[Sidenote: The Confederation.]
[Sidenote: Bond of the States.]
The Confederation was designed as a temporary civil machine, with which
to conduct a war common to the colonies. The Constitution was the later
and permanent bond, combining the States under a single government.
Without the confederation, there would have been chaos in the
revolution; without the constitution, there would have remained the
weakness arising from the division and rivalry of States. It is most
interesting to observe the gradual manner in which our civil government
crystallized out of the original elements offered by the colonies;
and it is wonderful to see with what wise deliberation and patriotic
earnestness States differing so widely in manners, in religion, in
colonial system, and even in blood and race, were brought together in
harmonious coalition, bound with a bond which the greatest civil war of
modern times failed to sever, and which it seems only to have confirmed
and strengthened.
[Sidenote: Early Confederations.]
There were, indeed, local confederations before those which, in
1774, enabled a congress to meet at Philadelphia, and which, in 1777,
established articles for a more regular, though still a temporary, civil
enginery with which to bring the war to a successful conclusion. More
than a century before the first meeting of the Continental Congress,
the idea of a confederation had been agitated among the New England
colonies. In 1643 a confederation of those colonies was agreed upon
at Boston, with twelve organic articles, for the common protection and
defence. Here was the very beginning of American unions; and in its
features may be discovered traces of the democratic principles of the
Pilgrims.
[Sidenote: Declaration of Rights.]
A general congress of all the colonies met at New York in 1690,
for purposes of conference, when the Stamp Act was promulgated.
Massachusetts invited the colonies to meet in a general congress, which
assembled at New York in 1765, adopted a declaration of rights, asserted
the sole right of taxation to rest in the colonies, and passed other
important resolutions. Eleven years before this, commissioners from
nearly all of the colonies had met at Albany, and before this body
Benjamin Franklin submitted his famous "project of union." Other
conferences and congresses were held between 1765 and 1774; but it was
early in September of the latter year that the first formal Continental
Congress met, at Philadelphia, mainly to concert measures for resisting
the arbitrary acts of the mother country. The rules which guided its
deliberations were few and simple; but even so early we find Patrick
Henry arguing upon the great question of the rights of the States, which
has been a bone of contention in this country from that time to this.
[Sidenote: Articles of Confederation Adopted. ]
The first formal articles of confederation, after several ineffectual
attempts, were adopted on the 15th of November, 1777, when the States
were in the midst of the war of independence; but they were not formally
ratified by all of the colonies until 1781, when Maryland at last agreed
to them. These articles contained the germs of nationality, the crude
material out of which the much broader and wiser constitution was
afterwards framed. The second article provided for the complete
"sovereignty, independence, and freedom," of the several States, in all
powers not expressly delegated to Congress.
[Sidenote: Restrictions on the States. ]
It was declared that the confederation was a mutual league for
protection and defence; that each State should deliver fugitives from
justice to the others, and accord full faith to the judicial records
of the others; that each State should have the right to recall its
delegates, and that no State should be represented in Congress by
less than two nor more than seven delegates; that no State should send
embassies to foreign powers, confer titles of nobility, lay imports
inconsistent with treaties of the United States, keep vessels of war
or military forces in time of peace without the consent of Congress, a
certain quota of militia excepted, or engage in war except in certain
specified exigencies.
These, with many minor regulations, were the organic rules under
which our civil government was carried on from 1777 to 1788, when the
constitution came into force. The confederation was supplied with an
executive chosen by Congress, comprising secretaries of foreign affairs,
war, and finance. It was evident, however, that this league, while it
had well served a temporary purpose, was quite inadequate to the
purpose of a permanent bond of union. "We are one nation to-day," said
Washington, "and thirteen to-morrow; who will treat with us on these
terms?"
[Sidenote: Steps towards a Constitution.]
The first formal step towards establishing a constitution was the
meeting, in the autumn of 1786, of commissioners from Virginia,
Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, at Annapolis. They
conferred together, and reported to Congress a recommendation that a
body, comprising delegates from all the States, and empowered to frame
an organic instrument, should be convened early in the following year.
Congress adopted the scheme, and the constituent convention was called.
[Sidenote: The Constituent Convention.]
This famous assembly met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and its
deliberations continued until the middle of September. Among its
members were many of the most eminent statesmen and soldiers of the
Revolutionary period.
[Sidenote: Members of the Convention.]
George Washington, pre-eminent in war, and to be still pre-eminent in
times of peace, presided over the convention, and was one of the guiding
spirits of its labors. Of the thirty-eight delegates who signed the
constitution, six--Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris,
James Wilson, and George Clymer--had previously signed the Declaration
of Independence. It was in the constitutional convention that Alexander
Hamilton's genius for statesmanship became conspicuous to the whole
nation; while Madison, the future President, achieved therein a large
reputation.
[Sidenote: The Non-signers.]
Among others, the two Pinckneys from South Carolina, John Dickinson,
Jonathan Dayton, Rufus King, Gouverneur Morris, Jared Ingersoll, and
John Rutledge, were eminent in various spheres of public life. Some of
the members of the convention refused to, or for some reason did not,
sign the constitution after it was completed and drafted. These were
Elbridge Gerry and Caleb Strong of Massachusetts, Oliver Ellsworth
of Connecticut, John Lansing and Robert Yates of New York, William
C. Houston of New Jersey, Luther Martin and John Francis Mercer of
Maryland, George Mason, James McClung, Edmund Randolph, and George Wythe
of Virginia, William R. Davis of North Carolina, William Houston and
William Pierce of Georgia.
[Sidenote: Issues in the Convention.]
The discussions on the proposed constitution were long, earnest,
sometimes heated, and revealed the presence of widely divergent
opinions. Four plans, or projects, were submitted severally by Edmund
Randolph, William Paterson, Charles Pinckney, and Alexander Hamilton,
differing widely in the political systems recommended. Throughout, the
struggle was between those who desired to preserve a large degree
of independence to the States, and those who wished to make a strong
national government; and the crisis of the struggle came upon the
question whether the States should have equal votes in the Senate, or
should be represented in that body, as in the House of Representatives,
according to population.
This was warmly debated for several days, the venerable Roger Sherman
and Hamilton sustaining the principle of State equality, and Madison
and Rufus King as vigorously opposing it. At last the former party
prevailed, after a report in favor of State equality in the Senate said
to have been moved in committee by Dr. Franklin. Other phases of the
same contention occurred in the discussion of the article specially
defining the powers of Congress. It was the object of the "States'
rights" party to limit these as much as possible, and of the nationalist
party to give them a broad range.
[Sidenote: The Constitution a Compromise.]
[Sidenote: Powers of Congress.]
Thus, after labors extending through nearly four months, the
constitution issued from the hands of its framers with the marks of
compromise and concession on almost every section. On the one hand,
the States were to vote as equals in the second and upper branch of
Congress, and reserved to themselves local self-government and all
powers not expressly set forth in the instrument. On the other, Congress
was clothed with authority to lay uniform taxes and imposts, to provide
for the common defence, to borrow money on the credit of the nation, to
regulate foreign commerce, to make naturalization and bankruptcy laws,
to coin money, to establish post-offices and roads, to declare war and
raise armies and a navy, to constitute courts, to organize and call
out the militia, and to "execute the laws of the Union, suppress
insurrection, and repel invasions."
Animated, too, by the true republican spirit, the framers of the
constitution inserted in it that no bill of attainder or _ex-post-facto_
law should be passed; that the writ of _habeas corpus_ should only be
suspended in cases of extreme necessity; and that no title of nobility
should either be granted by the government or accepted by a citizen of
the United States.
[Sidenote: Ratification of the Constitution.]
As soon as the constitution was promulgated, a warm contest arose in all
the States over its ratification. The instrument, upon being ratified by
nine States, was to become the organic law of the land. Although it was
strenuously opposed by many eminent men, among them Patrick Henry, a
sufficient number of States assented in time to bring the constitution
into operation the year after its submission to the people.
[Sidenote: "The Federalist."]
Although neither Hamilton nor Madison was entirely satisfied with the
work of the convention, both sank their scruples in a loftier spirit of
patriotism; and their defence of the constitution, in conjunction
with John Jay in the _Federalist_, is likely to be read as long as the
constitution lasts. How wisely the framers labored, and the great fruits
of their labor, are far more clearly to be seen now that the great
instrument has been so long and so severely tried, than was possible in
their own generation. The constitution has stood well the strain of a
progress far more rapid, and needs far more vast and pressing, than they
could have foreseen. It protects the liberties of a nation many fold
more extended and numerous than they could have anticipated would
exist within the brief space of a century; nor does the promise of its
endurance yet grow feeble.