The Life of John Marshall, Volume 1: Frontiersman, soldier, lawmaker, 1755-1788

897

Moore's Diary, ii, 143-44. Although this was a British opinion, yet it was entirely accurate.

898

"They will rise and for lack of argument, say, Mṛ Speaker, this measure will never do, the People Sir, will never bear it… These small Politicians, returned home, … tell their Constituents such & such measures are taking place altho' I did my utmost to prevent it – The People must take care of themselves or they are undone. Stir up a County Convention and by Trumpeting lies from Town to Town get one [a convention] collected and Consisting of Persons of small Abilities – of little or no property – embarrass'd in their Circumstances – and of no great Integrity – and these Geniouses vainly conceiving they are competent to regulate the affairs of State – make some hasty incoherent Resolves, and these end in Sedition, Riot, & Rebellion." (Sewell to Thatcher, Dec., 1787; Hist. Mag. (2d Series), vi, 257.)

899

More than a decade after the slander was set afoot against Colonel Levin Powell of Loudoun County, Virginia, one of the patriot soldiers of the Revolution and an officer of Washington, that he favored establishing a monarchy, one of his constituents wrote that "detraction & defamation are generally resorted to promote views injurious to you… Can you believe it, but it is really true that the old & often refuted story of your predilection for Monarchy is again revived." (Thomas Sims to Colonel Levin Powell, Leesburg, Virginia, Feb. 5 and 20, 1801; Branch Historical Papers, i, 58, 61.)

900

Watson, 262-64. This comic prophecy that the National Capital was to be the fortified home of a standing army was seriously believed by the people. Patrick Henry urged the same objection with all his dramatic power in the Virginia Convention of 1788. So did the scholarly Mason. (See infra, chaps. XI and XII.)

901

Graydon, 392-93.

902

Memorials of the Society of the Cincinnati, 1790, 3-24.

903

Jefferson to Washington, Nov. 14, 1786; Works: Ford, v, 222-23; and see Jefferson's denunciation of the Cincinnati in Jefferson to Madison, Dec. 28, 1794; ib., viii, 156-57. But see Jefferson's fair and moderate account of the Cincinnati before he had learned of its unpopularity in America. (Jefferson to Meusnier, June 22, 1786; ib., v, 50-56.)

904

The same who broke the quorum in the Continental Congress. (Supra, chap. IV.)

905

Burke: Considerations on the Society of the Order of Cincinnati; 1784.

906

Mirabeau: Considerations on the Order of Cincinnati; 1786. Mirabeau here refers to the rule of the Cincinnati that the officer's eldest son might become a member of the order, as in the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the present time.

907

As quoted in Hudson: Journalism in the United States, 158.

908

Madison to James Madison, Nov. 1, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, 278.

909

Jay to Jefferson, Oct. 27, 1786; Jay: Johnston, iii, 212.

910

See Weld, i, 114-15, as a fair example of foreign estimate of this American characteristic at that period.

911

See chap. II, vol. II, of this work.

912

Private debts which Virginia planters alone owed British merchants were "20 or 30 times the amount of all money in circulation in that state." (Jefferson to Meusnier, Jan. 24, 1786; Works: Ford, v, 17-18; and see Jefferson to McCaul, April 19, 1786; ib., 88.)

913

"It cannot perhaps be affirmed that there is gold & silver eno in the Country to pay the next tax." (Madison to Monroe, June 4, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, 245.)

914

Jefferson to Meusnier, Jan. 24, 1786; Works: Ford, v, 27.

915

Jefferson to Meusnier, Jan. 24, 1786: Works: Ford, v, 27.

916

Moore's Diary, ii, 425-26. The merchants of Philadelphia shut their shops; and it was agreed that if Congress did not substitute "solid money" for paper, "all further resistance to" Great Britain "must be given up." (Ib.)

917

Jefferson to McCaul, April 19, 1786; Works: Ford, v, 90; also to Wm. Jones, Jan. 5, 1787; ib., 247. – "Paiment was made me in this money when it was but a shadow."

918

Livingston to Jay, July 30, 1789; Jay: Johnston, iii, 373-74.

919

Fithian, 91.

920

Virginia's paper money experiment was the source of many lawsuits in which Marshall was counsel. See, for example, Pickett vs. Claiborne (Call, iv, 99-106); Taliaferro vs. Minor (Call, i, 456-62).

921

The House of Delegates toward the end of 1786 voted 84 to 17 against the paper money resolution. (Madison to James Madison, Nov. 1, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, 277.)

922

"The advocates for paper money are making the most of this handle. I begin to fear exceedingly that no efforts will be sufficient to parry this evil." (Madison to Monroe, June 4, 1786; ib., 245.)

923

Madison to Jefferson, Aug. 12, 1786; ib., 259.

924

"Enclosed are one hundred Dollars of new Emmission Money which Col. Steward desires me to have exchanged for Specie. Pray, inform him they are all counterfeit." (Gerry to King, April 7, 1785; King, i, 87.)

925

Washington to Grayson, Aug. 22, 1785; Writings: Ford, X, 493-94.

926

Knox to Washington, Oct. 28, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, footnote to p. 407-08.

927

Minot: History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts in 1786 (2d ed.), 1810.

928

Printed in the first edition (1807) "enormous" – a good example of the haste of the first printing of Marshall's Life of Washington. (See vol. III of this work.)

929

Marshall, ii, 117.

930

Ib., 118.

931

Knox to Washington, Oct. 28, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, footnote to 408.

932

Shays's Rebellion was only a local outburst of a general feeling throughout the United States. Marshall says, "those causes of discontent … existed in every part of the union." (Marshall, ii, 117.)

933

Jay to Jefferson, Oct. 27, 1786; Jay: Johnston, iii, 213.

934

Jay to Reed, Dec. 12, 1786; ib., 222.

935

Jay to Price, Sept. 27, 1786; ib., 168.

936

Madison to Randolph, Jan. 10, 1788; Writings: Hunt, v, 81.

937

Washington to Lee, Oct. 31, 1786; Writings: Ford, xi, 76-77.

938

Washington to Madison, Nov. 5, 1786; ib., 81.

939

Washington to Knox, Dec. 26, 1786; ib., 103-04. And Washington wrote to Lafayette that "There are seeds of discontent in every part of the Union." (Writings: Sparks, ix, 263.)

940

Marshall to James Wilkinson, Jan. 5, 1787; Amer. Hist. Rev., xii, 347-48.

941

Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Feb. 22, 1787; Works: Ford, v, 265.

942

Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Feb. 22, 1787; Works: Ford, v, 263.

943

Jefferson to Smith, Nov. 13, 1787; ib., 362.

944

"The payments from the States under the calls of Congress have in no year borne any proportion to the public wants. During the last year … the aggregate payments … fell short of 400,000 dollrs, a sum neither equal to the interest due on the foreign debts, nor even to the current expenses of the federal Government. The greatest part of this sum too went from Virga, which will not supply a single shilling the present year." (Madison to Jefferson, March 18, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, 228.)

945

Washington to Jay, Aug. 1, 1786; Writings: Ford, xi, 54-55.

946

Jay (Secretary of State under the Confederation) to Jefferson, Dec. 14, 1786; Jay: Johnston, iii, 223.

947

"We are wasting our time & labour in vain efforts to do business" (because of State delegates not attending), wrote Jefferson in 1784. (Jefferson to Washington, March 15, 1784; Works: Ford, iv, 266.) And at the very climax of our difficulties "a sufficient number of States to do business have not been represented in Congress." (Jay to Wm. Carmichael, Jan. 4, 1786; Jay: Johnston, iii, 225.) During half of September and all of October, November, December, January, and February, nine States "have not been represented in congress"; and this even after the Constitution had been adopted. (Jay to Jefferson, March 9, 1789; Jay: Johnston, iii, 365.)

948

Jay to Jefferson, Dec. 14, 1786; Jay: Johnston, iii, 223-24. And Melancton Smith declared that "the farmer cultivates his land and reaps the fruit… The merchant drives his commerce and none can deprive him of the gain he honestly acquires… The mechanic is exercised in his art, and receives the reward of his labour." (1797-98; Ford: P. on C., 94.) Of the prosperity of Virginia, Grigsby says, "our agriculture was most prosperous, and our harbors and rivers were filled with ships. The shipping interest … was really advancing most rapidly to a degree of success never known in the colony." (Grigsby, i, footnote to p. 82; and see his brilliant account of Virginia's prosperity at this time; ib., 9-19.) "The spirit of industry throughout the country was never greater. The productions of the earth abound," wrote Jay to B. Vaughan, Sept. 2, 1784. (Jay: Johnston, iii, 132.)

949

Jay to John Adams, Feb. 21, 1787; Jay: Johnston, iii, 235. Jay thought that the bottom of the trouble was that "relaxation in government and extravagance in individuals create much public and private distress, and much public and private want of good faith." (Ib., 224.)

950

Madison to Jefferson, Dec. 4, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, 293. "This indulgence to the people as it is called & considered was so warmly wished for out of doors, and so strenuously pressed within that it could not be rejected without danger of exciting some worse project of a popular cast." (Ib.)

951

Madison to Washington, Dec. 24, 1786; ib., 301. "My acquiescence in the measure was against every general principle which I have embraced, and was extorted by a fear that some greater evil under the name of relief to the people would be substituted." (Ib.)

952

Rutledge to Jay, May 2, 1789; Jay: Johnston, iii, 368.

953

Washington to Jay, May 18, 1786; Writings: Ford, xi, 31-32.

954

Jay to Washington, June 27, 1786; Jay: Johnston, iii, 204.

955

Ib., 205.

956

Washington to Harrison, Jan. 18, 1784; Writings: Ford, x, 345.

957

Ib.

958

See Madison's masterful summary of the wickedness, weakness, and folly of the State Governments in Writings: Hunt, ii, 361-69.

959

Washington to Jay, March 10, 1787; Writings: Ford, xi, 125.

960

See supra, chap. VI.

961

Madison to Jefferson, March 18, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, 228. "Another unhappy effect of a continuance of the present anarchy of our commerces will be a continuance of the unfavorable balance on it, which by draining us of our metals, furnishes pretexts for the pernicious substitution of paper money, for indulgencies to debtors, for postponements of taxes." (Ib.)

962

Virginia carefully defined her revenue boundaries as against Pennsylvania and Maryland; and provided that any vessel failing to enter and pay duties as provided by the Virginia tariff laws might be seized by any person and prosecuted "one half to the use of the informer, and the other half to the use of the commonwealth." (Va. Statutes at Large (1785), chap. 14, 46.)

Virginia strengthened her tariff laws against importations by land. "If any such importer or owner shall unload any such wagon or other carriage containing any of the above goods, wares, or merchandise brought into this state by land without first having entered the same as directed above, every such wagon or other carriage, together with the horses thereto belonging and all such goods wares and merchandise as shall be brought therein, shall be forfeited and recovered by information in the court of the county; two-thirds to the informer and one-third toward lessening the levy of the county where such conviction shall be made." (Ib.)

Even Pennsylvania, already the principal workshop of the country, while enacting an avowedly protective tariff on "Manufactures of Europe and Other foreign parts," included "cider, malted barley or grain, fish, salted or dried, cheese, butter, beef, pork, barley, peas, mustard, manufactured tobacco" which came, mostly, from sister States. The preamble declares that the duties are imposed to protect "the artisans and mechanics of this state" without whose products "the war could not have been carried on."

In addition to agricultural articles named above, the law includes "playing cards, hair powder, wrought gold or silver utensils, polished or cut stones, musical instruments, walking canes, testaments, psalters, spelling books or primers, romances, novels and plays, and horn or tortoise shell combs," none of which could be called absolutely indispensable to the conduct of the war. The preamble gives the usual arguments for protective tariffs. It is the first protective tariff law, in the present-day sense, ever passed. (Pa. Statutes at Large (1785), 99.)

963

Even at the present time the various States have not recovered from this anti-National and uneconomic practice, as witness the tax laws and other statutes in almost every State designed to prevent investments by the citizens of that State in industries located in other States. Worse, still, are the multitude of State laws providing variable control over railways that are essentially National.

964

Writings: Hunt, ii, 395.

965

Marshall (1st ed.), v, 76-79.

966

Madison to Washington, April 16, 1787; Writings: Hunt, ii, 345-46. This ultra-Nationalist opinion is an interesting contrast to Madison's States' Rights views a few years later. (See infra, vol. II, chaps. II, III, and IV.)

967

Minton Collins at Richmond to Stephen Collins at Philadelphia, May 8, 1788; MS., Lib. Cong.

968

Sam Smith in London to Stephen Collins in Philadelphia, July 21, 1788; ib.

969

Minton Collins to Stephen Collins, Aug. 9, 1788; ib.

970

"Vergennes complained, and with a good deal of stress, that they did not find a sufficient dependence on arrangements taken with us. This was the third time, too, he had done it… He observed too, that the administration of justice with us was tardy, insomuch that their merchants, when they had money due to them within our States, considered it as desperate; and that our commercial regulations, in general, were disgusting to them." (Jefferson's Report; Works: Ford, iv, 487.)

971

Jefferson to Stuart, Jan. 25, 1786; ib., v, 74.

972

Jefferson to Madison, Dec. 16, 1786; ib., v, 230.

973

Jefferson to Carrington, Paris, Aug. 4, 1787; ib., 318; also 332; and Jefferson to Wythe, Sept. 16, 1787; ib., 340.

974

Jefferson to Carrington, Paris, Aug. 4, 1787; ib., 318.

975

Jefferson to Meusnier, Jan. 24, 1786; ib., 8.

976

Jefferson to Meusnier, Jan. 24, 1786; Works: Ford, v, 8.

977

Jefferson to Madison, Dec. 20, 1787; ib., 373-74. Jefferson concluded, prophetically, that when the people "get piled upon one another, in large cities, as in Europe, they will become as corrupt as Europe." (Ib.)

978

Jefferson to Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785; ib., iv, 469.

979

Jefferson to Stuart, Jan. 25, 1786; ib., v, 74.

980

See infra, chap. IX.

981

For a careful study of this important but neglected subject see Professor Edward Payson Smith's paper in Jameson, 46-115.

982

Grigsby, i, 25.

983

Travelers from the District of Kentucky or from the back settlements of Virginia always journeyed fully armed, in readiness to defend themselves from attack by Indians or others in their journey through the wilderness.

984

Grigsby, i, 27-28.

985

Ib., 25.

986

The Jockey Club was holding its annual races at Richmond when the Constitutional Convention of 1788 convened. (Christian, 31.)

987

Grigsby, i. 31.

988

Humphrey Marshall, from the District of Kentucky, saw for the first time one number of the Federalist, only after he had reached the more thickly peopled districts of Virginia while on his way to the Convention. (ib., footnote to 31.)

989

George Nicholas to Madison, April 5, 1788; Writings: Hunt, v, footnote to p. 115.

990

"The most common and ostensible objection was that it [the Constitution] would endanger state rights and personal liberty – that it was too strong." (Humphrey Marshall, i, 285.)

991

Tyler, i, 142. Grigsby estimates that three fourths of the people of Virginia were opposed to the Constitution. (Grigsby, i, footnote to 160.)

992

Lee to Madison, Dec. 1787; Writings: Hunt, v, footnote to p. 88.

993

Madison's father to Madison, Jan. 30, 1788; Writings: Hunt, v, footnote to p. 105.

994

Madison to Jefferson, Feb. 19, 1788; ib., 103.

995

Henry to Lamb, June 9, 1788; Henry, ii, 342.

996

Minton Collins to Stephen Collins, March 16, 1788; Collins MSS., Lib. Cong.

997

Even Hamilton admitted this. "The framers of it [the Constitution] will have to encounter the disrepute of having brought about a revolution in government, without substituting anything that was worthy of the effort; they pulled down one Utopia, it will be said, to build up another." (Hamilton to Washington, Sept., 1788; Hamilton's Works: Lodge, ix, 444; and also in Jefferson, Writings: Ford, xi, footnote to 330.) Martin Van Buren describes the action of the Federal Convention that framed the Constitution, in "having … set aside the instructions of Congress by making a new Constitution … an heroic but lawless act." (Van Buren, 49-50.)

Professor Burgess does not overstate the case when he declares: "Had Julius or Napoleon committed these acts [of the Federal Convention in framing and submitting the Constitution], they would have been pronounced coups d'état." (Burgess, i, 105.)

Also see Beard: Econ. I. C., 217-18.

998

Ford: P. on C., 14.

999

Ib., 100-01.

1000

Ford: P. on C., 284-85. And see Jameson, 40-49.

1001

Washington to Lafayette, Sept. 18, 1788; Writings: Sparks, ix, 265.

1002

Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware had practically no ports and, under the Confederation, were at the mercy of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania in all matters of trade. The Constitution, of course, remedied this serious defect. Also, these smaller States had forced the compromise by which they, with their comparatively small populations, were to have an equal voice in the Senate with New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with their comparatively great populations. And therefore they would have practically equal weight in the law – and treaty-making power of the Government. This was the most formidable of the many rocks on which the Federal Convention all but broke up.

1003

One proposition was to call the State Convention "within ten days." (See "Address of the Minority of the Pennsylvania Convention," in McMaster and Stone, 458.)

1004

Ib., 3-4; and see ib., 75. An excuse for these mob methods was that the Legislature previously had resolved to adjourn sine die on that very day. This would put off action until the next session. The Anti-Constitutionalists urged – with entire truthfulness – that even this delay would give the people too little time to inform themselves upon the "New Plan" of government, as it was called, which the Convention was to pass upon in the people's name. "Not one in twenty know anything about it." (Mr. Whitehall in debate in the Legislature; ib., 32.)

1005

McMaster and Stone, 459-60. This charge was wholly accurate. Both sides exerted themselves to carry the "election." The Anti-Constitutionalists declared that they stood for "the principles of the Revolution"; yet, asserts Graydon, who was at Reading at the time, they sought the support of the Tories; the country lawyers were opposed to the "New Plan" and agreed not "to practice or accept any office under the Constitution"; but the Constitutionalists promised "prothonotaryships, attorney generalships, chief justiceships, and what not," and the hostile attorneys "were tempted and did eat." Describing the spirit of the times, Graydon testifies that "pelf was a better goal than liberty and at no period in my recollection was the worship of Mammon more widely spread, more sordid and disgusting."

Everybody who wanted it had a military title, that of major being "the very lowest that a dasher of any figure would accept." To "clap on a uniform and a pair of epaulettes, and scamper about with some militia general for a day or two" was enough to acquire the coveted rank. Thus, those who had never been in the army, but "had played a safe and calculating game" at home and "attended to their interests," were not only "the men of mark and consideration," but majors, colonels, and generals as well. (Graydon, 331-33.)

Noting, at a later time, this passion for military titles Weld says: "In every part of America a European is surprised at finding so many men with military titles … but no where … is there such a superfluity of these military personages as in the little town of Staunton; there is hardly a decent person in it … but what is a colonel, a major, or a captain." (Weld, i, 236-37.)

Such were the conditions in the larger towns when the members of the Pennsylvania Convention were chosen. The small vote cast seems to justify the charge that the country districts and inaccessible parts of the State did not even know of the election.

1006

McMaster and Stone, 503-04.