History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States Volume II Part 28

The leading Federalists who were united with Hamilton in the effort to prevent such a disastrous issue of this convention were John Jay, the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, and James Duane. A few days after the intelligence from New Hamps.h.i.+re was received, these gentlemen held a consultation as to the most effectual method of encountering the objections made to the general power of taxation that would be conferred by the Const.i.tution upon the general government. The legislative history of the State, from 1780 to 1782, embraced a series of official acts and doc.u.ments, showing that the State had been compelled to sustain a very large share of the burden of the Revolutionary war; that requisitions had been unable to call forth the resources of the country; and that, in the judgment of the State, officially and solemnly declared in 1782, and concurred in by those who now resisted the establishment of the Const.i.tution, it was necessary that the Union should possess other sources of revenue. The Federalists now resolved that these doc.u.ments be formally laid before the convention, and Hamilton undertook to bring them forward.

On the 27th of June, he commenced the most elaborate and important of the speeches which he made in this a.s.sembly, for the purpose of showing that in the construction of a government the great objects to be attained are a free and pure representation, and a proper balance between the different branches of administration; and that when these are obtained, all the powers necessary to answer, in the most ample manner, the purposes of government, may be bestowed with entire safety. He proceeded to argue, not only that a general power of taxation was essential, but that, under a system so complex as that of the Const.i.tution,--so skilfully endowed with the requisite forms of representation and division of executive and legislative power,--it was next to impossible that this authority should be abused. In the course of this speech, and for the purpose of showing that the State had suffered great distresses during the war from the mode of raising revenues by requisitions, he called for the reading at the clerk's table of a series of doc.u.ments exhibiting this fact. Governor Clinton resisted their introduction, but they were read; and Hamilton and his friends then contended, that they proved beyond dispute that the State had once been in great peril for want of an energetic general government.

This movement produced a warm altercation between the leading gentlemen on the opposite sides of the house. But while it threw a grave responsibility upon the opposition, it did not conquer them; and by the day on which the intelligence from Virginia arrived, they had heaped amendments upon the table on almost every clause and feature of the Const.i.tution, some one or more of which it was highly probable they would succeed in making a condition of its acceptance.

This critical situation of affairs led Hamilton to consider, for a short time, whether it might not be necessary to accede to a plan, by which the State should reserve the right to recede from the Union, in case its amendments should not have been decided upon, in one of the modes pointed out by the Const.i.tution, within five or six years. He saw the objections to this course; and he was determined to leave no effort untried to bring the opposition to an unqualified ratification.

But the danger of a rejection of the Const.i.tution was extreme; and as a choice of evils, he thought that, if the State could in the first instance be received into the Union under such a reserved right to withdraw, succeeding events, by the adoption of all proper and necessary amendments, would make the reservation unimportant, because such amendments would satisfy the more reasonable part of the opposition, and would thus break up their party. But he determined not to incur the hazard of this step upon his own judgment alone, or that of any one else having a personal interest in the question; and accordingly, on the 12th of July, he despatched a letter to Madison, who was then attending in Congress at the city of New York, asking his opinion upon the possibility of receiving the State into the Union in this form.[452]

Madison instantly replied, that, in his opinion, this would be a conditional ratification, and would not make the State of New York a member of the new Union; that the Const.i.tution required an adoption _in toto_ and for ever; and that any condition must vitiate the ratification of any State.[453]

Before this reply could have been received at Poughkeepsie, the Federalists had introduced their proposition for an unconditional ratification, and this was followed by that of the Anti-Federalists for a conditional one. The former was rejected by the convention on the 16th of July. The opposition then brought forward a new form of conditional ratification, with a Bill of Rights prefixed, and with amendments subjoined. After a long debate, the Federalists succeeded, on the 23d of July, in procuring a vote to change this proposition, so that, in place of the words "on condition," the people of the State would be made to declare that they a.s.sented to and ratified the Const.i.tution "in full confidence" that, until a general convention should be called for proposing amendments, Congress would not exercise certain powers which the Const.i.tution conferred upon them. This alteration was carried by thirty-one votes against twenty-seven. A list of amendments was then agreed upon, and a circular letter was adopted, to be sent to all the States, recommending a general convention; and on Sat.u.r.day, the 26th of July, the ratification, as thus framed, with the Bill of Rights and the amendments, was carried by thirty affirmative against twenty-seven negative votes.[454]

By this slender majority of her delegates, and under circ.u.mstances of extreme peril of an opposite decision, did the State of New York accept the Const.i.tution of the United States, and become a member of the new government. The facts of the case, and the importance of her being brought into the new Union, afford a sufficient vindication of the course pursued by the Federalists in her convention. But it is necessary, before closing the history of these events, to consider a complaint that was made at the time, by some of the most zealous of their political a.s.sociates in other quarters, and which touched the correctness of their motives in a.s.senting to the circular letter demanding a general convention for the amendment of the Const.i.tution.

That there was danger lest another general convention might result in serious injury to the Const.i.tution, perhaps in its overthrow, was a point on which there was probably no difference of opinion among the Federalists of that day. Was.h.i.+ngton regarded it in this light; and there is no reason to doubt that Hamilton and Jay, and many others of the friends of the Const.i.tution, would have felt great anxiety about its result. But there were some members of the Federal party, in several of the States, who do not seem to have fully appreciated the importance of conceding to the opposition, at the time of the adoption of the Const.i.tution, the use of any and every form of obtaining amendments which the Const.i.tution itself recognized. This was true everywhere, where serious dissatisfaction existed, and it was especially true in the State of New York. It was impossible to procure a ratification in that State, without an equivalent concession; and if the Federal leaders in that convention a.s.sented to the proposal of a course of amending the Const.i.tution for which the instrument itself provided, however ineligible it might be, their justification is to be found in the circ.u.mstances of their situation. Was.h.i.+ngton himself, when all was over, wrote to Mr. Jay as follows:--"Although I could scarcely conceive it possible, after ten States had adopted the Const.i.tution, that New York, separated as it is from the others, and peculiarly divided in sentiments as it is, would withdraw from the Union, yet, considering the great majority which appeared to cling together in the convention, and the decided temper of the leaders, I did not, I confess, see how it was to be avoided. The exertion of those who were able to effect this great work must have been equally arduous and meritorious."[455]

But others were not so just. The Federalists of the New York convention were complained of by some of their friends for having a.s.sented to the circular letter, for the purpose of procuring a ratification at any price, in order to secure the establishment of the new government at the city of New York. It was said that the State had better have remained out of the Union, than to have taken a course which would prove more injurious than her rejection would have done.[456]

With respect to these complaints and the accompanying charge, it is only necessary to say, in the first place, that Hamilton and Jay and their a.s.sociates believed that there was far less danger to be apprehended from a mere call for a second general convention, than from a rejection of the Const.i.tution by the State of New York; and they had to choose between these alternatives. The result shows that they chose rightly; for the a.s.sembling of a general convention was superseded by the action of Congress upon the amendments proposed by the States. In the second place, the alleged motive did not exist. We now know that Hamilton certainly, and we may presume his friends also, did not expect or desire the new government to be more than temporarily placed at the city of New York. He himself saw the impolicy of establis.h.i.+ng it permanently either at that place or at Philadelphia. He regarded its temporary establishment at the city of New York as the certain means of carrying it farther south, and of securing its final and permanent place somewhere upon the banks of the Delaware within the limits of New Jersey, or upon the banks of the Potomac within the limits of Virginia.[457]

The people of the city of New York had waited long for the decision of their State convention. They had postponed several times their intended celebration in honor of the Const.i.tution, which, as it was to be the last, they determined should be the most imposing of these ceremonies. When the day at length came, on the 5th of August, 1788, it saw a population whose mutual confidence and joy had absorbed every narrow and bigoted distinction in that n.o.blest of all the pa.s.sions that a people can exhibit,--love of country. It were a vain and invidious task to attempt to determine, from the contemporary descriptions, whether this display exceeded that of all the other cities in variety and extent. But there was one feature of it so striking, so creditable to the people of the city of New York, that it should not be pa.s.sed over. It consisted in the honors they paid to Hamilton.

He must have experienced on that day the best reward that a statesman can ever find; for there is no purer, no higher pleasure for a conscientious statesman, than to know, by demonstrations of public grat.i.tude, that the humblest of the people for whose welfare he has labored appreciate and are thankful for his services. Public life is often represented, and often found, to be a thankless sphere, for men of the greatest capacity and the highest patriotism; and the accidents, the defeats, the changes, the party pa.s.sions and obstructions of the political world, in a free government, frequently make it so. But mankind are neither deliberately heartless nor systematically unthankful; and it has sometimes happened, in popular governments, that statesmen of the first order of mind and character have, while living, received the most unequivocal proofs of feeling directly from the popular heart, while the sum total of their lives appears in history to be wanting in evidences of that personal success which is attained in a constant triumph over opponents. Such an expression of popular grat.i.tude and sympathy it was now the fortune of Hamilton to receive.

The people of the city did not stop to consider, on this occasion, whether he was ent.i.tled, in comparison with all the other public men in the United States, to be regarded as the chief author of the blessings which they now antic.i.p.ated from the Const.i.tution. And why should they? He was their fellow-citizen,--their own. They remembered the day when they saw him, a mere boy, training his artillerymen in their public park, for the coming battles of the Revolution. They remembered the youthful eloquence and the more than youthful power with which he encountered the pestilent and slavish doctrines of their Tories. They thought of his career in the army, when the extraordinary maturity, depth, and vigor of his genius, and his great accomplishments, supplied to Was.h.i.+ngton, in some of the most trying periods of his vast and prolonged responsibility, the a.s.sistance that Was.h.i.+ngton most needed. They recollected his career in Congress, when his comprehensive intellect was always alert, to bear the country forward to measures and ideas that would concentrate its powers and resources in some national system. They called to mind how he had kept their own State from wandering quite away into the paths of disunion,--how he had enlightened, invigorated, and purified public opinion by his wise and energetic counsels,--how he had led them to understand the true happiness and glory of their country,--how he had labored to bring about those events which had now produced the Const.i.tution,--how he had shown to them the harmony and success that might be predicted of its operation, and had taught them to accept what was good, without petulantly demanding what individual opinion might claim as perfect.

What was it to them, therefore, on this day of public rejoicing, that there might be in his policy more of consolidation than in the policy of others,--that he was said to have in his politics too much that was national and too little that was local,--that some had done as much as he in the actual construction of the system which they were now to celebrate? Such controversies might be for history, or for the contests of administration that were soon to arise. On this day, they were driven out of men's thoughts by the glow of that public enthusiasm which banishes the spirit of party, and touches and opens the inmost fountains of patriotism. Hamilton had rendered a series of great services to his country, which had culminated in the adoption of the Const.i.tution by the State of New York; and they were now acknowledged from the very hearts of those who best knew his motives and best understood his character.

The people themselves, divided into their respective trades, evidently undertook the demonstrations in his honor, and gave them an emphasis which they could have derived from no other source. They bore his image aloft upon banners. They placed the Const.i.tution in his right hand, and the Confederation in his left. They depicted Fame, with her trumpet, crowning him with laurels. They emblazoned his name upon the miniature frigate, the federal s.h.i.+p of state. They antic.i.p.ated the administration of the first President, by uniting on the national flag the figure of Was.h.i.+ngton and the figure of Hamilton.[458] All that ingenuity, all that affection, that popular pride and grat.i.tude could do, to honor a public benefactor, was repeated again and again through the long line of five thousand citizens, of all orders and conditions, which stretched away from the sh.o.r.es of that beautiful bay, where ocean ascends into river and river is lost in ocean,--where Commerce then wore her holiday attire, to prefigure the magnificence and power which she was to derive from the Const.i.tution of the United States.

FOOTNOTES:

[429] Notice of Henry, in the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, Vol. II. Mr. Jefferson has said that Henry's power as a popular orator was greater than that of any man he had ever heard, and that Henry "appeared to speak as Homer wrote." (Jefferson's Works, I. 4.)

[430] It is said in the newspapers of that period that Henry was on his legs in one speech for seven hours. I think it must have been the one from which I have made the abstract in the text. But he made a great many speeches, quite as earnest.

[431] There has been, I am aware, a modern scepticism concerning Patrick Henry's abilities; but I cannot share it. He was not a man of much information, and he had no great breadth of mind. But he must have been, not only a very able debater, but a good parliamentary tactician. The manner in which he carried on the opposition to the Const.i.tution in the convention of Virginia, for nearly a whole month, shows that he possessed other powers besides those of great natural eloquence.

[432] Elliot, III. 152, Debates in the Virginia Convention.

[433] Under date of February 7, 1788, Mr. Jefferson wrote from Paris, in a private letter to a gentleman in Virginia, as follows:--"I wish, with all my soul, that the nine first conventions may accept the new Const.i.tution, because this will secure to us the good it contains, which I think great and important. But I equally wish that the four latest conventions, whichever they be, may refuse to accede to it till a Declaration of Rights be annexed. This would probably command the offer of such a Declaration, and thus give to the whole fabric, perhaps, as much perfection as any one of that kind ever had. By a Declaration of Rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the _habeas corpus_, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline. There is another strong feature in the new Const.i.tution which I as strongly dislike.

That is, the perpetual re-eligibility of the President. Of this, I expect no amendment at present, because I do not see that anybody has objected to it on your side the water. But it will be productive of cruel distress to our country, even in your day and mine. The importance to France and England to have our government in the hands of a friend or foe, will occasion their interference by money, and even by arms. Our President will be of much more consequence to them than a king of Poland. We must take care, however, that neither this nor any other objection to the new form produces a schism in our Union. That would be an incurable evil, because near friends falling out never reunite cordially; whereas, all of us going together, we shall be sure to cure the evils of our new Const.i.tution before they do great harm." (Jefferson's Works, II. 355.) That Mr. Jefferson intended this letter should be used as it was in the convention of Virginia, is not probable; but it would seem from the care he took to state a plan of proceeding in the adoption of the Const.i.tution, that he intended his suggestions should be known. His subsequent opinion will be found in a note below.

[434] Alluding, evidently, to Was.h.i.+ngton.

[435] See the speeches of Pendleton and Madison, in reply to Henry.

Elliot, III. 304, 329.

[436] Elliot, III. 314.

[437] On the 27th of May, 1788, Mr. Jefferson wrote from Paris to Colonel Carrington, as follows:--"I learn with great pleasure the progress of the new Const.i.tution. Indeed, I have presumed it would gain on the public mind, as I confess it has on my own. At first, though I saw that the great ma.s.s and groundwork was good, I disliked many appendages. Reflection and discussion have cleared off most of those. You have satisfied me as to the query I had put to you about the right of direct taxation. My first wish was that nine States would adopt it, and that the others might, by holding off, produce the necessary amendments. But the plan of Ma.s.sachusetts is far preferable, and will, I hope, be followed by those who are yet to decide," &c.

(Jefferson's Works, II. 404.) Colonel Carrington, the person to whom this letter was addressed, was a member of Congress, and received it at New York, about the 2d of July, when it was seen by Madison. (See a letter from Madison to E. Randolph of that date, among the Madison papers. Elliot, V. 573.)

[438] See an account of this matter, _ante_, Vol. I. Book III. Chap.

V. pp. 309-327.

[439] They meant the four New England States and New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. New Jersey and Delaware were supposed to be with the four Southern States on this question.

[440] Ten would be two thirds of the const.i.tutional quorum of fourteen; so that the argument supposed only a quorum to be present.

[441] See Mr. Madison's explanation in the convention of Virginia.

Elliot, III. 346.

[442] _Ante_, Book III. Chap. V., Vol. I. pp. 324-327.

[443] Debates in the Virginia Convention, Elliot, III. 344-347.

[444] He thought at this moment that if the Const.i.tution should be lost, the Mississippi question would be the cause. The members from Kentucky were then generally hostile. (See a letter from Madison to Hamilton, of June 16th, Hamilton's Works, I. 457.)

[445] See his correspondence with Madison, Works, I. pp. 450-469.

[446] Works, I. 462.

[447] See the latest letter which he had then received from Madison.

Ibid. 461.

[448] It has been supposed that this was not so, but that Hamilton's messenger arrived at Richmond before the final action of the Virginia convention, and so that the decision of New Hamps.h.i.+re had an important influence. I think this is clearly a mistake. I have traced the progress of the messenger in the newspapers of that time, and find his arrival at New York and Philadelphia chronicled as it is given in the text. The dates are therefore decisive. It appears also from Mr.

Madison's correspondence with Hamilton, that he did not receive the despatch about New Hamps.h.i.+re until the 31st. (Hamilton's Works, I.

463.) The ratification pa.s.sed the Virginia convention on the 25th, and that body was dissolved on the 27th. There is no trace in the Virginia debates of any authentic news from New Hamps.h.i.+re. On the contrary, it was a.s.sumed by one of the speakers, Mr. Innes, on the day of their ratification, that the Const.i.tution then stood adopted by _eight_ States. (Elliot, III. 636.)

[449] The form of ratification embraced the recitals given in the text respecting the powers of Congress. It was adopted by a vote of 89 to 79, on the 25th of June, 1788. I do not go into the particular consideration of the amendments proposed by several of the State conventions, because the present work is confined to the origin, the formation, and the adoption of the Const.i.tution, and no State that ratified the instrument proposed by the national Convention made amendments a condition. The examination of the amendments proposed, therefore, belongs to the history of the Const.i.tution subsequent to its inauguration. They may all be found in the Appendix to the thirteenth volume of the Journals of the Old Congress.

[450] Debates in Virginia Convention, Elliot, III. 652.

[451] Madison's letters to Hamilton, Works of Hamilton, I. 462, 463.

[452] Letter to Madison, Works of Hamilton, I. 464.

[453] Ibid. 465.

[454] It was reported in the newspapers of that period that the Const.i.tution was adopted in this convention by 30 yeas against 25 nays. But the official record gives the several votes as they are stated in the text; from which it appears that, on the critical question of a conditional or unconditional ratification, the majority was only 2. In truth, the ratification of New York barely escapes the objection of being a qualified one, if it does in fact escape it.

[455] Works of Was.h.i.+ngton, IX. 408.

[456] Madison's letter to Was.h.i.+ngton, August 24, 1788, Works of Was.h.i.+ngton, IX. 549.

[457] See his letter to Governor Livingston of New Jersey, August 29, 1788, Works, I. 471.

[458] Some of the most elaborate of these devices were borne by the "Block and Pump Makers" and the "Tallow-Chandlers."