History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States, Vol. 1
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Title: History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States, Vol. 1
Author: George Ticknor Curtis
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN, FORMATION, AND ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL. 1 ***
HISTORY
OF THE
ORIGIN, FORMATION, AND ADOPTION
OF THE
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES;
WITH
NOTICES OF ITS PRINCIPAL FRAMERS.
BY
GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOLUME I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER AND BROTHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1854.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
GEORGE T. CURTIS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts
TO
GEORGE TICKNOR, ESQ.,
THE HISTORIAN OF SPANISH LITERATURE,
BY WHOSE ACCURATE SCHOLARSHIP AND CAREFUL CRITICISM
THESE PAGES HAVE LARGELY PROFITED,
I DEDICATE THIS WORK,
IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF TIES,
WHICH HAVE BEEN TO ME CONSTANT SOURCES OF HAPPINESS
THROUGH MY WHOLE LIFE.
PREFACE.
A special history of the origin and establishment of the Constitution of
the United States has not yet found a place in our national literature.
Many years ago, I formed the design of writing such a work, for the
purpose of exhibiting the deep causes which at once rendered the
Convention of 1787 inevitable, and controlled or directed its course and
decisions; the mode in which its great work was accomplished; and the
foundations on which our national liberty and prosperity were then
deliberately settled by the statesmen to whom the American Revolution
gave birth, and on which they have rested ever since.
In the prosecution of this purpose I had, until death terminated his
earthly interests, the encouragement and countenance of that illustrious
person, whose relation to the Constitution of the United States, during
the last forty years, has been not inferior in importance to that of
any of its founders during the preceding period.
Mr. Webster had for a long time the intention of writing a work which
should display the remarkable state of affairs under whose influence the
Constitution was first brought into practical application; and this
design he relinquished only when all the remaining plans of his life
were surrendered with the solemn and religious resignation that marked
its close. It was known to him that I had begun to labor upon another
branch of the same subject. In the spring of 1852 I wrote to him to
explain the plan of my work, and to ask him for a copy of some remarks
made by his father in the Convention of New Hampshire when the
Constitution was ratified by that State. I received from him the
following answer.
"WASHINGTON, March 7th, [1852].
"MY DEAR SIR,--
"I will try to find for you my father's speech, as it was collected from
tradition and published some years ago. If I live to see warm weather in
Marshfield, I shall be glad to see you beneath its shades, and to talk
of your book.
"You are probably aware that I have meditated the writing of something
upon the History of the Constitution and the Administration of
Washington. I have the plan of such a work pretty definitely arranged,
but whether I shall ever be able to execute it I cannot say:--'the wills
above be done.'
"Yours most truly,
"DANL. WEBSTER."
Regarding this kind and gracious intimation as a wish not to be
anticipated in any part of the field which he had marked out for
himself, I replied, that if, when I should have the pleasure of seeing
him, my work should seem to involve any material part of the subject
which he had comprehended within his own plan, I should of course
relinquish it at once. When, however, the period of that summer's
leisure arrived, and brought with it, to his watchful observation, so
many tokens that "the night cometh," he seemed anxious to impress upon
me the importance of the task I had undertaken, and to remove any
obstacle to its fulfilment that he might have suggested. Being with him
alone, on an occasion when his physician, after a long consultation, had
just left him, he said to me, with an earnestness and solemnity that can
never be described or forgotten: "_You_ have a future; _I_ have none.
You are writing a History of the Constitution. _You_ will write that
work; _I_ shall not. Go on, by all means, and you shall have every aid
that I can give you."
The event of which these words were ominous was then only four weeks
distant. Many times, during those short remaining weeks, I sought "the
shades of Marshfield"; but now it was for the offices and duties, not
for the advantages, of friendship;--and no part of my work was ever
submitted to him to whose approbation, sympathy, and aid I had so long
looked forward, as to its most important stimulus and its most
appropriate reward.
But the solemn injunction which I had received became to me an
ever-present admonition, and gave me--if I may make such a
profession--the needful fidelity to my great subject. Whatever may be
thought of the manner in which it has been treated, a consciousness that
the impartial spirit of History has guided me will remain, after every
ordeal of criticism shall have been passed.
And here, while memories of the earlier as well as of the later lost
crowd upon me with my theme, I cannot but think of him, jurist and
magistrate, friend of my younger as well as riper years, who was called
from all human sympathies before I had conceived the undertaking which I
have now completed. Fortunate shall I be, if to those in whom his blood
flows united with mine I can transmit a work that may be permitted to
stand near that noble Commentary, which is known and honored wherever
the Constitution of the United States bears sway.
The plan of this work is easily explained. The first volume embraces the
Constitutional History of the United States from the commencement of the
Revolution to the assembling of the Convention of 1787, together with
some notices of the principal members of that body. The second volume is
devoted to the description of the process of forming the Constitution,
in which I have mainly followed, of course, the ample Record of the
Debates preserved by Mr. Madison, and the official Journal of the
proceedings.[1]
The period of our history from the commencement of the Revolution to the
beginning of Washington's administration is the period when our State
and national institutions were formed. With the events of the
Revolution, its causes, its progress, its military history, and its
results, the people of this country have long been familiar. But the
constitutional history of the United States has not been written, and
few persons have made themselves accurately acquainted with its details.
How the Constitution of the United States came to be formed; from what
circumstances it arose; what its relations were to institutions
previously existing in the country; what necessities it satisfied; and
what was its adaptation to the situation of these States,--are all
points of the gravest importance to the American people, and all of them
require to be distinctly stated for their permanent welfare.
For the history of this Constitution is not like the history of a
monarchy, in which some things are obsolete, while some are of present
importance. The Constitution of the United States is a living code, for
the perpetuation of a system of free government, which the people of
each succeeding generation must administer for themselves. Every line of
it is as operative and as binding to-day as it was when the government
was first set in motion by its provisions, and no part of it can fall
into neglect or decay while that government continues to exist.
The Constitution of the United States was the means by which republican
liberty was saved from the consequences of impending anarchy; it secured
that liberty to posterity, and it left it to depend on their fidelity to
the Union. It is morally certain that the formation of some general
government, stronger and more efficient than any which had existed since
the independence of the States had been declared, had become necessary
to the continued existence of the Confederacy. It is equally certain,
that, without the preservation of the Union, a condition of things must
at once have ensued, out of which wars between the various provinces of
America must have grown. The alternatives, therefore, that presented
themselves to the generation by whom the Constitution was established,
were either to devise a system of republican government that would
answer the great purposes of a lasting union, or to resort to something
in the nature of monarchy. With the latter, the institutions of the
States must have been sooner or later crushed;--for they must either
have crumbled away in the new combinations and fearful convulsions that
would have preceded the establishment of such a power, or else they must
have fallen speedily after its triumph had been settled. With the former
alternative, the preservation of the States, and of all the needful
institutions which marked their separate existence, though a difficult,
was yet a possible result.
To this preservation of the separate States we owe that power of minute
local administration, which is so prominent and important a feature of
our American liberty. To this we are indebted for those principles of
self-government which place their own interests in the hands of the
people of every distinct community, and which enable them, by means of
their own laws, to defend their own particular institutions against
encroachments from without.
Finally, the Constitution of the United States made the people of these
several provinces one nation, and gave them a standing among the nations
of the world. Let any man compare the condition of this country at the
peace of 1783, and during the four years which followed that event, with
its present position, and he will see that he must look to some other
cause than its merely natural and material resources to account for the
proud elevation which it has now reached.
He will see a people ascending, in the comparatively short period of
seventy years, from an attitude in which scarcely any nation thought it
worth while to treat with them, to a place among the four principal
powers of the globe. He will see a nation, once of so little account and
so little strength that the corsairs of the Mediterranean could prey
unchecked upon its defenceless merchantmen, now opening to their
commerce, by its overawing diplomacy and influence, an ancient empire,
on the opposite side of the earth we inhabit, which has for countless
ages been firmly closed against the whole world. He will first see a
collection of thirteen feeble republics on the eastern coast of North
America, inflicting upon each other the manifold injuries of rival and
hostile legislation; and then again he will behold them grown to be a
powerful confederacy of more than thirty States, stretching from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, with all their commercial interests blended and
harmonized by one superintending legislature, and protected by one
central and preponderating power. He will see a people who had at first
achieved nothing but independence, and had contributed nothing to the
cause of free government but the example of their determination to
enjoy it, founding institutions to which mankind may look for hope, for
encouragement and light. He will see the arts of peace--commerce,
agriculture, manufactures, jurisprudence, letters--now languishing
beneath a civil polity inadequate and incompetent, and now expanding
through a continent with an energy and force unexampled in the history
of our race,--subduing the farthest recesses of nature, and filling the
wilderness with the beneficent fruits of civilization and Christianity.
Surveying all this,--looking back to the period which is removed from
him only by the span of one mortal life, and looking around and before
him, he will see, that among the causes of this unequalled growth stands
prominent and decisive, far over all other human agencies, the great
code of civil government which the fathers of our republic wrought out
from the very perils by which they were surrounded.
It is for the purpose of tracing the history of the period in which
those perils were encountered and overcome, that I have written this
work. But in doing it, I have sought to write as an American. For it is,
I trust, impossible to study the history of the Constitution which has
made us what we are, by making us one nation, without feeling how
unworthy of the subject--how unworthy of the dignity of History--would
be any attempt to claim more than their just share of merit and renown
for names or places endeared to us by local feeling or traditionary
attachment. Historical writing that is not just, that is not impartial,
that is not fearless,--looking beyond the interests of neighborhood, the
claims of party, or the solicitations of pride,--is worse than useless
to mankind.
BOSTON, July, 1854.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] In citing the "Madison Papers," I have constantly referred to the
edition contained in the fifth (supplementary) volume of Mr. Jonathan
Elliot's "Debates," &c., because it is more accessible to general
readers. The accuracy of that publication, and its full and admirable
Index, make it a very important volume to be consulted in connection
with the subject of this work. In this relation, I may suggest the
desirableness of a new and carefully revised edition of the Journals of
the old Congress;--an enterprise that should be the care of the national
government. A great magazine of materials for our national history, from
the first Continental Congress to the adoption of the Constitution,
exists in those Journals.
CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME FIRST.
BOOK I.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE
COMMENCEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION TO THE ADOPTION OF THE
ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION.
CHAPTER I.
1774-1775.
ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.--ORIGIN OF
THE UNION.--SITUATION OF THE COLONIES BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.
Page
Political Organizations of the Colonies 3
Provincial Governments 4
Proprietary Governments 5
Charter Governments 5
Causes of the Revolution 6
Local Legislatures 7
Power of the Colonies to unite, asserted by the Revolution 8
Reasons why they were enabled to effect the Union 8
A General Congress 10
First Step towards it 11
Assembling of the Congress 13
Delegates 14
Method of Voting 15
Rights of the Colonies 16
Separation from Great Britain not contemplated 18
Relations of the Congress to the Country 19
Authority of Parliament 20
Declaration of Rights 22
Cessation of Exports and Imports 23
Another Congress proposed 25
Royal Government terminated in Massachusetts 25
Provincial Congress of Massachusetts 26
Battle of Lexington 27
CHAPTER II.
1775-1776.
THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.--FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF
THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.--APPOINTMENT OF A
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.--FIRST ARMY OF THE REVOLUTION.
New Continental Congress 28
Delegates 29
Colonies represented 29
Duration of this Congress 30
War commenced 31
Massachusetts and New York apply to the Congress for Direction
and Assistance 31
The Congress proceeds to put the Country into a State of
Defence 32
American Continental Army created 32
Washington chosen Commander-in-Chief 33
Measures to defray the Expenses of War 34
Treasury Department established 35
General Post-office organized 35
Militia 35
Relations with Indian Tribes 35
Royalists 36
The Congress advise Provisional Governments 37
Separation from England determined upon 38
Suppression of the Royal Authority 39
National Union formed before the State Governments 39
The Revolutionary Government 40
Note on Washington's Appointment as Commander-in-Chief 41
CHAPTER III.
1776-1777.
CONTINUANCE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.--DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE.--PREPARATIONS FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT.--FORMATION
OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY.
Independence proposed 49
Committee to prepare the Declaration 50
Instructions to the Delegates 51
Declaration adopted 51
Consequences of its Adoption 51
The Title "United States of America" first used 52
Articles of Confederation proposed 53
The Revolutionary Congress, the Real Government 54
Power of the Congress 55
General Washington's Position 55
Difficulties which he had to encounter 56
Machinery of Government defective 57
Formation of the Army 58
Remodelling of the Army 59
Difficulties attending it 59
Committee appointed to confer with General Washington 60
Error of Short Enlistments 60
Washington does not concur in their Expediency 60
Powers of the National Government 62
Difficulties attending their Exercise 63
Popular Feeling about the Grievances 64
Tories 65
Officers of the Royal Government in New Hampshire seized 66
General Lee's Offer to seize the Tories of New York 66
He prepares to defend New York 67
Orders to disarm the Tories in Queen's County 68
Orders countermanded 68
Washington's Regret 69
His Directions to Lee 70
Tories of Queen's County arrested 71
Inhabitants of New York alarmed 71
Congress compelled to submit the Subject to the Colonial
Authorities 72
Questions of Prize 73
Origin of the American Navy 73
Vessels fitted out to intercept the Enemy's Supplies 73
Falmouth burned 74
Letters of Marque and Reprisal 75
Prizes captured 75
Adjudication of Prizes 76
Delay in obtaining Decisions 77
Means of defraying the Public Expenses 77
Paper Money issued 78
Delay in Signing the Bills 79
Pressing Wants of the Army 79
Washington borrows Money of the Province of Massachusetts
Bay 80
Defects of the Revolutionary Government 80
Jealousy of Standing Armies 80
Note on the Authorship of the Declaration of Independence 81
CHAPTER IV.
JULY, 1776-NOVEMBER, 1777.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE.--REORGANIZATION OF THE CONTINENTAL
ARMY.--FLIGHT OF THE CONGRESS FROM PHILADELPHIA.--PLAN OF THE
CONFEDERATION PROPOSED.
Effect of the Declaration of Independence 89
More vigorous and decisive Measures adopted by the Congress 90
Mischievous Adhesion to State Interests 90
History of the Army 91
General Washington abandons the City of New York 91
Writes to the President of Congress 91
He retreats to the Heights of Haerlem, and again appeals to
Congress 92
The Congress organizes a new Army 92
Number of Battalions raised by each State 93
Inducements to enlist 93
Serious Defects in the Plan 93
Washington suggests a Remedy 94
Promotion of the Officers provided for 95
Another Defect in the Plan 95
Massachusetts and Connecticut offer further Pay to their Men 95
Washington remonstrates 96
Congress augments the Pay of the Army 96
Ill Effects of the System 96
Number of the American Forces near New York 96
Washington's Discouragement 97
His Situation and Trials 97
His Retreat through New Jersey 98
Loss of Philadelphia threatened 99
Washington asks for Extraordinary Powers from the Congress 100
Powers intrusted to him 100
Unsettled Condition of the Political System 101
The Congress apologizes to the Governors of the States 102
Inaccuracy of their Position 103
The States acquiesce in the Powers granted to Washington 104
Articles of Confederation pending in Congress 104
Eminent Men retire from Congress 104
Delegations of the States renewed 105
Striking Instance of State Jealousy 106
Washington requires an Oath of Allegiance to the United
States 107
The Requisition denounced as improper 107
Its Propriety 108
Formation of a new Army 110
Embarrassments in the Formation of the Army 110
Persistence of the States in giving Extra Bounties 110
Bounty offered by Massachusetts 111
Army greatly reduced 111
Washington hindered in his Efforts to plan and carry out a
Campaign 112
Applications for Troops to defend particular Neighborhoods 112
Battle of the Brandywine 113
The Congress leaves Philadelphia 113
Sir William Howe takes Possession of it 113
The Congress removes to Yorktown 113
They resolve to consider the Articles of Confederation 114
The Plan of a Confederacy submitted to the several
Legislatures 114
Necessity for a National Government 114
End of the Revolutionary Government approaching 115
Want of a Civil Executive 115
States engaged in forming Governments 116
Colonies accustomed to the Business of Government 116
Practice of Representation familiar 117
Previous Political Training of the People 118
Distinctions between the Departments of Government 119
Ideas not yet applied to a General Government 120
Union of the People of the United States, as distinguished
from a Union of the States, learned by a bitter Experience 122
First Stage in the Constitutional History of the Country 123
CHAPTER V.
NOVEMBER, 1777-MARCH, 1781.
ADOPTION OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION.--CESSIONS OF
WESTERN TERRITORY.--FIRST POLITICAL UNION OF THE STATES.
Adoption of the Articles of Confederation 124
Causes which delayed the Adoption of the Confederation 125
Changes of the Members of Congress 126
The present Congress compared with that of 1776 127
Objections made to the Articles of Confederation 128
Propositions for Amendments rejected 129
Objection made by the State of New Jersey 129
Their Suggestion rejected 130
Claims of the Larger States to Vacant Lands 131
Objection of the Smaller States 131
Assent of Maryland to the Confederation withheld 133
New York authorizes its Delegates in Congress to limit the
Western Boundaries of the State 134
Congress urges other States to surrender a Portion of their
Claims 134
Generous Example of New Jersey 135
Delaware follows it 135
Maryland adopts the Articles of Confederation 136
Virginia yields her Claim to some of her Territory 137
Progress of the People of the United States towards a
National Character 139
Security against a Dissolution of the Confederacy 140
CHAPTER VI.
NATURE AND POWERS OF THE CONFEDERATION.
Nature of the Government established by the Confederation 142
Provisions in the Confederation for the States as separate
Communities 143
Form of Government established by it 143
The Confederation a League for Mutual Defence and Protection 144
Powers of Congress with regard to the External Relations of
the Country 144
Powers of Congress with regard to Internal Affairs 145
Committee of the States to sit in the Recess of Congress 146
Restrictions imposed upon Congress 146
Revenues of the Country 147
No Provision for enforcing Measures adopted by Congress 148
The United States enter upon a New Era of Civil Polity 149
The Confederation demonstrates the Necessity for a more
perfect Union 149
BOOK II.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE
ADOPTION OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, IN 1781, TO THE
PEACE OF 1783.
CHAPTER I.
1781-1783.
REQUISITIONS.--CLAIMS OF THE ARMY.--NEWBURGH
ADDRESSES.--PEACE PROCLAIMED.--THE ARMY DISBANDED.
Congress assembles under the Confederation 155
Treaty of Peace signed 155
Treaty of Alliance with France 156
Delay of the States in complying with the Requisitions of
Congress 156
Washington addresses Letters to the States on the Subject of
Finance, and completing their Quotas of Troops 157
Force of the Army 158
Discontents in the Army 158
The Newburgh Addresses 159
Congress votes an Establishment of Half-Pay for the Officers 160
Impracticable Adherence to the Principles of Civil Liberty 161
Provision for the Officers found to be inadequate 162
Congress recommends to the States to make Provision for the
Officers and Soldiers 162
Pennsylvania places her Officers upon Half-Pay for Life 163
Congress pass a Resolve giving Half-Pay for Life to the
Officers 163
Disappointment of the Officers 164
The Congress of the Confederation refuse to redeem the Pledge
of the Revolutionary Congress 164
Officers offer to commute the Half-Pay for Life 165
Breach of Public Faith 166
Situation of Washington 167
Anonymous Address circulated among the Officers at Newburgh 168
Washington forbids an Assemblage at the Call of an Anonymous
Paper 168
He appoints a Day to hear the Report of their Committee 168
The Officers again refer their Claims to the Consideration of
Congress 169
Half-Pay commuted to Five Years' Full Pay 170
The Army disbanded 170
Value of the Votes which fixed the Compensation of the
Officers 171
CHAPTER II.
1781-1783.
FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE CONFEDERATION.--REVOLUTIONARY
DEBT.--REVENUE SYSTEM OF 1783.
Public Debt of the United States 172
Congress recommend a Duty upon Importations 173
Office of Superintendent of Finance established 174
Rhode Island refuses to grant to Congress the Power of Levying
Duties 174
Virginia repeals the Act by which she had granted this Power
to Congress 175
No Means of paying the Public Debts 175
Another Plan for collecting Revenues recommended to the
States 176
Strong Appeal to the People in Favor of it 177
Claims of the various Classes of the Public Creditors 178
Character of the United States involved 179
The Confederation a Government for Purposes of War 181
Its Great Defects 181
The Moral Feelings an Unsafe Reliance for the Operations of
Government 183
Proofs of this in the History of the Confederation 184
Design of the Framers of the Revenue System 185
Claims of the Army 186
Wisdom of proposing a Scheme of Finance during the Continuance
of the War 186
Influence of the Revenue System of 1783 188
The System of 1783 different from the Present Constitution 188
Note on the Half-Pay for the Officers of the Revolution 190
Note on the Newburgh Addresses 194
CHAPTER III.
1781-1783.
OPINIONS AND EFFORTS OF WASHINGTON, AND OF HAMILTON.--DECLINE
OF THE CONFEDERATION.
Washington's Relations to the People of this Country 200
His Address to them on resigning his Office 201
His Views at the Close of the War 202
Hamilton's Opinions 203
His Advice and Suggestions 204
The Necessity for a Complete Sovereignty in Congress 204
Hamilton's Entry into Congress 206
Nature of a Federal Constitution not understood 206
Hamilton urges the Necessity of vesting the Appointment of
Collectors of Revenue in the General Government 208
Ratio of Contribution by the States to the Treasury uncertain 210
Hamilton desires to change the Principle of the Confederation 211
Advises General Taxes to be collected under Continental
Authority 212
An Attempt to substitute Specific Taxes on Land and Houses 212
It is determined to adopt Population as the Basis of
Contribution 213
Hamilton's Views on a Peace Establishment 214
Committee to arrange the Details of such a System 215
An Army and Navy necessary 216
No Provision in the Articles of Confederation for their
Maintenance during Peace 216
Hamilton advises Federal Provision for Defence 219
Congress driven from Philadelphia 220
Hamilton examines the Confederation 221
Its Defects 222, 223
He proposes to revise it 224
His Plan unsuccessful 224
Improvement in the Revenue System 225
Causes of the Decline of a National Spirit 226
Falling off in the Attendance of Members of Congress 226
Results of the Confederation 228
Its Defects displayed 229
Another Government necessary for the great Duties of Peace 230
BOOK III.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE
PEACE OF 1783 TO THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787.
CHAPTER I.
JANUARY, 1784-MAY, 1787.
DUTIES AND NECESSITIES OF CONGRESS.--REQUISITIONS ON THE
STATES.--REVENUE SYSTEM OF 1783.
State of the Union from 1783 to 1787 233
Dangers and Evils which existed during the Four Years after
the War 234
A New Congress 235
Washington's Resignation 235
Congress urge the Attendance of absent Members 236
Ratification of the Treaty of Peace 237
Congress perpetually in Session during the War 238
Number of Delegates from each State 238
Low State of the Representation 239
Duties of the Government 240
Supplies for the Year 1784 240
How to be obtained 241
Old Requisitions unpaid 241
Supplies necessary for the Year 1785 242
Supplies necessary for the Year 1786 242
Rhode Island and New Jersey propose to pay their Quotas in
their own Paper Currency 242
Inadequacy of Requisitions 243
States which had assented to the Revenue System in February,
1786 244
Congress make known the Public Embarrassments 245
Impost granted by all the States except New York 246
Argument used in Support of her Refusal 247
Hamilton's Answer to it 247
Congress recommend to New York to reconsider the Revenue
System 247
The Governor refuses to summon the Legislature 247
Failure of the Revenue System 248
CHAPTER II.
1784-1787.
INFRACTIONS OF THE TREATY OF PEACE.
Provisions of the Treaty of Peace 249
Departure of the British Troops from the Atlantic Coast 249
Western Posts retained 249
Interests of British Subjects 250
Confiscated Property 250
Power of Confiscation belonging to the United States 252
Refugees 252
State Laws prohibiting the Recovery of British Debts 253
Articles of the Treaty infringed by New York 254, 255
Powers of the Government inadequate 255
Treaty of Peace 256
Violations of its Articles 257
Congress recommend to the States to repeal all Acts repugnant
to the Treaty 258
The two Countries remain in the same Position 259
CHAPTER III.
1786-1787.
NO SECURITY AFFORDED BY THE CONFEDERATION TO THE STATE
GOVERNMENTS.--SHAYS'S REBELLION IN MASSACHUSETTS, AND ITS
KINDRED DISTURBANCES.
Defence against External Assaults, the Object of the
Confederation 260
Construction of the State Constitutions 261
Fundamental Doctrine of the American Constitutions 262
Commencement of Discontents in Massachusetts 263
The Confederation without Power to act upon the Internal
Condition of a State 264, 265
State Governments exposed to the Dangers of Anarchy 265
Insurrection in Massachusetts 266
Debt of that State at the Close of the War 266
Decrease of Exports and Fisheries 267
General Condition of the State 267, 268
Private Debts 268
The Tender Act 268
Effects of this Law 269
Shays's Rebellion 269
Firmness of Governor Bowdoin 270
Insurrection suppressed 270
Congress unable to interpose 271
Hostile Disposition of the Western Indians 271
Troops to be raised by the New England States 272
Extent of the Disaffection in New England 273
Beneficial Effect of these Disturbances 273
The Union necessary to the Preservation of Order 274
Washington's Anxieties 274
CHAPTER IV.
ORIGIN AND NECESSITY OF THE POWER TO REGULATE COMMERCE.
Inability of the Confederation to manage Foreign Commerce 276
Essential that it should be managed by the United States 277
Views of the Revolutionary Statesmen 277, 278
Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign
Countries 279
Negotiation of the Treaty with the Netherlands 280
Duties and Imposts 281
Congress without Power to enforce Treaty Stipulations upon
the States 282
Relations of the United States with Great Britain 282
Measure of Mr. Pitt 282
Change of the English Administration 283
Mr. Pitt's Bill 283
Views of the New English Administration 283, 284
American Trade excluded from the British West Indies 284
The three great Branches of American Commerce 285
Congress apply to the States for further Powers 286
Action of the States thereupon 286
Success of Treaties dependent on the Grant of further Powers 287
Incongruities in the Grants of the several States 288
Failure of the Attempt to negotiate Commercial Treaties 289
Discordant Legislation of the States 290
CHAPTER V.
1783-1787.
THE PUBLIC LANDS.--GOVERNMENT OF THE NORTHWESTERN
TERRITORY.--THREATENED LOSS OF THE WESTERN SETTLEMENTS.
Relations of Congress to the Public Lands 291
Efforts to procure Cessions from the States 292
Cession by New York 293
Disposal of the Territories 293
Power of Congress to acquire and hold Lands 293
Its Constitutional Authority to deal with acquired Territory 294
Cession of Northwestern Territory by Virginia 295
States to be formed from this Territory 296
Congress pass a Resolve for the Regulation of ceded Territory 296
Principles on which the Government of New States should be
established 297
Provision for admitting New States into the Union 298
Compact between the Old and New States 299
The Public Lands the true Resources for the Payment of the
Public Debt 299
Slavery to be excluded from the New States 299
Cession by Massachusetts and Connecticut of a Portion of their
Territorial Claims 299, 300
Modification by Virginia of her Act of Cession 300
Cession of Lands by South Carolina 301
No other Lands ceded to the United States before 1787 301
Ordinance for the Government of the Northwestern Territory
enacted 302
Its Provisions concerning Property 302
Civil Government of the Territory 303
Laws to be adopted 303
Appointment of Civil Officers 304
Counties and Townships to be formed 304
Representation in the Legislature provided for 304
Articles of Compact between the Original States and the
People and States in the Territory 305, 306
Wisdom of this Scheme of Government 306, 307
Political Difficulties in the Management of this Territory 308
Threatened Loss of the Western Settlements 309, 310
Washington's Plan of uniting the Eastern and Western States 310
He considers the Opening of the Mississippi not important 311
The Southern Boundary of the United States, by the Treaty of
Peace 312
Secret Article in that Treaty 312
Spain refuses to concede the Navigation of the Mississippi 313
Arrival of Guardoqui as Minister from Spain 313
The United States insist on the Right to navigate the
Mississippi 314
The Right refused, but a Commercial Treaty tendered 314
Importance of this Treaty 314
The States divided with Regard to the Mississippi 314, 315
Mr. Jay proposes a Middle Course 315
Treaty to be limited to Twenty-five Years 316
Use of the River to be suspended for the same Period 316
Change in Mr. Jay's Instructions 317
Seizure of American Property at Natchez 318
Inhabitants of the Western Settlements alarmed 318
Richness of their Territory 319
Their Complaints of Congress 320
Their Resolves 321
Retaliatory Seizure of Spanish Property 322
The Executive of Virginia disavows the Act 322
Guardoqui adheres to his Position 323
Committees of Correspondence formed in the West 323
The Inhabitants of Kentucky in Motion 323
Remonstrances of Virginia on the Subject of shutting up the
Mississippi 323
Their Delegates intercede with the Spanish Minister 324
Their Efforts ineffectual 324
The Vote of Seven States attacked in Congress 325
Unconstitutionality of that Vote 325, 326
It is not rescinded 326
Critical Position of the Country 326
The Subject of the Mississippi postponed to await the Action
of the Federal Convention 326, 327
CHAPTER VI.
1783-1787.
DECAY AND FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERATION.--PROGRESS OF
OPINION.--STEPS WHICH LED TO THE CONVENTION OF
1787.--INFLUENCE AND EXERTIONS OF HAMILTON.--MEETING OF THE
CONVENTION.
The Federal Power under the Confederation unequal to the
Discharge of its Duties 328
The Confederation destitute of Political Sovereignty 329
Capacities of the Country 330
Difficulties in the Formation of a Federal Constitution 331
Progress of Opinion upon the Subject of a General
Government 332, 333
Important Centres of Opinion 334
Action of Massachusetts 334
Distress pervading the Commercial Classes 334, 335
Governor Bowdoin's Message 336
The Legislature recommend a General Convention 336, 337
Their Delegates in Congress refuse to present the Resolves 337
Congress desire only a Temporary Power over Commerce 337
Jealousy in Congress of the Changes likely to be made in the
Government 338
The Legislature of Massachusetts rescind their Resolutions 339
Condition of Congress in 1785 339
Action of Virginia 340
Proposed Enlargement of the Powers of Congress over Trade 340
Difficulties between the Citizens of Virginia and Maryland 341
Meeting at Alexandria 341
Report of the Commissioners of Virginia and Maryland to their
Governments 342
Virginia invites a Meeting of Commissioners from all the
States at Annapolis 343
Action of New York 343
Final Appeal by Congress for the Establishment of the Revenue
System of 1783 344
Exertions of Hamilton 345
The Revenue System again rejected by the New York Legislature 346
Commissioners appointed by New York to attend the Commercial
Convention 346
Course of New York upon the Revenue System 346
Five States only represented at Annapolis 347
Hamilton's Original Plan, and its Modification 347, 348
His Report 348
He desires an entirely New System of Government 349
Caution in his Proposal 350
His extensive Views 350
Reception of the Recommendation of the Annapolis Commissioners
in Virginia 351
Objections to it in Congress 352-355
Report of the Commissioners taken into Consideration 355
Opinions of different Members upon the Subject 355
Legal Difficulties in the Way of a Convention 356
Views entertained in Congress 357
Critical State of the Country 357, 358
It impels Congress to Action 358
Influence of the Course of New York upon Congress 358, 359
Their Delegation instructed to move a Convention 360
Failure of this Proposition 360
Adoption of a Resolve proposed by the Massachusetts Members
for the same Purpose 361
Mode of Amendment recommended by Congress 362
Importance of this Action of Congress 362
Dangers of Inaction 363
Importance of the Sanction of the Old Government, in the
Formation of a new one 364
Hamilton's Wisdom 365
Reason for not intrusting the Revision of the System of
Government to Congress 365, 366
Powers of the Convention not defined by Congress 367
Nature of the Crisis 368
Danger of an Attempt to establish Monarchical Government 369
Washington's Opinions 370, 371
Other Difficulties attending the Revision of the Federal
System 371
Sectional Jealousy and its Causes 371, 372
New Idea of a Union 372, 373
Prevailing Feeling among Statesmen concerning the Convention 373
Hamilton fully equal to the Demands of the Crisis 373, 374
Assembling of the Convention 374
Novelty of their Undertaking 374, 375
State of Political Science in Modern Europe 375
The Results of English Liberty 376, 377
French Discussions 377, 378
The English Constitution an imperfect Guide 378
Nature of the Problem 379
CHAPTER VII.
THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION.--WASHINGTON, PRESIDENT OF
THE CONVENTION.
Embarrassments attending the Assembling of the Convention 380
Discipline to which the American People had been subjected 381, 382
The Constitution the Result of Circumstances 382
Consequences of a Want of Power in the First Government 383
Its Incapacity 384
Sufferings of the People 384
Civil Liberty the Result of Trial and Suffering 385, 386
Qualities of the Framers of the Constitution 386, 387
Hamilton 387
Washington 388
Madison 388
Franklin 388
Gouverneur Morris 388
Their Characters formed during the Revolution 388, 389
Diversities of Opinion in such an Assembly 389
Patriotism of its Members 390
A Republican System their great Object 390
Slight Value of the Examples of other Countries 391
Necessity for a National Head 392
The New Government established without Violence 393
Washington at Mount Vernon 393, 394
His Opinions upon the Powers of the Federal Government 394-396
His Fears as to the Result of a Convention 396, 397
The Legislature of Virginia desire to place him at the Head
of their Delegation 397
Refuses informally 398
Declines a Re-election as President of the Society of the
Cincinnati 398
Receives Official Notice of his Appointment to the Convention 399
Declines the Appointment 399
The Insurrection in Massachusetts changes his
Determination 399, 400
He leaves Mount Vernon for Philadelphia 401
Is elected President of the Convention 401
His great Object, to secure a Republican Government 402
The Idea of a Monarchical Government entertained to some
Extent 402
Coercive Power necessary in the General Government 403
Washington's Character as a Statesman 404
His Fitness for the Chair of the Convention 405
CHAPTER VIII.
HAMILTON.
Causes why Hamilton is less known at the present Day, than
other Statesmen of the Revolution 406
Immediate Effect of his Death upon the Country 407
His Birth and Education 408
Very early Entrance upon Political Life 408
His Essays on the Rights of the Colonies 408
Appointed Aide-de-Camp to Washington 409
Elected to Congress from New York 409
A Member of the Legislature 409
Delegate to the Federal Convention 409
One of the Authors of the Federalist 409
Elected to the State Convention 409
Secretary of the Treasury 409
Retirement 409
Command of the Provisional Army 409
Practice of the Law 409
Death 409, 410
Character 410-419
CHAPTER IX.
MADISON.
His Birth and Education 420
Entrance into Congress 421
His Influence in inducing Virginia to yield the Northwest
Territory 422
Other important Services in the Congress of the
Confederation 422, 423
Retires to Virginia 423
Efforts for the Enlargement of Commercial Powers 423, 424
His Connection with the Events which led to the Convention 424-427
Appointed one of the Commissioners to Annapolis 427
Drafts the Act of Virginia appointing Delegates to the Federal
Convention 427
His Labors in the Convention 427, 428
Records the Debates 428
His Character 428-431
CHAPTER X.
FRANKLIN.
His long Career of Public Service 433, 434
His distinguished Residences abroad 434, 435
Importance and Influence of his Presence in the Convention 435-437
His Objections to the Constitution 437
Sacrifices them to the Public Good 437
His Efforts to produce Unanimity 437, 438
CHAPTER XI.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
Birth and Education 440
Views on the Independence of America 441
Services in Congress 442
Appointed Assistant Financier 443
Elected to the Federal Convention 444
His Character 444-447
CHAPTER XII.
KING.
Birth and Education 448
Elected to Congress 448
His Opinions on the Subject of a Federal Convention 449
His Views of the Insurrection in Massachusetts 450
Disappointment concerning the Powers of the Confederation 450
Change of Opinion 450, 451
View of the true Principle for the new Government 451
Introduces the Prohibition against Laws affecting the
Obligation of Contracts 452
His Character 453
CHAPTER XIII.
CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY.
Descent and Education 454
Military Career 454
Appointed to the Federal Convention 455
His Course on the Slave-Trade, and the Regulation of Commerce 456
Vindication of the Framers of the Constitution 456-460
Note on the Abolition of the Slave-Trade 460
CHAPTER XIV.
WILSON.
Birth and Education 462
Emigration to America 462
Services in Congress 462, 463
His Opinions in the Convention 463, 464
Exertions for a Representative Government 464
Appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States 465
His Speech on the Constitution in the Pennsylvania
Convention 465-479
CHAPTER XV.
RANDOLPH.
An Aide-de-camp to Washington 480
Services in Congress 480
Elected Governor of Virginia 481
Procures the Attendance of Washington 481
His Opinions on the Constitution, and the existing Crisis 481-485
Genealogy 485
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCLUSION OF THE PRESENT VOLUME.
The Other Members of the Convention 486, 487
Responsible Position of the American People 487, 488
APPENDIX.
Circular Letter of Congress recommending the Articles of
Confederation 491
Representation of New Jersey on the Articles of Confederation 493
Act of New Jersey accepting the Confederation 497
Resolutions passed by the Council of Delaware respecting the
Articles of Confederation 498
Act to authorize the Delegates of the Delaware State to ratify
the Articles of Confederation 500
Instructions of the General Assembly of Maryland to their
Delegates, respecting the Articles of Confederation 501
Act of the Legislature of New York, to facilitate the
Completion of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual
Union among the United States of America 505
Report of the Committee of Congress as to the Proceedings of
the Legislatures of Maryland, New York, and Virginia in
Relation to the Articles of Confederation 506
Act to empower the Delegates of Maryland to ratify the
Articles of Confederation 508
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the
States 509
Members of the Convention which formed the Constitution 516
BOOK I.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT
OF THE REVOLUTION TO THE ADOPTION OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION.
CHAPTER I.
1774-1775.
ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.--ORIGIN OF THE UNION.
The thirteen British colonies in North America, by whose inhabitants the
American Revolution was achieved, were, at the commencement of that
struggle, so many separate communities, having, to a considerable
extent, different political organizations and different municipal laws:
but their various populations spoke almost universally the English
language. These colonies were Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. From the times
when they were respectively settled, until the union formed under the
necessities of a common cause at the breaking out of the Revolution,
they had no political connection; but each possessed a domestic
government peculiar to itself, derived directly from the crown of
England, and more or less under the direct control of the mother
country.
The political organizations of the colonies have been classed by jurists
and historians under the three heads of Provincial, Proprietary, and
Charter governments.
To the class of Provincial governments belonged the Provinces of New
Hampshire, New Jersey, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. These
had no other written constitutions, or fundamental laws, than the
commissions issued to the Governors appointed by the crown, explained by
the instructions which accompanied them. The Governor, by his
commission, was made the representative or deputy of the King, and was
obliged to act in conformity with the royal instructions. He was
assisted by a Council, the members of which, besides participating with
him, to a certain extent, in the executive functions of the government,
constituted the upper house of the provincial legislature; and he was
also authorized to summon a general assembly of representatives of the
freeholders of the Province. The three branches thus convened,
consisting of the Governor, the Council, and the Representatives,
constituted the provincial Assemblies, having the power of local
legislation, subject to the ratification and disapproval of the crown.
The direct control of the crown over these provincial governments may
also be traced in the features, common to them all, by which the
Governor had power to suspend the members of the Council from office,
and, whenever vacancies occurred, to appoint to those vacancies, until
the pleasure of the crown should be known; to negative all the
proceedings of the assembly; and to prorogue or dissolve it at his
pleasure.
The Proprietary governments, consisting of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and
Delaware, were those in which the subordinate powers of legislation and
government had been granted to certain individuals called the
proprietaries, who appointed the Governor and authorized him to summon
legislative assemblies. The authority of the proprietaries, or of the
legislative bodies assembled by the Governor, was restrained by the
condition, that the ends for which the grant was made to them by the
crown should be substantially pursued in their legislation, and that
nothing should be done, or attempted, which might derogate from the
sovereignty of the mother country. In Maryland, the laws enacted by the
proprietary government were not subject to the direct control of the
crown; but in Pennsylvania and Delaware they were.[2]
The Charter governments, consisting, at the period of the Revolution, of
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, may be said, in a stricter
sense, to have possessed written constitutions for their general
political government. The charters, granted by the crown, established an
organization of the different departments of government similar to that
in the provincial governments. In Massachusetts, after the charter of
William and Mary granted in 1691, the Governor was appointed by the
crown; the Council were chosen annually by the General Assembly, and the
House of Representatives by the people. In Connecticut and Rhode
Island, the Governor, Council, and Representatives were chosen annually
by the freemen of the colony. In the charter, as well as the provincial
governments, the general power of legislation was restrained by the
condition, that the laws enacted should be, as nearly as possible,
agreeable to the laws and statutes of England.
One of the principal causes which precipitated the war of the Revolution
was the blow struck by Parliament at these charter governments,
commencing with that of Massachusetts, by an act intended to alter the
constitution of that Province as it stood upon the charter of William
and Mary; a precedent which justly alarmed the entire continent, and in
its principle affected all the colonies, since it assumed that none of
them possessed constitutional rights which could not be altered or taken
away by an act of Parliament. The "Act for the better regulating the
government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay," passed in 1774, was
designed to create an executive power of a totally different character
from that created by the charter, and also to remodel the judiciary, in
order that the laws of the imperial government might be more certainly
enforced.
The charter had reserved to the King the appointment of the Governor,
Lieutenant-Governor, and Secretary of the Province. It vested in the
General Assembly the choice of twenty-eight councillors, subject to
rejection by the Governor; it gave to the Governor, with the advice and
consent of the Council, the appointment of all military and judicial
officers, and to the two houses of the legislature the appointment of
all other civil officers, with a right of negative by the Governor. The
new law vested the appointment of councillors, judges, and magistrates
of all kinds, in the crown, and in some cases in the Governor, and made
them all removable at the pleasure of the crown. A change so radical as
this, in the constitution of a people long accustomed to regard their
charter as a compact between themselves and the crown, could not but
lead to the most serious consequences.
* * * * *
The statements which have now been made are sufficient to remind the
reader of the important fact, that, at the commencement of the
Revolution, there existed, and had long existed, in all the colonies,
local legislatures, one branch of which was composed of representatives
chosen directly by the people, accustomed to the transaction of public
business, and being in fact the real organs of the popular will. These
bodies, by virtue of their relation to the people, were, in many
instances, the bodies which took the initiatory steps for the
organization of the first national or Continental Congress, when it
became necessary for the colonies to unite in the common purpose of
resistance to the mother country. But it should be again stated, before
we attend to the steps thus taken, that the colonies had no direct
political connection with each other before the Revolution commenced,
but that each was a distinct community, with its own separate political
organization, and without any power of legislation for any but its own
inhabitants; that, as political communities, and upon the principles of
their organizations, they possessed no power of forming any union among
themselves, for any purpose whatever, without the sanction of the Crown
or Parliament of England.[3] But the free and independent power of
forming a union among themselves, for objects and purposes common to
them all, which was denied to their colonial condition by the principles
of the English Constitution, was one of the chief powers asserted and
developed by the Revolution; and they were enabled to effect this union,
as a revolutionary right and measure, by the fortunate circumstances of
their origin, which made the people of the different colonies, in
several important senses, one people. They were, in the first place,
chiefly the descendants of Englishmen, governed by the laws, inheriting
the blood, and speaking the language of the people of England. As
British subjects, they had enjoyed the right of dwelling in any of the
colonies, without restraint, and of carrying on trade from one colony to
another, under the regulation of the general laws of the empire, without
restriction by colonial legislation. They had, moreover, common
grievances to be redressed, and a common independence to establish, if
redress could not be obtained: for although the precise grounds of
dispute with the Crown or the Parliament of England had not always been
the same in all the colonies, yet when the Revolution actually broke
out, they all stood in the same attitude of resistance to the same
oppressor, making common cause with each other, and resting upon certain
great principles of liberty, which had been violated with regard to many
of them, and with the further violation of which all were threatened.
* * * * *
It was while the controversies between the mother country and the
colonies were drawing towards a crisis, that Dr. Franklin, then in
England as the political agent of Pennsylvania, of Massachusetts, and of
Georgia, in an official letter to the Massachusetts Assembly, dated July
7th, 1773, recommended the assembling of a general congress of all the
colonies. "As the strength of an empire," said he, "depends not only on
the _union_ of its parts, but on their readiness for united exertion of
their common force; and as the discussion of rights may seem
unseasonable in the commencement of actual war, and the delay it might
occasion be prejudicial to the common welfare; as likewise the refusal
of one or a few colonies would not be so much regarded, if the others
granted liberally, which perhaps by various artifices and motives they
might be prevailed on to do; and as this want of concert would defeat
the expectation of general redress, that might otherwise be justly
formed; perhaps it would be best and fairest for the colonies, in a
general congress now in peace to be assembled, or by means of the
correspondence lately proposed, after a full and solemn assertion and
declaration of their rights, to engage firmly with each other, that they
will never grant aids to the crown in any general war, till those rights
are recognized by the King and both houses of Parliament; communicating
at the same time to the crown this their resolution. Such a step I
imagine will bring the dispute to a crisis."[4]
The first actual step towards this measure was taken in Virginia. A new
House of Burgesses had been summoned by the royal Governor to meet in
May, 1774. Soon after the members had assembled at Williamsburg, they
received the news that, by an act of Parliament, the port of Boston was
to be closed on the first day of the succeeding June, and that other
disabilities were to be inflicted on the town. They immediately passed
an order, setting apart the first day of June as a day of fasting,
humiliation, and prayer, "to implore the Divine interposition for
averting the heavy calamity which threatened destruction to their civil
rights, and the evils of civil war, and to give them one heart and one
mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to
American rights." Thereupon, the Governor dissolved the House. But the
members immediately assembled at another place of meeting, and, having
organized themselves as a committee, drew up and subscribed an
Association, in which they declared that the interests of all the
colonies were equally concerned in the late doings of Parliament, and
advised the local Committee of Correspondence to consult with the
committees of the other colonies on the expediency of holding a general
Continental Congress. Pursuant to these recommendations, a popular
convention was holden at Williamsburg, on the 1st of August, which
appointed seven persons as delegates to represent the people of Virginia
in a general Congress to be held at Philadelphia in the September
following.[5]
The Massachusetts Assembly met on the last of May, and, after negativing
thirteen of the Councillors, Governor Gage adjourned the Assembly to
meet at Salem on the 7th of June. When they came together at that place,
the House of Representatives passed a resolve, declaring a meeting of
committees from the several colonies on the continent to be highly
expedient and necessary, to deliberate and determine upon proper
measures to be recommended to all the colonies for the recovery and
establishment of their just rights and liberties, civil and religious,
and for the restoration of union and harmony with Great Britain. They
then appointed five delegates[6] to meet the representatives of the
other colonies in congress at Philadelphia, in the succeeding September.
These examples were at once followed by the other colonies. In some of
them, the delegates to the Continental Congress were appointed by the
popular branch of the legislature, acting for and in behalf of the
people; in others, they were appointed by conventions of the people
called for the express purpose, or by committees duly authorized to make
the appointment.[7] The Congress, styling themselves "the delegates
appointed by the good people of these colonies," assembled at
Philadelphia on the 5th of September, 1774, and organized themselves as
a deliberative body by the choice of officers and the adoption of rules
of proceeding. Peyton Randolph of Virginia was elected President, and
Charles Thompson of Pennsylvania Secretary of the Congress.
No precedent existed for the mode of action to be adopted by this
assembly. There was, therefore, at the outset, no established principle
which might determine the nature of the union; but that union was to be
shaped by the new circumstances and relations in which the Congress
found itself placed. There had been no general concert among the
different colonies as to the numbers of delegates, or, as they were
called in many of the proceedings, "committees" of the colonies, to be
sent to the meeting at Philadelphia. On the first day of their
assembling, Pennsylvania and Virginia had each six delegates in
attendance; New York had five; Massachusetts, New Jersey, and South
Carolina had four each; Connecticut had three; New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, Delaware, and Maryland had two each. The delegates from North
Carolina did not arrive until the 14th.[8]
As soon as the choice of officers had taken place,[9] the method of
voting presented itself as the first thing to be determined; and the
difficulties arising from the inequalities between the colonies in
respect to actual representation, population, and wealth, had to be
encountered upon the threshold. Insuperable obstacles stood in the way
of the adoption of interests as the basis of votes. The weight of a
colony could not be ascertained by the numbers of its inhabitants, the
amount of their wealth, the extent of their trade, or by any ratio to be
compounded of all these elements, for no authentic evidence existed from
which data could be taken.[10] As it was apparent, however, that some
colonies had a larger proportion of members present than others,
relatively to their size and importance, it was thought to be equally
objectionable to adopt the method of voting by polls. In these
circumstances, the opinion was advanced, that the colonial governments
were at an end; that all America was thrown into one mass, and was in a
state of nature; and consequently, that the people ought to be
considered as represented in the Congress according to their numbers, by
the delegations actually present.[11] Upon this principle, the voting
should have been by polls.
But neither the circumstances under which they were assembled, nor the
dispositions of the members, permitted an adoption of the theory that
all government was at an end, or that the boundaries of the colonies
were effaced. The Congress had not assembled as the representatives of a
people in a state of nature, but as the committees of different
colonies, which had not yet severed themselves from the parent state.
They had been clothed with no legislative or coercive authority, even of
a revolutionary nature; compliance with their resolves would follow only
on conviction of the utility of their measures; and all their resolves
and all their measures were, by the express terms of many of their
credentials, limited to the restoration of union and harmony with Great
Britain, which would of course leave the colonies in their colonial
state. The people of the continent, therefore, as a people in the state
of nature, or even in a national existence as one people standing in a
revolutionary attitude, had not then come into being.
The nature of the questions, too, which they were to discuss, and of the
measures which they were to adopt, were to be considered in determining
by what method of voting those questions and measures should be decided.
The Congress had been called to secure the _rights_ of the colonies.
What were those rights? By what standard were they to be ascertained? By
the law of nature, or by the principles of the English Constitution, or
by the charters and fundamental laws of the colonies, regarded as
compacts between the crown and the people, or by all of these combined?
If the law of nature alone was to determine their rights, then all
allegiance to the British crown was to be regarded as at an end. If the
principles of the English Constitution, or the charters, were to be the
standard, the law of nature must be excluded from consideration. This
exclusion would of necessity narrow the ground, and deprive them of a
resource to which Parliament might at last compel them to look.[12] In
order, therefore, to leave the whole field open for consideration, and
at the same time to avoid committing themselves to principles
irreconcilable with the preservation of allegiance and their colonial
relation to Great Britain, it was necessary to consider themselves as an
assembly of committees from the different colonies, in which each colony
should have one voice, through the delegates whom it had sent to
represent and act for it. But, as if foreseeing the time when population
would become of necessity the basis of congressional power, when the
authority of Parliament should have given place to a system of American
continental legislation, they inserted, in the resolve determining that
each colony should have one vote, a caution that would prevent its being
drawn into precedent. They declared, as the reason for the course which
they adopted, that the Congress were not possessed of, or able to
procure, the proper materials for ascertaining the importance of each
colony.[13]
It appears, therefore, very clear, that an examination of the relations
of the first Congress to the colonies which instituted it will not
enable us to assign to it the character of a government. Its members
were not elected for the express purpose of making a revolution. It was
an assembly convened from separate colonies, each of which had causes of
complaint against the imperial government to which it acknowledged its
allegiance to be due, and each of which regarded it as essential to its
own interests to make common cause with the others, for the purpose of
obtaining redress of its own grievances. The idea of separating
themselves from the mother country had not been generally entertained by
the people of any of the colonies. All their public proceedings, from
the commencement of the disputes down to the election of delegates to
the first Congress, including the instructions given to those delegates,
prove, as we have seen, that they looked for redress and relief to means
which they regarded as entirely consistent with the principles of the
British Constitution.[14]
Still, although this Congress did not take upon themselves the functions
of a government, or propose revolution as a remedy for the wrongs of
their constituents, they regarded and styled themselves as "the
guardians of the rights and liberties of the colonies";[15] and in that
capacity they proceeded to declare the causes of complaint, and to take
the necessary steps to obtain redress, in what they believed to be a
constitutional mode. These steps, however, although not directly
revolutionary, had a revolutionary tendency.
On the 6th of September, 1774, a resolve was passed, that a committee be
appointed to state the rights of the colonies in general, the several
instances in which those rights had been violated or infringed, and the
means most proper to be pursued for obtaining a restoration of them.
Another committee was ordered on the same day, to examine and report the
several statutes affecting the trade and manufactures of the colonies.
On the following day, it was ordered that the first committee should
consist of two members, and the second of one member, from each of the
colonies.[16] Two questions presented themselves to the first of these
committees, and created a good deal of embarrassment. The first was,
whether, in stating the rights of the colonies, they should recur to the
law of nature, as well as to the British Constitution and the American
charters and grants. The second question related to the authority which
they should allow to be in Parliament;--whether they should deny it
wholly, or deny it only as to internal affairs, admitting it as to
external trade; and if the latter, to what extent and with what
restrictions. It was soon felt that this question of the authority of
Parliament was the essence of the whole controversy. Some denied it
altogether. Others denied it as to every species of taxation; while
others admitted it to extend to the regulation of external trade, but
denied it as to all internal affairs. The discussions had not proceeded
far, before it was perceived that this subject of the regulation of
trade might lead directly to the question of the continuance of the
colonial relations with the mother country. For this they were not
prepared. It was apparent that the right of regulating the trade of the
whole country, from the local circumstances of the colonies and their
disconnection with each other, could not be exercised by the colonies
themselves: it was thought that the aid, assistance, and protection of
the mother country were necessary to them; and therefore, as a proper
equivalent, that the colonies must admit the right of regulating the
trade, to some extent and in some mode, to be in Parliament. The
alternatives were, either to set up an American legislature, that could
control and regulate the trade of the whole country, or else to give the
power to Parliament. The Congress determined to do the latter; supposing
that they could limit the admission, by denying that the power extended
to taxation, but ceding at the same time the right to regulate the
external trade of the colonies for the common benefit of the whole
empire.[17] They grounded this concession upon "the necessities of the
case," and "the mutual interests of both countries";[18] meaning by
these expressions to assert that all legislative control over the
external and internal trade of the colonies belonged of right to the
colonies themselves, but, as they were part of an empire for which
Parliament legislated, it was necessary that the common legislature of
the whole empire should retain the regulation of the external trade,
excluding all power of taxation for purposes of revenue, in order to
secure the benefits of the trade of the whole empire to the mother
country.
The Congress, therefore, after having determined to confine their
statement to such rights as had been infringed by acts of Parliament
since the year 1763, unanimously adopted a Declaration of Rights, in
which they summed up the grievances and asserted the rights of the
colonies. This document placed the rights of the colonies upon the laws
of nature, the principles of the English Constitution, and the several
charters or compacts. It declared, that, as the colonies were not, and
from their local situation could not be, represented in the English
Parliament, they were entitled to a free and exclusive power of
legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right
of representation could alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and
internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in
such manner as had been before accustomed. At the same time, from the
necessity of the case and from a regard to the mutual interests of both
countries, they cheerfully consented to the operation of such acts of
Parliament as were in good faith limited to the regulation of their
external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages
of the whole to the mother country, and the commercial benefit of its
respective members; excluding every idea of taxation, internal and
external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America, without
their consent.[19]
In addition to this, they asserted, as great constitutional rights
inherent in the people of all these colonies, that they were entitled to
all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural-born
subjects within the realm of England; to the common law of England, and
especially to trial by a jury of the vicinage; to the immunities and
privileges granted and confirmed to them by royal charters, or secured
by their several codes of provincial laws; and to the right of peaceably
assembling to consider grievances and to petition the King.[20]
In order to enforce their complaints upon the attention of the
government and people of Great Britain, and as the sole means which were
open to them, short of actual revolution, of coercing the ministry into
a change of measures, they resolved that after the 10th of September,
1775, the exportation of all merchandise, and every commodity
whatsoever, to Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies, ought to
cease, unless the grievances of America should be redressed before that
time; and that after the first day of December, 1774, there should be no
importation into British America, from Great Britain or Ireland, of any
goods, wares, or merchandise whatever, or from any other place, of any
such goods, wares, or merchandise as had been exported from Great
Britain or Ireland, and that no such goods, wares, or merchandise be
used or purchased.[21] They then prepared an association, or agreement,
of non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption, in order, as
far as lay in their power, to cause a general compliance with their
resolves. This association was subscribed by every member of the
Congress, and was by them recommended for adoption to the people of the
colonies, and was very generally adopted and acted upon.[22] They
resorted to this as the most speedy, effectual, and peaceable measure to
obtain a redress of the grievances of which the colonies complained; and
they entered into the agreement on behalf of the inhabitants of the
several colonies for which they acted.
* * * * *
This Congress, which sat from the 5th of September to the 26th of
October, 1774, had thus made the restoration of commercial intercourse
between the colonies and the other parts of the British empire to depend
upon the repeal by Parliament of the obnoxious measures of which they
complained, and upon the recognition of the rights which they asserted;
for although their acts had not the foundation of laws, the general
adoption of their recommendations throughout the colonies gave them a
power that laws rarely possess. Before they adjourned, they recommended
that another Congress of all the colonies should be held at Philadelphia
on the 10th of the following May, unless their grievances were redressed
before that time, and that the deputies to such new Congress should be
chosen immediately.[23]
But while the Continental Congress were engaged in the adoption of these
measures of constitutional resistance, and still acknowledged their
colonial relations to the imperial government, the course of events in
Massachusetts had put an end to the forms of law and government in that
colony, as established or upheld by imperial authority. The last
Assembly held in the Province upon the principles of its charter had
been dissolved by the Governor's proclamation, at Salem, on the 17th of
June, 1774. The new law for the alteration of the government had taken
effect; and in August the Governor received from England a list of
thirty-six councillors, who were to be called into office by the King's
writ of _mandamus_, instead of being elected, as under the charter, by
the House of Representatives. Two thirds of the number accepted their
appointment; but popular indignation, treating them as enemies of their
country, compelled the greater part of them to renounce their offices.
The new judges were prevented everywhere from proceeding with the
business of the courts, which were obstructed by assemblies of the
people, who would permit no judge to exercise his functions, save in
accordance with the ancient laws and usages of the Colony.
Writs had been issued for a new General Assembly, which was to meet at
Salem in October; but it was found, that, while the old constitution had
been taken away by act of Parliament, the new one had been rejected by
the people. The compulsory resignation of so many of the councillors
left that body without power, and the Governor deemed it expedient to
countermand the writs by proclamation, and to defer the holding of the
Assembly until the popular temper should have had time to cool. But the
legality of the proclamation was denied; the elections were everywhere
held, and the members elect assembled at Salem, pursuant to the
precepts. There they waited a day for the Governor to attend, administer
the oaths, and open the session; but as he did not appear, they resolved
themselves into a Provincial Congress, to be joined by others who had
been or might be elected for that purpose, and adjourned to the town of
Cambridge, to take into consideration the affairs of the Colony, in
which the regular and established government was now at an end. Their
acts were at first couched in the form of recommendations to the people,
whose ready compliance gave to them the weight and efficacy of laws,
and there was thus formed something like a new and independent
government. Under the form of recommendation and advice, they settled
the militia, regulated the public revenue, provided arms, and prepared
to resist the British troops. In December, 1774, they elected five
persons to represent the Colony in the Continental Congress that was to
assemble at Philadelphia in the ensuing May. They were met by a
proclamation, issued by the Governor, in which their assembly was
declared unlawful, and the people were prohibited, in the King's name,
from complying with their recommendations, requisitions, or resolves.
Through the winter, the Governor held the town of Boston, with a
considerable body of royal troops, but the rest of the Province
generally yielded obedience to the Provincial Congress. In this posture
of affairs, the encounter between a detachment of the King's forces and
a body of militia, commonly called the battle of Lexington, occurred, on
the 19th of April, 1775.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, § 160.
[3] That a union of the colonies into one general government, for any
purpose, could not take place without the sanction of Parliament, was
always assumed in both countries. The sole instance in which a plan of
union was publicly proposed and acted upon, before the Revolution, was
in 1753-4, when the Board of Trade sent instructions to the Governor of
New York to make a treaty with the Six Nations of Indians; and the other
colonies were also instructed to send commissioners to be present at the
meeting, so that all the provinces might be comprised in one general
treaty, to be made in the King's name. It was also recommended by the
home government, that the commissioners at this meeting should form a
plan of union among the colonies for their mutual protection and defence
against the French. Twenty-five commissioners assembled at Albany in
May, 1754, from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. In this body, a plan of union was
digested and adopted, which was chiefly the work of Dr. Franklin. It was
agreed that an act of Parliament was necessary to authorize it to be
carried into effect. It was rejected by all the colonial Assemblies
before which it was brought, and in England it was not thought proper by
the Board of Trade to recommend it to the King. In America it was
considered to have too much of _prerogative_ in it, and in England to be
too _democratic_. It was a comprehensive scheme of government, to
consist of a Governor-General, or President-General, who was to be
appointed and supported by the crown, and a Grand Council, which was to
consist of one member chosen by each of the smaller colonies, and two or
more by each of the larger. Its duties and powers related chiefly to
defence against external attacks. It was to have a general treasury, to
be supplied by an excise on certain articles of consumption. See the
history and details of the scheme, in Sparks's Life and Works of
Franklin, I. 176, III. 22-55; Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts,
III. 23; Trumbull's History of Connecticut, II. 355; Pitkin's History of
the United States, I. 140-146. In 1788, Franklin said of it: "The
different and contradictory reasons of dislike to my plan make me
suspect that it was really the true medium; and I am still of opinion it
would have been happy for both sides, if it had been adopted. The
colonies so united would have been sufficiently strong to have defended
themselves: there would have been no need of troops from England: of
course the subsequent pretext for taxing America, and the bloody contest
it occasioned, would have been avoided. But such mistakes are not new:
history is full of the errors of states and princes." (Life, by Sparks,
I. 178.) We may not join in his regrets now.
[4] It is not certain by whom the first suggestion of a Continental
Congress was made. Thomas Cushing, Speaker of the Massachusetts
Assembly, and a correspondent of Dr. Franklin, appears to have expressed
to him the opinion, previously to the date of Franklin's official letter
quoted in the text, that a congress would grow out of the committees of
correspondence which had been recommended by the Virginia House of
Burgesses. But Mr. Sparks thinks that no other direct and public
recommendation of the measure can be found before the date of Franklin's
letter to the Massachusetts Assembly. Sparks's Life of Franklin, I. 350,
note. In the early part of the year 1774, the necessity of such a
congress began to be popularly felt throughout all the colonies.
Sparks's Washington, II. 326.
[5] These delegates were Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George
Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund
Pendleton.
[6] Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine, James Bowdoin, and
John Adams.
[7] The delegates in the Congress of 1774 from New Hampshire were
appointed by a Convention of Deputies chosen by the towns, and received
their credentials from that Convention. In Rhode Island, they were
appointed by the General Assembly, and commissioned by the Governor. In
Connecticut, they were appointed and instructed by the Committee of
Correspondence for the Colony, acting under authority conferred by the
House of Representatives. In New York, the mode of appointment was
various. In the city and county of New York, the delegates were elected
by popular vote taken in seven wards. The same persons were also
appointed to act for the counties of West Chester, Albany, and Duchess,
by the respective committees of those counties; and another person was
appointed in the same manner for the county of Suffolk. The New York
delegates received no other instructions than those implied in the
certificates, "to attend the Congress and to represent" the county
designated. In New Jersey, the delegates were appointed by the
committees of counties, and were simply instructed "to represent" the
Colony. In Pennsylvania, they were appointed and instructed by the House
of Assembly. In the counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex on
Delaware, delegates were elected by a convention of the freemen
assembled in pursuance of circular letters from the Speaker of the House
of Assembly. In Maryland, the appointment was by committees of the
counties. In Virginia, it was by a popular convention of the whole
Colony. In South Carolina, it was by the House of Commons. Georgia was
not represented in this Congress.
[8] Journals, I. 1, 12.
[9] The President and Secretary appear to have been chosen _viva voce_
or by a hand vote. John Adam's Works, II. 365.
[10] Adams, II. 366.
[11] This opinion, we are told by Mr. Adams, was advanced by Patrick
Henry. See notes of the debate, in Adams, II. 366, 368.
[12] See the very interesting notes of their debates in Adams's Works,
II. 366, 370-377.
[13] Journals, I. 10.
[14] The instructions embraced in the credentials of the delegates to
the first Congress were as follows:--NEW HAMPSHIRE,--"to devise,
consult, and adopt such measures as may have the most likely tendency to
extricate the colonies from their present difficulties; to secure and
perpetuate their rights, liberties, and privileges; and to restore that
peace, harmony, and mutual confidence which once happily subsisted
between the parent country and her colonies." MASSACHUSETTS,--"to
deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measures, to be by them
recommended to all the colonies, for the recovery and establishment of
their just rights and liberties, civil and religious, and the
restoration of union and harmony between Great Britain and the colonies,
most ardently desired by all good men." RHODE ISLAND,--"to meet and join
with the other commissioners or delegates from the other colonies in
consulting upon proper measures to obtain a repeal of the several acts
of the British Parliament for levying taxes upon his Majesty's subjects
in America without their consent, and particularly the commercial
connection of the colonies with the mother country, for the relief of
Boston and the preservation of American liberty." VIRGINIA,--"to
consider of the most proper and effectual manner of so operating on the
commercial connection of the colonies with the mother country, as to
procure redress for the much injured Province of Massachusetts Bay, to
secure British America from the ravage and ruin of arbitrary taxes, and
speedily to procure the return of that harmony and union so beneficial
to the whole empire, and so ardently desired by all British America."
SOUTH CAROLINA,--"to consider the acts lately passed and bills depending
in Parliament with regard to the port of Boston and Colony of
Massachusetts Bay, which acts and bills, in the precedent and
consequences, affect the whole continent of America;--also the
grievances under which America labors by reason of the several acts of
Parliament that impose taxes or duties for raising a revenue, and lay
unnecessary restraints and burdens on trade;--and of the statutes,
parliamentary acts, and royal instructions, which make an invidious
distinction between his Majesty's subjects in Great Britain and America;
with full power and authority to concert, agree to, and effectually
prosecute such legal measures as, in the opinion of the said deputies
and of the deputies so to be assembled, shall be most likely to obtain a
repeal of the said acts and a redress of these grievances." The
delegates from New York and New Jersey were simply instructed "to
represent" those colonies in the Congress. Journals, I. 2-9.
[15] Letter of the Congress to Governor Gage, October 10, 1774.
Journals, I. 25, 26.
[16] Additions were made to it.
[17] Works of John Adams.
[18] See the origin of these expressions explained, in Adams's Works,
II. 373-375.
[19] Journals, I. 29.
[20] Ibid. They adopted also an Address to the People of Great Britain,
and a Petition to the King, embodying similar principles with those
asserted in the Declaration of Rights. Ibid. 38, 67.
[21] Journals, I. 21.
[22] This association, signed by the delegates, of Maryland, Virginia,
North Carolina, and South Carolina, as well as of the other colonies,
contained, among other things, the following agreement:--"We will
neither import nor purchase any slaves imported after the first day of
December next; after which time we will wholly discontinue the
slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we
hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures, to those who
are concerned in it." Journals, I. 33.
[23] Journals, I. 56. Oct. 22, 1774.
CHAPTER II
1775-1776.
THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.--FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF THE
REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.--APPOINTMENT OF A COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.--FIRST
ARMY OF THE REVOLUTION.
A new Continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia on the 10th of May,
1775; and in order to observe the growth of the Union, it is necessary
to trace the organization of this body, and to describe briefly the kind
of sovereignty which it exercised, from the time of its assembling until
the adoption and promulgation of the Declaration of Independence.[24]
The delegates to this Congress were chosen partly by the popular branch
of such of the colonial legislatures as were in session at the time, the
choice being afterwards ratified by conventions of the people; but they
were principally appointed by conventions of the people held in the
various colonies. All these appointments, except those made in New York,
took place before the battle of Lexington, and most of them had been
made in the course of the previous winter.[25] The credentials of the
delegates, therefore, while they conferred authority to adopt measures
to recover and establish American rights, still expressed, in many
instances, a desire for the restoration of harmony between Great Britain
and her colonies. In some cases, however, this desire was not expressed,
but a naked authority was granted, to consent and agree to all such
measures as the Congress should deem necessary and effectual to obtain a
redress of American grievances.
When this Congress assembled, it seems to have been tacitly assumed that
each colony should continue to have one vote through its delegation
actually present. All the thirteen colonies were represented at the
opening of the session, except Georgia and Rhode Island. Three days
after the session commenced, a delegate appeared from the Parish of St.
Johns in Georgia, who was admitted to a seat, but did not claim the
right of voting for the colony. On the 15th of May, a delegation from
Rhode Island appeared and took their seats.
The credentials of the delegates contained no limitation of their powers
with respect to time, with the exception of those from Massachusetts and
South Carolina, whose authority was not to extend beyond the end of the
year. The Congress continued in session until the 1st of August, and
then adjourned for a recess to the 5th of September. When they were
again assembled, the delegations of several of the colonies were
renewed, with different limitations as to their time of service. Georgia
sent a full delegation, who took their seats on the 13th of September.
Still later, the delegations of several other colonies were renewed from
time to time, and this practice was pursued both before and after the
Declaration of Independence, thus rendering the Congress a permanent
body.[26]
Notwithstanding the absence of any express authority in their
instructions to enter upon revolutionary measures, the circumstances
under which the Congress assembled placed it in the position and cast
upon it the powers of a revolutionary government. Civil war had actually
commenced, and blood had been shed. Whether this war was to be carried
on for independence, or was only to be waged until the British ministry
could be compelled to acknowledge the rights which the colonies had
asserted, the Congress necessarily became, at once, the organ of the
common resistance of the colonies against the parent state. The first
thing which evinces its new relation to the country was the application
made to it by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, immediately
after the battle of Lexington, for direction and assistance. While they
informed the Continental Congress that they had proceeded, at once, to
raise a force of thirteen thousand six hundred men, and had made
proposals to the other New England colonies to furnish men in the same
proportions, stating that the sudden exigency of their affairs precluded
the possibility of waiting for direction, they suggested that an
American army ought forthwith to be raised for the common cause.[27] In
the same manner, the city and county of New York applied for the advice
of Congress, how to conduct themselves with regard to the British troops
expected in that quarter. These applications caused the Congress at once
to resolve itself into a committee of the whole, to take into
consideration the state of America.[28]
These proceedings were soon followed by another application on the part
of the Provincial Convention of Massachusetts, setting forth the
difficulties under which they were laboring for want of a regular form
of government; requesting explicit advice respecting the formation of a
new government; and offering to submit to such a general plan as the
Congress might direct for the colonies, or to endeavor to form such a
government for themselves as should not only promote their own
advantage, but the union and interest of the whole country.[29]
Placed in this manner at the head of American affairs, the Continental
Congress proceeded, at once, to put the country into a state of defence,
and virtually assumed a control over the military operations of all the
colonies. They appointed committees to prepare reports on military
measures: first, to recommend what posts should be occupied in the city
of New York; secondly, to devise ways and means for procuring ammunition
and military stores; thirdly, to make an estimate of the moneys
necessary to be raised; and fourthly, to prepare rules and regulations
for the government of the army.
They then proceeded to create a continental, or national army. To the
battle of Lexington had succeeded the investment of Boston, by an army
composed of regiments raised by the New England provinces, under the
command of General Ward of Massachusetts. This army was adopted by the
Congress; and, with other forces raised for the common defence, became
known and designated as the American Continental Army.[30] Six companies
of riflemen were ordered to be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two
in Maryland, and two in Virginia, and directed to join the army near
Boston, and to be paid by the continent.[31]
On the 15th of June, 1775, Colonel George Washington, one of the
delegates in Congress from Virginia, was unanimously chosen to be
commander-in-chief of the continental forces.[32] Having accepted the
appointment, he received from the Congress a commission, together with a
resolution by which they pledged their lives and fortunes to maintain,
assist, and adhere to him in his great office, and a letter of
instructions, in which they charged him to make it his special care,
"that the liberties of America receive no detriment."[33] In the
commission given to the general, the style of "the United Colonies" was
for the first time adopted, and the defence of American Liberty was
assumed as the great object of their union.[34] On the 21st of June,
Washington left Philadelphia to take command of the army, and arrived at
Cambridge in Massachusetts on the 2d of July. Four major-generals and
eight brigadier-generals were also appointed by the Congress for the
continental army; rules and regulations for its government were adopted
and proclaimed, and the pay of the officers and privates was fixed.[35]
The Congress also proceeded, as the legislative authority of the United
Colonies, to create a continental currency, in order to defray the
expenses of the war. This was done by issuing two millions of dollars,
in bills of credit, for the redemption of which the faith of the
confederated colonies was pledged. A quota of this sum was apportioned
to each colony, and each colony was made liable to discharge its
proportion of the whole, but the United Colonies were obligated to pay
any part which either of the colonies should fail to discharge.[36] The
first of these quotas was made payable in four, the second in five, the
third in six, and the fourth in seven years from the last day of
November, 1775, and the provincial assemblies or conventions were
required, by the resolves of the Congress, to provide taxes in their
respective provinces or colonies, to discharge their several quotas.[37]
The Congress also directed reprisals to be made, both by public and
private armed vessels, against the ships and goods of the inhabitants of
Great Britain found on the high seas, or between high and low
water-mark; this being a measure of retaliation against an act of
Parliament, which had authorized the capture and condemnation of
American vessels, and which was considered equivalent to a declaration
of war. They also threw open the ports of the United Colonies to all
the world, except the dominions and dependencies of Great Britain.
Further, they established a general Treasury Department, by the
appointment of two joint Treasurers of the United Colonies, who were
required to give bonds for the faithful performance of the duties of
their office,[38] and they organized a general Post-Office, by the
appointment of a Postmaster-General for the United Colonies, to hold his
office at Philadelphia, to appoint deputies, and to establish a line of
posts from Falmouth in Massachusetts to Savannah in Georgia, with such
cross posts as he should judge proper.[39]
The proceedings of the Congress on the subject of the Militia were, of
course, in the nature of recommendations only. They advised the arming
and training of the militia of New York, in May, 1775,[40] and in July
they recommended to all the colonies to enroll all the able-bodied,
effective men among their inhabitants, between sixteen and fifty years
of age, and to form them into proper regiments.[41] The powers of the
Congress to call into the field the militia thus embodied were
considered to be subject to the consent of those exercising the
executive powers of government in the colony, for the time being.[42]
The relations of the country with the Indian tribes and nations were
deemed to be properly within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress.
Three departments of Indian Affairs, Northern, Southern, and Middle,
with separate commissioners for each, were therefore established in
July, having power to treat with the Indians in the name and on behalf
of the United Colonies.[43] Negotiations and treaties were entered into
by these departments, and all affairs with the Indians were conducted by
them, under the direction and authority of the Congress.[44]
With regard to those inhabitants of the country who adhered to the
royalist side of the controversy, the Congress of 1775-6 did not assume
and exercise directly the powers of arrest or restraint, but left the
exercise of such powers to the provincial assemblies, or conventions,
and committees of safety, in the respective colonies, with
recommendations from time to time as to the mode in which such powers
ought to be exercised.[45]
Besides all this, the different applications made to the Congress by the
people of Massachusetts,[46] of New Hampshire,[47] of Virginia,[48] and
of South Carolina, concerning the proper exercise of the powers of
government in those colonies, and the answers to those applications,
furnish very important illustrations of the position in which the
Congress were placed. To the people of Massachusetts, they declared
that no obedience was due to the act of Parliament for altering their
charter, and that, as the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor would not
observe the directions of that instrument, but had endeavored to subvert
it, their offices ought to be considered vacant; and, as the Council was
actually vacant, in order to conform as near as might be to the spirit
and substance of the charter, they recommended to the Provincial
Convention to write letters to the inhabitants of the several towns
entitled to representation in the Assembly, requesting them to choose
representatives, and requesting the Assembly when chosen to elect
councillors; adding their wish, that these bodies should exercise the
powers of government until a Governor of the King's appointment would
consent to govern the colony according to its charter.[49] The
Provincial Conventions of New Hampshire, Virginia, and South Carolina
were advised to call a full and free representation of the people, in
order to establish such a form of government as, in their judgment,
would best promote the happiness of the people and most effectually
secure peace and good order in their Provinces, during the continuance
of the dispute with Great Britain.[50] This advice manifestly
contemplated the establishment of provisional governments only.
But between the date of these last proceedings and the following spring
a marked change took place, both in the expectations and wishes of the
people of most of the colonies, with regard to an accommodation of the
great controversy. The last petition of the Congress to the King was
refused a hearing in Parliament, as emanating from an unlawful assembly,
in arms against their sovereign. In November, the town of Falmouth in
Massachusetts was bombarded and destroyed by the King's cruisers. In the
latter part of December, an act was passed in Parliament, prohibiting
all trade and commerce with the colonies; warranting the capture and
condemnation of all American vessels, with their cargoes, and
authorizing the commanders of the King's ships to compel the masters,
crews, and other persons found in such vessels, to enter the King's
service. The act also empowered the King to appoint commissioners, with
authority to grant pardon, on submission, to individuals and to
colonies, and after such submission to exempt them from its
operation.[51] Great preparations were made to reduce the colonies to
the submission required by this act, and a part of the troops that were
to be employed were foreign mercenaries.
The necessity of a complete separation from the mother country, and the
establishment of independent governments, had, therefore, in the winter
of 1775-6, become apparent to the people of America. Accordingly, the
Congress, asserting it to be irreconcilable to reason and good
conscience for the people of the colonies any longer to take the oaths
and affirmations necessary for the support of any government under the
crown of Great Britain, and declaring that the exercise of every kind of
authority under that crown ought to be suppressed, and a government of
the people of the colonies substituted in its place, recommended to the
respective assemblies and conventions of the colonies, where no
government sufficient for the exigencies of their affairs had been
already established, to adopt such a government as in the opinion of the
representatives of the people would best conduce to the happiness and
safety of their constituents and of America in general.[52]
* * * * *
It is apparent, therefore, that, previously to the Declaration of
Independence, the people of the several colonies had established a
national government of a revolutionary character, which undertook to
act, and did act, in the name and with the general consent of the
inhabitants of the country. This government was established by the
union, in one body, of delegates representing the people of each colony;
who, after they had thus united for national purposes, proceeded, in
their respective jurisdictions, by means of conventions and other
temporary arrangements, to provide for their domestic concerns by the
establishment of local governments, which should be the successors of
that authority of the British crown which they had "everywhere
suppressed." The fact that these local or state governments were not
formed until a union of the people of the different colonies for
national purposes had already taken place, and until the national power
had authorized and recommended their establishment, is of great
importance in the constitutional history of this country; for it shows
that no colony, acting separately for itself, dissolved its own
allegiance to the British crown, but that this allegiance was dissolved
by the supreme authority of the people of all the colonies, acting
through their general agent, the Congress, and not only declaring that
the authority of Great Britain ought to be suppressed, but recommending
that each colony should supplant that authority by a local government,
to be framed by and for the people of the colony itself.
The powers exercised by the Congress, before the Declaration of
Independence, show, therefore, that its functions were those of a
revolutionary government. It is a maxim of political science, that, when
such a government has been instituted for the accomplishment of great
purposes of public safety, its powers are limited only by the
necessities of the case out of which they have arisen, and of the
objects for which they were to be exercised. When the acts of such a
government are acquiesced in by the people, they are presumed to have
been ratified by the people. To the case of our Revolution, these
principles are strictly applicable, throughout. The Congress assumed, at
once, the exercise of all the powers demanded by the public exigency,
and their exercise of those powers was fully acquiesced in and confirmed
by the people. It does not at all detract from the authoritative
character of their acts, nor diminish the real powers of the
Revolutionary Congress, that it was obliged to rely on local bodies for
the execution of most of its orders, or that it couched many of those
orders in the form of recommendations. They were complied with and
executed, in point of fact, by the provincial congresses, conventions,
and local committees, to such an extent as fully to confirm the
revolutionary powers of the Congress, as the guardians of the rights and
liberties of the country. But we shall see, in the further progress of
the history of the Congress, that while its powers remained entirely
revolutionary, and were consequently coextensive with the great national
objects to be accomplished, the want of the proper machinery of civil
government and of independent agents of its own rendered it wholly
incapable of wielding those powers successfully.
* * * * *
NOTE TO PAGE 33.
ON WASHINGTON'S APPOINTMENT AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.
The circumstances which attended the appointment of
Washington to this great command are now quite well known. He
had been a member of the Congress of 1774, and his military
experience and accomplishments, and the great resources of
his character, had caused his appointment on all the
committees charged with making preparations for the defence
of the colonies. Returned as a delegate from Virginia to the
Congress of 1775, his personal qualifications pointed him out
as the fittest person in the whole country to be invested
with the command of any army which the United Colonies might
see fit to raise; and it is quite certain that there would
have been no hesitation about the appointment, if some
political considerations had not been suggested as obstacles.
At the moment when the choice was to be made, the scene of
actual operations was in Massachusetts, where an army
composed of troops wholly raised by the New England colonies,
and under the command of General Ward, of that Province, was
besieging the enemy in Boston. This army was to be adopted by
the Congress into the service of the continent, and serious
doubts were entertained by some of the members of the
Congress as to the policy of appointing a Southern general to
the command of it, and a good deal of delicacy was felt on
account of General Ward, who, it was thought, might consider
himself injured by such an appointment. On the other hand,
there were strong reasons for selecting a general-in-chief
from Virginia. That colony had taken the lead, among the
Southern provinces, in the cause of the continent, and the
appointment seemed to be due to her, if it was to be made
upon political considerations. The motives for this policy
were deemed sufficient to outweigh the objections arising
from the character and situation of the army which the
general would, in the first instance, have to command. But
after all, it cannot be doubted, that the preëminent
qualifications of Washington had far more weight with the
majority of the Congress, than any dictates of mere policy,
between one part of the Union and another, or any local
jealousies or sectional ambition.
Mr. John Adams, whose recently published autobiography
contains some statements on this subject, speaks of the
existence of a Southern party against a Northern, and a
jealousy against a New England army under the command of a
New England general, which, he says, he discovered after the
Congress had been some time in session, and after the
necessity of having an army and a general had become a topic
of conversation. (Works, II. 415.) In a letter, also, written
by Mr. Adams in 1822 to Timothy Pickering, he states that, on
the journey to Philadelphia, he and a party of his
colleagues, the delegates from Massachusetts to this
Congress, were met at Frankfort by Dr. Rush, Mr. Mifflin, Mr.
Bayard, and others of the Philadelphia patriots, who desired
a conference with them; that, in this conference, the
Philadelphia gentlemen strongly advised the Massachusetts
delegates not to come forward with bold measures, or to
endeavor to take the lead; and represented that Virginia was
the most populous State in the Union, proud of its ancient
dominions, and that "they [the Virginians] think they have a
right to take the lead, and the Southern States, and the
Middle States, too, are too much disposed to yield it to
them."
"I must confess," says Mr. Adams, "that there appeared so
much wisdom and good sense in this, that it made a deep
impression on my mind, and it had an equal effect on all my
colleagues." "This conversation," he continues, "and the
principles, facts, and motives suggested in it, have given a
color, complexion, and character to the whole policy of the
United States from that day to this. _Without it, Mr.
Washington would never have commanded our armies_; nor Mr.
Jefferson have been the author of the Declaration of
Independence; nor Mr. Richard Henry Lee the mover of it; nor
Mr. Chase the mover of foreign connections. _If I have ever
had cause to repent of any part of this policy, that
repentance ever has been and ever will be unavailing._ I had
forgot to say, nor had Mr. Johnson ever have been the
nominator of Washington for general." (Works, II. 512, 513.)
Without impeaching the accuracy of Mr. Adams's recollection,
on the score of his age when this letter was written, and
without considering here how or why Mr. Jefferson came to be
the author of the Declaration of Independence, it is believed
that Mr. Adams states other facts, in his autobiography,
sufficient to show that motives of policy towards Virginia
were _not_ the sole or the principal reasons why Washington
was elected general. Mr. Adams states in his autobiography,
that at the time when he observed the professed jealousy of
the South against a New England army under the command of a
Northern general, it was very visible to him "that Colonel
Washington was their object"; "and," he adds, "so many of our
stanchest men were in the plan, that we could carry nothing
without conceding it." (Works, II. 415.) When Mr. Adams came,
as he afterwards did, to put himself at the head of this
movement, and to propose in Congress that the army at
Cambridge should be adopted, and that a general should be
appointed, he referred directly to Washington as the person
whom he had in his mind, and spoke of him as "a gentleman
from Virginia who was among us and very well known to all of
us, a gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer,
whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent
universal character, would command the approbation of all
America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies
better than any other person in the Union. Mr. Washington,
who happened to sit near the door, as soon as he heard me
allude to him, from his usual modesty, darted into the
library-room." (Works, II. 417.) It is quite clear,
therefore, that Mr. Adams put the appointment of Washington,
in public, upon his qualifications and character, known all
over the Union. He further states, that the subject came
under debate, and that nobody opposed the appointment of
Washington on account of any personal objection to him; and
the only objection which he mentions as having been raised,
was on the ground that the army near Boston was all from New
England, and that they had a general of their own, with whom
they were entirely satisfied. He mentions one of the Virginia
delegates, Mr. Pendleton, as concurring in this objection;
that Mr. Sherman of Connecticut and Mr. Cushing of
Massachusetts also concurred in it, and that Mr. Paine of
Massachusetts expressed strong personal friendship for
General Ward, but gave no opinion upon the question.
Afterwards, he says, the subject being postponed to a future
day, "pains were taken out of doors to obtain a unanimity,
and the voices were generally so clearly in favor of
Washington, that the dissentient members were persuaded to
withdraw their opposition, and Mr. Washington was nominated,
I believe, by Mr. Thomas Johnson of Maryland, unanimously
elected, and the army adopted." (Ibid.)
It is worth while to inquire, therefore, what were the
controlling reasons, which so easily and so soon produced
this striking unanimity. If it was brought about mainly by
the exertions of a Southern against a Northern party, and by
the yielding of Northern men to the Virginians from motives
of policy, it would not have been accomplished with so much
facility, although even a Washington were the candidate of
Virginia. Sectional jealousies and sectional parties inflame
each other; the struggles which they cause are protracted;
and the real merits of men and things are lost sight of in
the passions which they arouse. If policy, as a leading or a
principal motive, gave to General Washington the great body
of the Northern votes, there would have been more
dissentients from that policy than any of the accounts
authorize us to suppose there were, at any moment, while the
subject was under consideration. Nor does the previous
conduct of Virginia warrant the belief, that her subsequent
exertions in the cause of American liberty were mainly
purchased by the honors bestowed upon her great men, or by so
much of precedence as was yielded in the public councils to
the unquestionable abilities of her statesmen. Some of them
had undoubtedly been in favor of measures of conciliation to
a late period; and some of them, as Washington, Patrick
Henry, and Richard Henry Lee, had been, from an early period,
convinced that the sword must decide the controversy. They
were perhaps as much divided upon this point, until the army
at Boston was adopted, as the leading men of other colonies.
But when the necessity of that measure became apparent, it
was the peculiar happiness of Virginia to be able to present
to the country, as a general, a man whose character and
qualifications threw all local and political objects at once
into the shade. In order to form a correct judgment, at the
present day, of the motives which must have produced a
unanimity so remarkable and so prompt, we have only to
recollect the previous history of Washington, as it was known
to the Congress, at the moment when he shrank from the
mention of his name in that assembly.
He was forty-three years of age. From early youth, he had had
a training that eminently fitted him for the great part which
he was afterwards to play, and which unfolded the singular
capacities of his character to meet the extraordinary
emergencies of the post to which he was subsequently called.
That training had been both in military and in civil life.
His military career had been one of much activity and
responsibility, and had embraced several brilliant
achievements. In 1751, it became necessary to put the militia
of Virginia in a condition to defend the frontiers against
the French and the Indians. The province was divided into
military districts, in each of which an adjutant-general,
with the rank of major, was commissioned to drill and inspect
the militia. Washington, at the age of nineteen, received the
appointment to one of these districts; and in the following
year, the province was again divided into four grand military
divisions, of which the northern was assigned to him as
adjutant-general. In 1753, the French crossed the lakes, to
establish posts on the Ohio, and were joined by the Indians.
Major Washington was sent by the Governor of Virginia to warn
them to retire. This expedition was one of difficulty and of
delicacy. He crossed the Alleghany Mountains, reached the
Ohio, had interviews with the French commander and the
Indians, and returned to Williamsburg to make report to the
Governor. Of this journey, full of perilous adventures and
narrow escapes, he kept a journal, which was published by the
Governor; was copied into most of the newspapers of the other
colonies; and was reprinted in London, as a document of much
importance, exhibiting the views and designs of the French.
In 1754, he was appointed, with the rank of
lieutenant-colonel, second in command of the provincial
troops raised by the Legislature to repel the French
invasion. On the first encounter with a party of the enemy
under Jumonville, on the 28th of May, 1754, the chief command
devolved on Washington, in the absence of his superior. The
French leader was killed, and most of his party were taken
prisoners. Washington commanded also at the battle of the
Great Meadows, and received a vote of thanks for his services
from the House of Burgesses. This was in 1754, when he was at
the age of twenty-two. During the next year, in consequence
of the effect of some new arrangement of the provincial
troops, he was reduced from the rank of colonel to that of
captain, and thereupon retired from the army, with the
consolation that he had received the thanks of his country
for the services he had rendered. In 1755, he consented to
serve as aide-de-camp to General Braddock, who had arrived
from England with two regiments of regular troops. In this
capacity he served in the battle of the Monongahela with much
distinction. The two other aids were wounded and disabled
early in the action, and the duty of distributing the
General's orders devolved wholly upon Washington. It was in
this battle that he acquired with the Indians the reputation
of being under the special protection of the Great Spirit,
because he escaped the aim of many of their rifles, although
two horses were shot under him, and his dress was perforated
by four bullets. His conduct on this occasion became known
and celebrated throughout the country; and when he retired to
Mount Vernon, as he did soon after, at the age of
three-and-twenty, he not only carried with him a decisive
reputation for personal bravery, but he was known to have
given advice to Braddock, before the action, which all men
saw, after it, would, if it had been duly heeded, have
prevented his defeat. But he was not allowed to remain long
in retirement. In August, 1755, he was appointed
commander-in-chief of all the provincial forces of Virginia,
and immediately entered upon the duties of reorganizing the
old and raising new troops, in the course of which he visited
all the outposts along the frontier. Soon afterwards, a
dispute about rank having arisen with a person who claimed to
take precedence of provincial officers because he had
formerly held the King's commission, it became necessary for
Colonel Washington to make a visit to Boston, in order to
have the point decided by General Shirley, the
commander-in-chief of his Majesty's armies in America. He
commenced his journey on the 4th of February, 1756, and
passed through Philadelphia, New York, New London, Newport,
and Providence, and visited the Governors of Pennsylvania and
New York. In all the principal cities his character, and his
remarkable escape at Braddock's defeat, made him the object
of a strong public interest. At Boston, he was received with
marked distinction by General Shirley and by the whole
society of the town, and the question of rank was decided
according to his wishes. General Shirley explained to him the
intended operations of the next campaign; and, after an
absence from Virginia of seven weeks, he returned to resume
his command. The next three years were spent in the duties of
this laborious and responsible position, the difficulties and
embarrassments of which bore a strong resemblance to those
which he afterwards had to encounter in the war of the
Revolution. In 1758, he commanded the Virginia troops in the
expedition against Fort Duquesne, under General Forbes. Great
deference was paid by that officer to his opinions and
judgment, in arranging the line of march and order of battle,
on this important expedition; for the fate of Braddock was
before him. The command of the advanced division, consisting
of one thousand men, was assigned to him, with the temporary
rank of brigadier. When the army had approached within fifty
miles of Fort Duquesne, the French deserted it; its
surrender to the English closed the campaign; and in December
Washington resigned his commission, and retired to Mount
Vernon. What he had been, and what he then was, to the Colony
of Virginia, is shown by the Address presented to him by the
officers of the provincial troops, on his retirement. "In our
earliest infancy," said they, "you took us under your
tuition, trained us up in the practice of that discipline
which alone can constitute good troops, from the punctual
observance of which you never suffered the least deviation.
Your steady adherence to impartial justice, your quick
discernment, and invariable regard to merit, wisely intended
to inculcate those genuine sentiments of true honor and
passion for glory, from which the greatest military
achievements have been derived, first heightened our natural
emulation and our desire to excel. How much we improved by
those regulations and your own example, with what alacrity we
have hitherto discharged our duty, with what cheerfulness we
have encountered the severest toils, especially while under
your particular directions, we submit to yourself, and
flatter ourselves that we have in a great measure answered
your expectations.... It gives us additional sorrow, when we
reflect, to find our unhappy country will receive a loss no
less irreparable than our own. Where will it meet a man so
experienced in military affairs, one so renowned for
patriotism, conduct, and courage? Who has so great a
knowledge of the enemy we have to deal with? Who so well
acquainted with their situation and strength? Who so much
respected by the soldiery? Who, in short, so able to support
the military character of Virginia? Your approved love to
your King and country, and your uncommon perseverance in
promoting the honor and true interest of the service,
convince us that the most cogent reasons only could induce
you to quit it; yet we, with the greatest deference, presume
to entreat you to suspend those thoughts for another year,
and to lead us on to assist in the glorious work of
extirpating our enemies, towards which so considerable
advances have already been made. In you we place the most
implicit confidence. Your presence only will cause a steady
firmness and vigor to actuate every breast, despising the
greatest dangers, and thinking light of toils and hardships,
while led on by the man we know and love. But if we must be
so unhappy as to part, if the exigencies of your affairs
force you to abandon us, we beg it as our last request, that
you will recommend some person most capable to command, whose
military knowledge, whose honor, whose conduct, and whose
disinterested principles we may depend on. Frankness,
sincerity, and a certain openness of soul, are the true
characteristics of an officer, and we flatter ourselves that
you do not think us capable of saying any thing contrary to
the purest dictates of our minds. Fully persuaded of this, we
beg leave to assure you, that, as you have hitherto been the
actuating soul of our whole corps, we shall at all times pay
the most invariable regard to your will and pleasure, and
shall be always happy to demonstrate by our actions with how
much respect and esteem we are," &c.
Washington's marriage took place soon after his resignation
(January 6th, 1759), and his civil life now commenced. He had
been elected a member of the House of Burgesses, before the
close of the campaign, and in the course of the winter he
took his seat. Upon this occasion, his inability, from
confusion and modesty, to reply to a highly eulogistic
address made to him by the Speaker, Mr. Robinson, drew from
that gentleman the celebrated compliment, "Sit down, Mr.
Washington, your modesty equals your valor, and that
surpasses the power of any language that I possess." He
continued a member of the House of Burgesses until the
commencement of the Revolution, a period of fifteen years. He
was not a frequent speaker; but his sound judgment, quick
perception, and firmness and sincerity of character, gave him
an influence which the habit of much speaking does not give,
and which is often denied to eloquence. As the time drew
near, when the controversies between the colonies and England
began to assume a threatening aspect, he was naturally found
with Henry, Randolph, Lee, Wythe, and Mason, and the other
patriotic leaders of the colonies. His views concerning the
policy of the non-importation agreements were early formed
and made known. In 1769, he took charge of the Articles of
Association, drawn by Mr. Mason, which were intended to bring
about a concert of action between all the colonies, for the
purpose of presenting them to the Assembly, of which Mr.
Mason was not a member. In 1774, he was chosen a member of
the first Virginia Convention, and was by that body elected a
delegate to the first Continental Congress, where he was
undoubtedly the most conspicuous person present. The second
Virginia Convention met in March, 1775, and reflected the
former delegates to the second Continental Congress, from
which Washington was removed by his appointment as
Commander-in-chief.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that Washington was chosen
Commander-in-chief for his unquestionable merits, and not as
a compromise between sectional interests and local
jealousies.
(The authorities for the statements in this note concerning
Washington's history are the biographies by Marshall and
Sparks, and the Writings of Washington, edited by the
latter.)
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Peyton Randolph, President of the first and reëlected President of
the second Congress, died very suddenly at Philadelphia on the 22d of
October, 1775, and was succeeded in that office by John Hancock. Mr.
Randolph was one of the most eminent of the Virginia patriots, and an
intimate friend of Washington. Richard Henry Lee wrote to Washington, on
the day after his death, that "in him American liberty lost a powerful
advocate, and human nature a sincere friend." He was formerly
Attorney-General of Virginia, and in 1753 went to England as agent of
the House of Burgesses, to procure the abolition of a fee, known as the
pistole fee, which it had been the custom of the Governors of Virginia
to charge for signing land patents, as a perquisite of their office. He
succeeded in getting the fee abolished in cases where the quantity of
land exceeded one hundred acres. He was commander of a company of
mounted volunteers called the Gentlemen Associators, who served in the
French war. He was President of the Virginia Convention, as well as a
Delegate in Congress, at the time of his death. Sparks's Washington, II.
58, 161; III. 139, 140; XII. 420.
[25] In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, they were made in
December; in Connecticut, in November; in New Jersey, in January; in
South Carolina, in February; in the Lower Counties on Delaware and in
Virginia, in March; in North Carolina, on the 5th of April; and in New
York, on the 22d of April.
[26] Virginia renewed her delegation for one year from the 11th of
August, 1775, and Maryland hers with powers to act until the 25th of
March, 1776. These new delegations, as well as that of Georgia, appeared
on the 13th of September, 1775. On the 16th of September, a renewed
delegation appeared from New Hampshire, without limitation of time;
Connecticut sent a new delegation on the 16th of January, 1776, and
Massachusetts did the same on the 31st of January, for the year 1776.
The persons of the delegates were not often changed.
[27] Journals, I. 81, 82.
[28] May 15, 1775. Journals, I. 162.
[29] Journals, I. 112.
[30] Form of enlistment, Journals, I. 118.
[31] Ibid.
[32] See note at end of the chapter.
[33] Secret Journals of Congress, I. 18; Pitkin's History of the United
States, I. 334, 335.
[34] Journals, I. 122.
[35] June 16-July 4, 1775. Journals, I. 112-133.
[36] Journals, I. 125, June 23, 1775. Ibid., I. 185, July 29, 1775.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Journals, I. 186, July 29, 1775. Michael Hillegas and George
Clymer, Esquires, were elected Treasurers.
[39] Journals, I. 177, 178, July 26, 1775. Dr. Franklin was elected
Postmaster-General for one year, and until another should be appointed
by a future Congress.
[40] Journals, I. 106.
[41] Journals, I. 170.
[42] Journals, I. 285.
[43] Journals, I. 161, 162.
[44] Journals, II. 112, 141, 163, 201, 255, 302, 304.
[45] Journals, I. 213; II. 5.
[46] June 9, 1775.
[47] November 3, 1775.
[48] December 4, 1775.
[49] Journals, I. 115.
[50] Journals, I. 231, 235, 279.
[51] Annual Register.
[52] May 10, 1776. Journals, II. 166, 174.
CHAPTER III.
1776-1777.
CONTINUANCE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.--DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE.--PREPARATIONS FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT.--FORMATION OF THE
CONTINENTAL ARMY.
On the 7th of June, 1776, after the Congress had in fact assumed and
exercised sovereign powers with the assent of the people of America, a
resolution was moved by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and seconded by
John Adams of Massachusetts, "That these United Colonies are, and of
right ought to be, free and independent states; and that all political
connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to
be totally suppressed."[53] This resolution was referred to a committee
of the whole, and was debated until the 10th, when it was adopted in
committee. On the same day, a committee, consisting of five members,[54]
was instructed to prepare a declaration "that these United Colonies are,
and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are
absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all
political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and
ought to be, dissolved." The resolution introduced by Mr. Lee on the
7th was postponed until the 1st of July, to give time for greater
unanimity among the members, and to enable the people of the colonies to
instruct and influence their delegates.
The postponement was immediately followed by proceedings in the
colonies, in most of which the delegates in Congress were either
instructed or authorized to vote for the resolution of Independence; and
on the 2d of July that resolution received the assent in Congress of all
the colonies, excepting Pennsylvania and Delaware. The Declaration of
Independence was reported by the committee, who had been instructed to
prepare it, on the 28th of June, and on the 4th of July it received the
vote of every colony, and was published to the world.[55]
This celebrated instrument, regarded as a legislative proceeding, was
the solemn enactment, by the representatives of all the colonies, of a
complete dissolution of their allegiance to the British crown. It
severed the political connection between the people of this country and
the people of England, and at once erected the different colonies into
free and independent states. The body by which this step was taken
constituted the actual government of the nation, at the time, and its
members had been directly invested with competent legislative power to
take it, and had also been specially instructed to do so. The
consequences flowing from its adoption were, that the local allegiance
of the inhabitants of each colony became transferred and due to the
colony itself, or, as it was expressed by the Congress, became due to
the laws of the colony, from which they derived protection;[56] that the
people of the country became thenceforth the rightful sovereign of the
country; that they became united in a national corporate capacity, as
one people; that they could thereafter enter into treaties and contract
alliances with foreign nations, could levy war and conclude peace, and
do all other acts pertaining to the exercise of a national sovereignty;
and finally, that, in their national corporate capacity, they became
known and designated as the United States of America. This Declaration
was the first national state paper in which these words were used as the
style and title of the nation. In the enacting part of the instrument,
the Congress styled themselves "the representatives of the United States
of America in general Congress assembled"; and from that period, the
previously "United Colonies" have been known as a political community,
both within their own borders and by the other nations of the world, by
the title which they then assumed.[57]
On the same day on which the committee for preparing the Declaration of
Independence was appointed, another committee, consisting of one member
from each colony, was directed "to prepare and digest the form of a
confederation to be entered into between these colonies." This committee
reported a draft of Articles of Confederation, on the 12th of July,
which were debated in Congress on several occasions between that day and
the 20th of August of the same year, at which time a new draft was
reported, and ordered to be printed. The subject was not again resumed,
until the 8th of April, 1777; but, between that date and the 15th of the
following November, sundry amendments were discussed and adopted, and
the whole of the articles, as amended, were printed for the use of the
Congress and the State Legislatures. On the 17th of November, a circular
letter was reported and adopted, to be addressed to the Legislatures of
the thirteen States, recommending to them "to invest the delegates of
the State with competent powers, ultimately, in the name and behalf of
the State, to subscribe Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union of
the United States, and to attend Congress for that purpose on or before
the 10th day of March next."[58]
A year and five months had thus elapsed, between the agitation of the
subject of a new form of national government, and the adoption and
recommendation of a form, by the Congress, for the consideration of the
States.[59] During this interval, the affairs of the country were
administered by the Revolutionary Congress, which had been instituted,
originally, for the purpose of obtaining redress peaceably from the
British ministry, but which afterwards became _de facto_ the government
of the country, for all the purposes of revolution and independence. In
order to appreciate the objects of the Confederation, the obstacles
which it had to encounter, and the mode in which those obstacles were
finally overcome, it is necessary here to take a brief survey of the
national affairs during the period beginning with the commencement of
the war and the Declaration of Independence, and extending to the date
of the submission of the Articles of Confederation to the State
Legislatures. From no point of view can so much instruction be derived,
as from the position in which Washington stood, during this period. By
following the fortunes and appreciating the exertions of him who had
been charged with the great military duty of achieving the liberties of
the country, and especially by observing his relations with the
government that had undertaken the war, we can best understand the
fitness of that government for the great task to which it had been
called.
The continental government, which commissioned and sent General
Washington to take the command of the army which it had adopted,
consisted solely of a body of delegates, chosen to represent the people
of the several colonies or states, for certain purposes of national
defence, safety, redress, and revolution. When the war had actually
commenced, and the United Colonies were engaged in waging it, the
Congress possessed, theoretically and rightfully, large political
powers, of a vague revolutionary nature; but practically, they had
little direct civil power, either legislative or executive. They were
obliged to rely almost wholly on the legislatures, provincial congresses
and committees, or other local bodies of the several colonies or states,
to carry out their plans. When Washington arrived at Cambridge and found
the army then encamped around Boston in a state requiring it to be
entirely remodelled, he came as the general of a government which could
do little more for him than recommend him to the Provincial Congress, to
the Committee of Safety, and to the prominent citizens of Massachusetts
Bay. The people of the United States, at the present day, surrounded by
the apparatus of national power, can form some idea of Washington's
position, and of that of the government which he served, from the fact
that, when he left Philadelphia to take the command of the army, he
requested the Massachusetts delegates to recommend to him bodies of men
and respectable individuals, to whom he might apply, to get done,
through voluntary coöperation, what was absolutely essential to the
existence of that army.[60] In truth, the whole of his residence in
Massachusetts during the summer of 1775, and the winter of 1775-6, until
he saw the British fleet go down the harbor of Boston, was filled with
complicated difficulties, which sprang from the nature of the
revolutionary government and the defects in its civil machinery, far
more than from any and all other causes. These difficulties required the
exertion of great intellectual and physical energy, the application of
consummate prudence and forecast, and the patience and fortitude which
in him were so happily combined with power. They would have broken down
many of the greatest generals whom the world has seen; but it is our
good fortune to be able to look back upon his efforts to encounter them
as among the more prominent and striking manifestations of the strength
of Washington's mind and character, and as among the most valuable
proofs of what we owe to him.
On the one side of him was the body of delegates, sitting at
Philadelphia, by whom he had been commissioned, who constituted the
government of America, and from whom every direction, order, or
requisition, concerning national affairs, necessarily proceeded. On the
other side were the Provincial Congresses, and other public bodies of
the New England colonies, on whom he and the Congress were obliged to
rely for the execution of their plans. He was compelled to become the
director of this complicated machinery. There were committees of the
Congress, charged with the different branches of the public service; but
General Washington was obliged to attend personally to every detail, and
to suggest, to urge, and to entreat action upon all the subjects that
concerned the army and the campaign. His letters, addressed to the
President of Congress, were read in that body, and votes or resolutions
were passed to give effect to his requests or recommendations. But this
was not enough. Having obtained the proper order or requisition, he was
next obliged to see that it was executed by the local bodies or
magistrates, with whom he not infrequently was forced to discuss the
whole subject anew. He met with great readiness of attention, and every
disposition to make things personally convenient and agreeable to him;
but he found, as he has recorded, a vital and inherent principle of
delay, incompatible with military service, in the necessity he was under
to transact business through such numerous and different channels.[61]
His applications to the Governor of Connecticut for hunting-shirts for
the army;[62] to the Governor of Rhode Island for powder;[63] to the
Massachusetts Provincial Congress to apprehend deserters and to furnish
supplies;[64] and to the New York Provincial Congress to prevent their
citizens from trading with the enemy in Boston,[65]--together with the
earnest appeals which he was obliged to make on these and many other
subjects, which should never have been permitted to embarrass
him,--show how feeble were the powers and how defective was the
machinery of the government which he served.
But there are two or three topics which it will be necessary to examine
more particularly, in order fully to understand the character and
working of the revolutionary government. The first of these is the
formation of the army.
In order to carry on a war of any duration, it is the settled result of
all experience, that the soldier should be bound to serve for a period
long enough to insure discipline and skill, and should be under the
influence of motives which look to substantial pecuniary rewards, as
well as those founded on patriotism. According to Washington's
experience, this is as true of officers as it is of common soldiers; and
undoubtedly no army can be formed, and kept long enough in the field to
be relied upon for the accomplishment of great purposes, if these maxims
are neglected in its organization.
Unfortunately, the Revolutionary Congress, at the very commencement of
the war, committed the serious error of enlisting soldiers for short
periods. When Washington arrived at Cambridge, the army which the
Congress had just adopted as the continental establishment consisted of
certain regiments, raised on the spur of the moment by the provinces of
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut; acting
under their respective officers; regulated by their own militia laws;
and, with the exception of those from Massachusetts, under no legal
obligation to obey the general then in command. The terms of service of
most of these men would expire in the autumn; and as they had enlisted
under their local governments for a special object, and had not been in
service long enough to have merged their habits of thinking and feeling,
as New England citizens, in the character of soldiers, they denied the
power of their own governments or of the Congress to transfer them into
another service, or to retain them after their enlistments had
expired.[66] The army was therefore to be entirely remodelled; or, to
speak more correctly, an army was to be formed, by making enlistments
under the Articles of War which had been adopted by the Congress, and by
organizing new regiments and brigades under officers holding continental
commissions. But the greatest difficulties had to be encountered in this
undertaking. The continental Articles of War required a longer term of
service than any of these troops had originally engaged for, and the
rules and regulations were far more stringent than the discipline to
which they had hitherto been subjected. There was, moreover, great
reluctance, on the part of both officers and men, to serve in regiments
consisting of the inhabitants of different colonies. A Connecticut
captain would not serve under a Massachusetts colonel; a Massachusetts
colonel was unwilling to command Rhode Island men; and the men were
equally indisposed to serve under officers from another colony, or under
any officers, in fact, but those of their own choosing.[67]
In this state of things, a committee, consisting of Dr. Franklin, Mr.
Lynch, and Colonel Harrison, was sent by the Congress to confer with
General Washington and with the local governments of the New England
colonies, on the most effectual method of continuing, supporting, and
regulating a continental army.[68] This committee arrived at Cambridge
on the 18th of October, and sat until the 24th.[69] They rendered very
important services to the commander-in-chief, in the organization of the
army; but in forming this first military establishment of the Union, the
strange error was committed by the Congress, of enlisting the men for
the term of one year only, if not sooner discharged;--a capital mistake,
the consequences of which were severely felt throughout the whole war.
There is no reason to suppose that General Washington concurred in the
expediency of such short enlistments, then or at any other time; but he
was obliged to yield to the pressure of the causes to which the mistake
is fairly to be attributed. In fact, we find him, in a short time after
the new system had been put into operation, pointing it out as a fatal
error, in a letter to the President of Congress.[70] The error may have
been owing to the character of the government, to the opinions and
prejudices prevailing in Congress, and to the delusive idea, which still
lingered in the minds of many of the members, that, although the sword
had been drawn, the scabbard was not wholly thrown aside, and that they
should be able to coerce the British ministry into a redress of
grievances, which might be followed by a restoration of the relations
between the colonies and the mother country, upon a constitutional
basis. No such idea was entertained by Washington, from the beginning.
He entertained no thought of accommodation, after the measures adopted
in consequence of the battle of Bunker's Hill.
But at the time of which we are treating, the issue had not been made,
as Washington would have made it; and, when we consider the state of
things before the Declaration of Independence was adopted, and look
attentively at the objects for which the Congress had been assembled,
and at the nature of their powers, we may perceive how they came to make
the mistake of not organizing a military establishment on a more
permanent footing.
The delegates to the first Congress were, as we have seen, sent with
instructions, which were substantially the same in all the colonies.
These instructions, in some instances, looked to "a redress of
grievances," and in others, to "the recovery and establishment of the
just rights and liberties of the colonies"; and the delegates were
directed "to deliberate upon wise and proper measures, to be by them
recommended to all the colonies," for the attainment of these objects.
But with this was coupled the declared object of a "restoration of union
and harmony" upon "constitutional principles." We have seen how far this
body proceeded towards a revolution. The second, or Revolutionary
Congress, was composed of delegates who were originally assembled under
similar instructions; but the conflict of arms that had already taken
place, between the times of their respective appointments and the date
of their meeting, had materially changed the posture of affairs. Powers
of a revolutionary nature had been cast upon them, by the force of
circumstances; and when they finally resolved to take the field, the
character of those powers, as understood and acted upon by themselves,
is illustrated by the commission which they issued to their
General-in-chief, which embraced in its scope the whole vast object of
"the defence of American liberty, and the repelling every hostile
invasion thereof," by force of arms, and "by the rules and discipline of
war, as herewith given."
It is obvious, therefore, that, at the time when the first continental
army was to be formed, the powers of the national government were very
broad, although vague and uncertain. There seems to have been no reason,
upon principle, why they should not have adopted decrees, to be executed
by their own immediate agents, and by their own direct force. But a
practical difficulty embarrassed and almost annulled this theoretical
and rightful power. The government of the Congress rested on no
definite, legislative faculty. When they came to a resolution, or vote,
it constituted only a voluntary compact, to which the people of each
colony pledged themselves, by their delegates, as to a treaty, but which
depended for its observance entirely on the patriotism and good faith of
the colony itself. No means existed of compelling obedience from a
delinquent colony, and the government was not one which could operate
directly upon individuals, unless it assumed the full exercise of powers
derived from the revolutionary objects at which it aimed. These powers
were not assumed and exercised to their full extent, for reasons
peculiar to the situation of the country, and to the character, habits,
and feelings of the people.
The people of the colonies had indeed sent their delegates to a
Congress, to consult and determine upon the measures necessary to be
adopted, in order to assert and maintain their rights. But they had
never been accustomed to any machinery of government, or legislation,
other than that existing in their own separate jurisdictions. They had
imparted to the Congress no proper legislative authority, and no civil
powers, except those of a revolutionary character. This revolutionary
government was therefore entirely without civil executive officers,
fundamental laws, or control over individuals; and the union of the
colonies, so far as a union had taken place, was one from which any
colony could withdraw at any time, without violating any legal
obligation.
In addition to this, the popular feeling on the subject of the
grievances existing, and of the measures that ought to be taken for
redress, was quite different in the different colonies, before the
Declaration of Independence was adopted. The leading patriotic or Whig
colonies made common cause with each other, with great spirit and
energy, and the more lukewarm followed, but with unequal steps.[71]
Virginia had, upon the whole, less to complain of than Massachusetts;
but she adopted the whole quarrel of her Northern sister, with the
firmness of her Washington and the ardor of her Henry. New York, on the
other hand, for a considerable period, and down to the month of January,
1775, stood nearly divided between the Whigs and the Tories, and did not
choose its delegates to the second Congress until the 20th of
April,--twenty days only before that body assembled.[72]
One of the most striking illustrations, both of the character of the
revolutionary government and of the state of the country, is presented
by the proceedings respecting the Loyalists, or, as they were called,
the Tories. This is not the place to consider whether the American
Loyalists were right or wrong in adhering to the crown. Ample justice is
likely to be done, in American history, to the characters and motives of
those among them whose characters and motives were pure. From a sense of
duty, or from cupidity, or from some motive, good or bad, they made
their election to adhere to the public enemy; and they were, therefore,
rightfully classed, according to their personal activity and importance,
among the enemies of the country, by those whose business it was to
conduct its affairs and to fight its battles. General Washington was, at
a very early period, of opinion, that the most decisive steps ought to
be taken with these persons; and he seems at first to have acted as if
it belonged, as in fact it did properly belong, to the commander of the
continental forces to determine when and how they should be arrested. He
first had occasion to act upon the subject in November, 1775, when he
sent Colonel Palfrey, one of his aids, into New Hampshire, with orders
to seize every officer of the royal government, who had given proofs of
an unfriendly disposition to the American cause, and when he had secured
them, to take the opinion of the Provincial Congress, or Committee of
Safety, in what manner to dispose of them in that Province.[73]
Early in the month of January, 1776, General Washington was led to
suppose that the enemy were about to send from Boston a secret
expedition by water, for the purpose of taking possession of the city of
New York; and it was believed that a body of Tories on Long Island,
where they were numerous, were about rising, to join the enemy's forces
on their arrival. While Washington was deliberating whether he should be
warranted in sending an expedition to check this movement and to prevent
the city from falling into the hands of the enemy, without first
applying to Congress for a special authority, he received a letter from
Major-General Charles Lee, offering to go into Connecticut, to raise
volunteers, and to march to the neighborhood of New York, for the
purpose of securing the city and suppressing the anticipated
insurrection of the Tories.[74] He was inclined to adopt Lee's
suggestion, but doubted whether he had power to disarm the people of an
entire district, as a military measure, without the action of the civil
authority of the Province. Upon this point, he consulted Mr. John Adams,
who was then attending the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts. Mr.
Adams gave it, unhesitatingly, as his clear opinion, that the commission
of the Commander-in-chief extended to the objects proposed in General
Lee's letter; and he reminded General Washington, that it vested in him
full power and authority to act as he should think for the good and
welfare of the service.[75] Lee was thereupon authorized to raise
volunteers and to proceed to the city of New York, which he was
instructed to prevent from falling into the hands of the enemy, by
putting it into the best posture of defence and by disarming all persons
upon Long Island and elsewhere, (and, if necessary, by otherwise
securing them,) whose conduct and declarations had rendered them justly
suspected of designs unfriendly to the views of the Congress.[76] At the
same time, General Washington wrote to the Committee of Safety of New
York, informing them of the instructions which he had given to General
Lee, and requesting their assistance; but without placing Lee under
their authority.[77]
* * * * *
It happened, that at this time, while Washington was considering the
expediency of sending this expedition, the Congress had under
consideration the subject of disarming the Tories in Queen's County,
Long Island, where the people had refused to elect members to the
Provincial Convention.[78] Two battalions of minute-men had been ordered
to enter that county, at its opposite sides, on the same day, and to
disarm every inhabitant who had voted against choosing members to the
Convention.[79] A part of these orders were suddenly countermanded, and
in place of the minute-men from Connecticut, three companies were
ordered to be detailed for this service from the command of Lord
Stirling. This change in the original plan was made on the 10th of
January; and when Washington received notice of it from Lee, he seems to
have understood it as an abandonment of the whole scheme of the
expedition,--a course which he deeply regretted.[80] He thought, that
the period had arrived when nothing less than the most decisive measures
ought to be pursued; that the enemies of the country were sufficiently
numerous on the other side of the Atlantic, and that it was highly
important to have as few internal ones as possible. But supposing that
Congress had changed their determination, he directed Lee to disband his
troops so soon as circumstances would in his judgment admit of it.[81]
Lee was at this time at Stamford in Connecticut, with a body of about
twelve hundred men, whom he had raised in that colony, preparing to
march to New York to execute the different purposes for which he had
been detached. On the 22d of January,--the day before the date of
General Washington's letter to him directing him to disband his
forces,--he had written to the President of Congress, urging in the
strongest terms the expediency of seizing and disarming the Tories;[82]
and he immediately communicated to Washington the fact of his having
done so. Washington wrote again on the 30th, informing Lee that General
Clinton had gone from Boston on some expedition with four or five
hundred men; that there was reason to believe that this expedition had
been sent on the application of Tryon, the royal Governor of New York,
who, with a large body of the inhabitants, would probably join it; and
that the Tories ought, therefore, to be disarmed at once, and the
principal persons among them seized. He also expressed the hope that
Congress would empower General Lee to act conformably to both their
wishes; but that, if they should order differently, their directions
must be obeyed.[83]
General Washington was mistaken in supposing that Congress had resolved
to abandon the expedition against the Tories of Queen's County. That
expedition had actually penetrated the county, under Colonel Heard, who
had arrested nineteen of the principal inhabitants and conducted them to
Philadelphia. Congress directed them to be sent to New York, and
delivered to the order of the Convention of that Colony, until an
inquiry could be instituted by the Convention into their conduct, and a
report thereon made to Congress.[84]
This destination of the prisoners had become necessary, in consequence
of the local fears and jealousies excited by the approach of General Lee
to the city of New York, at the head of a force designed to prevent it
from falling into the possession of the enemy. The inhabitants of the
city were not a little alarmed at the idea of its becoming a post to be
contended for; and the Committee of Safety wrote to General Lee
earnestly deprecating his approach.[85] Lee replied to them, and
continued his march, inclosing their letter to Congress. It was received
in that body on the 26th, and a committee of three members was
immediately appointed to repair to New York, to consult and advise with
the Council of Safety of the Colony, and with General Lee, respecting
the defence of the city.[86] The Provincial Congress of New York were in
session at the time of the arrival of this committee,[87] and, in
consequence of the temper existing in that body and in the local
committees, the Continental Congress found themselves obliged to recede
from the course which they had taken of disarming the Tories of Queen's
County by their own action, and to submit the whole subject again to the
colonial authorities everywhere, by a mere recommendation to them to
disarm all persons, within their respective limits, notoriously
disaffected to the American cause.[88]
Thus, after having resolved on the performance of a high act of
sovereignty, which was entirely within the true scope of their own
powers, and eminently necessary, the Congress was obliged to content
itself with a recommendation on the subject to the colonial authorities;
not only because it felt itself, as a government, far from secure of the
popular coöperation in many parts of the country, but because it had not
finally severed the political tie which had bound the country to the
crown of Great Britain, and because it had no civil machinery of its
own, through which its operations could be conducted.
Another topic, which illustrates the character of the early
revolutionary government, is the entire absence, at the period now under
consideration, of a proper national tribunal for the determination of
questions of Prize;--a want which gave General Washington great trouble
and embarrassment, during his residence at Cambridge and for some time
afterwards. As this subject is connected with the origin of the American
Navy, a brief account may here be given of the commencement of naval
operations by the United Colonies.
* * * * *
When General Washington arrived at Cambridge, no steps had been taken by
the Continental Congress towards the employment of any naval force
whatever. In June, 1775, two small schooners had been fitted out by
Rhode Island, to protect the waters of that Colony from the depredations
of the enemy; and in the same month, the Provincial Congress of
Massachusetts resolved to provide six armed vessels; but none of them
were ready in the month of October.[89] In the early part of that month,
the first movement was made by the Continental Congress towards the
employment of any naval force. General Washington was then directed to
fit out two armed vessels, with all possible despatch, to sail for the
mouth of the St. Lawrence, in order to intercept certain ships from
England bound to Quebec with powder and stores. He was to procure these
vessels from the government of Massachusetts.[90] The authorities of
Massachusetts had then made no such provision; but in the latter part
of August, General Washington had, on the broad authority of his
commission, proceeded to fit out six armed schooners, to cruise in the
waters of Massachusetts Bay, so as to intercept the enemy's supplies
coming into the port of Boston. One of them sailed in September, and in
the course of a few weeks they were all cruising between Cape Ann and
Cape Cod.[91]
On the 17th of September, 1775, the town of Falmouth in Massachusetts
(now Portland in Maine) was burnt by the enemy. This act stimulated the
Continental Congress to order the fitting out of two armed vessels on
the 26th of October, and of two others, on the 30th. It also stimulated
the Massachusetts Assembly to issue letters of marque and reprisal, and
to pass an act establishing a court to try and condemn all captures made
from the enemy, by the privateers and armed vessels of that Colony.
In the autumn of this year, therefore, there were two classes of armed
vessels cruising in the waters of Massachusetts: one consisting of those
sailing under the continental authority, and the other consisting of
those sailing under the authority of the Massachusetts Assembly.
Captures were made by each, and some of those sailing under the
continental authority were quite successful. Captain Manly, commanding
the Lee, took, in the latter part of November, a valuable prize, with a
large cargo of arms, ammunition, and military tools; and several other
captures followed before any provision had been made for their
condemnation,--a business which was thus thrown entirely upon the hands
of General Washington.
The court established by the Legislature of Massachusetts, at its
session in the autumn of 1775, for the trial and condemnation of all
captures from the enemy, was enabled to take cognizance only of captures
made by vessels fitted out by the Province, or by citizens of the
Province. As the cruisers fitted out at the continental expense did not
come under this law, General Washington early in November called the
attention of Congress to the necessity of establishing a court for the
trial of prizes made by continental authority.[92] On the 25th of
November, the Congress passed resolves ordering all trials of prizes to
be held in the court of the colony into which they should be brought,
with a right of appeal to Congress.[93] But these resolves do not seem
to have been, for a considerable period of time, communicated to General
Washington; for, during the months of November, December, and January,
he supposed it to be necessary for him to attend personally to the
adjudication of prizes made by continental vessels,[94] and it was not
until the early part of February that the receipt of the resolves of
Congress led to a resort to the jurisdiction of the admiralty court of
Massachusetts. When, however, this was done, an irreconcilable
difference was found to exist between the resolves of Congress and the
law of the Colony respecting the proceedings; the trials were stopped
for a long time, to enable the General Court of Massachusetts to alter
their law, so as to make it conform to the resolves; and in the mean
while, many of the captors, weary of the law's delay, applied, without
waiting for the decisions, for leave to go away, which General
Washington granted.[95] As late as the 25th of April, 1776, there had
been no trials of any of the prizes brought into Massachusetts Bay. At
that date, General Washington wrote to the President of Congress, from
New York, that some of the vessels which he had fitted out were laid up,
the crews being dissatisfied because they could not obtain their
prize-money; that he had appealed to the Congress on the subject; and
that, if a summary way of proceeding were not resolved on, it would be
impossible to have the continental vessels manned. At this time Captain
Manly and his crew had not received their share of the valuable prize
taken by them in the autumn previous.[96]
* * * * *
Another remarkable defect in the revolutionary government was found in
the mode in which it undertook to supply the means of defraying the
public expenses. It was a government entirely without revenues of any
kind; for, in constituting the Congress, the colonies had not clothed
their delegates with power to lay taxes, or to establish imposts. At the
time when hostilities were actually commenced, the commerce of the
country was almost totally annihilated; so that if the Congress had
possessed power to derive a revenue from commerce, little could have
been obtained for a long period after the commencement of the war. But
the power did not exist; money in any considerable quantity could not be
borrowed at home; the expedient of foreign loans had not been suggested;
and consequently the only remaining expedient to which the Congress
could resort was, like other governments similarly situated, to issue
paper money. The mode in which this was undertaken to be done was, in
the first instance, to issue two millions of Spanish milled dollars, in
the form of bills, of various denominations, from one dollar to eight
dollars each, and a few of twenty dollars, designed for circulation as
currency. The whole number of bills which made up the sum of $2,000,000
was 403,800.[97] The next emission amounted to $1,000,000, in bills of
thirty dollars each, and was ordered on the 25th of July.[98] When the
bills of the first emission were prepared, it would seem to have been
the practice to have them signed by a committee of the members; but this
was found so inconvenient, from the length of time during which it
withdrew the members from the other business of Congress, that, when the
second emission was ordered, a committee of twenty-eight citizens of
Philadelphia was appointed for the purpose, and the bills were ordered
to be signed by any two of them.[99] At this time, no continental
Treasurers had been appointed.[100]
Such a clumsy machinery was poorly adapted to the supply of a currency
demanded by the pressing wants of the army and of the other branches of
the public service. The signers of the bills were extremely dilatory in
their work. In September, 1775, the paymaster and commissary, at
Cambridge, had not a single dollar in hand, and they had strained their
credit, for the subsistence of the army, to the utmost; the greater part
of the troops were in a state not far from mutiny, in consequence of the
deduction which had been made from their stated allowance; and there was
imminent danger, if the evil were not soon remedied, and greater
punctuality observed, that the army would absolutely break up. In
November, General Washington deemed it highly desirable to adopt a
system of advanced pay, but the unfortunate state of the military chest
rendered it impossible. There was not cash sufficient to pay the troops
for the months of October and November. Through the months of December
and January, the signing of the bills did not keep pace with the demands
of the army, notwithstanding General Washington's urgent remonstrances;
and in February his wants became so pressing, that he was obliged to
borrow twenty-five thousand pounds of the Province of Massachusetts Bay,
in order that the recruiting service might not totally cease.[101]
These facts show significantly, that, before the Declaration of
Independence, scarcely any progress had been made towards the formation
of a national government with definite powers and appropriate
departments. In matters of judicature, and in measures requiring
executive functions and authority, the Congress were obliged to rely
almost entirely upon the local institutions and the local civil
machinery of the different colonies; while, in all military affairs, the
very form of the revolutionary government was unfavorable to vigor,
despatch, and consistent method. There were also causes existing in the
temper and feelings of many of the members of that government, both
before and after the Declaration of Independence, which, at times,
prevented the majority from acting with the decision and energy demanded
by the state of their affairs. Many excellent and patriotic men in the
Congress of 1775-6, while they concurred fully in the necessity for
resistance to the measures of the British ministry, and had decided, or
were fast deciding, that a separation must take place, still entertained
a great jealousy of standing armies. This jealousy began to exhibit
itself very soon after the appointment of the Commander-in-chief, and
was never wholly without influence in the proceedings of Congress
during the entire period of the war. It led to a degree of reliance upon
militia, which, in the situation of the colonies, was too often
demonstrated to be a weak and fatal policy.[102]
* * * * *
NOTE TO PAGE 51.
ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
The Declaration of Independence was drawn by Thomas
Jefferson; and the circumstances under which he was selected
for this honorable and important task have been for more than
a quarter of a century somewhat in doubt, and that doubt has
been increased by the recent publication of a part of the
Works of Mr. John Adams. The evidence on the subject is to be
derived chiefly from statements made by both of these eminent
persons in their memoirs, and in a letter written by each of
them. We have seen, in a former note, that in 1822 Mr. Adams
declared, that had it not been for a conversation which
occurred in 1775, before the meeting of the Congress of that
year, between himself and his Massachusetts colleagues and
certain of the Philadelphia "sons of liberty," in which the
Massachusetts members were advised to concede precedence to
Virginia, from motives of policy, and but for the principles,
facts, and motives suggested in that conversation, many
things would not have happened which did occur, and among
them, that Mr. Jefferson never would have been the author of
the Declaration of Independence. In regard to the same
speculation, concerning the election of Washington as
Commander-in-chief, I have ventured, on Mr. Adams's own
authority, to suggest doubts whether that election ought now
to be considered to have turned upon motives which Mr. Adams
made so prominent in 1822. In regard to the authorship of the
Declaration of Independence, I shall only endeavor to state
fairly and fully the conflicting evidence, in order that the
reader may judge what degree of weight ought to be assigned
to the cause, _without_ which Mr. Adams supposed Mr.
Jefferson would not have been selected to draft it.
Mr. Jefferson, as it appeared when his writings came to be
published in 1829, wrote in 1821, when at the age of
seventy-seven, a memoir of some of the public transactions in
which he had been engaged. At this time, he had in his
possession a few notes of the debates which took place in
Congress on the subject of Independence, and which he made at
the time. These notes he inserted bodily, as they stood, in
his memoir, and they are so printed. (Jefferson's Works, I.
10-14.) They are easily distinguishable from the text of the
memoir, but they do not appear to throw any especial light
upon the fact now in controversy; although, as Mr. Jefferson,
in 1823, when writing on this subject, supported his
recollection by "written notes, taken at the moment and on
the spot," it is proper to allow that those notes may in some
way have aided his memory, although we cannot now see in what
way they did so. He made this latter reference in a letter
which he wrote to Mr. Madison, in reply to the statements in
Mr. Adams's letter to Timothy Pickering, under date of August
6, 1822. (Jefferson's Works, IV. 375, 376.)
At or near the beginning of the present century, Mr. Adams,
then about sixty-six, wrote an autobiography, which has
recently been published [1850], and in which he gave an
account of the authorship of the Declaration. In 1822, when
about eighty-six, Mr. Adams wrote the letter to Mr.
Pickering, which called forth Mr. Jefferson's contradiction
in his letter to Mr. Madison, under date of August 30, 1823.
(Adams's Works, II. 510-515.) Mr. Jefferson, in his memoir
written in 1821, states simply that the committee for drawing
the Declaration desired him to do it; that he accordingly
wrote it, and that, being approved by the committee, he
reported it to the Congress on Friday, the 28th of June, when
it was read and ordered to lie on the table; and that on
Monday, the 1st of July, the Congress, in committee of the
whole, proceeded to consider it. "The pusillanimous idea," he
continues, "that we had friends in England worth keeping
terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason,
those passages which conveyed censures on the people of
England were struck out, lest they should give them offence.
The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of
Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and
Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation
of slaves, and who, on the contrary, wished to continue it.
Our Northern brethren, also, I believe, felt a little tender
under those censures; for though their people had very few
slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable
carriers of them to others. The debates having taken up the
greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4th days of July, were, on
the evening of the last, closed." (Jefferson's Works, I. 14,
15.)
In Mr. Adams's autobiography, the following account is
given:--"The Committee of Independence were Thomas Jefferson,
John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R.
Livingston. Mr. Jefferson had been now about a year a member
of Congress, but had attended his duty in the house a very
small part of the time, and, when there, had never spoken in
public. During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I
never heard him utter three sentences together. It will
naturally be inquired how it happened that he was appointed
on a committee of such importance. There were more reasons
than one. Mr. Jefferson had the reputation of a masterly pen;
he had been chosen a delegate in Virginia, in consequence of
a very handsome public paper which he had written for the
House of Burgesses, which had given him the character of a
fine writer. Another reason was, that Mr. Richard Henry Lee
was not beloved by the most of his colleagues from Virginia,
and Mr. Jefferson was set up to rival and supplant him. This
could be done only by the pen, for Mr. Jefferson could stand
no competition with him or any one else in elocution and
public debate.... The committee had several meetings, in
which were proposed the articles of which the Declaration was
to consist, and minutes made of them. The committee then
appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to draw them up in form, and
clothe them in a proper dress. The sub-committee met, and
considered the minutes, making such observations on them as
then occurred, when Mr. Jefferson desired me to take them to
my lodgings, and make the draft. This I declined, and gave
several reasons for declining: 1. That he was a Virginian,
and I a Massachusettensian. 2. That he was a Southern man,
and I a Northern one. 3. That I had been so obnoxious for my
early and constant zeal in promoting the measure, that any
draft of mine would undergo a more severe scrutiny and
criticism in Congress than one of his composition. 4. And
lastly, and that would be reason enough if there were no
other, I had a great opinion of the elegance of his pen, and
none at all of my own. I therefore insisted that no
hesitation should be made on his part. He accordingly took
the minutes, and in a day or two produced to me his draft.
Whether I made or suggested any corrections I remember not.
The report was made to the committee of five, by them
examined, but whether altered or corrected in any thing, I
cannot recollect. But, in substance, at least, it was
reported to Congress, where, after a severe criticism, and
striking out several of the most oratorical paragraphs, it
was adopted on the 4th of July, 1776, and published to the
world." (Adams's Works, II. 511-515.)
The account in Mr. Adams's letter to Mr. Pickering is as
follows:--"You inquire why so young a man as Mr. Jefferson
was placed at the head of the committee for preparing a
Declaration of Independence? I answer, it was the Frankfort
advice to place Virginia at the head of every thing. Mr.
Richard Henry Lee might be gone to Virginia, to his sick
family, for aught I know; but that was not the reason of Mr.
Jefferson's appointment. There were three committees
appointed at the same time. One for the Declaration of
Independence, another for preparing Articles of
Confederation, and another for preparing a treaty to be
proposed to France.
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