When peace came in 1783 there were in the United States approximately three million people, who were spread over the whole Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia and back into the interior as far as the Allegheny Mountains; and a relatively small number of settlers had crossed the mountain barrier. About twenty per cent of the population, or some six hundred thousand, were negro slaves.
There was also a large alien element of foreign birth or descent, poor when they arrived in America, and, although they had been able to raise themselves to a position of comparative comfort, life among them was still crude and rough. Many of the people were poorly educated and lacking in cultivation and refinement and in a knowledge of the usages of good society. Not only were they looked down upon by other nations of the world; there was within the United States itself a relatively small upper class inclined to regard the mass of the people as of an inferior order.
Thus, while forces were at work favorable to democracy, the gentry remained in control of affairs after the Revolution, although their numbers were reduced by the emigration of the Loyalists and their power was lessened. The explanation of this aristocratic control may be found in the fact that the generation of the Revolution had been accustomed to monarchy and to an upper class and that the people were wont to take their ideas and to accept suggestions from their betters without question or murmur. This deferential attitude is attested by the indifference of citizens to the right of voting. In our own day, before the great extension of woman suffrage, the number of persons voting approximated twenty per cent of the population, but after the Revolution less than five per cent of the white population voted. There were many limitations upon the exercise of the suffrage, but the small number of voters was only partially due to these restrictions, for in later years, without any radical change in suffrage qualifications, the proportion of citizens who voted steadily increased.
The fact is that many of the people did not care to vote. Why should they, when they were only registering the will or the wishes of their superiors? But among the relatively small number who constituted the governing class there was a high standard of intelligence. Popular magazines were unheard of and newspapers were infrequent, so that men depended largely upon correspondence and personal intercourse for the interchange of ideas. There was time, however, for careful reading of the few available books; there was time for thought, for writing, for discussion, and for social intercourse. It hardly seems too much to say, therefore, that there was seldom, if ever, a people-certainly never a people scattered over so wide a territory-who knew so much about government as did this controlling element of the people of the United States.
The practical character, as well as the political genius, of the Americans was never shown to better advantage than at the outbreak of the Revolution, when the quarrel with the mother country was manifesting itself in the conflict between the Governors, and other appointed agents of the Crown, and the popularly elected houses of the colonial legislatures. When the Crown resorted to dissolving the legislatures, the revolting colonists kept up and observed the forms of government. When the legislature was prevented from meeting, the members would come together and call themselves a congress or a convention, and, instead of adopting laws or orders, would issue what were really nothing more than recommendations, but which they expected would be obeyed by their supporters. To enforce these recommendations extra-legal committees, generally backed by public opinion and sometimes concretely supported by an organized "mob," would meet in towns and counties and would be often effectively centralized where the opponents of the British policy were in control.
In several of the colonies the want of orderly government became so serious that, in 1775, the Continental Congress advised them to form temporary governments until the trouble with Great Britain had been settled. When independence was declared Congress recommended to all the States that they should adopt governments of their own. In accordance with that recommendation, in the course of a very few years each State established an independent government and adopted a written constitution. It was a time when men believed in the social contract or the "compact theory of the state," that states originated through agreement, as the case might be, between king and nobles, between king and people, or among the people themselves. In support of this doctrine no less an authority than the Bible was often quoted, such a passage for example as II Samuel v, 3: "So all the elders of Israel came to the King to Hebron; and King David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the Lord; and they anointed David King over Israel." As a philosophical speculation to explain why people were governed or consented to be governed, this theory went back at least to the Greeks, and doubtless much earlier; and, though of some significance in medieval thought, it became of greater importance in British political philosophy, especially through the works of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. A very practical application of the compact theory was made in the English Revolution of 1688, when in order to avoid the embarrassment of deposing the king, the convention of the Parliament adopted the resolution: "That King James the Second, having endeavored to subvert the Constitution of the Kingdom, by breaking the original Contract between King and People, and having, by the advice of Jesuits, and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental Laws, and withdrawn himself out of this Kingdom, has abdicated the Government, and that the throne is hereby vacant." These theories were developed by Jean Jacques Rousseau in his "Contrat Social"--a book so attractively written that it eclipsed all other works upon the subject and resulted in his being regarded as the author of the doctrine--and through him they spread all over Europe.
Conditions in America did more than lend color to pale speculation; they seemed to take this hypothesis out of the realm of theory and to give it practical application. What happened when men went into the wilderness to live? The Pilgrim Fathers on board the Mayflower entered into an agreement which was signed by the heads of families who took part in the enterprise: "We, whose names are underwritten... Do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick."
Other colonies, especially in New England, with this example before them of a social contract entered into similar compacts or "plantation covenants," as they were called. But the colonists were also accustomed to having written charters granted which continued for a time at least to mark the extent of governmental powers. Through this intermingling of theory and practice it was the most natural thing in the world, when Americans came to form their new State Governments, that they should provide written instruments framed by their own representatives, which not only bound them to be governed in this way but also placed limitations upon the governing bodies. As the first great series of written constitutions, these frames of government attracted wide attention. Congress printed a set for general distribution, and numerous editions were circulated both at home and abroad.
The constitutions were brief documents, varying from one thousand to twelve thousand words in length, which established the framework of the governmental machinery. Most of them, before proceeding to practical working details, enunciated a series of general principles upon the subject of government and political morality in what were called declarations or bills of rights. The character of these declarations may be gathered from the following excerpts:
"That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights,... the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services.
"The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals; it is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen and each citizen with the whole people that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.
"That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights, and ought not to be exercised.
"That general warrants,... are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.
"All penalties ought to be proportioned to the nature of the offence.
"That sanguinary laws ought to be avoided, as far as is consistent with the safety of the State; and no law, to inflict cruel and unusual pains and penalties, ought to be made in any case, or at any time hereafter.
"No magistrate or court of law shall demand excessive bail or sureties, impose excessive fines....
"Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and reason; ...
"That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments."
It will be perceived at once that these are but variations of the English Declaration of Rights of 1689, which indeed was consciously followed as a model; and yet there is a world-wide difference between the English model and these American copies. The earlier document enunciated the rights of English subjects, the recent infringement of which made it desirable that they should be reasserted in convincing form. The American documents asserted rights which the colonists generally had enjoyed and which they declared to be "governing principles for all peoples in all future times."
But the greater significance of these State Constitutions is to be found in their quality as working instruments of government. There was indeed little difference between the old colonial and the new State Governments. The inhabitants of each of the Thirteen States had been accustomed to a large measure of self-government, and when they took matters into their own hands they were not disposed to make any radical changes in the forms to which they had become accustomed. Accordingly the State Governments that were adopted simply continued a framework of government almost identical with that of colonial times. To be sure, the Governor and other appointed officials were now elected either by the people or the legislature, and so were ultimately responsible to the electors instead of to the Crown; and other changes were made which in the long run might prove of far-reaching and even of vital significance; and yet the machinery of government seemed the same as that to which the people were already accustomed. The average man was conscious of no difference at all in the working of the Government under the new order. In fact, in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the most democratic of all the colonies, where the people had been privileged to elect their own governors, as well as legislatures, no change whatever was necessary and the old charters were continued as State Constitutions down to 1818 and 1842, respectively.
To one who has been accustomed to believe that the separation from a monarchical government meant the establishment of democracy, a reading of these first State Constitutions is likely to cause a rude shock. A shrewd English observer, traveling a generation later in the United States, went to the root of the whole matter in remarking of the Americans that, "When their independence was achieved their mental condition was not instantly changed. Their deference for rank and for judicial and legislative authority continued nearly unimpaired."* They might declare that "all men are created equal," and bills of rights might assert that government rested upon the consent of the governed; but these constitutions carefully provided that such consent should come from property owners, and, in many of the States, from religious believers and even followers of the Christian faith. "The man of small means might vote, but none save well-to-do Christians could legislate, and in many states none but a rich Christian could be a governor."** In South Carolina, for example, a freehold of 10,000 pounds currency was required of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and members of A he Council; 2,000 pounds of the members of the Senate; and, while every elector was eligible to the House of Representatives, he had to acknowledge the being of a God and to believe in a future state of rewards and punishments, as well as to hold "a freehold at least of fifty acres of land, or a town lot."
* George Combe, "Tour of the United States," vol. I, p. 205.
** McMaster, "Acquisition of Industrial, Popular, and Political Rights of Man in America," p. 20.
It was government by a property-owning class, but in comparison with other countries this class represented a fairly large and increasing proportion of the population. In America the opportunity of becoming a property-owner was open to every one, or, as that phrase would then have been understood, to most white men. This system of class control is illustrated by the fact that, with the exception of Massachusetts, the new State Constitutions were never submitted to the people for approval.
The democratic sympathizer of today is inclined to point to those first State Governments as a continuance of the old order. But to the conservative of that time it seemed as if radical and revolutionary changes were taking place. The bills of rights declared, "That no men, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services." Property qualifications and other restrictions on office holding and the exercise of the suffrage were lessened. Four States declared in their constitutions against the entailment of estates, and primogeniture was abolished in aristocratic Virginia. There was a fairly complete abolition of all vestiges of feudal tenure in the holding of land, so that it may be said that in this period full ownership of property was established. The further separation of church and state was also carried out.
Certainly leveling influences were at work, and the people as a whole had moved one step farther in the direction of equality and democracy, and it was well that the Revolution was not any more radical and revolutionary than it was. The change was gradual and therefore more lasting. One finds readily enough contemporary statements to the effect that, "Although there are no nobles in America, there is a class of men denominated 'gentlemen,' who, by reason of their wealth, their talents, their education, their families, or the offices they hold, aspire to a preeminence," but, the same observer adds, this is something which "the people refuse to grant them." Another contemporary contributes the observation that there was not so much respect paid to gentlemen of rank as there should be, and that the lower orders of people behave as if they were on a footing of equality with them.
Whether the State Constitutions are to be regarded as property-conserving, aristocratic instruments, or as progressive documents, depends upon the point of view. And so it is with the spirit of union or of nationality in the United States. One student emphasizes the fact of there being "thirteen independent republics differing... widely in climate, in soil, in occupation, in everything which makes up the social and economic life of the people"; while another sees "the United States a nation." There is something to be said for both sides, and doubtless the truth lies between them, for there were forces making for disintegration as well as for unification. To the student of the present day, however, the latter seem to have been the stronger and more important, although the possibility was never absent that the thirteen States would go their separate ways.
There are few things so potent as a common danger to bring discordant elements into working harmony. Several times in the century and a half of their existence, when the colonies found themselves threatened by their enemies, they had united, or at least made an effort to unite, for mutual help. The New England Confederation of 1643 was organized primarily for protection against the Indians and incidentally against the Dutch and French. Whenever trouble threatened with any of the European powers or with the Indians--and that was frequently--a plan would be broached for getting the colonies to combine their efforts, sometimes for the immediate necessity and sometimes for a broader purpose. The best known of these plans was that presented to the Albany Congress of 1754, which had been called to make effective preparation for the inevitable struggle with the French and Indians. The beginning of the troubles which culminated in the final breach with Great Britain had quickly brought united action in the form of the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, in the Committees of Correspondence, and then in the Continental Congress.
It was not merely that the leaven of the Revolution was already working to bring about the freer interchange of ideas; instinct and experience led the colonies to united action. The very day that the Continental Congress appointed a committee to frame a declaration of independence, another committee was ordered to prepare articles of union. A month later, as soon as the Declaration of Independence had been adopted, this second committee, of which John Dickinson of Pennsylvania was chairman, presented to Congress a report in the form of Articles of Confederation. Although the outbreak of fighting made some sort of united action imperative, this plan of union was subjected to debate intermittently for over sixteen months and even after being adopted by Congress, toward the end of 1777, it was not ratified by the States until March, 1781, when the war was already drawing to a close. The exigencies of the hour forced Congress, without any authorization, to act as if it had been duly empowered and in general to proceed as if the Confederation had been formed.
Benjamin Franklin was an enthusiast for union. It was he who had submitted the plan of union to the Albany Congress in 1754, which with modifications was recommended by that congress for adoption. It provided for a Grand Council of representatives chosen by the legislature of each colony, the members to be proportioned to the contribution of that colony to the American military service. In matters concerning the colonies as a whole, especially in Indian affairs, the Grand Council was to be given extensive powers of legislation and taxation. The executive was to be a President or Governor-General, appointed and paid by the Crown, with the right of nominating all military officers, and with a veto upon all acts of the Grand Council. The project was far in advance of the times and ultimately failed of acceptance, but in 1775, with the beginning of the troubles with Great Britain, Franklin took his Albany plan and, after modifying it in accordance with the experience of twenty years, submitted it to the Continental Congress as a new plan of government under which the colonies might unite.
Franklin's plan of 1775 seems to have attracted little attention in America, and possibly it was not generally known; but much was made of it abroad, where it soon became public, probably in the same way that other Franklin papers came out. It seems to have been his practice to make, with his own hand, several copies of such a document, which he would send to his friends with the statement that as the document in question was confidential they might not otherwise see a copy of it. Of course the inevitable happened, and such documents found their war into print to the apparent surprise and dismay of the author. Incidentally this practice caused confusion in later years, because each possessor of such a document would claim that he had the original. Whatever may have been the procedure in this particular case, it is fairly evident that Dickinson's committee took Franklin's plan of 1775 as the starting point of its work, and after revision submitted it to Congress as their report; for some of the most important features of the Articles of Confederation are to be found, sometimes word for word, in Franklin's draft.
This explanation of the origin of the Articles of Confederation is helpful and perhaps essential in understanding the form of government established, because that government in its main features had been devised for an entirely different condition of affairs, when a strong, centralized government would not have been accepted even if it had been wanted. It provided for a "league of friendship," with the primary purpose of considering preparation for action rather than of taking the initiative. Furthermore, the final stages of drafting the Articles of Confederation had occurred at the outbreak of the war, when the people of the various States were showing a disposition to follow readily suggestions that came from those whom they could trust and when they seemed to be willing to submit without compulsion to orders from the same source. These circumstances, quite as much as the inexperience of Congress and the jealousy of the States, account for the inefficient form of government which was devised; and inefficient the Confederation certainly was. The only organ of government was a Congress in which every State was entitled to one vote and was represented by a delegation whose members were appointed annually as the legislature of the State might direct, whose expenses were paid by the State, and who were subject to recall. In other words, it was a council of States whose representatives had little incentive to independence of action.
Extensive powers were granted to this Congress "of determining on peace and war,... of entering into treaties and alliances," of maintaining an army and a navy, of establishing post offices, of coining money, and of making requisitions upon the States for their respective share of expenses "incurred for the common defence or general welfare." But none of these powers could be exercised without the consent of nine States, which was equivalent to requiring a two-thirds vote, and even when such a vote had been obtained and a decision had been reached, there was nothing to compel the individual States to obey beyond the mere declaration in the Articles of Confederation that, "Every State shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled."
No executive was provided for except that Congress was authorized "to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States under their direction." In judicial matters, Congress was to serve as "the last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences" between States; and Congress might establish courts for the trial of piracy and felonies committed on the high seas and for determining appeals in cases of prize capture.
The plan of a government was there but it lacked any driving force. Congress might declare war but the States might decline to participate in it; Congress might enter into treaties but it could not make the States live up to them; Congress might borrow money but it could not be sure of repaying it; and Congress might decide disputes without being able to make the parties accept the decision. The pressure of necessity might keep the States together for a time, yet there is no disguising the fact that the Articles of Confederation formed nothing more than a gentlemen's agreement.