The Critical Period of American History

Paterson was ably answered by James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, who pointed out the absurdity of giving 180,000 men in one part of the country as much weight in the national legislature as 750,000 in another part. It is unjust, he said. "The gentleman from New Jersey is candid. He declares his opinions boldly. I commend him for it. I will be equally candid… I never will confederate on his principles." The convention grew nervous and excited over this seemingly irreconcilable antagonism. The discussion was kept up with much learning and acuteness by Madison, Ellsworth, and Martin, and history was ransacked for testimony from the Amphiktyonic Council to Old Sarum, and back again to the Lykian League. Madison, rightly reading the future, declared that if once the proposed union should be formed, the real danger would come not from the rivalry between large and small states, but from the antagonistic interests of the slave-holding and non-slaveholding states. Hamilton pointed out that in the state of New York five counties had a majority of the representatives, and yet the citizens of the other counties were in no danger of tyranny, as the laws have an equal operation upon all. Rufus King called attention to the fact that the rights of Scotland were secure from encroachments, although her representation in Parliament was necessarily smaller than that of England. But New Jersey and Delaware, mindful of recent grievances, were not to be argued down or soothed. Gunning Bedford of Delaware was especially violent. "Pretences to support ambition," said he, "are never wanting. The cry is, Where is the danger? and it is insisted that although the powers of the general government will be increased, yet it will be for the good of the whole; and although the three great states form nearly a majority of the people of America, they never will injure the lesser states. Gentlemen, I do not trust you. If you possess the power, the abuse of it could not be checked; and what then would prevent you from exercising it to our destruction?.. Sooner than be ruined, there are foreign powers who will take us by the hand. I say this not to threaten or intimidate, but that we should reflect seriously before we act." This language called forth a rebuke from Rufus King. "I am concerned," said he, "for what fell from the gentleman from Delaware, —take a foreign power by the hand! I am sorry he mentioned it, and I hope he is able to excuse it to himself on the score of passion."

The Connecticut compromise.

The situation had become dangerous. "The convention," said Martin, "was on the verge of dissolution, scarce held together by the strength of a hair." When things were looking darkest, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman suggested a compromise. "Yes," said Franklin, "when a joiner wishes to fit two boards, he sometimes pares off a bit from both." The famous Connecticut compromise led the way to the arrangement which was ultimately adopted, according to which the national principle was to prevail in the House of Representatives, and the federal principle in the Senate. But at first the compromise met with little favour. Neither party was willing to give way. "No compromise for us," said Luther Martin. "You must give each state an equal suffrage, or our business is at an end." "Then we are come to a full stop," said Roger Sherman. "I suppose it was never meant that we should break up without doing something." When the question as to allowing equality of suffrage to the states in the Federal Senate was put to vote, the result was a tie. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland – five states – voted in the affirmative; Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina – five states – voted in the negative; the vote of Georgia was divided and lost. It was Abraham Baldwin, a native of Connecticut and lately a tutor in Yale College, a recent emigrant to Georgia, who thus divided the vote of that state, and prevented a decision which would in all probability have broken up the convention. His state was the last to vote, and the house was hushed in anxious expectation, when this brave and wise young man yielded his private conviction to what he saw to be the paramount necessity of keeping the convention together. All honour to his memory!

The moral effect of the tie vote was in favour of the Connecticut compromise; for no one could doubt that the little states, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, had they been represented in the division, would have voted upon that side. The matter was referred to a committee as impartially constituted as possible, with Elbridge Gerry as chairman; and On the 5th of July, after a recess of three days, the committee reported in favour of the compromise. Fresh objections on the part of the large states were now offered by Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, and gloom again overhung the convention. Gerry said that, while he did not fully approve of the compromise, he had nevertheless supported it, because he felt sure that if nothing were done war and confusion must ensue, the old confederation being already virtually at an end. George Mason observed that "it could not be more inconvenient for any gentleman to remain absent from his private affairs than it was for him; but he would bury his bones in that city rather than expose his country to the consequences of a dissolution of the convention." Mason's subsequent behaviour was hardly in keeping with the promise of this brave speech, and in Gerry we shall observe like inconsistency. At present a timely speech from Madison soothed the troubled waters; but it was only after eleven days of somewhat more tranquil debate that the compromise was adopted on the 16th of July. Even then it was but narrowly secured. The ayes were Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina, – five states; the noes were Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, – four states; Gerry and Strong against King and Gorham divided the vote of Massachusetts, which was thus lost. New York, for reasons presently to be stated, was absent. It is accordingly to Elbridge Gerry and Caleb Strong that posterity are indebted for here preventing a tie, and thus bringing the vexed question to a happy issue.

According to the compromise secured with so much difficulty, it was arranged that in the lower house population was to be represented, and in the upper house the states, each of which, without regard to size, was forever to be entitled to two senators. In the lower house there was to be one representative for every 40,000 inhabitants, but at Washington's suggestion the number was changed to 30,000, so as to increase the house, which then seemed likely to be too small in numbers. Some one suggested that with the growth of population that rate would make an unwieldy house within a hundred and fifty years from that time, whereat Gorham of Massachusetts laughed to scorn the idea that any system of government they could devise in that room could possibly last a hundred and fifty years. The difficulty has been surmounted by enlarging from time to time the basis of representation. It now seemed inadvisable that the senators should be chosen by the lower house out of persons nominated by the state legislatures; and it was accordingly decided that they should be not merely nominated, but elected, by the state legislatures. Thus the Senate was made quite independent of the lower house. At the same time, the senators were to vote as individuals, and thus the old practice of voting by states, except in certain peculiar emergencies, was finally done away with.

It was a decisive victory for Madison's scheme.

Irreconcilables go home.

It is seldom, if ever, that a political compromise leaves things evenly balanced. Almost every such arrangement, when once set working, weighs down the scales decidedly to the one side or the other. The Connecticut compromise was really a decisive victory for Madison and his party, although it modified the Virginia plan so considerably. They could well afford to defer to the fears and prejudices of the smaller states in the structure of the Senate, for by securing a lower house, which represented the American people, and not the American states, they won the whole battle in so far as the question of radically reforming the government was concerned. As soon as the foundation was thus laid for a government which should act directly upon individuals, it obviously became necessary to abandon the articles of confederation, and work out a new constitution in all its details. The plan, as now reported, omitted the obnoxious adjective "national," and spoke of the federal legislature and federal courts. But to the men who were still blindly wedded to the old confederation this soothing change of phraseology did not conceal their defeat. On the very day that the compromise was favourably reported by the committee, Yates and Lansing quit the convention in disgust, and went home to New York. After the departure of these uncongenial colleagues, Hamilton might have acted with power, had he not known too well that the sentiment of his state did not support him. As a mere individual he could do but little, and accordingly he went home for a while to attend to pressing business, returning just in time to take part in the closing scenes. His share in the work of framing the Federal Constitution was very small. About the time that Hamilton returned, Luther Martin, whose wrath had waxed hotter every day, as he saw power after power extended to the federal government, at length gave way and went back to Maryland, vowing that he would have nothing more to do with such high-handed proceedings.

While the Connecticut compromise thus scattered a few scintillations of discontent, and relieved the convention of some of its most discordant elements, its general effect was wonderfully harmonizing. The men who had opposed the Virginia plan only through their dread of the larger states were now more than conciliated. The concession of equal representation in the Senate turned out to have been a master stroke of diplomacy. As soon as the little states were assured of an equal share in the control of one of the two central legislative bodies, they suddenly forgot their scruples about thoroughly overhauling the government, and none were readier than they to intrust extensive powers to the new Congress. Paterson of New Jersey, the fiercest opponent of the Virginia plan, became from that time forth to the end of his life the most devoted of Federalists.

Other antagonisms; vague dread of the future west.

Antagonism between slave states and free states.

That first step which proverbially gives the most trouble had now been fairly taken. But other compromises were needed before the work of construction could properly be carried out. As the antagonism between great and small states disappeared from the scene, other antagonisms appeared. It is worth noting that just for a moment there was revealed a glimmering of jealousy and dread on the part of the eastern states toward those of which the foundations were laid in the northwestern territory. Many people in New England feared that their children would be drawn westward in such numbers as to create immense states beyond the Ohio; and thus it was foreseen that the relative political weight of New England in the future would be diminished. To a certain extent this prediction has been justified by events, but Roger Sherman rightly maintained that it afforded no just grounds for dread. King and Gerry introduced a most illiberal and mischievous motion, that the total number of representatives from new states must never be allowed to exceed the total number from the original thirteen. Such an arrangement, which would surely have been enough to create that antagonism between east and west which it sought to forestall and avoid, was supported by Massachusetts and Connecticut, with Delaware and Maryland; but it was defeated by the combination of New Jersey with the four states south of Maryland. The ground was thus cleared for a very different kind of sectional antagonism, – that which, as Madison truly said, would prove the most deep-seated and enduring of all, – the antagonism between north and south. The first great struggle between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties began in the Federal Convention, and it resulted in the first two of the long series of compromises by which the irrepressible conflict was postponed until the north had waxed strong enough to confront the dreaded spectre of secession, and, summoning all its energies in one stupendous effort, exorcise it forever. From this moment down to 1865 we shall continually be made to realize how the American people had entered into the shadow of the coming Civil War before they had fairly emerged from that of the Revolution; and as we pass from scene to scene of the solemn story, we shall learn how to be forever grateful for the sudden and final clearing of the air wrought by that frightful storm which men not yet old can still so well remember.

The first compromise related to the distribution of representatives between north and south. Was representation in the lower house of Congress to be proportioned to wealth, or to population; and if the latter, were all the inhabitants, or only all the free inhabitants, to be counted? It was soon agreed that wealth was difficult to reckon and population easy to count; and to an extent sufficient for all ordinary purposes, population might serve as an index of wealth. A state with 500,000 inhabitants would be in most cases richer than one with 400,000. In those days, when cities were few and small, this was approximately true. In our day it is not at all true. A state with large commercial and manufacturing cities is sure to be much richer than a state in which the population is chiefly rural. The population of Massachusetts is somewhat smaller than that of Indiana; but her aggregate wealth is more than double that of Indiana. Disparities like this, which do not trouble us to-day, would have troubled the Federal Convention. We no longer think it desirable to give political representation to wealth, or to anything but persons. We have become thoroughly democratic, but our great-grandfathers had not. To them it seemed quite essential that wealth should be represented as well as persons; but they got over the main difficulty easily, because under the economic conditions of that time population could serve roughly as an index to wealth, and it was much easier to count noses than to assess the value of farms and stock.

Were slaves to be reckoned as persons or as chattels?

But now there was in all the southern states, and in most of the northern, a peculiar species of collective existence, which might be described either as wealth or as population. As human beings the slaves might be described as population, but in the eye of the law they were chattels. In the northern states slavery was rapidly disappearing, and the property in negroes was so small as to be hardly worth considering; while south of Mason and Dixon's line this peculiar kind of property was the chief wealth of the states. But clearly, in apportioning representation, in sharing political power in the federal assembly, the same rule should have been applied impartially to all the states. At this point, Pierce Butler and Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina insisted that slaves were part of the population, and as such must be counted in ascertaining the basis of representation. A fierce and complicated dispute ensued. The South Carolina proposal suggested a uniform rule, but it was one that would scarcely alter the political weight of the north, while it would vastly increase the weight of the south; and it would increase it most in just the quarter where slavery was most deeply rooted. The power of South Carolina, as a member of the Union, would be doubled by such a measure. Hence the northern delegates maintained that slaves, as chattels, ought no more to be reckoned as part of the population than houses or ships. "Has a man in Virginia," exclaimed Paterson, "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 were to take place in a slave state, would the slaves vote? They would not. Why then should they be represented in a federal government?" "I can never agree," said Gouverneur Morris, "to give such encouragement to the slave-trade as would be given by allowing the southern states a representation for their negroes… I would sooner submit myself to a tax for paying for all the negroes in the United States than saddle posterity with such a constitution."

The three fifths compromise; a genuine English solution, if ever there was one.

The attitude taken by Virginia was that of peace-maker. On the one hand, such men as Washington, Madison, and Mason, who were earnestly hoping to see their own state soon freed from the curse of slavery, could not fail to perceive that if Virginia were to gain an increase of political weight from the existence of that institution, the difficulty of getting the state legislature to abolish it would be enhanced. But on the other hand, they saw that South Carolina was inexorable, and that her refusal to adopt the Constitution for this reason would certainly carry Georgia with her, and probably North Carolina, also. Even had South Carolina alone been involved, it was not simply a question of forming a Union which should either include her or leave her out in the cold. The case was much more complicated than that. It was really doubtful if, without the cordial assistance of South Carolina, a Union could be formed at all. A Federal Constitution had not only to be framed, but it had to be presented to the thirteen states for adoption. It was by no means clear that enough states would ratify it to enable the experiment of the new government to go into operation. New York and Rhode Island were known to be bitterly opposed to it; Massachusetts could not be counted on as sure; to add South Carolina to this list would be to endanger everything. The event justified this caution. We shall hereafter see that it was absolutely necessary to satisfy South Carolina, and that but for her ratification, coming just at the moment when it did, the work of the Federal Convention would probably have been done in vain. It was a clear perception of the wonderful complication of interests involved in the final appeal to the people that induced the Virginia statesmen to take the lead in a compromise. Four years before, in 1783, when Congress was endeavouring to apportion the quotas of revenue to be required of the several states, a similar dispute had arisen. If taxation were to be distributed according to population, it made a great difference whether slaves were to be counted as population or not. If slaves were to be counted, the southern states would have to pay more than their equitable share into the federal treasury; if slaves were not to be counted, it was argued at the north that they would be paying less than their equitable share. Consequently, at that time the north had been inclined to maintain that the slaves were population, while the south had preferred to regard them as chattels. Thus we see that in politics, as well as in algebra, it makes all the difference in the world whether you start with plus or with minus. On that occasion Madison had offered a successful compromise, in which a slave figured as three fifths of a freeman; and Rutledge of South Carolina, who was now present in the convention, had supported the measure. Madison now proposed the same method of getting over the difficulty about representation, and his compromise was adopted. It was agreed that in counting population, whether for direct taxation or for representation in the lower house of Congress, five slaves should be reckoned as three individuals.

In other words, it was the best solution attainable under the circumstances.

All this was thoroughly illogical, of course; it left the question whether slaves are population or chattels for theorizers to wrangle over, and for future events to decide. It was easy for James Wilson to show that there was neither rhyme nor reason in it: but he subscribed to it, nevertheless, just as the northern abolitionists, Rufus King and Gouverneur Morris, joined with Washington and Madison, and with the pro-slavery Pinckneys, in subscribing to it, because they all believed that without such a compromise the Constitution would not be adopted; and in this there can be little doubt that they were right. The evil consequences were unquestionably very serious indeed. Henceforth, so long as slavery lasted, the vote of a southerner counted for more than the vote of a northerner; and just where negroes were most numerous the power of their masters became greatest. In South Carolina there soon came to be more blacks than whites, and the application of the rule therefore went far toward doubling the vote of South Carolina in the House of Representatives and in the electoral college. Every five slaveholders down there were equal in political weight to not less than eight farmers or merchants in the north; and thus this troublesome state acquired a power of working mischief out of all proportion to her real size. At a later date the operation of the rule in Mississippi was similar; and in general it was just the most backward and barbarous parts of the Union that were thus favoured at the expense of the most civilized parts. Admitting all this, however, it remains undeniable that the Constitution saved us from anarchy; and there can be little doubt that slavery and every other remnant of barbarism in American society would have thriven far more lustily under a state of chronic anarchy than was possible under the Constitution. Four years of concentrated warfare, animated by an intense and lofty moral purpose, could not hurt the character or mar the fortunes of the people, like a century of aimless and miscellaneous squabbling over a host of petty local interests. The War of Secession was a terrible ordeal to pass through; but when one tries to picture what might have happened in this fair land without the work of the Federal Convention, the imagination stands aghast.

Compromise between New England and South Carolina as to the foreign slave-trade.

The second great compromise between northern and southern interests related to the abolition of the foreign slave-trade and the power of the federal government over commerce. All the states except South Carolina and Georgia wished to stop the importation of slaves; but the physical conditions of rice and indigo culture exhausted the negroes so fast that these two states felt that their industries would be dried up at the very source if the importation of fresh negroes were to be stopped. Cotesworth Pinckney accordingly declared that South Carolina would consider a vote to abolish the slave-trade as simply a polite way of telling her that she was not wanted in the Union. On the other hand, the three New England states present in the convention had made up their minds that it would not do to allow the several states any longer to regulate commerce each according to its own whim. It was of vital importance that this power should be taken from the states and lodged in Congress; otherwise, the Union would soon be rent in pieces by commercial disputes. The policy of New York had thoroughly impressed this lesson upon all the neighbouring states. But none of the southern states were in favour of granting this power unreservedly to Congress. If a navigation act could be passed by a simple majority in Congress, it was feared that the New Englanders would get all the carrying trade into their own hands, and then charge ruinous freights for carrying rice, indigo, and tobacco to the north and to Europe. On this point, accordingly, the southern delegates acted as a unit in insisting that Congress should not be empowered to pass navigation acts, except by a two thirds vote of both houses. This would have tied the hands of the federal government most unfortunately; and the New Englanders, enlightened by their own interests, saw it to be so. Here were the materials ready for a compromise, or, as the stout abolitionist, Gouverneur Morris, truly called it, a "bargain" between New England and the far south. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut consented to the prolonging of the foreign slave-trade for twenty years, or until 1808; and in return South Carolina and Georgia consented to the clause empowering Congress to pass navigation acts and otherwise regulate commerce by a simple majority of votes. At the same time, as a concession to rice and indigo, the New Englanders agreed that Congress should be forever prohibited from taxing exports; and thus one remnant of mediæval political economy was neatly swept away.