History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States Volume I Part 25

[435] Ibid. 517.

CHAPTER XII.

KING.

Rufus King, celebrated as a jurist, a statesman, an orator, and a diplomatist, was sent to the Convention by the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts. Born in her District of Maine, in 1755, and graduated at Harvard College in 1777, he came very early into public life, and was rarely out of it until his death, which occurred in 1827, in the seventy-third year of his age.

His first public service was in the year 1778, as a volunteer in the expedition against the British in Rhode Island, in which he acted as aide-de-camp to General Sullivan. In 1780, he commenced the practice of the law in the town of Newburyport, and was soon after elected from that town to the legislature of the State. There he distinguished himself by a very powerful speech in favor of granting to the general government the five per cent. impost recommended by Congress as part of the revenue system of 1783.

He was soon after elected a member of Congress from Ma.s.sachusetts, in which body he took his seat on the 6th of December, 1784, and served until the close of the year 1787. He was thus a member both of the Convention for forming the Const.i.tution and of the Congress which sanctioned and referred it to the people. He was also a member of the Convention of Ma.s.sachusetts, in which the Const.i.tution was ratified by that State.

Mr. King did not favor the plan of a convention for the revision of the federal system, until after the meeting at Annapolis had been held; and, indeed, he did not concur in its expediency, until after the troubles in Ma.s.sachusetts had made its necessity apparent. In 1785, as we have seen, he joined with the other members of the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation in opposing it.[436] In the autumn of 1786, when the report of the Annapolis Convention was before Congress, he expressed the opinion, in person, to the legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts, that the Articles of Confederation could not be altered, except by the consent of Congress and the confirmation of the several legislatures; that Congress ought, in the first instance, to make the examination of the federal system, since, if it was done by a convention, no legislature would have a right to confirm it; and further, that, if Congress should reject the report of a convention, the most fatal consequences might follow. For these reasons, he at that time held Congress to be the proper body to propose alterations.[437]

At the moment when he was making this address to the legislature, the disturbances in Ma.s.sachusetts were fast gathering into that formidable insurrection, which two months afterwards burst forth in the interior of the State.[438] Mr. King spoke of these commotions in grave and pointed terms. He told the legislature that Congress viewed them with deep anxiety; that every member of the national councils felt his life, liberty, and property to be involved in the issue of their decisions; that the United States would not be inactive on such an occasion, for, if the lawful authority of the State were to be prostrated, every other government would eventually be swept away. He entreated them to remember, that, if the government were in a minority in the State, they had a majority of every State in the Union to join them.[439]

He returned to Congress immediately. But there he found that the reliance which he had placed upon the ability of the Confederation to interfere and suppress such a rebellion was not well founded. The power was even doubted, or denied, by some of the best statesmen in that body; and although the insurrection was happily put down by the government of the State itself, the fearful exposure of a want of external power adequate to such emergencies produced in Mr. King, as in many others, a great change of views, both as to the necessity for a radical change of the national government and as to the mode of effecting it. His vote, in February, was given to the proposition introduced by the delegation of New York for a national convention; and when that failed, he united with his colleague, Mr. Dane, in bringing forward the resolution by which the Convention was finally sanctioned in Congress.[440]

The Convention having been sanctioned by Congress, no man was more ready than Mr. King to maintain its power to deliberate on and propose any alterations that Congress could have suggested in the Federal Articles.

He held that the proposing of an entire change in the mode of suffrage in the national legislature, from a representation of the States alone to a representation of the people, was within the scope of their powers, and consistent with the Union; for if that Union, on the one hand, involved the idea of a confederation, on the other hand it contained also the idea of consolidation, from which a national character resulted to the individuals of whom the States were composed. He doubted the practicability of annihilating the State governments, but thought that much of their power ought to be taken from them.[441] He declared, that, when every _man_ in America might be secured in his rights, by a government founded on equality of representation, he could not sacrifice such a substantial good to the phantom of _State_ sovereignty. If this illusion were to continue to prevail, he should be prepared for any event, rather than sit down under a government founded on a vicious principle of representation, and one that must be as short-lived as it would be unjust.[442]

There is one feature of the Const.i.tution with which the name of Mr. King should always be connected, and of which he may be said, indeed, to have been the author. Towards the close of the session, he introduced the prohibition on the States to pa.s.s laws affecting the obligation of contracts. It appears that the Ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory, which had been pa.s.sed by Congress about a month previous, contained a similar prohibition on the States to be formed out of that territory. That any of the jurists who were concerned in the framing of either instrument foresaw at the moment all the great future importance and extensive operation of this wise and effective provision, we are not authorized to affirm. But a clause which has enabled the supreme national judicature to exercise a vast, direct, and uniform influence on the security of property throughout all the States of this Confederacy, should be permanently connected with the names of its authors.[443]

Mr. King was but little past the age of thirty when the Const.i.tution was adopted. After that event, he went to reside in the city of New York, and entered upon the career of distinction which filled up the residue of his life, as a Senator in Congress, and as Minister to England. No formal biography of him has yet appeared; but when that duty shall have been discharged by those to whom it appropriately belongs, there will be added to our literature an account of a man of the most eminent abilities and the purest patriotism, whose influence and agency in the great transactions which attended the origin and first operations of the government were of the utmost importance.

FOOTNOTES:

[436] Ante, p. 339, note.

[437] Mr. King being in Boston in October, 1786, was desired by the legislature to attend and give an account of the state of national affairs. For an abstract of his address, see Boston Magazine for the year 1786, p. 406.

[438] Ante, p. 266 et seq.

[439] Ibid.

[440] Journals, XII. 15-17.

[441] Madison, Elliot, V. 212, 213.

[442] Madison, Elliot, V. 266.

[443] The Ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory was drawn by Nathan Dane of Ma.s.sachusetts. It was reported in Congress July 11th, 1787, and was pa.s.sed July 13th. The committee by whom it was reported were Messrs. Carrington and R. H. Lee of Virginia, Kearney of Delaware, Smith of New York, and Mr. Dane. The clause relating to contracts was in these words: "And in the just preservation of rights and property, it is understood and declared, that no law ought ever to be made or have force in the said territory, that shall in any manner whatever interfere with or affect private contracts or engagements, _bona fide_ and without fraud previously formed." On the 28th of August, Mr. King moved in the Convention to insert the same clause in the Const.i.tution; but it was opposed, and was not finally adopted until September 14, when it was incorporated in the phraseology in which it now stands in the Const.i.tution. (Madison, Elliot, V. 485; Journal of the Convention, Elliot, I. 311.)

CHAPTER XIII.

CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY.

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, the eldest son of a chief justice of that Colony, distinguished both as a soldier and a civilian, was educated in England, and read law at the Temple. He returned to his native province in 1769, and commenced the practice of his profession; which, like many of the young American barristers of that day, he was obliged to abandon for the duties of the camp, when the troubles of the Revolution began. He became colonel of the first regiment of the Carolina infantry, and served under General Moultrie in the defence of the fort on Sullivan's Island. This gallant resistance having freed the South, for a time, from invasion, Pinckney repaired to the Northern army, and was made aide-de-camp to General Was.h.i.+ngton; in which capacity he served at the battles of the Brandywine and Germantown. He afterwards acquired great distinction in the defence of South Carolina against the British under Sir Henry Clinton.

On the return of peace, he devoted himself to the law, in which he became eminent. He belonged to that school of public men, who had been trained in the service of the country under the eye of Was.h.i.+ngton, and who had experienced with him the fatal defects of the successive governments which followed the Declaration of Independence. Of his abilities, patriotism, and purity of character we have the strongest evidence, in the repeated efforts made by Was.h.i.+ngton, after the establishment of the Const.i.tution, to induce him to accept some of the most important posts in the government.

He was, indeed, one of that order of men to whom Was.h.i.+ngton gave his entire confidence from the first. A ripe scholar, a profound lawyer, with Revolutionary laurels of the most honorable kind,--wise, energetic, and disinterested,--it is not singular that the people of South Carolina should have selected him as one of their delegates to an a.s.sembly, which was to frame a new const.i.tution of government for the country to whose service his earlier years had been devoted.

General Pinckney entered the Convention with a desire to adhere, if possible, to the characteristic principles of the Confederation; but also with the wish to make that government more effective, by giving to it distinct departments and enlarged powers.[444] But in the progress of the discussions, he surrendered these views, and became a party to those arrangements by which mutual concessions between the opposing sections of the Union made a different form of government a practicable result.

He was a strenuous supporter of the interests of the slaveholding States, in all that related to their right to hold and increase their slave population. He contended earnestly against a grant of authority to the general government to prohibit the importation of slaves; for he supposed that his const.i.tuents would not surrender that right. But he finally entered into the arrangement, by which the postponement of the power to prohibit the slave-trade to the year 1808 was made a ground of consent on the part of the Southern States to give the regulation of commerce to the Union. He considered it, he said, the true interest of the Southern States to have no regulation of commerce; but he yielded it, in consideration of the losses brought upon the commerce of the Eastern States by the Revolution, and of their liberality towards the interests of the Southern portion of the Confederacy.

The framers of the Const.i.tution of the United States have often been bitterly reproached for permitting the slave-trade to be carried on for twenty years after the period of its formation; and the Eastern States have been especially accused of a sordid spirit of trade in purchasing for themselves the advantage of a national regulation of commerce by this concession. It is the duty of History, however, to record the facts in their true relations.

At the time when the Convention for framing our Const.i.tution was a.s.sembled, no nation had prohibited the African slave-trade. The English Quakers, following the example of their American brethren, had begun to move upon the subject, but it was not brought formally before Parliament until 1788; the trade was not abolished by act of Parliament until 1807, nor made a felony until 1810. Napoleon's decree of 1815 was the first French enactment against the traffic.

But in 1787, many of the members of the American Convention insisted that the power to put an end to this trade ought to be vested in the new government which they were endeavoring to form. But they found certain of the Southern States unwilling to deprive themselves of the supply of this species of labor for their new and yet unoccupied lands. Those States would not consent to a power of immediate prohibition, and they were extremely reluctant to yield even a power that might be used at a future period. They preferred to keep the whole subject in their own hands, and to determine for themselves when the importation should cease. The members of the Convention, therefore, who desired the abolition of this trade, found that, if they attempted to force these States to a concession that it ought to be immediately prohibited, either the regulation of commerce--the chief object for which the Convention had been called--could not be obtained for the new Const.i.tution, or, if it were obtained, several of the Southern States would be excluded from the Union. The question, then, that presented itself to them was a great question of humanity and public policy, to be judged and decided upon all the circ.u.mstances that surrounded it.

Were they to form a Union that should include only those States willing to consent to an immediate prohibition of the slave-trade, and thus leave the rest of the States out of that Union, and independent of its power to restrain the importation of slaves? Were they to abandon the hope of forming a new Const.i.tution for the thirteen States that had gone together through all the conflicts and trials and sacrifices of the Revolution, or were they to form such a government, and secure to it the power at some early period of putting an end to this traffic? If they were to do the latter,--if the cause of humanity demanded action upon this and all the other great objects dependent upon their decisions,--how could the commercial interests of the country be better used, than in the acquisition of a power to free its commerce from the stain and reproach of this inhuman traffic? By the arrangement which was to form one of the princ.i.p.al "compromises" of the Const.i.tution, American commerce might achieve for itself the opportunity to do what no nation had yet done. By this arrangement, it might be implied in the fundamental law of the new government about to be created for the American people, that the abolition of the slave-trade was an object that ought to engage the attention of Christian states. Without it, the abolition of this trade could not be secured within any time or by any means capable of being foreseen or even conjectured.

That the framers of the Const.i.tution judged wisely: that they acted upon motives which will enable History to s.h.i.+eld them from all reasonable reproach; and that they brought about a result alike honorable to themselves and to their country,--will not be denied by those who remember and duly appreciate the fact, that the Congress of the United States, under the Const.i.tution, was the first legislative body in the world to prohibit the carrying of slaves to the territories of foreign countries.[445]

It is no inconsiderable honor to the statesmen situated as General Pinckney and other representatives of the Southern States were, that they should have frankly yielded the prejudices, and what they supposed to be the interests, of their const.i.tuents, to the great object of forming a more perfect union. Certainly they could urge, with equal if not greater force and truth, the same arguments for the continuance of the slave-trade, which for nearly twenty years afterwards were continually heard in the British Parliament, and which postponed its abolition until long after the people of England had become satisfied both of its inhumanity and its impolicy. Whether General Pinckney was right or wrong in the opinion that his const.i.tuents needed no national regulation of commerce, there can be no doubt of his sincerity when he expressed it. Nor can there be any doubt that he was fully convinced of the fact, when he a.s.serted that they would not adopt a const.i.tution that should vest in the national government an immediate power to prohibit the importation of slaves. He made, therefore, a real concession, when he consented to the prohibition at the end of twenty years, and he made it in order that the union of the thirteen States might be preserved under a Const.i.tution adequate to its wants.

For this, as well as for other services, he is ent.i.tled to a place of honor among the great men who framed the charter of our national liberties; and when we recollect that by his action he armed the national government with a power to free the American name from the disgrace of tolerating the slave-trade, before it was effectually put down by any other people in Christendom, we need not hesitate to rank him high among those who made great sacrifices for the general welfare of the country and the general good of mankind.[446]

FOOTNOTES:

[444] Madison, Elliot, V. 133.

[445] Denmark, it is said, abolished the foreign slave-trade and the importation into her colonies in 1792, but the prohibitions were not to take effect until 1804. 1 Kent's Commentaries, 198, note (citing Mr.

Wheaton).

[446] In the first draft of the Const.i.tution reported by the Committee of Detail, it was provided that the importation of such persons as the States might think proper to admit should not be prohibited. When the committee to arrange, if possible, certain compromises between the Northern and Southern States was raised, this provision, with other matters, was referred, and it was finally agreed that the importation should not be prohibited before the year 1808. After the adoption of the Const.i.tution, Congress, by the acts of March 22d, 1794, and May 10, 1800, prohibited the citizens and residents of the United States from carrying slaves to any foreign territory for the purpose of traffic. By the act of March 2, 1807, the importation of slaves into the United States after January 1, 1808, was prohibited under severe penalties. In 1818 and 1819 these penalties were further increased, and in 1820, the offence was made piracy. Although the discussion of the subject commenced in England at about the same time (1788), it was nearly twenty years before a bill could be carried through Parliament for the abolition of the traffic. Through the whole of that period, and down to the very last, counsel were repeatedly heard at the bar, in behalf of interested parties, to oppose the reform. The trade was finally abolished by act of Parliament in March, 1807; it was made a felony in 1810, and declared to be piracy in 1824. While, therefore, the representatives of a few of the Southern States of this Union refused to consent to an immediate prohibition, they did consent to engraft upon the Const.i.tution what was in effect a declaration that the trade should be prohibited at a fixed period of time; and the trade was thus abolished by the United States, under a government of limited powers, with respect to their own territories, as soon as it was abolished by the "omnipotent" Parliament of Great Britain. Moreover, by consenting to give to the Union the power to regulate commerce, the Southern States enabled Congress to abolish the slave-trade with foreign countries thirteen years before the same trade was made unlawful to British vessels.

CHAPTER XIV.

WILSON.

James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the early Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, was one of the first jurists in America during the latter part of the last century.

He was born in Scotland about the year 1742. After studying at Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh, he emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1766. He became, soon after his arrival, a tutor in the Philadelphia College, in which place he acquired great distinction as a cla.s.sical scholar. He subsequently studied the law, and was admitted to the bar; and, after practising at different places, took up his residence at Philadelphia, where he continued to reside during the rest of his life.[447]