Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins Part 25

[Sidenote: The several states were never at any time sovereign states.]

[Sidenote: The Articles of Confederation]

The Continental Congress began to exercise a certain amount of directive authority from the time of its first meeting in 1774. Such authority as it had arose simply from the fact that it represented an agreement on the part of the several governments to pursue a certain line of policy. It was a diplomatic and executive, but scarcely yet a legislative body. Nevertheless it was the visible symbol of a kind of union between the states. There never was a time when any one of the original states exercised singly the full powers of sovereignty. Not one of them was ever a small sovereign state like Denmark or Portugal.

As they acted together under the common direction of the British government in 1759, the year of Quebec, so they acted together under the common direction of that revolutionary body, the Continental Congress, in 1775, the year of Bunker Hill. In that year a "continental army" was organized in the name of the "United Colonies."

In the following year, when independence was declared, it was done by the concerted action of all the colonies; and at the same time a committee was appointed by Congress to draw up a written const.i.tution.

This const.i.tution, known as the "Articles or Confederation," was submitted to Congress in the autumn of 1777, and was sent to the several states to be ratified. A unanimous ratification was necessary, and it was not until March 1781, that unanimity was secured and the articles adopted.

Meanwhile the Revolutionary War had advanced into its last stages, having been carried on from the outset under the general direction of the Continental Congress. When reading about this period of our history, the student must be careful not to be misled by the name "congress" into reasoning as if there were any resemblance whatever between that body and the congress which was created by our Federal Const.i.tution. The Continental Congress was not the parent of our Federal Congress; the former died without offspring, and the latter had a very different origin, as we shall soon see. The former simply bequeathed to the latter a name, that was all.

[Sidenote: Nature and powers of the Continental Congress]

The Continental Congress was an a.s.sembly of delegates from the thirteen states, which from 1774 to 1783 held its sessions at Philadelphia.[2] It owned no federal property, not even the house in which it a.s.sembled, and after it had been turned out of doors by a mob of drunken soldiers in June, 1783, it flitted about from place to place, sitting now at Trenton, now at Annapolis, and finally at New York.[3] Each state sent to it as many delegates as it chose, though after the adoption of the articles no state could send less than two or more than seven. Each state had one vote, and it took nine votes, or two thirds of the whole, to carry any measure of importance. One of the delegates was chosen president or chairman of the congress, and this position was one of great dignity and considerable influence, but it was not essentially different from the position, of any of the other delegates. There were no distinct executive officers. Important executive matters were at first a.s.signed to committees, such as the Finance Committee and the Board of War, though at the most trying time the finance committee was a committee of one, in the person of Robert Morris, who was commonly called the Financier. The work of the finance committee was chiefly trying to solve the problem of paying bills without spending money, for there was seldom any money to spend. Congress could not tax the people or recruit the army. When it wanted money or troops, it could only ask the state governments for them; and generally it got from a fifth to a fourth part of the troops needed, but of money a far smaller proportion.

Sometimes it borrowed money from Holland or France, but often its only resource was to issue paper promises to pay, or the so-called Continental paper money. There were no federal courts,[4] nor marshals to execute federal decrees. Congress might issue orders, but it had no means of compelling obedience.

[Footnote 2: Except for a few days in December, 1776, when it fled to Baltimore; and again from September, 1777, to June, 1778, when Philadelphia was in possession of the British; during that interval Congress held its meetings at York in Pennsylvania.]

[Footnote 3: See my _Critical Period of American History_, pp.

112, 271, 306]

[Footnote 5: Except the "Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture," for an admirable account of which see Jameson's _Essays in the Const.i.tutional History of the United States_, pp. 1-45.]

[Sidenote: It was not fully endowed with sovereignty.]

The Continental Congress was therefore not in the full sense a sovereign body. A government is not really a government until it can impose taxes and thus command the money needful for keeping it in existence. Nevertheless the Congress exercised some of the most indisputable functions of sovereignty. "It declared the independence of the United States; it contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with France; it raised and organized a Continental army; it borrowed large sums of money, and pledged what the lenders understood to be the national credit for their repayment; it issued an inconvertible paper currency, granted letters of marque, and built a navy." [6] Finally it ratified a treaty of peace with Great Britain. So that the Congress was really, in many respects, and in the eyes of the world at large, a sovereign body. Time soon showed that the continued exercise of such powers was not compatible with the absence of the power to tax the people. In truth the situation of the Continental Congress was an illogical situation. In the effort of throwing off the sovereignty of Great Britain, the people of these states were constructing a federal union faster than they realized. Their theory of the situation did not keep pace with the facts, and their first attempt to embody their theory, in the Articles of Confederation, was not unnaturally a failure.

[Footnote 6: _Critical Period_, p. 93.]

[Sidenote: Decline of the Continental Congress.]

At first the powers of the Congress were vague. They were what are called "implied war powers;" that is to say, the Congress had a war with Great Britain on its hands, and must be supposed to have power to do whatever was necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion.

At first, too, when it had only begun to issue paper money, there was a momentary feeling of prosperity. Military success added to its appearance of strength, and the reputation of the Congress reached its high water mark early in 1778, after the capture of Burgoyne's army and the making of the alliance with France. After that time, with the weary prolonging of the war, the increase of the public debt, and the collapse of the paper currency, its reputation steadily declined.

There was also much work to be done in reorganizing the state governments, and this kept at home in the state legislatures many of the ablest men who would otherwise have been sent to the Congress.

Thus in point of intellectual capacity the latter body was distinctly inferior in 1783 to what it had been when first a.s.sembled nine years earlier.

[Sidenote: Anarchical tendencies.]

The arrival of peace did not help the Congress, but made matters worse.

When the absolute necessity of presenting a united front to the common enemy was removed, the weakness of the union was shown in many ways that were alarming. The _sentiment_ of union was weak. In spite of the community in language and inst.i.tutions, which was so favourable to union, the people of the several states had many local prejudices which tended to destroy the union in its infancy. A man was quicker to remember that he was a New Yorker or a Ma.s.sachusetts man than that he was an American and a citizen of the United States. Neighbouring states levied custom-house duties against one another, or refused to admit into their markets each other's produce, or had quarrels about boundaries which went to the verge of war. Things grew worse every year until by the autumn of 1786, when the Congress was quite bankrupt and most of the states nearly so, when threats of secession were heard both in New England and in the South, when there were riots in several states and Ma.s.sachusetts was engaged in suppressing armed rebellion, when people in Europe were beginning to ask whether we were more likely to be seized upon by France or reconquered piecemeal by Great Britain, it came to be thought necessary to make some kind of a change.

[Sidenote: The Federal Convention (1787).]

Men were most unwillingly brought to this conclusion, because they were used to their state a.s.semblies and not afraid of them, but they were afraid of increasing the powers of any government superior to the states, lest they should thus create an unmanageable tyranny. They believed that even anarchy, though a dreadful evil, is not so dreadful as despotism, and for this view there is much to be said. After no end of trouble a convention was at length got together at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and after four months of work with closed doors, it was able to offer to the country the new Federal Const.i.tution. Both in its character and in the work which It did, this Federal Convention, over which Was.h.i.+ngton presided, and of which Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton were members, was one of the most remarkable deliberative bodies known to history.

We have seen that the fundamental weakness of the Continental Congress lay in the fact that it could not tax the people. Hence although it could for a time exert other high functions of sovereignty, it could only do so while money was supplied to it from other sources than taxation; from contributions made by the states in answer to its "requisitions," from foreign loans, and from a paper currency. But such resources could not last long. It was like a man's trying to live upon his own promissory notes and upon gifts and unsecured loans from his friends. When the supply of money was exhausted, the Congress soon found that it could no longer comport itself as a sovereign power; it could not preserve order at home, and the situation abroad may be ill.u.s.trated by the fact that George III. kept garrisons in several of our northwestern frontier towns and would not send a minister to the United States. This example shows that, among the sovereign powers of a government, the power of taxation is the fundamental one upon which all the others depend. Nothing can go on without money.

But the people of the several states would never consent to grant the power of taxation, to such a body as the Continental Congress, in which they were not represented. The Congress was not a legislature, but a diplomatic body; it did not represent the people, but the state governments; and a large state like Pennsylvania had no more weight in it than a little state like Delaware. If there was to be any central a.s.sembly for the whole union, endowed with the power of taxation, it must be an a.s.sembly representing the American people just as the a.s.sembly of a single state represented the people of the state.

As soon as this point became clear, it was seen to be necessary to throw the Articles of Confederation overboard, and construct a new national government. As was said above, our Federal Congress is not descended from the Continental Congress. Its parentage is to be sought in the state legislatures. Our federal government was constructed after the general model of the state governments, with some points copied from British usages, and some points that were original and new.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. What are the reasons for reserving the Const.i.tution of the United States for the concluding chapter?

2. Circ.u.mstances that favoured union of the colonies:--

a. The origin of their inhabitants.

b. All the details of their civil government.

c. The ease with which they understood one another.

d. Their common dangers, two in particular.

3. Earlier unions among the colonies:--

a. The New England Confederacy,--its time, purpose, and duration.

b. The French danger, and plans to meet it.

c. The Albany Congress,--its nature and immediate purpose.

d. The Stamp Act Congress.

4. Committees of correspondence:--

a. The circular letter of Ma.s.sachusetts in 1768.

b. Town committees of correspondence in Ma.s.sachusetts in 1772.

c. Colonial committees of correspondence in 1773.

d. The habit established through these committees.

5. The Continental Congress:--

a. The immediate causes that led to it.

b. How it might have been temporary.

c. How it became permanent.

d. Its date, place of meeting, and duration.

e. Why "continental" as distinguished from "provincial?"

f. The nature and extent of its authority.

g. The states represented in it never fully sovereign.

6. Give an account of the "Articles of Confederation."

7. Distinguish between the Continental Congress and the Federal.

8. The powers of the Continental Congress:-- a. Its homelessness and wandering.

b. Its delegates and their voting power.

c. Its presiding officer.

d. Its management of executive matters.

e. The finance committee and its problems.

f. The raising of money.

g. The compelling of obedience.

9. The Continental Congress not a sovereign body:--

a. The nature of real government.

b. Some functions of sovereignty exercised by the Congress.

c. The situation illogical.