314 Annapolis and Philadelphia Conventions [1786-9 Convention met at Annapolis. The attendance was small. No delegates came from Georgia, South Carolina, or any State to the east of the Hudson. Three elections had been held in Massachusetts. Twice the delegates refused to serve. On the third occasion those chosen accepted and set out, but, like the delegates from Rhode Island, were met on the way by news that the Convention had broken up. The session was a short one, for the few who came had such limited powers that they contented themselves with lamenting the wretched state of national affairs, and urging that Congress should call a new Convention, with enlarged powers, to meet at Philadelphia in May, 1787. This was eventually done; and the Convention so gathered produced the Constitution of the United States. That noble instrument, under which the United States has attained to such astonishing prosperity, is based on no mere theory of government framed by speculative politicians. It was drawn by practical men to meet a pressing need, and bears throughout the marks of experience gained during the dark days which followed the war for independence. Congress now had sole power to coin money and to determine its value, and to regulate trade with foreign countries and between the States. It was empowered to levy taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to pay the debts of the United States; and to provide for the common defence and general welfare. No State, on the other hand, could issue bills of credit, or coin money, or make anything else than gold or silver a legal tender for debt. The Convention, having framed the Constitution, sent it to Congress to be transmitted to the States for consideration, and requested that when nine States had ratified it, Congress should take the necessary steps to put the new government into operation. By July, 1788, eleven States had adopted the Constitution; and Congress then made preparations for its establishment. It was ordered that New York City should be the seat of government; that on the first Wednesday in January, 1789, the States should choose presidential electors; that the electors should meet and vote in their respective States on the first Wednesday in February; and that the Senate and the House should meet and count the electoral vote at New York City on the first Wednesday in March, 1789. Towards sunset on March 3 a salute was fired from the battery as a farewell to the old Confederation. At daylight, at noon, and at six in the evening on Wednesday the 4th guns were again fired, and all the church bells rung, as a hearty welcome to the new Constitution. But no other celebration was attempted; and nothing further was done to mark the fact that the weak and crumbling Confederation had given place to a strong and vigorous government. No President was inaugurated; no Senate, no House of Representatives was ready to begin. business. Indeed, the new Congress seemed to have inherited all the 1789] The new Government 315 sloth, all the torpor of the old. The Senate was to consist of twentytwo members and the House of fifty-nine. Yet, while the cannon were firing and the bells ringing, there were but eight Senators and thirteen Representatives in the city. The sixth of April arrived before both Houses had a quorum. Then the electoral votes were counted; and Washington and Adams were declared respectively President and Vicepresident. On April 22 Adams was inaugurated; and a week later Washington, standing on the balcony of the Federal Hall, took the oath of office in the presence of a great crowd of his fellow-citizens. The task which now lay before him was unique. No such duty had ever before been laid on any man. "My station," said he to the crowd that saw him take the oath of office for the first time, "is new. I walk on untrodden ground." He did indeed walk on untrodden ground. When the Constitution became the supreme law of the land, scarce a vestige of government existed. The Continental Congress, a body whose name should never be mentioned without a grateful recollection of its noble work, had months before expired ignominiously for want of a quorum. Save a Secretary of Foreign Affairs with scarce a letter to write, a Secretary of War with an army of eighty men, a Board of Treasury in whose coffers there was not a shilling, not a piece of the machinery of the defunct and discarded system remained in operation. About the President on every side lay the wreckage of a demolished government, and in his hand was a brand-new Constitution investing him with untried powers of the largest kind. A man who in our time comes to the presidency finds his way made straight by customs, traditions, precedents, and established forms, and administers government under a Constitution simplified by the interpretations of a hundred years. To Washington these helps were all denied. On him rested the solemn responsibility of so starting the young Republic on its way that its future career should not fail to be honourable to itself and beneficial to mankind. The United States was at that time a small country. On the west it just touched the Mississippi river. It nowhere touched the Gulf of Mexico, and it contained but half as many human beings as to-day dwell within the borders of Pennsylvania. Its foreign relations were strained and in disorder. There was as yet no commercial treaty with Great Britain, and none of any sort with Spain, Portugal, or Italy, or with any commercial nation of Europe, save France, Holland, and Prussia. In spite of the Treaty of Independence, British troops still held the frontier forts from Lake Champlain to Michigan. In defiance of right, Spain held part of what is now Alabama and Mississippi, and displayed her flag on the site of what is now Memphis. The finances were in confusion. On the books of the treasury was a debt due to France, Spain, and Holland, the principal of which had begun to fall due and the interest on which had often been unpaid. To the people the State owed a still greater debt, the paper evidence of 316 The rise of parties [1789-92 which seemed scarcely worth preserving. No national currency existed; but in its place were thirteen kinds of paper issued by the States, and reduced to token-money by the provision in the Constitution that no State should issue bills of credit or make anything else than gold and silver legal tender for debt. Trade and commerce were all but ruined. American ships and sailors were excluded from British ports in the West Indies; American products were discriminated against abroad; and American merchants were undersold at home by foreign manufacturers. Everywhere was chaos; and out of this chaos must come order and prosperity, or the new Constitution would go down in ruin. To the duty which thus lay before it, Congress now set itself in serious earnest; and, before two years had passed, the machinery of government was well under way. Departments of State, of War, and of the Treasury were established; the Supreme, Circuit, and District Courts were created; taxes were levied; a census was taken; and twelve amendments to the Constitution (of which ten were adopted) were submitted to the States. A Coinage Act was passed, and a mint set up; the District of Columbia was defined, and the city of Washington planned; the temporary seat of government was removed from New York to Philadelphia, there to remain until 1800; the debts contracted by the Continental Congress and by the separate States in the long struggle for independence were funded; a national bank was chartered; and provision was made for the naturalisation of foreigners, the granting of patents and copyrights, the building of lighthouses, the regulation of trade and intercourse with the Indians, and for continuing the post-office as already established. Most of this legislation met with little opposition; but the funding of the Continental debt and the assumption and funding of the debts of the States, the chartering of the Bank of the United States, and the Excise Act, aroused bitter resistance in Congress and split the people into two great political parties. Those who supported the Administration and looked up to Washington and Adams, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay as leaders, became known as the Federalist party. Those who opposed the policy of the Administration and were led by Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, took the name of Federal Republicans. The Federalists were strongest in the commercial States, and the Republicans in the farming and planting regions. The Republicans complained of the high salaries paid to public officers; believed that the national debt was unnecessarily large because the depreciated Continental paper had been funded at its face-value and not at its market price, and because the debts of the States had been assumed by the Federal government; denied that Congress had power to charter the Bank; insisted that the Constitution should be construed strictly; and saw in the attempt to give the President a title, and in his levees and his refusal to mingle with the people, in the secret sessions of 1792-3] Sympathy with the French Revolution 317 the Senate, and in the gowns worn by the judges of the Supreme Court, unmistakeable signs of a lingering fondness for aristocracy and monarchy. The Federalists, on the other hand, believed in a broad and liberal construction of the Constitution; insisted that every bill of credit, every loan office certificate, every promise to pay issued by authority of the Continental Congress, should be redeemed at its face-value; held that the debts which the States had incurred in the struggle for independence were part of the price paid for liberty and had very properly been made part of the national debt; scoffed at the charge of aristocratic and monarchical tendencies; and declared that the tariff and the excise were no higher than was necessary to support such a government as the people, the States, and foreign Powers would respect. Scarcely were the people thus definitely parted by domestic issues into Federalists and Republicans, when the course of events compelled them to take sides in the great war which began in Europe in April, 1792, and forced them to enter on a struggle, of two and twenty years' duration, for commercial independence. From the day when the news of the fall of the Bastille reached America, the progress of the French Revolution had been watched with the deepest interest by the people of the United States. The treaty of alliance which bound the two countries, the grateful recollection of independence recognised, of money lent, of ships and troops furnished by France, and the belief that the uprising of the French people was largely due to the example set by America, aroused all over the United States an interest in the French Revolution and a sympathy with it which could not be felt elsewhere. When therefore, in December, 1792, it became known that the French were slowly making headway against the Allies, the delight of Federalists and Republicans alike found expression in bell-ringings, bonfires, cannonades, and illuminations. Civic feasts were held, "liberty poles" adorned with the red cap erected, democratic societies formed, and tricolour flags hung up in inns and taverns. Men ceased to be Americans and became all but 'Frenchmen. They doffed small clothes and put on pantaloons, cut their hair in the "Brutus crop," dropped such old-fashioned terms as "Sir" and "Mr," and called each other "Citizen." They erased from the streets of cities and towns such names as King, Queen, and Prince; and were in transports of joy when they heard (in April, 1793) that war had broken out between France and Great Britain, and that the first minister plenipotentiary to the United States from the Republic of France was on his way across the ocean. The mission of that functionary, Edmond Genest, was a matter of serious concern to Washington. In the early days of the revolutionary war the King of France had made a treaty of alliance with the little league of States, then struggling desperately for independence. Louis XVI guaranteed the sovereignty and independence of the United 318 Proclamation of neutrality [1793 States for ever; Congress, in the name of the States, pledged itself to defend for ever the French possessions in America. France had made good her promise and fought in behalf of America till liberty, sovereignty, and independence were obtained. Might she not now call on the States to make good their promise and defend her West Indian possessions? And, if so, would the United States accede, and once more take up arms against Great Britain? The answer of every sympathiser with France was, Yes! France, they said, is our old friend: England is our old enemy. We are bound to France by gratitude, by a treaty of alliance, by the sympathy which one republic cannot but feel for a sister republic struggling for life. No tie, no treaty of any sort, binds us to Great Britain. To this it was replied that the French alliance was defensive, not offensive; that it was contracted with the King, not with the government which had cut off his head; and that to go to war while Spain was in full possession of the Mississippi, with the Indians on the war-path, and British garrisons in the forts along the Canadian frontier, would be the height of folly. On hearing that war between England and France had begun, Washington, who had just entered on his second term of office, hastened to Philadelphia, and summoned his Secretaries for advice. Is it wise, he asked them, to assemble Congress? Shall neutrality be declared? Are the treaties made with France when under a King still in force now that she is ruled by a revolutionary government? Does the treaty of alliance apply to an offensive as well as to a defensive war? Is France engaged in an offensive war? Shall the plenipotentiary of the French Republic be received? It was the opinion of the Cabinet that Congress need not be called together; that, although the country was under no treaty obligations to show Great Britain any consideration, it was politic to remain neutral; that, as France had declared war against England, she was engaged in offensive war, and could claim no aid under the treaty; and that it would be well to receive the French minister. Thus advised, Washington issued a declaration of neutrality on April 22, 1793. Had he proclaimed a monarchy he could not have been more savagely reviled. He was accused of base ingratitude to France; he was a tool of Great Britain; his anti-republican tendency was now quite plain, for he had placed on the same footing a republic that the States were bound to aid, and a monarchy that held their forts, insulted their flag, and would not so much as make a treaty of commerce with them. To proclaim neutrality was easy. To enforce it was hard, and was made harder by the conduct of Great Britain. France, having declared war, opened her ports in the West Indies to neutral trade. This trade Great Britain declared illegal, as giving to neutrals in time of war a trade they did not enjoy in time of peace, which was contrary to the rule of 1756. In March, 1793, she made a treaty with Prussia by |