular letter recommending them as containing the
only plan of union at all likely to be adopted. In the course of the
next fifteen months the articles were ratified by all the states except
Maryland, which refused to sign until the states laying claim to the
northwestern lands, and especially Virginia, should surrender their
claims to the confederation. We shall by and by see, when we come to
explain this point in detail, that from this action of Maryland there
flowed beneficent consequences that were little dreamed of. It was first
in the great chain of events which led directly to the formation of the
Federal Union. Having carried her point, Maryland ratified the articles
on the first day of March, 1781; and thus in the last and most brilliant
period of the war, while Greene was leading Cornwallis on his fatal
chase across North Carolina, the confederation proposed at the time of
the Declaration of Independence was finally consummated.
According to the language of the articles, the states entered into a
firm league of friendship with each other; and in order to secure and
perpetuate such friendship, the freemen of each state were entitled to
all the privileges and immunities of freemen in all the other states.
Mutual extradition of criminals was established, and in each state full
faith and credit was to be given to the records, acts, and judicial
proceedings of every other state. This universal intercitizenship was
what gave reality to the nascent and feeble Union. In all the common
business relations of life, the man of New Hampshire could deal with the
man of Georgia on an equal footing before the law. But this was almost
the only effectively cohesive provision in the whole instrument.
Throughout the remainder of the articles its language was largely
devoted to reconciling the theory that the states were severally
sovereign with the visible fact that they were already merged to some
extent in a larger political body. The sovereignty of this larger body
was vested in the Congress of delegates appointed yearly by the states.
No state was to be represented by less than two or more than seven
members; no one could be a delegate for more than three years out of
every six; and no delegate could hold any salaried office under the
United States. As in colonial times the states had, to preserve their
self-government, insisted upon paying their governors and judges,
instead of allowing them to be paid out of the royal treasury, so now
the delegates in Congress were paid by their own states. In determining
questions in Congress, each state had one vote, without regard to
population; but a bare majority was not enough to carry any important
measure. Not only for such extraordinary matters as wars and treaties,
but even for the regular and ordinary business of raising money to carry
on the government, not a single step could be taken without the consent
of at least nine of the thirteen states; and this provision well-nigh
sufficed of itself to block the wheels of federal legislation. The
Congress assembled each year on the first Monday of November, and could
not adjourn for a longer period than six months. During its recess the
continuity of government was preserved by an executive committee,
consisting of one delegate from each state, and known as the "committee
of the states." Saving such matters of warfare or treaty as the public
interest might require to be kept secret, all the proceedings of
Congress were entered in a journal, to be published monthly; and the
yeas and nays must be entered should any delegate request it. The
executive departments of war, finance, and so forth were intrusted at
first to committees, until experience soon showed the necessity of
single heads. There was a president of Congress, who, as representing
the dignity of the United States, was, in a certain sense, the foremost
person in the country, but he had no more power than any other delegate.
Of the fourteen presidents between 1774 and 1789, perhaps only Randolph,
Hancock, and Laurens are popularly remembered in that capacity; Jay, St.
Clair, Mifflin, and Lee are remembered for other things; Hanson,
Griffin, and Boudinot are scarcely remembered at all, save by the
student of American history.
Between the Congress thus constituted and the several state governments
the attributes of sovereignty were shared in such a way as to produce a
minimum of result with a maximum of effort. The states were prohibited
from keeping up any naval or military force, except militia, or from
entering into any treaty or alliance, either with a foreign power or
between themselves, without the consent of Congress. No state could
engage in war except by way of defence against a sudden Indian attack.
Congress had the sole right of determining on peace and war, of sending
and receiving ambassadors, of making treaties, of adjudicating all
disputes between the states, of managing Indian affairs, and of
regulating the value of coin and fixing the standard of weights and
measures. Congress took control of the post-office on condition that no
more revenue should be raised from postage than should suffice to
discharge the expenses of the service. Congress controlled the army,
but was provided with no means of raising soldiers save through
requisitions upon the states, and it could only appoint officers above
the rank of colonel; the organization of regiments was left entirely in
the hands of the states. The traditional and wholesome dread of a
standing army was great, but there was no such deep-seated jealousy of a
navy, and Congress was accordingly allowed not only to appoint all naval
officers, but also to establish courts of admiralty.
[Sidenote: The articles failed to create a federal government endowed
with real sovereignty.]
Several essential attributes of sovereignty were thus withheld from the
states; and by assuming all debts contracted by Congress prior to the
adoption of the articles, and solemnly pledging the public faith for
their payment, it was implicitly declared that the sovereignty here
accorded to Congress was substantially the same as that which it had
asserted and exercised ever since the severing of the connection with
England. The articles simply defined the relations of the states to the
Confederation as they had already shaped themselves. Indeed, the
articles, though not finally ratified till 1781, had been known to
Congress and to the people ever since 1776 as their expected
constitution, and political action had been shaped in general accordance
with the theory on which they had been drawn up. They show that
political action was at no time based on the view of the states as
absolutely sovereign, but they also show that the share of sovereignty
accorded to Congress was very inadequate even to the purposes of an
effective confederation. The position in which they left Congress was
hardly more than that of the deliberative head of a league. For the
most fundamental of all the attributes of sovereignty--the power of
taxation--was not given to Congress. It could neither raise taxes
through an excise nor through custom-house duties; it could only make
requisitions upon the thirteen members of the confederacy in proportion
to the assessed value of their real estate, and it was not provided with
any means of enforcing these requisitions. On this point the articles
contained nothing beyond the vague promise of the states to obey. The
power of levying taxes was thus retained entirely by the states. They
not only imposed direct taxes, as they do to-day, but they laid duties
on exports and imports, each according to its own narrow view of its
local interests. The only restriction upon this was that such
state-imposed duties must not interfere with the stipulations of any
foreign treaties such as Congress might make in pursuance of treaties
already proposed to the courts of France and Spain. Besides all this,
the states shared with Congress the powers of coining money, of emitting
bills of credit, and of making their promissory notes a legal tender for
debts.
Such was the constitution under which the United States had begun to
drift toward anarchy even before the close of the Revolutionary War, but
which could only be amended by the unanimous consent of all the thirteen
states. The historian cannot but regard this difficulty of amendment as
a fortunate circumstance; for in the troubles which presently arose it
led the distressed people to seek some other method of relief, and thus
prepared the way for the Convention of 1787, which destroyed the whole
vicious scheme, and gave us a form of government under which we have
just completed a century unparalleled for peace and prosperity. Besides
this extreme difficulty of amendment, the fatal defects of the
Confederation were three in number. The first defect was the two thirds
vote necessary for any important legislation in Congress; under this
rule any five of the states--as, for example, the four southernmost
states with Maryland, or the four New England states with New
Jersey--could defeat the most sorely needed measures. The second defect
was the impossibility of presenting a united front to foreign countries
in respect to commerce. The third and greatest defect was the lack of
any means, on the part of Congress, of enforcing obedience. Not only was
there no federal executive or judiciary worthy of the name, but the
central government operated only upon states, and not upon individuals.
Congress could call for troops and for money in strict conformity with
the articles; but should any state prove delinquent in furnishing its
quota, there were no constitutional means of compelling it to obey the
call. This defect was seen and deplored at the outset by such men as
Washington and Madison, but the only remedy which at first occurred to
them was one more likely to kill than to cure. Only six weeks after the
ratification of the articles, Madison proposed an amendment "to give to
the United States full authority to employ their force, as well by sea
as by land, to compel any delinquent state to fulfil its federal
engagements." Washington approved of this measure, hoping, as he said,
that "a knowledge that this power was lodged in Congress might be the
means to prevent its ever being exercised, and the more readily induce
obedience. Indeed," added Washington, "if Congress were unquestionably
possessed of the power, nothing should induce the display of it but
obstinate disobedience and the urgency of the general welfare." Madison
argued that in the very nature of the Confederation such a right of
coercion was necessarily implied, though not expressed in the articles,
and much might have been said in behalf of this opinion. The
Confederation explicitly declared itself to be perpetual, yet how could
it perpetuate itself for a dozen years without the right to coerce its
refractory members? Practically, however, the remedy was one which could
never have been applied without breaking the Confederation into
fragments. To use the army or navy in coercing a state meant nothing
less than civil war. The local yeomanry would have turned out against
the Continental army with as high a spirit as that with which they
swarmed about the British enemy at Lexington or King's Mountain. A
government which could not collect the taxes for its yearly budget
without firing upon citizens or blockading two or three harbours would
have been the absurdest political anomaly imaginable. No such idea could
have entered the mind of a statesman save from the hope that if one
state should prove refractory, all the others would immediately frown
upon it and uphold Congress in overawing it. In such case the knowledge
that Congress had the power would doubtless have been enough to make its
exercise unnecessary. But in fact this hope was disappointed, for the
delinquency of each state simply set an example of disobedience for all
the others to follow; and the amendment, had it been carried, would
merely have armed Congress with a threat which everybody would have
laughed at. So manifestly hopeless was the case to Pelatiah Webster that
as early as May, 1781, he published an able pamphlet, urging the
necessity for a federal convention for overhauling the whole scheme of
government from beginning to end.
[Sidenote: Military weakness of the government.]
The military weakness due to this imperfect governmental organization
may be illustrated by comparing the number of regular troops which
Congress was able to keep in the field during the Revolutionary War with
the number maintained by the United States government during the War of
Secession. A rough estimate, obtained from averages, will suffice to
show the broad contrast. In 1863, the middle year of the War of
Secession, the total population of the loyal states was about
23,491,600, of whom about one fifth, or 4,698,320, were adult males of
military age. Supposing one adult male out of every five to have been
under arms at one time, the number would have been 939,664. Now the
total number of troops enlisted in the northern army during the four
years of the war, reduced to a uniform standard, was 2,320,272, or an
average of 580,068 under arms in any single year. In point of fact,
this average was reached before the middle of the war, and the numbers
went on increasing, until at the end there were more than a million men
under arms,--at least one out of every five adult males in the northern
states. On the other hand, in 1779, the middle year of the Revolutionary
War, the white population of the United States was about 2,175,000, of
whom 435,000 were adult males of military age. Supposing one out of
every five of these to have been under arms at once, the number would
have been 87,000. Now in the spring of 1777, when the Continental
Congress was at the highest point of authority which it ever reached,
when France was willing to lend it money freely, when its paper currency
was not yet discredited and it could make liberal offers of bounties, a
demand was made upon the states for 80,000 men, or nearly one fifth of
the adult male population, to serve for three years or during the war.
Only 34,820 were obtained. The total number of men in the field in that
most critical year, including the swarms of militia who came to the
rescue at Ridgefield and Bennington and Oriskany, and the Pennsylvania
militia who turned out while their state was invaded, was 68,720. In
1781, when the credit of Congress was greatly impaired, although
military activity again rose to a maximum and it was necessary for the
people to strain every nerve, the total number of men in the field,
militia and all, was only 29,340, of whom only 13,292 were Continentals;
and it was left for the genius of Washington and Greene, working with
desperate energy and most pitiful resources, to save the country. A
more impressive contrast to the readiness with which the demands of the
government were met in the War of Secession can hardly be imagined. Had
the country put forth its strength in 1781 as it did in 1864, an army of
90,000 men might have overwhelmed Clinton at the north and Cornwallis at
the south, without asking any favours of the French fleet. Had it put
forth its full strength in 1777, four years of active warfare might have
been spared. Mr. Lecky explains this difference by his favourite
hypothesis that the American Revolution was the work of a few
ultra-radical leaders, with whom the people were not generally in
sympathy; and he thinks we could not expect to see great heroism or
self-sacrifice manifested by a people who went to war over what he calls
a "money dispute."[3] But there is no reason for supposing that the
loyalists represented the general sentiment of the country in the
Revolutionary War any more than the peace party represented the general
sentiment of the northern states in the War of Secession. There is no
reason for supposing that the people were less at heart in 1781 in
fighting for the priceless treasure of self-government than they were in
1864 when they fought for the maintenance of the pacific principles
underlying our Federal Union. The differences in the organization of the
government, and in its power of operating directly upon the people, are
quite enough to explain the difference between the languid conduct of
the earlier war and the energetic conduct of the later.
[Sidenote: Extreme difficulty of obtaining a revenue.]
Impossible as Congress found it to fill the quotas of the army, the task
of raising a revenue by requisitions upon the states was even more
discouraging. Every state had its own war-debt, and several were
applicants for foreign loans not easy to obtain, so that none could
without the greatest difficulty raise a surplus to hand over to
Congress. The Continental rag-money had ceased to circulate by the end
of 1780, and our foreign credit was nearly ruined. The French government
began to complain of the heavy demands which the Americans made upon its
exchequer, and Vergennes, in sending over a new loan in the fall of
1782, warned Franklin that no more must be expected. To save American
credit from destruction, it was at least necessary that the interest on
the public debt should be paid. For this purpose Congress in 1781 asked
permission to levy a five per cent. duty on imports. The modest request
was the signal for a year of angry discussion. Again and again it was
asked, If taxes could thus be levied by any power outside the state, why
had we ever opposed the Stamp Act or the tea duties? The question was
indeed a serious one, and as an instance of reasoning from analogy
seemed plausible enough. After more than a year Massachusetts consented,
by a bare majority of two in the House and one in the Senate, reserving
to herself the right of appointing the collectors. The bill was then
vetoed by Governor Hancock, though one day too late, and so it was
saved. But Rhode Island flatly refused her consent, and so did Virginia,
though Madison earnestly pleaded the cause of the public credit. For
the current expenses of the government in that same year $9,000,000 were
needed. It was calculated that $4,000,000 might be raised by a loan, and
the other $5,000,000 were demanded of the states. At the end of the year
$422,000 had been collected, not a cent of which came from Georgia, the
Carolinas, or Delaware. Rhode Island, which paid $38,000, did the best
of all according to its resources. Of the Continental taxes assessed in
1783, only one-fifth part had been paid by the middle of 1785. And the
worst of it was that no one could point to a remedy for this state of
things, or assign any probable end to it.
[Sidenote: Dread of the army.]
[Sidenote: Supposed scheme for making Washington king.]
Under such circumstances the public credit sank at home as well as
abroad. Foreign creditors--even France, who had been nothing if not
generous with her loans--might be made to wait; but there were creditors
at home who, should they prove ugly, could not be so easily put off. The
disbandment of the army in the summer of 1783, before the British troops
had evacuated New York, was hastened by the impossibility of paying the
soldiers and the dread of what they might do under such provocation.
Though peace had been officially announced, Hamilton and Livingston
urged that, for the sake of appearances if for no other reason, the army
should be kept together so long as the British remained in New York, if
not until they should have surrendered the western frontier posts. But
Congress could not pay the army, and was afraid of it,--and not without
some reason. Discouraged at the length of time which had passed since
they had received any money, the soldiers had begun to fear lest, now
that their services were no longer needed, their honest claims would be
set aside. Among the officers, too, there was grave discontent. In the
spring of 1778, after the dreadful winter at Valley Forge, several
officers had thrown up their commissions, and others threatened to do
likewise. To avert the danger, Washington had urged Congress to promise
half-pay for life to such officers as should serve to the end of the
war. It was only with great difficulty that he succeeded in obtaining a
promise of half-pay for seven years, and even this raised an outcry
throughout the country, which seemed to dread its natural defenders only
less than its enemies. In the fall of 1780, however, in the general
depression which followed upon the disasters at Charleston and Camden,
the collapse of the paper money, and the discovery of Arnold's treason,
there was serious danger that the army would fall to pieces. At this
critical moment Washington had earnestly appealed to Congress, and
against the strenuous opposition of Samuel Adams had at length extorted
the promise of half-pay for life. In the spring of 1782, seeing the
utter inability of Congress to discharge its pecuniary obligations, many
officers began to doubt whether the promise would ever be kept. It had
been made before the articles of confederation, which required the
assent of nine states to any such measure, had been finally ratified. It
was well known that nine states had never been found to favour the
measure, and it was now feared that it might be repealed or repudiated,
so loud was the popular clamour against it. All this comes of
republican government, said some of the officers; too many cooks spoil
the broth; a dozen heads are as bad as no head; you do not know whose
promises to trust; a monarchy, with a good king whom all men can trust,
would extricate us from these difficulties. In this mood, Colonel Louis
Nicola, of the Pennsylvania line, a foreigner by birth, addressed a long
and well-argued letter to Washington, setting forth the troubles of the
time, and urging him to come forward as a saviour of society, and accept
the crown at the hands of his faithful soldiers. Nicola was an aged man,
of excellent character, and in making this suggestion he seemed to be
acting as spokesman of a certain clique or party among the
officers,--how numerous is not known. Washington instantly replied that
Nicola could not have found a person to whom such a scheme could be more
odious, and he was at a loss to conceive what he had ever done to have
it supposed that he could for one moment listen to a suggestion so
fraught with mischief to his country. Lest the affair, becoming known,
should enhance the popular distrust of the army, Washington said nothing
about it. But as the year went by, and the outcry against half-pay
continued, and Congress showed symptoms of a willingness to compromise
the matter, the discontent of the army increased. Officers and soldiers
brooded alike over their wrongs. "The army," said General Macdougall,
"is verging to that state which, we are told, will make a wise man mad."
The peril of the situation was increased by the well-meant but
injudicious whisperings of other public creditors, who believed that if
the army would only take a firm stand and insist upon a grant of
permanent funds to Congress for liquidating all public debts, the states
could probably be prevailed upon to make such a grant. Robert Morris,
the able secretary of finance, held this opinion, and did not believe
that the states could be brought to terms in any other way. His namesake
and assistant, Gouverneur Morris, held similar views, and gave
expression to them in February, 1783, in a letter to General Greene, who
was still commanding in South Carolina. When Greene received the letter,
he urged upon the legislature of that state, in most guarded and
moderate language, the paramount need of granting a revenue to Congress,
and hinted that the army would not be satisfied with anything less. The
assembly straightway flew into a rage. "No dictation by a Cromwell!"
shouted the members. South Carolina had consented to the five per cent.
impost, but now she revoked it, to show her independence, and Greene's
eyes were opened at once to the danger of the slightest appearance of
military intervention in civil affairs.
[Sidenote: The dangerous Newburgh address, March 11, 1783.]
At the same time a violent outbreak in the army at Newburgh was barely
prevented by the unfailing tact of Washington. A rumour went about the
camp that it was generally expected the army would not disband until the
question of pay should be settled, and that the public creditors looked
to them to make some such demonstration as would overawe the delinquent
states. General Gates had lately emerged from the retirement in which
he had been fain to hide himself after Camden, and had rejoined the army
where there was now such a field for intrigue. An odious aroma of
impotent malice clings about his memory on this last occasion on which
the historian needs to notice him. He plotted in secret with officers of
the staff and others. One of his staff, Major Armstrong, wrote an
anonymous appeal to the troops, and another, Colonel Barber, caused it
to be circulated about the camp. It named the next day for a meeting to
consider grievances. Its language was inflammatory. "My friends!" it
said, "after seven long years your suffering courage has conducted the
United States of America through a doubtful and bloody war; and peace
returns to bless--whom? A country willing to redress your wrongs,
cherish your worth, and reward your services? Or is it rather a country
that tramples upon your rights, disdains your cries, and insults your
distresses? ... If such be your treatment while the swords you wear are
necessary for the defence of America, what have you to expect when those
very swords, the instruments and companions of your glory, shall be
taken from your sides, and no mark of military distinction left but your
wants, infirmities, and scars? If you have sense enough to discover and
spirit to oppose tyranny, whatever garb it may assume, awake to your
situation. If the present moment be lost, your threats hereafter will be
as empty as your entreaties now. Appeal from the justice to the fears of
government, and suspect the man who would advise to longer
forbearance."
Better English has seldom been wasted in a worse cause. Washington, the
man who was aimed at in the last sentence, got hold of the paper next
day, just in time, as he said, "to arrest the feet that stood wavering
on a precipice." The memory of the revolt of the Pennsylvania line,
which had so alarmed the people in 1781, was still fresh in men's minds;
and here was an invitation to more wholesale mutiny, which could hardly
fail to end in bloodshed, and might precipitate the perplexed and
embarrassed country into civil war. Washington issued a general order,
recognizing the existence of the manifesto, but overruling it so far as
to appoint the meeting for a later day, with the senior major-general,
who happened to be Gates, to preside. This order, which neither
discipline nor courtesy could disregard, in a measure tied Gates's
hands, while it gave Washington time to ascertain the extent of the
disaffection. On the appointed day he suddenly came into the meeting,
and amid profoundest silence broke forth in a most eloquent and touching
speech. Sympathizing keenly with the sufferings of his hearers, and
fully admitting their claims, he appealed to their better feelings, and
reminded them of the terrible difficulties under which Congress
laboured, and of the folly of putting themselves in the wrong. He still
counselled forbearance as the greatest of victories, and with consummate
skill he characterized the anonymous appeal as undoubtedly the work of
some crafty emissary of the British, eager to disgrace the army which
they had not been able to vanquish. All were hushed by that majestic
presence and those solemn tones. The knowledge that he had refused all
pay, while enduring more than any other man in the room, gave added
weight to every word. In proof of the good faith of Congress he began
reading a letter from one of the members, when, finding his sight dim,
he paused and took from his pocket the new pair of spectacles which the
astronomer David Rittenhouse had just sent him. He had never worn
spectacles in public, and as he put them on he said, in his simple
manner and with his pleasant smile, "I have grown gray in your service,
and now find myself growing blind." While all hearts were softened he
went on reading the letter, and then withdrew, leaving the meeting to
its deliberations. There was a sudden and mighty revulsion of feeling. A
motion was reported declaring "unshaken confidence in the justice of
Congress;" and it was added that "the officers of the American army view
with abhorrence and reject with disdain the infamous proposals contained
in a late anonymous address to them." The crestfallen Gates, as
chairman, had nothing to do but put the question and report it carried
unanimously; for if any still remained obdurate they no longer dared to
show it. Washington immediately set forth the urgency of the case in an
earnest letter to Congress, and one week later the matter was settled by
an act commuting half-pay for life into a gross sum equal to five years'
full pay, to be discharged at once by certificates bearing interest at
six per cent. Such poor paper was all that Congress had to pay with,
but it was all ultimately redeemed; and while the commutation was
advantageous to the government, it was at the same time greatly for the
interest of the officers, while they were looking out for new means of
livelihood, to have their claims adjusted at once, and to receive
something which could do duty as a respectable sum of money.
[Sidenote: Congress driven from Philadelphia by mutinous soldiers, June
21, 1783.]
Nothing, however, could prevent the story of the Newburgh affair from
being published all over the country, and it greatly added to the
distrust with which the army was regarded on general principles. What
might have happened was forcibly suggested by a miserable occurrence in
June, about two months after the disbanding of the army had begun. Some
eighty soldiers of the Pennsylvania line, mutinous from discomfort and
want of pay, broke from their camp at Lancaster and marched down to
Philadelphia, led by a sergeant or two. They drew up in line before the
state house, where Congress was assembled, and after passing the grog
began throwing stones and pointing their muskets at the windows. They
demanded pay, and threatened, if it were not forthcoming, to seize the
members of Congress and hold them as hostages, or else to break into the
bank where the federal deposits were kept. The executive council of
Pennsylvania sat in the same building, and so the federal government
appealed to the state government for protection. The appeal was
fruitless. President Dickinson had a few state militia at his disposal,
but did not dare to summon them, for fear they should side with the
rioters. The city government was equally listless, and the townsfolk
went their ways as if it were none of their business; and so Congress
fled across the river and on to Princeton, where the college afforded it
shelter. Thus in a city of thirty-two thousand inhabitants, the largest
city in the country, the government of the United States, the body which
had just completed a treaty browbeating England and France, was
ignominiously turned out-of-doors by a handful of drunken mutineers. The
affair was laughed at by many, but sensible men keenly felt the
disgrace, and asked what would be thought in Europe of a government
which could not even command the services of the police. The army became
more unpopular than ever, and during the summer and fall many
town-meetings were held in New England, condemning the Commutation Act.
Are we not poor enough already, cried the farmers, that we must be taxed
to support in idle luxury a riotous rabble of soldiery, or create an
aristocracy of men with gold lace and epaulets, who will presently plot
against our liberties? The Massachusetts legislature protested; the
people of Connecticut meditated resistance. A convention was held at
Middletown in December, at which two thirds of the towns in the state
were represented, and the best method of overruling Congress was
discussed. Much high-flown eloquence was wasted, but the convention
broke up without deciding upon any course of action. The matter had
become so serious that wise men changed their minds, and disapproved of
proceedings calculated to throw Congress into contempt. Samuel Adams,
who had almost violently opposed the grant of half-pay and had been
dissatisfied with the Commutation Act, now came completely over to the
other side. Whatever might be thought of the policy of the measures, he
said, Congress had an undoubted right to adopt them. The army had been
necessary for the defence of our liberties, and the public faith had
been pledged to the payment of the soldiers. States were as much bound
as individuals to fulfil their engagements, and did not the sacred
Scriptures say of an honest man that, though he sweareth to his own
hurt, he changeth not? Such plain truths prevailed in the Boston
town-meeting, which voted that "the commutation is wisely blended with
the national debt." The agitation in New England presently came to an
end, and in this matter the course of Congress was upheld.
[Sidenote: Order of the Cincinnati.]
In order fully to understand this extravagant distrust of the army, we
have to take into account another incident of the summer of 1783, which
gave rise to a discussion that sent its reverberation all over the
civilized world. Men of the present generation who in childhood rummaged
in their grandmothers' cosy garrets cannot fail to have come across
scores of musty and worm-eaten pamphlets, their yellow pages crowded
with italics and exclamation points, inveighing in passionate language
against the wicked and dangerous society of the Cincinnati. Just before
the army was disbanded, the officers, at the suggestion of General Knox,
formed themselves into a secret society, for the purpose of keeping up
their friendly intercourse and cherishing the heroic memories of the
struggle in which they had taken part. With the fondness for classical
analogies which characterized that time, they likened themselves to
Cincinnatus, who was taken from the plough to lead an army, and returned
to his quiet farm so soon as his warlike duties were over. They were
modern Cincinnati. A constitution and by-laws were established for the
order, and Washington was unanimously chosen to be its president. Its
branches in the several states were to hold meetings each Fourth of
July, and there was to be a general meeting of the whole society every
year in the month of May. French officers who had taken part in the war
were admitted to membership, and the order was to be perpetuated by
descent through the eldest male representatives of the families of the
members. It was further provided that a limited membership should from
time to time be granted, as a distinguished honour, to able and worthy
citizens, without regard to the memories of the war. A golden American
eagle attached to a blue ribbon edged with white was the sacred badge of
the order; and to this emblem especial favour was shown at the French
court, where the insignia of foreign states were generally, it is said,
regarded with jealousy. No political purpose was to be subserved by this
order of the Cincinnati, save in so far as the members pledged to one
another their determination to promote and cherish the union between the
states. In its main intent the society was to be a kind of masonic
brotherhood, charged with the duty of aiding the widows and the orphan
children of its members in time of need. Innocent as all this was,
however, the news of the establishment of such a society was greeted
with a howl of indignation all over the country. It was thought that its
founders were inspired by a deep-laid political scheme for centralizing
the government and setting up a hereditary aristocracy. The press teemed
with invective and ridicule, and the feeling thus expressed by the
penny-a-liners was shared by able men accustomed to weigh their words.
Franklin dealt with it in a spirit of banter, and John Adams in a spirit
of abhorrence; while Samuel Adams pointed out the dangers inherent in
the principle of hereditary transmission of honours, and in the
admission of foreigners into a secret association possessed of political
influence in America. What! cried the men of Massachusetts. Have we
thrown overboard the effete institutions of Europe, only to have them
straightway introduced among us again, after this plausible and
surreptitious fashion? At Cambridge it was thought that the general
sentiment of the university was in favour of suppressing the order by
act of legislature. One of the members, who was a candidate for senator
in the spring of 1784, found it necessary to resign in order to save his
chances for election. Rhode Island proposed to disfranchise such of her
citizens as belonged to the order, albeit her most eminent citizen,
Nathanael Greene, was one of them. Ædanus Burke, a judge of the Supreme
Court of South Carolina, wrote a violent pamphlet against the society of
the Cincinnati under the pseudonym of Cassius, the slayer of tyrants;
and this diatribe, translated and amplified by Mirabeau, awakened dull
echoes among readers of Rousseau and haters of privilege in all parts of
Europe. A swarm of brochures in rejoinder and rebutter issued from the
press, and the nineteenth century had come in before the controversy was
quite forgotten.
It is easy for us now to smile at this outcry against the Cincinnati as
much ado about nothing, seeing as we do that in the absence of
territorial jurisdiction or especial political privileges an order of
nobility cannot be created by the mere inheritance of empty titles or
badges. For example, since the great revolution which swept away the
landlordship and fiscal exemptions of the French nobility, a marquisate
or a dukedom in France is of scarcely more political importance than a
doctorate of laws in a New England university. Men were nevertheless not
to be blamed in 1783 for their hostility toward that ghost of the
hereditary principle which the Cincinnati sought to introduce. In a free
industrial society like that of America it had no proper place or
meaning; and the attempt to set up such a form might well have been
cited in illustration of the partial reversion toward militancy which
eight years of warfare had effected. The absurdity of the situation was
quickly realized by Washington, and he prevailed upon the society, in
its first annual meeting of May, 1784, to abandon the principle of
hereditary membership. The agitation was thus allayed, and in the
presence of graver questions the much-dreaded brotherhood gradually
ceased to occupy popular attention.
The opposition to the Cincinnati is not fully explained unless we
consider it in connection with Nicola's letter, the Newburgh address,
and the flight of Congress to Princeton. The members of the Cincinnati
were pledged to do whatever they could to promote the union between the
states; the object of the Newburgh address was to enlist the army in
behalf of the public creditors, and in some vaguely-imagined fashion to
force a stronger government upon the country; the letter of Nicola shows
that at least some of the officers had harboured the notion of a
monarchy; and the weakness of Congress had been revealed in the most
startling manner by its flight before a squad of mutineers. It is one of
the lessons of history that, in the virtual absence of a central
government for which a need is felt, the want is apt to be supplied by
the strongest organization in the country, whatever that may happen to
be. It was in this way that the French army, a few years later, got
control of the government of France and made its general emperor. In
1783, if the impotence of Congress were to be as explicitly acknowledged
as it was implicitly felt, the only national organization left in the
country was the army, and when this was disbanded it seemed nevertheless
to prolong its life under a new and dangerous form in the secret
brotherhood of the Cincinnati. The cession of western lands to the
confederacy was, moreover, completed at about this time, and one of the
uses to which the new territory was to be put was the payment of claims
due to the soldiers. It was distinctly feared, as is shown in a letter
from Samuel Adams to Elbridge Gerry, that the members of the Cincinnati
would acquire large tracts of western land under this arrangement, and,
importing peasants from Germany, would grant farms to them on terms of
military service and fealty, thus introducing into America the feudal
system. In order to forestall any such movement, it was provided by
Congress that in any new states formed out of the western territory no
person holding a hereditary title should be admitted to citizenship.
[Sidenote: Congress finds itself unable to carry out the provisions of
the treaty.]
[Sidenote: Persecution of Tories.]
From the weakness of Congress as illustrated in its inability to raise
money to pay the public debt and meet the current expenses of
government, and from the popular dread of military usurpation which went
along with the uneasy consciousness of that weakness, we have now to
turn to another group of affairs in which the same point is still
further illustrated and emphasized. We have seen how the commissioners
of the United States in Paris had succeeded in making a treaty of peace
with Great Britain on extremely favourable terms. So unpopular was the
treaty in England, on account of the great concessions made to the
Americans, that, as we have seen, the fall of Lord Shelburne's ministry
was occasioned thereby. As an offset to these liberal concessions, of
which the most considerable was the acknowledgment of the American claim
to the northwestern territory, our confederate government was pledged to
do all in its power to effect certain concessions which were demanded by
England. That the American loyalists, whose property had been
confiscated by various state governments, should be indemnified for
their losses was a claim which, whatever Americans might think of it,
England felt bound in honour to urge. That private debts, due from
American to British creditors, should be faithfully discharged was the
plainest dictate of common honesty. Congress, as we have seen, was bound
by the treaty to recommend to the several states to desist from the
persecution of Tories, and to give them an opportunity of recovering
their estates; and it had been further agreed that all private debts
should be discharged at their full value in sterling money. It now
turned out that Congress was powerless to carry out the provisions of
the treaty upon either of these points. The recommendations concerning
the Tories were greeted with a storm of popular indignation. Since the
beginning of the war these unfortunate persons had been treated with
severity both by the legislatures and by the people. Many had been
banished; others had fled the country, and against these refugees
various harsh laws had been enacted. Their estates had been confiscated,
and their return prohibited under penalty of imprisonment or death. Many
others, who had remained in the country, were objects of suspicion and
dislike in states where they had not, as in New York and the Carolinas,
openly aided the enemy or taken part in Indian atrocities. Now, on the
conclusion of peace, in utter disregard of Congress, fresh measures of
vengeance were taken against these "fawning spaniels," as they were
called, these "tools and minions of Britain." An article in the
"Massachusetts Chronicle" expressed the common feeling: "As Hannibal
swore never to be at peace with the Romans, so let every Whig swear, by
his abhorrence of slavery, by liberty and religion, by the shades of
departed friends who have fallen in battle, by the ghosts of those of
our brethren who have been destroyed on board of prison-ships and in
loathsome dungeons, never to be at peace with those fiends the refugees,
whose thefts, murders, and treasons have filled the cup of woe." Tons of
pamphlets, issued under the customary Latin pseudonyms, were filled with
this truculent bombast; and like sentiments were thundered from the
pulpit by men who had quite forgotten for the moment their duty of
preaching reconciliation and forgiveness of injuries. Why should not
these wretches, it was sarcastically asked, be driven at once from the
country? Of course they could not desire to live under a free government
which they had been at such pains to destroy. Let them go forthwith to
his majesty's dominions, and live under the government they preferred.
It would never do to let them stay here, to plot treason at their
leisure; in a few years they would get control of all the states, and
either hand them over to Great Britain again, or set up a Tory despotism
on American soil. Such was the rubbish that passed current as argument
with the majority of the people. A small party of moderate Whigs saw its
absurdity, and urged that the Tories had much better remain at home,
where they had lost all political influence, than go and found
unfriendly colonies to the northward. The moderate Whigs were in favour
of heeding the recommendation of Congress, and acting in accordance
with the spirit of the treaty; and these humane and sensible views were
shared by Gadsden and Marion in South Carolina, by Theodore Sedgwick in
Massachusetts, and by Greene, Hamilton, and Jay. But any man who held
such opinions, no matter how conspicuous his services had been, ran the
risk of being accused of Tory sympathies. "Time-serving Whigs" and
"trimmers" were the strangely inappropriate epithets hurled at men who,
had they been in the slightest degree time-servers, would have shrunk
from the thankless task of upholding good sense and humanity in the
teeth of popular prejudice.
[Sidenote: The Trespass Act of New York, 1784.]
In none of the states did the loyalists receive severer treatment than
in New York, and for obvious reasons. Throughout the war the frontier
had been the scene of atrocities such as no other state, save perhaps
South Carolina, had witnessed. Cherry Valley and Minisink were names of
horror not easily forgotten, and the fate of Lieutenant Boyd and
countless other victims called loudly for vengeance. The sins of the
Butlers and their bloodthirsty followers were visited in robbery and
insult upon unoffending men, who were like them in nothing but in being
labelled with the epithet "Tory." During the seven years that the city
of New York had been occupied by the British army, many of these
loyalists had found shelter there. The Whig citizens, on the other hand,
had been driven off the island, to shift as best they might in New
Jersey, while their comfortable homes were seized and assigned by
military orders to these very Tories. For seven years the refugee Whigs
from across the Hudson had looked upon New York with feelings like those
with which the mediæval exile from Florence or Pisa was wont to regard
his native city. They saw in it the home of enemies who had robbed them,
the prison-house of gallant friends penned up to die of wanton ill-usage
in foul ships' holds in the harbour. When at last the king's troops left
the city, it was felt that a great day of reckoning had arrived. In
September, 1783, two months before the evacuation, more than twelve
thousand men, women, and children embarked for the Bahamas or for Nova
Scotia, rather than stay and face the troubles that were coming. Many of
these were refined and cultivated persons, and not all had been actively
hostile to the American cause; many had simply accepted British
protection. Against those who remained in the city the returning Whigs
now proceeded with great severity. The violent party was dominant in the
legislature, and George Clinton, the governor, put himself conspicuously
at its head. A bill was passed disfranchising all such persons as had
voluntarily stayed in neighbourhoods occupied by the British troops;
their offence was called misprision of treason. But the council vetoed
this bill as too wholesale in its operation, for it would have left some
districts without voters enough to hold an election. An "iron-clad oath"
was adopted instead, and no one was allowed to vote unless he could
swear that he had never in anywise abetted the enemy. It was voted that
no Tory who had left the state should be permitted to return; and a bill
was passed known as the Trespass Act, whereby all persons who had quit
their homes by reason of the enemy's presence might recover damages in
an action of trespass against such persons as had since taken possession
of the premises. Defendants in such cases were expressly barred from
pleading a military order in justification of their possession. As there
was scarcely a building on the island of New York that had not thus
changed hands during the British occupation, it was easy to foresee what
confusion must ensue. Everybody whose house had once been, for ever so
few days, in the hands of a Tory now rushed into court with his action
of trespass. Damages were rated at most exorbitant figures, and it
became clear that the misdeeds of the enemy were about to be made the
excuse for a carnival of spoliation, when all at once the test case of
Rutgers _v._ Waddington brought upon the scene a sturdy defender of
order, an advocate who was soon to become one of the foremost personages
in American history.
[Sidenote: Alexander Hamilton.]
Of all the young men of that day, save perhaps William Pitt, the most
precocious was Alexander Hamilton. He had already given promise of a
great career before the breaking out of the war. He was born on the
island of Nevis, in the West Indies, in 1757. His father belonged to
that famous Scottish clan from which have come one of the most learned
metaphysicians and one of the most original mathematicians of modern
times. His mother was a French lady, of Huguenot descent, and
biographers have been fond of tracing in his character the various
qualities of his parents. To the shrewdness and persistence, the
administrative ability, and the taste for abstract reasoning which we
are wont to find associated in the highest type of Scottish mind he
joined a truly French vivacity and grace. His earnestness, sincerity,
and moral courage were characteristic alike of Puritan and of Huguenot.
In the course of his short life he exhibited a remarkable
many-sidedness. So great was his genius for organization that in many
essential respects the American government is moving to-day along the
lines which he was the first to mark out. As an economist he shared to
some extent in the shortcomings of the age which preceded Adam Smith,
but in the special department of finance he has been equalled by no
other American statesman save Albert Gallatin. He was a splendid orator
and brilliant writer, an excellent lawyer, and a clear-headed and
industrious student of political history. He was also eminent as a
political leader, although he lacked faith in democratic government, and
a generous impatience of temperament sometimes led him to prefer short
and arbitrary by-paths toward desirable ends, which can never be
securely reached save along the broad but steep and arduous road of
popular conviction. But with all Hamilton's splendid qualities, nothing
about him is so remarkable as the early age at which these were
developed. At the age of fifteen a brilliant newspaper article brought
him into such repute in the little island of Nevis that he was sent to
New York to avail himself of the best advantages afforded by the King's
College, now known as Columbia. He had at first no definite intention
of becoming an American citizen, but the thrilling events of the time
appealed strongly to the earnest heart and powerful intelligence of this
wonderful boy. At a gathering of the people of New York in July, 1774,
his generous blood warmed, till a resistless impulse brought him on his
feet to speak to the assembled multitude. It was no company of
half-drunken idlers that thronged about him, but an assemblage of grave
and responsible citizens, who looked with some astonishment upon this
boy of seventeen years, short and slight in stature, yet erect and
Cæsar-like in bearing, with firm set mouth and great, dark, earnest
eyes. His eloquent speech, full of sense and without a syllable of
bombast, held his hearers entranced, and from that day Alexander
Hamilton was a marked man. He began publishing anonymous pamphlets,
which at first were attributed by some to Jay, and by others to
Livingston. When their authorship was discovered, the loyalist party
tried in vain to buy off the formidable youth. He kept up the
pamphlet-war, in the course of which he wofully defeated Dr. Cooper, the
Tory president of the college; but shortly afterward he defended the
doctor's house against an angry mob, until that unpopular gentleman had
succeeded in making his escape to a British ship. Hamilton served in the
army throughout the war, for the most part as aid and secretary to
Washington; but in 1781 he was a colonel in the line, and stormed a
redoubt at Yorktown with distinguished skill and bravery. He married a
daughter of Philip Schuyler, began the practice of law, and in 1782, at
the age of twenty-five, was chosen a delegate to Congress.
[Sidenote: The case of Rutgers _v._ Waddington.]
In 1784, when the Trespass Act threw New York into confusion, Hamilton
had come to be regarded as one of the most powerful advocates in the
country. In the test case which now came before the courts he played a
part of consummate boldness and heroism. Elizabeth Rutgers was a widow,
who had fled from New York after its capture by General Howe. Her
confiscated estate had passed into the hands of Joshua Waddington, a
rich Tory merchant, and she now brought suit under the Trespass Act for
its recovery. It was a case in which popular sympathy was naturally and
strongly enlisted in behalf of the poor widow. That she should have been
turned out of house and home was one of the many gross instances of
wickedness wrought by the war. On the other hand, the disturbance
wrought by the enforcement of the Trespass Act was already creating
fresh wrongs much faster than it was righting old ones; and it is for
such reasons as this that both in the common law and in the law of
nations the principle has been firmly established that "the fruits of
immovables belong to the captor as long as he remains in actual
possession of them." The Trespass Act contravened this principle, and it
also contravened the treaty. It moreover placed the state of New York in
an attitude of defiance toward Congress, which had made the treaty and
expressly urged upon the states to suspend the legislation against the
Tories. On large grounds of public policy, therefore, the Trespass Act
deserved to be set aside by the courts, and when Hamilton was asked to
serve as counsel for the defendant he accepted the odious task without
hesitation. There can be no better proof of his forensic ability than
his winning a verdict, in such a case as this, from a hostile court that
was largely influenced by the popular excitement. The decision nullified
the Trespass Act, and forthwith mass meetings of the people and an extra
session of the legislature condemned this action of the court. Hamilton
was roundly abused, and his conduct was attributed to unworthy motives.
But he faced the people as boldly as he had faced the court, and
published a letter, under the signature of Phocion, setting forth in the
clearest light the injustice and impolicy of extreme measures against
the Tories. The popular wrath and disgust at Hamilton's course found
expression in a letter from one Isaac Ledyard, a hot-headed pot-house
politician, who signed himself Mentor. A war of pamphlets ensued between
Mentor and Phocion. It was genius pitted against dulness, reason against
passion; and reason wielded by genius won the day. The more intelligent
and respectable citizens reluctantly admitted that Hamilton's arguments
were unanswerable. A club of boon companions, to which Ledyard belonged,
made the same admission by the peculiar manner in which it proposed to
silence him. It was gravely proposed that the members of the club should
pledge themselves one after another to challenge Hamilton to mortal
combat, until some one of them should have the good fortune to kill him!
The scheme met with general favour, but was defeated by the exertions
of Ledyard himself, whose zeal was not ardent enough to condone
treachery and murder. The incident well illustrates the intense
bitterness of political passion at the time, as Hamilton's conduct shows
him in the light of a most courageous and powerful defender of the
central government. For nothing was more significant in the verdict
which he had obtained than its implicit assertion of the rights of the
United States as against the legislature of a single state.
[Sidenote: Emigration of Tories.]
In spite of the efforts of such men as Hamilton, life was made very
uncomfortable for the Tories. In some states they were subjected to mob
violence. Instances of tarring and feathering were not uncommon. The
legislature of South Carolina was honourably distinguished for the good
faith with which it endeavoured to enforce the recommendation of
Congress; but the people, unable to forget the smoking ruins of
plundered homes, were less lenient. Notices were posted ordering
prominent loyalists to leave the country; the newspapers teemed with
savage warnings; and finally, of those who tarried beyond a certain
time, many were shot or hanged to trees. This extremity of bitterness,
however, did not long continue. The instances of physical violence were
mostly confined to the first two or three years after the close of the
war. In most of the states the confiscating acts were after a while
repealed, and many of the loyalists were restored to their estates. But
the emigration which took place between 1783 and 1785 was very large. It
has been estimated that 100,000 persons, or nearly three per cent. of
the total white population, quit the country. Those from the southern
states went mostly to the Bahamas and Florida; while those from the
north laid the foundation of new British states in New Brunswick and
Upper Canada. Many of these refugees appealed to the British government
for indemnification for their losses, and their claims received prompt
attention. A parliamentary commission was appointed to inquire into the
matter, and by the year 1790 some $16,000,000 had been distributed among
about 4,000 sufferers, while many others received grants of crown-lands,
or half-pay as military officers, or special annuities, or appointments
in the civil service. On the whole, the compensation which the refugees
received from Parliament seems to have been much more ample than that
which the ragged soldiers of our Revolutionary army ever received from
Congress.
[Sidenote: Congress is unable to enforce payment of debts to British
creditors. England retaliates by refusing to surrender the western
posts.]
While the political passions resulting in this forced emigration of
loyalists were such as naturally arise in the course of a civil war, the
historian cannot but regret that the United States should have been
deprived of the services of so many excellent citizens. In nearly all
such cases of wholesale popular vengeance, it is the wrong individuals
who suffer. We could well afford to dispense with the border-ruffians
who abetted the Indians in their carnival of burning and scalping, but
the refugees of 1784 were for the most part peaceful and unoffending
families, above the average in education and refinement. The vicarious
suffering inflicted upon them set nothing right, but simply increased
the mass of wrong, while to the general interests of the country the
loss of such people was in every way damaging. The immediate political
detriment wrought at the time, though it is that which here most nearly
concerns us, was perhaps the least important. Since Congress was
manifestly unable to carry out the treaty, an excuse was furnished to
England for declining to fulfil some of its provisions. In regard to the
loyalists, indeed, the treaty had recognized that Congress possessed but
an advisory power; but in the other provision concerning the payment of
private debts, which in the popular mind was very much mixed up with the
question of justice to the loyalists, the faith of the United States was
distinctly pledged. On this point also Congress was powerless to enforce
the treaty. Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia,
and South Carolina had all enacted laws obstructing the collection of
British debts; and in flat defiance of the treaty these statutes
remained in force until after the downfall of the Confederation. The
states were aware that such conduct needed an excuse, and one was soon
forthcoming. Many negroes had left the country with the British fleet:
some doubtless had sought their freedom; others, perhaps, had been
kidnapped as booty, and sold to planters in the West Indies. The number
of these black men carried away by the fleet had been magnified tenfold
by popular rumour. Complaints had been made to Sir Guy Carleton, but he
had replied that any negro who came within his lines was presumably a
freeman, and he could not lend his aid in remanding such persons to
slavery. Jay, as one of the treaty commissioners, gave it as his opinion
that Carleton was quite right in this, but he thought that where a loss
of slaves could be proved, Great Britain was bound to make pecuniary
compensation to the owners. The matter was wrangled over for several
years, in the state legislatures, in town and county meetings, at
dinner-tables, and in bar-rooms, with the general result that, until
such compensation should be made, the statutes hindering the collection
of debts would not be repealed. In retaliation for this, Great Britain
refused to withdraw her garrisons from the western fortresses, which the
treaty had surrendered to the United States. This measure was very
keenly felt by the people. As an assertion of superior strength, it was
peculiarly galling to our weak and divided confederacy, and it also
wrought us direct practical injury. It encouraged the Indian tribes in
their depredations on the frontier, and it deprived American merchants
of an immensely lucrative trade in furs. In the spring of 1787 there
were advertised for sale in London more than 360,000 skins, worth
$1,200,000 at the lowest estimate; and had the posts been surrendered
according to the treaty, all this would have passed through the hands of
American merchants. The London fur-traders were naturally loth to lose
their control over this business, and in the language of modern politics
they brought "pressure" to bear on the government to retain the
fortresses as long as possible. The American refusal to pay British
creditors furnished an excellent excuse, while the weakness of Congress
made any kind of reprisal impossible; and it was not until Washington's
second term as president, after our national credit had been restored
and the strength of our new government made manifest, that England
surrendered this chain of strongholds, commanding the woods and waters
of our northwestern frontier.