History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States Volume II Part 29

CHAPTER IV.

ACTION OF NORTH CAROLINA AND RHODE ISLAND.--CONCLUSION.

Thus had eleven States, at the end of July, 1788, unconditionally adopted the Const.i.tution; five of them proposing amendments for the consideration of the first Congress that would a.s.semble under it, and one of the five calling for a second general convention to act upon the amendments desired. Two other States, however, North Carolina and Rhode Island, still remained aloof.

The legislature of North Carolina, in December, 1787, had ordered a State convention, which a.s.sembled July 21, 1788, five days before the convention of New York ratified the Const.i.tution. In this body the Anti-Federalists obtained a large majority. They permitted the whole subject to be debated until the 2d of August; still it had been manifest from the first that they would not allow of an unconditional ratification. They knew what had been the result in New Hamps.h.i.+re and Virginia; but the decision of New York had, of course, not reached them. Their determination was not, however, to be affected by the certainty that the new government would be organized. Their purpose was not to enter the new Union, until the amendments which they desired had been obtained. They a.s.sumed that the Congress of the Confederation would not provide for the organization of the new government until another general convention had been held; or, if they did, that such a convention would be called by the new Congress;--and it appeared to them to be the most effectual mode of bringing about one or the other of these courses, to remain for the present in an independent position. The inconvenience and hazard attending such a position do not seem to have had much weight with them, when compared with what they regarded as the danger of an unconditional a.s.sent to the Const.i.tution as it then stood.

The Federalists contended strenuously for the course pursued by the other States which had proposed amendments, but they were overpowered by great numbers, and the convention was dissolved, after adopting a resolution declaring that a Bill of Rights, and certain amendments, ought to be laid before Congress and the convention that might be called for amending the Const.i.tution, previous to its ratification by the State of North Carolina.[459] But in order, if possible, to place the State in a position to accede to the Const.i.tution at some future time, and to partic.i.p.ate fully in its benefits, they also declared, that, having thought proper neither to ratify nor to reject it, and as the new Congress would probably lay an impost on goods imported into the States which had adopted it, they recommended the legislature of North Carolina to lay a similar impost on goods imported into the State, and to appropriate the money arising from it to the use of Congress.[460]

The elements which formed the opposition to the Const.i.tution in other States received in Rhode Island an intense development and aggravation, from the peculiar spirit of the people, and from certain local causes, the history of which has never been fully written, and is now only to be gathered from scattered sources. Const.i.tutional government was exposed to great perils, in that day, throughout the country, in consequence of the false notions of State sovereignty and of public liberty which prevailed everywhere. But it seemed as if all these causes of opposition and distrust had centred in Rhode Island, and had there found a theatre on which to exhibit themselves in their worst form. Fortunately, this theatre was so small and peculiar, as to make the display of these ideas extremely conspicuous.

The Colony of Rhode Island was established upon the broadest principles of religious and civil freedom. Its early founders and rulers, flying from religious persecution in the other New England Colonies, had transmitted to their descendants a natural jealousy of other communities, and a high spirit of individual and public independence. In the progress of time, as not infrequently happens in such communities, the principles on which the State was founded were falsely interpreted and applied, until, in the minds of a large part of the people, they had come to mean a simple aversion to all but the most democratic form of government. No successful appeal to this hereditary feeling could be made during the early part of the Revolution, against the interests and influence of the confederacy, because the early and local effect of the Revolution in fact coincided with it. But when the Revolution was fairly accomplished, and the State had a.s.sumed its position of absolute sovereignty, what may be called the extreme _individualism_ of the people, and their old unfortunate relations with the rest of New England, made them singularly reluctant to part with any power to the confederated States. The manifestations of this feeling we have seen all along, from the first establishment of the Confederation down to the period at which we are now arrived.

The local causes which gave to this tendency its utmost activity, at the time of the formation of the Const.i.tution of the United States, were the following.

First, there had existed in the State, for a considerable period, a despotic and well-organized party, known as the paper-money party.

This faction had long controlled the legislation of the State, by furnis.h.i.+ng the agricultural cla.s.ses, in the shape of paper money, with the only circulating medium they had ever had in any large quant.i.ty; and they were determined to extinguish the debt of the State by this species of currency, which the legislature could, and did, depreciate at pleasure.

Secondly, there existed, to a great and ludicrous extent, a constant antagonism between town and country,--between the agricultural and the mercantile or trading cla.s.ses; and this hostility was especially violent and active between the people of the towns of Providence and Newport and the people of the surrounding and the more remote rural districts.[461] The paper-money question divided the inhabitants of the State in the same way. The loss of this circulation would deprive the agricultural cla.s.ses of their sole currency. They kept their paper-money party, therefore, in a state of constant activity; and when the Const.i.tution of the United States appeared, this was an organized and triumphant party, ready for any new contest. Finally, there prevailed among the country party a notion that the maritime advantages of the State ought in some way to be made use of, for obtaining better terms with the general government than could be had under the Const.i.tution, and that by some such means funds could be obtained for paying their most urgent debts.

If we may judge of the spirit and the acts of the majority of the people of Rhode Island, at this time, by the manner in which they were looked upon throughout the rest of the Union, no language of censure can be too strong to be applied to them. They were regarded and spoken of everywhere, among the Federalists, with contempt and abhorrence.

Even the opposition in other States, in all their arguments against the Const.i.tution, never ventured to defend the people of Rhode Island.

Ridicule and scorn were heaped upon them from all quarters of the country, and ardent zealots of the Federal press urged the adoption of the advice which they said the Grand Seignior had given to the king of Spain, with respect to the refractory States of Holland, namely, to send his men with shovels and pickaxes, and throw them all into the sea. Such an undertaking, we may suppose, might have proved as difficult on this, as it would have been on the other side of the Atlantic. But however this might have been, it is probable that the natural effect of their conduct on the minds of men in other States, and the treatment they received, reacted upon the people of Rhode Island, and made them still more tenacious and persistent in their wrongful course.

But we need not go out of the State itself, to find proof that a majority of its people were at this time violent, arbitrary, and unenlightened, both as to their true interests and as to the principles of public honesty. Determined to adhere to their paper-money system, they did not pause to consider and to discuss the great questions respecting the Const.i.tution,--its bearing upon the welfare of the States,--its effect upon public liberty and social order,--the necessity for its amendment in certain particulars,--which led, in the conventions of the other States, to some of the most important debates that the subjects of government and free inst.i.tutions have ever produced. Indeed, they resolved to stifle all such discussions at once; or, at any rate, to prevent them from being had in an a.s.sembly whose proceedings would be known to the world. When the General a.s.sembly received the Const.i.tution, at their session in October, 1787, they directed it to be published and circulated among the inhabitants of the State. In February, 1788, instead of calling a convention, they referred the adoption of the Const.i.tution to the freemen in their several town meetings, for the purpose of having it rejected. There were at this time a little more than four thousand legal voters in the State. The Federalists, a small minority, indignant at the course of the legislature, generally withdrew from the meetings and refused to vote. The result was, that the people of the State appeared to be nearly unanimous in rejecting the Const.i.tution.[462]

The freemen of the towns of Providence and Newport, thereupon presented pet.i.tions to the General a.s.sembly, complaining of the inconvenience of acting upon the proposed Const.i.tution in meetings in which the people of the seaport towns and the people of the country could not hear and answer each other's arguments, or agree upon the amendments that it might be desirable to propose, and praying for a State convention. Their application was refused, and Rhode Island remained in this position, at the time when the question of organizing the new government came before the Congress of the Confederation, in July, 1788.

Better counsels prevailed with her people, at a later period, and the same redeeming virtue and good sense were at length triumphant, which, in still more recent trials, have enabled her to overcome error, and party pa.s.sion, and the false notions of liberty that have sometimes prevailed within her borders. As the stranger now traverses her little territory, in the journey of a day, and beholds her ample enjoyment of all civil and religious blessings,--her busy towns, her fruitful fields, her fair seat of learning, crowning her thriving capital, her free, happy, and prosperous people, her n.o.ble waters where she sits enthroned upon her lovely isles,--and remembers her ancient and her recent history, he cannot fail, in his prayer for her welfare, to breathe the hope that an escape from great social perils may be found for her and for all of us, in the future, as it has been in the past.

But the att.i.tudes taken by North Carolina and Rhode Island--although in truth quite different and taken from very different motives--placed the Union in a new crisis, involving the Const.i.tution in great danger of being defeated, notwithstanding its adoption by more than nine States. Both of them were members of the existing confederacy; both had a right to vote on all questions coming before the Congress of that confederacy; and it was to this body that the national Convention itself had looked for the initiatory measures necessary to organize the new government under the Const.i.tution. The question whether that government should be organized at all, was necessarily involved with the question as to the place where it should be directed to a.s.semble and to exercise its functions. This latter topic had often been a source of dissension between the States; and there was much danger lest the votes of North Carolina and Rhode Island, in the Congress of the Confederation, by being united with the votes of States opposed to the selection of the place that might be named as the seat of the new government, might prevent the Const.i.tution from being established at all.

But now, the pen that has thus traced these great events, and has sought to describe them in their true relations to the social welfare of the American people, must seek repose. How the Const.i.tution was inaugurated,--by whom and upon what principles it was put into operation,--how and why it was amended or altered,--when and under what circ.u.mstances the two remaining States accepted its benefits,--what development and what direction it received from the generation of statesmen who made and established it,--belongs to the next epoch in our political history, the Administration of Was.h.i.+ngton.

FOOTNOTES:

[459] This resolution was adopted August 2, 1788, by 184 yeas to 84 nays. North Carolina Debates, Elliot, IV. 250, 251.

[460] North Carolina Debates, Elliot, IV. 250, 251.

[461] The march of the country people upon Providence, on the 4th of July, 1788, and the manner in which they compelled the inhabitants of the town to abandon their purpose of celebrating the adoption of the Const.i.tution by nine States,--dictating even their toasts and salutes,--reads more like a page in Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York than like anything else. But it is a veracious as well as a most amusing story. (See Staples's Annals of Providence, pp.

329-335.)

[462] There were 2,708 votes thrown against it, and 232 in its favor.

This occurred in March, 1788.

APPENDIX.

NOTE

ON THE AUTHORs.h.i.+P OF THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.

(See page 344, _ante_.)

When writing this volume, I prepared an elaborate note, for the purpose of proving that the Ordinance of 1787 was drawn up by Nathan Dane. The subsequent publication by Mr. Charles King, of New York, of an autograph letter of Mr. Dane's to his father, the Hon. Rufus King, written a few days after the pa.s.sage of the Ordinance, put an end to all possibility of controversy on this subject, and made it unnecessary for me to burden my readers with a discussion of Mr.

Dane's claim to be regarded as the author of that instrument.

The following sentence in Mr. Dane's letter to Mr. King is decisive of the point which has sometimes been controverted:--

"When I drew the Ordinance, (which pa.s.sed, a few words excepted, as I originally formed it,) I had no idea the States would agree to the sixth article, prohibiting slavery, as only Ma.s.sachusetts, of the Eastern States, was present, and therefore omitted it in the draft; but finding the House favorably disposed on the subject, after we had completed the other parts, I moved the article, which was agreed to without opposition."

FIRST DRAFT OF THE CONSt.i.tUTION,

AS REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE OF DETAIL.

MONDAY, _August 6_.

_In Convention._--Mr. RUTLEDGE delivered in the report of the committee of detail, as follows,--a printed copy being at the same time furnished to each member:--

We, the people of the States of New Hamps.h.i.+re, Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, do ordain, declare, and establish the following Const.i.tution for the government of ourselves and our posterity:--

ARTICLE I.--The style of the government shall be, "The United States of America."

ART. II.--The government shall consist of supreme legislative, executive, and judicial powers.

ART. III.--The legislative power shall be vested in a Congress, to consist of two separate and distinct bodies of men, a House of Representatives and a Senate; each of which shall in all cases have a negative on the other. The legislature shall meet on the first Monday in December in every year.

ART. IV.--Sect. 1. The members of the House of Representatives shall be chosen, every second year, by the people of the several States comprehended within this Union.

The qualifications of the electors shall be the same, from time to time, as those of the electors, in the several States, of the most numerous branch of their own legislatures.

Sect. 2. Every member of the House of Representatives shall be of the age of twenty-five years at least; shall have been a citizen in the United States for at least three years before his election; and shall be, at the time of his election, a resident of the State in which he shall be chosen.

Sect. 3. The House of Representatives shall, at its first formation, and until the number of citizens and inhabitants shall be taken in the manner hereinafter described, consist of sixty-five members, of whom three shall be chosen in New Hamps.h.i.+re, eight in Ma.s.sachusetts, one in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, five in Connecticut, six in New York, four in New Jersey, eight in Pennsylvania, one in Delaware, six in Maryland, ten in Virginia, five in North Carolina, five in South Carolina, and three in Georgia.

Sect. 4. As the proportions of numbers in different States will alter from time to time; as some of the States may hereafter be divided; as others may be enlarged by addition of territory; as two or more States may be united; as new States will be erected within the limits of the United States,--the legislature shall, in each of these cases, regulate the number of representatives by the number of inhabitants, according to the provisions hereinafter made, at the rate of one for every forty thousand.

Sect. 5. All bills for raising or appropriating money, and for fixing the salaries of the officers of government, shall originate in the House of Representatives, and shall not be altered or amended by the Senate. No money shall be drawn from the public treasury, but in pursuance of appropriations that shall originate in the House of Representatives.