James Madison Part 3

In February, 1787, Madison again took a seat in Congress. It was an anxious period. Shays's rebellion in Ma.s.sachusetts had a.s.sumed rather formidable possibilities, and seemed not unlikely to spread to other States. Till this storm should blow over, the important business of Congress was to raise money and troops; in reality, to go to the help of Ma.s.sachusetts, if need should be, though the object ostensibly was to protect a handful of people on the frontier against the Indians. It was a striking instance of the imbecility of the government under the Articles of Confederation, that it could only undertake to suppress rebellion in a State under the pretense of doing something else which came within the law. Ma.s.sachusetts, it is true, was quite able to deal with her insurgents; but when Congress convened it was not known in New York that Lincoln had dispersed the main body of them at Petersham.

Nevertheless, a like difficulty might arise at any moment in any other of the States, where the strength to meet it might be quite inadequate.

Madison's ideal still was, the Union before the States, and for the sake of the States; the whole before the parts, to save the parts; the binding the f.a.got together that the sticks might not be lost. "Our situation," he wrote to Edmund Randolph in February, "is becoming every day more and more critical. No money comes into the federal treasury; no respect is paid to the federal authority; and people of reflection unanimously agree that the existing Confederacy is tottering to its foundation. Many individuals of weight, particularly in the eastern district, are suspected of leaning toward monarchy. Other individuals predict a part.i.tion of the States into two or more confederacies. It is pretty certain that if some radical amendment of the single one cannot be devised and introduced, one or the other of these revolutions, the latter no doubt, will take place."

It is not impossible that Madison himself may have had some faith in this suspicion that "individuals of weight in the eastern district" were inclined to a monarchy. For such suspicion, however there could be little real foundation. There were, doubtless, men of weight who thought and said that monarchy was better than anarchy. There were, doubtless, impatient men then who thought and said, as there are impatient men now who think and say, that the rule of a king is better than the rule of the people. But there was no disloyalty to government by the people among those who only maintained that the English in America must draw from the common heritage of English inst.i.tutions and English law the material wherewith to build up the foundations of a new nation. No intelligent and candid man doubts now that they were wise; nor would it have been long doubted then, had it not so speedily become manifest that, if the stigma of "British" was once affixed to a political party, any appeal from popular prejudice to reason and common sense was hopeless.

There were a few persons who would have done away with the divisions of States and establish in their place a central government. Those most earnest in maintaining the autonomy of States declared that such a government was, as Luther Martin of Maryland called it, of "a monarchical nature." What else could that be but a monarchy? An insinuation took on the form of a logical deduction and became a popular fallacy. Yet those most earnest for a central government only sought to establish a stable rule in place of no rule at all; or, worse still, of the tyranny of an ignorant and vicious mob under the outraged name of democracy, into which there was danger of drifting. Whether their plan was wise or foolish, it did not mean a monarchy. Even of Shays's misguided followers Jefferson said: "I believe you may be a.s.sured that an idea or desire of returning to anything like their ancient government never entered into their heads." As Madison knew and said, the real danger was that the States would divide into two confederacies, and only by a new and wiser and stronger union could that calamity be averted.

To gain the a.s.sent of most of the States to a convention was surmounting only the least of the difficulties. Three weeks before the time of meeting Madison wrote: "The nearer the crisis approaches, the more I tremble for the issue. The necessity of gaining the concurrence of the convention in some system that will answer the purpose, the subsequent approbation of Congress, and the final sanction of the States, present a series of chances which would inspire despair in any case where the alternative was less formidable." He said, in the first month of the session of that body, that "the States were divided into different interests, not by their difference of size, but by other circ.u.mstances; the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but princ.i.p.ally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These two causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in the United States. It did not lie between the large and small States. It lay between the Northern and Southern."

During the earlier weeks of this session of Congress, and, indeed, for some months before, events had made so manifest this difference of interest, coincident with the difference in lat.i.tude, that there seemed little ground for hope that any good would come out of a const.i.tutional convention. The old question of the navigation of the Mississippi was again agitated. The South held her right to that river to be of much more value than anything she could gain by a closer union with the North, and she was quite ready to go to war with Spain in defense of it.

On the other hand, the Northern States were quite indifferent to the navigation of the Mississippi, and not disposed apparently to make any exertion or sacrifice to secure it. Just now they were anxious to secure a commercial treaty with Spain; but Spain insisted, as a preliminary condition, that the United States should relinquish all claim to navigation upon a river whose mouths were within Spanish territory. In the Northern mind there was no doubt of the value of trade with Spain; and there was a good deal of doubt whether there was anything worth contending for in the right to sail upon a river running through a wilderness where, as yet, there were few inhabitants, and hardly any trade worth talking about. More than that, there was unquestionably a not uncommon belief at the North and East that the settlement and prosperity of the West would be at the expense of the Atlantic States.

Perhaps that view of the matter was not loudly insisted upon; but many were none the less persuaded that, if population was attracted westward by the hope of acquiring rich and cheap lands, prosperity and power would go with it. At any rate, those of this way of thinking were not inclined to forego a certain good for that which would profit them nothing, and might do them lasting harm.

For these reasons, spoken and unspoken, the Northern members of Congress were at first quite willing, for the sake of a commercial treaty, to concede to Spain the exclusive control of the Mississippi. But to pacify the South it was proposed that the concession to Spain should be for only five and twenty years. If at the end of that period the navigation of the Mississippi should be worth contending for, the question could be reopened. The South was, of course, rather exasperated than pacified by such a proposition. The navigation of the river had not only a certain value to them now, but it was theirs by right, and that was reason enough for not parting with it even for a limited period. Concessions now would make the rea.s.sertion of the right the more difficult by and by. If it must be fought for, it would lessen the chance of success to put off the fighting five and twenty years. Indeed, it could not be put off, for war was already begun in a small way. The Spaniards had seized American boats on trading voyages down the river, and the Americans had retaliated upon some petty Spanish settlements. Spain, moreover, seemed at first no more inclined to listen to compromise than the South was.

England watched this controversy with interest. She had no expectation of recovering for herself the Floridas, which she had lost in the war of the Revolution, and had finally ceded to Spain by the treaty of 1783; but she was quite willing to see that power get into trouble on the Mississippi question, and more than willing that it should threaten the peace and union of the States. Her own boundary line west of the Alleghanies might possibly be extended far south of the Great Lakes, if the Northern and Southern States should divide into two confederacies; but, apart from any l.u.s.t of territory, she rejoiced at anything that threatened to check the growth of her late colonies.

Fortunately, however, the question was disposed of, before the Const.i.tutional Convention met at Philadelphia, by the failure to secure a treaty. The Spanish minister, Guardoqui, consented, at length, after long resistance, to accept as a compromise the navigation of the river for five and twenty years; but Mr. Jay, who was willing, could he have had his way, to concede anything, found at that stage of the negotiations he could not command votes enough in Congress to secure a treaty even in that modified form. Hitherto he had relied upon a resolution pa.s.sed by Congress in August, 1786, by the vote of seven Northern States against five Southern. This, it was a.s.sumed, repealed a resolution of the year before, and authorized the secretary to make a treaty. The resolution of the year before, August, 1785, had been pa.s.sed by the votes of nine States, and was in confirmation of a provision of the Articles of Confederation declaring that "no treaties with foreign powers should be entered into but by the a.s.sent of nine States." The minority contended that such a resolution could not be repealed by the vote of only seven States, for that would be to violate a fundamental condition of the Articles of Confederation. It is easy to see now that there ought not to have been a difference among honorable men on such a point as that. Nevertheless Mr. Jay, supported by some of the strongest Northern men, held that the votes of seven States could be made, in a roundabout way, to authorize an act which the Const.i.tution declared should never be lawful except with the a.s.sent of nine States. So the secretary went on with his negotiations and came to terms with the Spanish minister.

In April the secretary was called upon to report to Congress what was the position of these negotiations. Then it first publicly appeared that a treaty was actually agreed upon which gave up the right to the Mississippi for a quarter of a century. But it was also speedily made plain by various parliamentary motions that the seven votes, which the friends of such a treaty had relied upon, had fallen from seven--even could that number in the end have been of use--to, at best, four. The New Jersey delegates had been instructed not to consent to the surrender of the American right to the use of the Mississippi; a new delegate from Pennsylvania had changed the vote of that State; and Rhode Island had also gone over to the other side. "It was considered, on the whole,"

wrote Madison, "that the project for shutting the Mississippi was at an end."

These details are not unimportant. Forty-five years afterward Madison wrote that "his main object, in returning to Congress at this time, was to bring about, if possible, the canceling of Mr. Jay's project for shutting the Mississippi." Probably it had occurred to n.o.body then that within less than twenty years the Province of Louisiana would belong to the United States, when their right to the navigation of the river could be no longer disputed. But so long as both its banks from the thirty-first degree of lat.i.tude southward to the Gulf remained foreign territory, it was of the last importance to the Southern States, whose territory extended to the Mississippi, that the right of way should not be surrendered. If a treaty with Spain could be carried that gave up this right, and the Southern States should be compelled to choose between the loss of the Mississippi and the loss of the Union, there could be little doubt as to what their choice would be. It was not a question to be postponed till after the Philadelphia Convention had convened; if not disposed of before, the convention might as well not meet.

Madison's letters, while the question was pending, show great anxiety.

He was glad to know that the South was of one mind on this subject and would not yield an inch. He was quite confident that his own State would take the lead, as she soon did, in the firm avowal of Southern opinion.

But he rejoiced that the question did not come up in the Virginia legislature till after the act was pa.s.sed to send delegates to the Philadelphia Convention. That he looked upon as a point gained, and the delegates were presently appointed; but he still despaired of any good coming of the convention, unless "Mr. Jay's project for shutting the Mississippi" could be first got rid of.

In a recent work[9] Mr. Madison is represented as having "struck a bargain" with the Kentucky delegates to the Virginia a.s.sembly, agreeing to speak on behalf of a pet.i.tion relating to the Mississippi question, provided the delegates from Kentucky--then a part of Virginia--would vote for the representation of Virginia at Philadelphia. A "bargain"

implies an exchange of one thing for another, and Madison had no convictions in favor of closing the Mississippi to exchange for a service rendered on behalf of a measure for which he wished to secure votes. Moreover, no bargain was necessary. It was not easy to find anybody in Virginia who needed to be persuaded that the right to the Mississippi must not be surrendered. Madison wrote to Monroe in October, 1786, that it would "be defended by the legislature with as much zeal as could be wished. Indeed, the only danger is that too much resentment may be indulged by many against the federal councils." His only apprehension was lest the Mississippi question should come up in the a.s.sembly before the report from the Annapolis Convention should be disposed of, for if that were accepted the appointment of delegates to Philadelphia was a.s.sured. "I hope," he wrote to Was.h.i.+ngton in November, "the report will be called for before the business of the Mississippi begins to ferment."

It happened as he wished. "The recommendation from Annapolis," he wrote again a week later, "in favor of a general revision of the federal system was _unanimously_ agreed to" (the emphasis is his own). He afterward reported to Jefferson "that the project for bartering the Mississippi to Spain was brought before the a.s.sembly after the preceding measure had been adopted." There was neither delay nor difficulty in securing the unanimous consent of the a.s.sembly to resolutions instructing the members of Congress to oppose any concession to Spain.

But Madison's anxiety was not in the least relieved by the speedy appointment of delegates to the Philadelphia Convention; for, he wrote presently to Was.h.i.+ngton, "I am entirely convinced, from what I observe here (at Richmond), that, unless the project of Congress can be reversed, the hopes of carrying this State into a proper federal system will be demolished." He had already said, in the same letter, that the resolutions on the Mississippi question had been "agreed to unanimously in the House of Delegates," and three days before the letter was written the delegates to Philadelphia had been appointed.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 9: _A History of the People of the United States._ Vol. i. By John Bach McMaster.]

CHAPTER VII

THE CONSt.i.tUTIONAL CONVENTION

Mr. Madison is called "the Father of the Const.i.tution." A paper written by him was laid before his colleagues of Virginia, before the meeting of the Const.i.tutional Convention at Philadelphia, and was made the basis of the "Virginia plan," as it was called, out of which the Const.i.tution was evolved. In another way his name is so identified with it that one cannot be forgotten so long as the other is remembered. From that full and faithful report of the proceedings of the convention, in which his own part was so active and conspicuous, we know most that we do or ever can know of the perplexities and trials, the concessions and triumphs, the acts of wisdom and the acts of weakness, of that body of men whose coming together time has shown to have been one of the important events in the history of mankind.

Then it is also true that no man had worked harder, perhaps none had worked so hard, to bring the public mind to a serious consideration of affairs and a recognition of the necessity of reorganizing the government, if the States were to be held together. Never, it seemed, had men better reason to be satisfied with the result of their labors when, a few months later, the new Const.i.tution was accepted by all the States. Yet the time was not far distant when even Madison would be in doubt as to the character of this new bond of union, and as to what sort of government had been secured by it. Nor till he had been dead near thirty years was it to be determined what union under the Const.i.tution really meant; nor till three quarters of a century after the adoption of that instrument was the more perfect union formed, justice established, domestic tranquillity insured, the general welfare promoted, and the blessings of liberty secured to all the people, which by that great charter it was intended, in 1787, to ordain and establish. All the difficulties, which they who framed it escaped by their work, were as nothing to those which it entailed upon their descendants.

Two parties went into the convention. On one point, of course, they were agreed, else they would never have come together at all,--that a united government under the Articles of Confederation was a failure, and, unless some remedy should be speedily devised, States with common local interests would gravitate into separate and perhaps antagonistic nationalities. But the differences between these two parties were radical, and for a time seemed insurmountable. One proposed simply to repair the Articles of Confederation as they might overhaul a machine that was out of gear; the other proposed to form an altogether new Const.i.tution. One wanted a merely federal government; not, however, meaning by that term what the other party--soon, nevertheless, to be known as Federalists--were striving for, but a confederation of States, each independent of all the rest and supreme in its own right, while consenting to unite with the rest in a limited government for the administration of certain common interests.[10]

This idea of the independence of the States was a survival of the old colonial system, when each colony under its distinct relation to the crown had attained a growth of its own with its separate interests. Each of these colonies had become a State. The Revolution had secured to each, it was maintained, a separate independence, achieved, it was true, by united efforts, but not therefore binding them together as a single nation. It was held as a legitimate result of that doctrine that each State, not the people of the State, whether many or few, should be represented by the same number of votes in a federal government as they were under the Articles of Confederation, because such a government was a union of States, not of a people.

All men, it was argued,--going back to a state of nature,--are equally free and independent; and when a government is formed every man has an equal share by natural right in its formation and in its subsequent conduct. While numbers are few, every member of the State exercises his individual right in person, and none can rightfully do more than this, however wise, or powerful, or rich he may be. But when government by the whole body of the people becomes c.u.mbersome and inconvenient through increase of numbers, the individual citizen loses none of his rights by intrusting their exercise to representatives, in choosing and instructing whom all have an equal voice. So when States are united in a confederacy each State has the same relation to that government that individuals have to each other in a single State. They are free and equal, and none has a larger share of rights in the confederacy because its people are more numerous, or because it is richer or more powerful, than the rest. In such a confederacy it is not the individual citizen who is to be represented, but the individual State. In such a confederacy there would be the same representation for a State, say of ten thousand inhabitants, as for one of fifty thousand. This, it was maintained, preserved equality of suffrage in the equality of States; while the representation of the individual citizens of the States would be in reality inequality of suffrage, because the autonomy of the State would be lost sight of. If in such a case it were asked what had become of the rights which the majority of forty thousand had inherited from nature, the answer was that those rights were preserved and represented in the state government. The difficulty, nevertheless, remained: how to reconcile in practice this doctrine of the equal rights of States, where there might be a minority of persons, with the actual rights of the whole people where, according to the underlying democratic doctrine, the good of the whole must be decided by the larger number.

Those who proposed only to amend the old Articles of Confederation, and opposed a new Const.i.tution, objected that a government formed under such a Const.i.tution would be not a federal but a national government. Luther Martin said, when he returned to Maryland, that the delegates "appeared totally to have forgot the business for which we were sent.... We had not been sent to form a government over the inhabitants of America considered as individuals.... That the system of government we were intrusted to prepare was a government over these thirteen States, but that in our proceedings we adopted principles which would be right and proper only on the supposition that there were no state governments at all, but that all the inhabitants of this extensive continent were in their individual capacity, without government, and in a state of nature." He added that "in the whole system there was but one federal feature, the appointment of the senators by the States in their sovereign capacity, that is, by their legislatures, and the equality of suffrage in that branch; but it was said that this feature was only federal in appearance."

The Senate, the second house as it was called in the convention, was in part created, it is needless to say, to meet, or rather in obedience to, reasoning like this. There was almost n.o.body who would have been willing to abandon the state governments, as there was next to n.o.body who wanted a monarchy. "We were eternally troubled," Martin said, "with arguments and precedents from the British government." He could not get beyond the fixed notion that those whom he opposed were determined to establish "one general government over this extensive continent, of a monarchical nature." If he, and those who agreed with him, sincerely believed this to be true, it was natural enough that the frequent allusions to British precedents, as wise rules for American guidance in constructing a government, should be looked upon as an unmistakable hankering after lost flesh-pots. Should the state governments be swept away, it might be that, in time of danger from without or of peril from internal dissensions, the country, under "a government of a monarchical nature,"

might drift back to its old allegiance. If those who feared, or said they feared, this were not quite sincere, the temptation was almost irresistible to use such arguments to arouse popular prejudice against political opponents. It is curious that Madison seemed quite unconscious of how much the frequent allusions in his articles in "The Federalist"

to the British Const.i.tution might strengthen these accusations of the opposition; while he half believed that the same thing in others showed in them a leaning toward England, from which he knew that he himself was quite free.

The Luther Martin protestants were too radical to remain in the convention to the end, when they saw that such a confederacy as they wanted was impossible. But there were not many who went the length they did in believing that a strong central government was necessarily the destruction of the state governments. Still fewer were those who would have brought this about if they could. That the rights of the States must be preserved was the general opinion and determination, and it was not difficult to do this by limiting the powers of the higher government, or federal as it soon came to be called, and by the organization of the second house, the Senate, in which all the States had an equal representation. The smaller States were satisfied with this concession, and the larger were willing to make it, not only for the sake of the Union, but because of the just estimate in which they held the rights belonging to all the States alike. The real difficulty, as Madison said in the debate on that question, and as he repeated again and again after that question was settled, was not between the larger and smaller States, but between the North and the South; between those States that held slaves and those that had none.

Slavery in the Const.i.tution, which has given so much trouble to the Abolitionists of this century, and indeed to everybody else, gave quite as much in the last century to those who put it there. Many of the wisest and best men of the time, Southerners as well as Northerners, and among them Madison, were opposed to slavery. They could see little good in it, hardly even any compensation for the existence of a system so full of evil. There was hardly a State in the Union at that time that had not its emanc.i.p.ation society; and there was hardly a man of any eminence in the country who was not an officer, or at least a member, of such a society. Everywhere north of South Carolina, slavery was looked upon as a misfortune which it was exceedingly desirable to be free from at the earliest possible moment; everywhere north of Mason and Dixon's line, measures had already been taken, or were certain soon to be taken, to put an end to it; and by the ordinance for the government of all the territory north of the Ohio River it was absolutely prohibited by Congress in the same year in which the Const.i.tutional Congress met.

But it was, nevertheless, a thing to the continued existence of which the anti-slavery people of that time could consent without any violation of conscience. Bad as it was, unwise, wasteful, cruel, a mockery of every pretense of respect for the rights of man, they did not believe it to be absolutely wicked. If they had so believed, let us hope they would have washed their hands of it. As it was, it was only a question of expediency whether, for the sake of the Union, they should protect the system of slavery, and give to the slaveholders, as slaveholders, a certain degree of political power. To refuse to admit a slaveholding State into the Union did not occur, probably, to the most earnest opponent of the system; for that would have been simply to say that there should be no Union. That was what Madison meant in saying so repeatedly that the real difficulty in the way was, not the difference between the large and the small States, but the difference between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding States. If there could be no conciliation on that point there could be no Union.

Some hoped, perhaps, rather than believed, that slavery was likely to disappear ere long at the South as it was disappearing at the North. It is an impeachment of their intelligence, however, to suppose that they relied much upon any such hope. The simple truth is that slavery was then, as it continued to be for three quarters of a century longer, the paramount interest of the South. To withstand or disregard it was not merely difficult, but was to brave immediate possible dangers and sufferings, which are never voluntarily encountered except in obedience to the highest sense of duty; or to meet a necessity, from which there was no manly way of escape. The sense of absolute duty was wanting; the necessity, it was hoped, might be avoided by concessions. It can only be said for those who made them that they did not see what fruitful seeds of future trouble they were sowing in the Const.i.tution.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 10: Those who were zealous for state rights, and opposed to a central government, called the system they wished to reestablish a Federal System,--a confederacy of States. It was too convenient and probably too popular a term to be lost, and the other party adopted it when the new Const.i.tution was formed. _The Federalist_ was the name chosen for the volume in which were collected the papers, written first under the signature of "A Citizen of New York," but afterward changed to "Publius," in support of the new Const.i.tution, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. In one of the earlier papers Mr. Hamilton refers to the Articles of Confederation, which were to be superseded, as the Federal Const.i.tution; but in the later papers Madison is careful to refer to the proposed form of government as the Federal Const.i.tution, and Federal soon came to be the distinguis.h.i.+ng name of the party which first came into power under the new Const.i.tution. Whatever may be said of Madison's other t.i.tle, his right to that of father of the Federal party can hardly be disputed.]

CHAPTER VIII

"THE COMPROMISES"

The question with the North was, how far could it yield; with the South, how far could it encroach. It turned mainly on representation,--on "the unimportant anomaly," as Mr. George Ticknor Curtis calls it in his "History of the Const.i.tution," "of a representation of men without political rights or social privileges." However much they differed upon the subject in the convention, there was n.o.body then and there who regarded the question as "unimportant;" nor was there a political event to happen for the coming eighty years that it did not influence and generally govern. There were some who maintained at first that the slave population should not be represented at all. Hamilton proposed in the first days of the convention "that the rights of suffrage in the national legislature ought to be proportioned to the number of free inhabitants." Madison was willing to concede this in one branch of the legislature, provided that in the representation in the other house the slaves were counted as free inhabitants. The const.i.tution of the Senate subsequently disposed of that proposition.

But why should slaves be represented at all? "They are not free agents,"

said Patterson, a delegate to the convention from New Jersey; they "have no personal liberty, no faculty of acquiring property, but, on the contrary, are themselves property, and, like other property, entirely at the will of the master. Has a man in Virginia a number of votes in proportion to the number of his slaves? And if negroes are not represented in the States to which they belong, why should they be represented in the general government?... If a meeting of the people was actually to take place in a slave State, would the slaves vote? They would not. Why, then, should they be represented in a federal government?" There could be but one reply, but that was one which it would not have been wise to make. It was slave property that was to be represented, and this would not be submitted to among slaveholders as against each other, while yet they were a unit in insisting upon it in a union with those who were not slaveholders. Among themselves slavery needed no protection; their safety was in equality. But to their great interest every non-slaveholder was, in the nature of things, an enemy; and prudence required that the power either to vote him down or to buy him up should never be wanting. It was as much a matter of instinct as of deliberation, for love of life is the first law. The truth was covered up in Madison's specious a.s.sertion that "every peculiar interest, whether in any cla.s.s of citizens or any description of States, ought to be secured as far as possible." The only "peculiar"

interest, however, belonging either to citizens or States, that was imbedded in the Const.i.tution, was slavery.

So Wilson of Pennsylvania asked: "Are they [the slaves] admitted as citizens--then why are they not admitted on an equality with white citizens? Are they admitted as property--then why is not other property admitted into the computation?" He was willing, however, to concede that it was a difficulty to be "overcome by the necessity of compromise."

Never, probably, in the history of legislation, was there a more serious question debated. Compromise is ordinarily understood to mean an adjustment by mutual concessions, where there are rights on both sides.

Here it meant whether the side which had no shadow of right whatever to that which it demanded would consent to take a little less than the whole. It was the kind of compromise made between the bandit and his victim when the former decides that he will not put himself to the trouble of shooting the other, and will even leave him his s.h.i.+rt. It was not difficult to understand that horses and cattle could be justly counted only where property was to be the basis of representation. Yet the slaves, who were counted, were, in the eye of the law, either personal property or real estate, and were no more represented as citizens than if they also had gone upon all fours. Their enumeration, nevertheless, was carried, and it so increased the representative power of their masters that inequality of citizens.h.i.+p became the fundamental principle of the government. This, of course, was to form an oligarchy, not a democracy. Practically the government was put in the hands of a cla.s.s, and there it remained from the moment of the adoption of the Const.i.tution to the rebellion of 1860; while that cla.s.s, including those of so little consequence as to own only a slave or two, in its best estate, probably never exceeded ten per centum of the whole people.

There was, if one may venture to say so, a singular confusion in the minds of the venerable fathers of the republic on this subject. They could not quite get rid of the notion that the slaves, being human, ought to be included in the enumeration of population, notwithstanding that their enumeration as citizens must necessarily disappear in their representation as chattels. Slaves, as slaves, were the wealth of the South, as s.h.i.+ps, for example, were the wealth of the North; but, being human, the mind was not shocked at having the slaves reckoned as population in fixing the basis of representation, though in reality they only represented the masters' owners.h.i.+p. But n.o.body would have been at a loss to see the absurdity of counting three fifths of the Northern s.h.i.+ps as population. Even a Webster Whig of sixty-five years later could, perhaps, have understood that that was something more than an "unimportant anomaly." There was no clearer-headed man in the convention than Gouverneur Morris; yet he said that he was "compelled to declare himself reduced to the dilemma of doing injustice to the Southern States or to human nature, and he must do it to the former." C.

C. Pinckney of South Carolina declared that he was "alarmed" at such an avowal as that. Yet had the question been one of counting three fifths of the Northern s.h.i.+ps in the enumeration of population, Morris would have discovered no "dilemma," and Pinckney nothing to be "alarmed" at.

So palpable an outrage on common sense would have been merely laughed at by both.