persistence against fortune!... Washington, the chief of a nation
in arms, doing battle with distracted parties; calm in the midst of
conspiracy; serene against the open foe before him and the darker
enemies at his back; Washington, inspiring order and spirit into
troops hungry and in rags; stung by ingratitude, but betraying no
anger, and every ready to forgive; in defeat invincible, magnanimous
in conquest and never so sublime as on that day when he laid down
his victorious sword and sought his noble retirement--here, indeed,
is a character to admire and revere; a life without a stain, a fame
without a flaw."
A year after the Articles of Confederation had been adopted, the war
came to an end by a preliminary treaty on November 30, 1782.
Now follows the least known chapter in American history. It was a period
of travail, of which the Constitution of the United States and the
present American nation were born. The government slowly succumbed from
its own weakness to its inevitable death. Only the shreds and patches of
authority were left. Gradually the union fell apart. Of the Continental
Congress only fifteen members, representing seven colonies, remained to
transact the affairs of the new nation. The army, which previously to
the termination of the war had dissolved by the hundreds, was now unpaid
and in a stale of revolt. Measure after measure was proposed in Congress
to raise money to pay the interest on the bonded indebtedness, which was
in arrears, and to provide funds for the most necessary expenses, but
these failed, in Congress for the want of the necessary nine votes or,
if enacted, the States treated the requisitions with indifference. The
currency of the United States had fallen almost as low as the Austrian
kronen, and men derisively plastered the walls of their houses with the
worthless paper of the Continental Congress. Adequate authority no
longer remained to carry out the terms of the treaties with England and
France, and they were nullified by the failure of the infant nation to
comply with its own obligations and the consequent refusal of the other
contracting parties to comply with theirs. The government made a call
upon the States to raise $8,000,000 for the most vital needs, but only
$400,000 was actually received. Then Congress asked the States to vest
in it the power to levy a tax of five per cent, on imports for a limited
period, but, after waiting two years for the action of the States, less
than nine concurred. The States were then asked to pledge their own
internal revenue for twenty-five years to meet the national
indebtedness, but this could only be done by unanimous consent, and
while twelve States concurred, Rhode Island refused and the measure was
defeated. It was again the infinite folly of the _liberum veto_ which,
prior to the great partition, condemned Poland to chronic anarchy.
The impotence of the new government, which was still sitting in
Philadelphia, can be measured by the fact that on June 9, 1783, word
came that eighty soldiers were on their way to Philadelphia to demand
relief. They stacked their arms in front of the State House, where the
Congress was then sitting, and refused to disband, when requested by
Col. Alexander Hamilton, as the representative of the Congress, to do
so. When Congress appealed to the government of Pennsylvania for
protection, it was advised that the Pennsylvania militia was likewise
insubordinate. The Congress then hastily fled by night and became a
fugitive.
The impotence of the Confederation can be measured by the fact that in
the last fourteen months of its existence its receipts were less than
$400,000, while the interest on the foreign debt alone was over
$2,400,000, and the interest on the internal debt was five-fold greater.
In the absence of any government and in the period of general
prostration it was not unnatural that the spirit of Bolshevism grew with
alarming rapidity. It even permeated the officers of the Army. In March,
1783, an anonymous communication was sent to Washington's officers to
meet in secret conference to take some action, possibly to overthrow the
government. A copy fell into Washington's hands and, while he forbade
the assemblage of the officers under the anonymous call, he himself
directed the officers to assemble. He unexpectedly appeared at the
meeting and, being no speaker, he had reduced his appeal to writing. As
he adjusted his spectacles to read it, he pathetically said: "I have not
only grown gray but blind in your service." He then made a touching
appeal to them not to increase by example the spreading spirit of
revolt. The very sight of their old commander turned the hearts of the
revolting element and the officers remained loyal to their noble leader.
Where the spirit of disaffection was thus found in high places it
naturally prevailed more widely among the masses who had been driven to
frenzy by their sufferings. This culminated in a revolt in Massachusetts
under the leadership of an old soldier named Shays, and it spread with
such rapidity that not only did one-fifth of the people join in
attempting to overthrow the remnant of established authority in
Massachusetts, but it rapidly spread to other States. The offices of
government and the courthouses were seized, the collection of debts was
forbidden, and private property was forcibly appropriated to meet the
common needs.
Chaos had come again. It filled Washington's heart with disgust and
despair. After surrendering his commission to the pitiful remnant of the
government he had retired to Mount Vernon, and for a time declined to
act further as the leader of his people. Thus, in October, 1785, he
wrote James Warren, of Massachusetts:
"The war, as you have very justly observed, has terminated most
advantageously for America, and a fair field is presented to our
view; but I confess to you freely, my dear sir, that I do not think
we possess wisdom or justice enough to cultivate it properly.
Illiberality, jealousy, and local policy mix too much in all our
public councils for good government of the union. In a word, the
Confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without
the substance, and Congress a nugatory body, their ordinances being
little attended to.... By such policy as this the wheels of
government are clogged, and our brightest prospects, and that high
expectation which was entertained of us by the wondering world, are
turned into astonishment; and, from the high ground on which we
stood, we are descending into the vale of confusion and darkness."
Again he wrote to George Mason:
"I have seen without despondency, even for a moment, the hours which
America has styled its gloomy ones, but I have beheld no day since
the commencement of hostilities that I thought our liberties in such
imminent danger as at present. Indeed, we are verging so fast to
destruction that I am feeling that sense to which I have been a
stranger until within these three months."
Again in 1786 he writes:
"I think often of our situation, and view it with concern. From the
high ground we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our
footsteps, to be so fallen, so lost, is mortifying; but everything
of virtue has, in a degree, taken its departure from our land....
What, gracious God, is man that there should be such inconsistency,
and perfidiousness in his conduct! It was but the other day that we
were shedding our blood to obtain the Constitutions under which we
now live, and now we are unsheathing our swords to overturn them.
The thing is so unaccountable that I hardly know how to realize it
or to persuade myself that I am not under an illusion of a dream."
It was, however, the darkest hour before the dawn, and again it was
Washington who became his country's saviour. In 1785, some commissioners
from the States of Virginia and Maryland visited Mount Vernon to pay
their respects to the well-loved commander. After conferring with him
upon the chaos of the times, they decided to issue a call for a general
conference of the representatives of the States to be held on September
11, 1786, at Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss how far the States
themselves could agree on common regulations of commerce. At the
appointed time the delegates assembled from Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, New York and New Jersey, and finding themselves too few in
number to achieve the great objective, the convention contented itself
by issuing another call, drafted by Alexander Hamilton, then under
thirty years of age, to all the States to send delegates to a convention
to be held in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May, 1787, "to take
into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such
further provisions as should appear to them necessary to render the
Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the
Union."
The dying Congress tardily approved of this suggestion, but finally, on
January 21, 1787, grudgingly adopted a resolution that--
"It is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a convention
of delegates, who shall have been appointed by the several States,
be held at Philadelphia _for the sole and express purpose of
revising the Articles of Confederation_ and reporting to Congress
and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein
as shall, _when agreed to in Congress_ and conformed to by the
States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigency of
the government and the preservation of the union."
It will be noted by the italicized portions of the resolution that this
impotent body thus vainly attempted to cling to the shadow of its
vanished authority by stating that the proposed constitutional
convention should merely revise the worthless Articles of Confederation
and that such amendments should not have validity until adopted by
Congress as well as by the people of the several States. How this
mandate was disregarded and how the convention was formed, and
proceeded to create a new government with a new Constitution, and how
it achieved its mighty work, will be the subject of the next lecture.
Anticipating the masterly ability with which a seemingly impotent and
dying nation plucked from the nettle of danger the flower of safety, let
me conclude this first address by quoting the words of de Tocqueville,
in his remarkable work _Democracy in America_, where he says:
"The Federal Government, condemned to impotence by its Constitution
and no longer sustained by the presence of common danger ... was
already on the verge of destruction when it officially proclaimed
its inability to conduct the government and appealed to the
constituent authority of the nation.... It is a novelty in the
history of a society to see a calm and scrutinizing eye turned upon
itself, when apprised by the legislature that the wheels of
government are stopped; to see it carefully examine the extent of
the field and patiently wait for two years until a remedy was
discovered, which it voluntarily adopted, without having ever wrung
a tear or a drop of blood from mankind."
_II. The Great Convention_
Now follows a notable and yet little known scene in the drama of
history. It reveals a people who, without shedding a drop of blood,
calmly and deliberately abolished one government, substituted another,
and erected it upon foundations which have hitherto proved enduring.
Even the superstructure slowly erected upon these foundations has
suffered little change in the most changing period of the world's
history, and until recently its additions, few in number, have varied
little from the plans of the original architects. The Constitution is
to-day, not a ruined Parthenon, but rather as one of those Gothic
masterpieces, against which the storms of passionate strife have beaten
in vain. The foundations were laid at a time when disorder was rampant
and anarchy widely prevalent. As I have already shown in my first
lecture, credit was gone, business paralysed, lawlessness triumphant,
and not only between class and class, but between State and State, there
were acute controversies and an alarming disunity of spirit. To weld
thirteen jealous and discordant States, demoralized by an exhausting
war, into a unified and efficient nation against their wills, was a
seemingly impossible task. Frederick the so-called Great had said that a
federal union of widely scattered communities was impossible. Its final
accomplishment has blinded the world to the essential difficulty of the
problem.
The time was May 25, 1787; the place, the State House in Philadelphia, a
little town of not more than 20,000 people, and, at that time, as
remote, measured by the facilities of communication, to the centres of
civilization as is now Vladivostok.
The _dramatis personae_ in this drama, though few in numbers, were,
however, worthy of the task.
Seventy-two had originally been offered or given credentials, for each
State was permitted to send as many delegates as it pleased, inasmuch as
the States were to vote in the convention as units. Of these, the
greatest actual attendance was fifty-five, and at the end of the
convention a saving remnant of only thirty-nine remained to finish a
work which was to immortalize its participants.
While this notable group of men contained a few merchants, financiers,
farmers, doctors, educators, and soldiers, of the remainder, at least
thirty-one were lawyers, and of these many had been justices of the
local courts and executive officers of the commonwealths. Four had
studied in the Inner Temple, at least five in the Middle Temple, one at
Oxford under the tuition of Blackstone and two in Scottish Universities.
Few of them were inexperienced in public affairs, for of the original
fifty-five members, thirty-nine had been members of the first or second
Continental Congresses, and eight had already helped to frame the
constitutions of their respective States. At least twenty-two were
college graduates, of whom nine were graduates of Princeton, three of
Yale, two of Harvard, four of William and Mary, and one each from the
Universities of Oxford, Columbia, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. A few already
enjoyed world-wide fame, notably Doctor Franklin, possibly the most
versatile genius of the eighteenth century and universally known and
honoured as a scientist, philosopher, and diplomat, and George
Washington, whose fame, even at that day, had filled the world with the
noble purity of his character.
It was a convention of comparatively young men, the average age being
little above forty. Franklin was the oldest member, being then
eighty-one; Dayton, the youngest, being twenty-seven. With the
exception of Franklin and Washington, most of the potential
personalities in the convention were under forty. Thus, James Madison,
who contributed so largely to the plan that he is sometimes called "The
Father of the Constitution," was thirty-six. Charles Pinckney, who,
unaided, submitted the first concrete draft of the Constitution, was
only twenty-nine, and Alexander Hamilton, who was destined to take a
leading part in securing its ratification by his powerful oratory and
his very able commentaries in the Federalist papers, was only thirty.
Above all they were a group of gentlemen of substance and honour, who
could debate for four months during the depressing weather of a hot
summer without losing their tempers, except momentarily--and this
despite vital differences--and who showed that genius for toleration and
reconciliation of conflicting views inspired by a common fidelity to a
great objective that is the highest mark of statesmanship. They
represented the spirit of representative government at its best in
avoiding the cowardice of time-servers and the low cunning of
demagogues. All apparently were inspired by a fine spirit of
self-effacement. Selfish ambition was conspicuously absent. They
differed, at times heatedly, but always as gentlemen of candour and
honour. The very secrecy of their deliberations, of which I shall
presently speak, is ample proof how indifferent they were to popular
applause and the _civium ardor prava jubentium_.
The convention had been slow in assembling. Ample notice had been given
that it would convene on May 13, 1787, but when that day arrived a mere
handful of the delegates, less than a quorum, had assembled.
The Virginia delegation, six in number, and forming probably the ablest
delegation from any State, arriving in time, and failing to find a
quorum then assembled, employed the period of waiting in submitting to
the Pennsylvania delegation the outlines of a plan for the new
Constitution. The plan was largely the work of James Madison, and how
long it had been in preparation cannot be definitely stated. It is clear
that four years before a Philadelphia merchant, one Peletiah Webster,
had published a brochure proposing a scheme of dual sovereignty, under
which the citizens would owe a double allegiance--one to the constituent
States within the sphere of their reserved powers, and one to a
federated government within the sphere of its delegated powers. Leagues
of States had often existed, but a league which, within a prescribed
sphere, would have direct authority over the citizens of the constituent
States, without, however, abolishing the authority of such States as to
their reserved sphere of power, was a novel theory. How far the Virginia
project had been influenced by Webster's suggestion is not clear, but it
is certain that before the convention met Pennsylvania and Virginia,
two of the most powerful States, were committed to it.
The suggestion was a radical one, for the States, with few exceptions,
were chiefly insistent upon the preservation of their sovereignty, and
while they were willing to amend the Articles of Confederation by giving
fuller authority to the central government, such as it was, the
suggestion of subordinating the States to a new sovereign power, whose
authority within circumscribed limits was to be supreme, was opposed to
all their conventions and traditions. Washington, however, had warmly
welcomed the creation of a strong central government, and his
correspondence with the leading men of the colonies for some years
previously had been burdened with arguments to convince them that a mere
league of States would not suffice to create a stable nation. To George
Washington, soldier and statesman, is due above all men the ideal of a
federated union, for without his influence--that of a noble and
unselfish leader--the great result would probably never have been
secured. While still waiting for the convention, to meet, and while
discussing what was expedient and practicable when they did meet,
Washington one day said to a group of delegates, who were considering
the acute nature of the crisis:
"It is too probable that no plan that we propose will be adopted.
Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please
the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we
afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the
wise and just can repair. The event is in the hand of God."
Noble words, fit to be written in letters of gold over the portal of
every legislature of the world, and it was in this spirit that the
convention finally convened on May 25th, 1787.
When the delegates from nine States had assembled, Washington was
unanimously elected the presiding officer of the convention. It began by
adopting rules of order, and the most significant of these was the
provision for secrecy. No copy should be taken of any entry on the
Journal, or even permission given to inspect it, without leave of the
convention, and "nothing spoken in the house be printed or otherwise
published or communicated without leave." The yeas and nays should not
be recorded. The rule of secrecy was enlarged by an unwritten
understanding that, even when the convention had adjourned, no
disclosure should be made of its proceedings during the life of its
members. When after nearly four months, the convention adjourned, the
secret had been kept, and no one knew even the concrete result of its
deliberations until the Constitution itself, and nothing else, was
offered to the approval of the people. The high-way, upon which the
State House fronted, was covered with earth, to deaden the noise of
traffic, and sentries were posted at every means of ingress and egress,
to prevent any intrusion upon the privacy of the convention. The members
were not photographed daily for the pictorial Press, nor did any cinema
register their entrance into the simple colonial hall where they were to
meet. Notwithstanding this limitation--for no present-day conference or
assembly can proceed with its labours until its members are photographed
for the curiosity of the public--these simple-minded gentlemen--less
intent upon their appearance than their task--were to accomplish a work
of enduring importance.
The extreme care which was taken to preserve this secrecy inviolate, and
its purpose, were indicated in an incident handed down by tradition.
One of the members dropped a copy of a proposition then before the
convention for consideration, and it was found by another of the
delegates and handed to General Washington. At the conclusion of the
session, Washington arose and sternly reprimanded the member for his
carelessness by saying:
"I must entreat gentlemen to be more careful, lest our transactions
get into the newspapers and disturb the public repose by premature
speculations. I know not whose paper it is, but there it is
[_throwing it down on the table_]. Let him who owns it, take it."
He then bowed, picked up his hat and left the room with such evidences
of annoyance that, like school-children, no delegate was willing to
admit the ownership of the paper.
The thought suggests itself: How different the result at Versailles and
Genoa might have been had there been the same reasonable provisions for
discussion and action uninfluenced by too premature public comment of
the day! In these days, when representative government has degenerated
into government by a fleeting public opinion, the price we pay for such
government by, for and of the Press, is too often the inability of
representatives to do what they deem wise and just.
At the close of the convention its records were committed into the
keeping of Washington, with instructions to "retain the journal and
other papers, subject to order of Congress, if ever formed under the
Constitution."
Even the journal consisted of little more than daily memoranda, from
which the minutes ought to have been, but never were, made; and these
fragmentary records of the proceedings of a convention which had been in
continuous session for nearly four months were never published until the
year 1819, or thirty-two years after the close of the convention. Thus,
the American people knew nothing of their greatest convention until a
generation later, and then only a few bones of the mastodon were
exhibited to their curious gaze.
The members of the convention kept its secrets inviolate for many years.
With few exceptions, the great secrets of the convention died with them.
Only one, James Madison, left a comprehensive statement of the more
formal proceedings. With this notable exception, only a few anecdotes,
handed down by tradition, escaped oblivion. The first of the number to
break the pledge of secrecy was Robert Yates, Chief Justice of New York,
who, in 1821, published his recollections; but, as he had left the
convention a few months after it began, his notes ceased with the 5th of
July.