Penguin History of the United States of America (36 page)

The North-West Ordinance became the pattern by which all future territorial acquisitions were regulated, and it shows conclusively that the Confederation Congress could act wisely and effectively on some matters. But its diplomatic and military strength was nil; its financial affairs were hopeless. Under the Articles, Congress had as little power to tax American citizens as George III had after the repeal of the Stamp Act – less, in fact, since it could not even impose a duty on tea. It had to rely on the system of requisitions employed by the English government during the Seven Years War: that is, it asked the state governments for money and, if it was lucky, got some (it never got all it needed). Various unsuccessful attempts were made to solve the problem: one promising notion was the imposition of a 5 per cent import duty; unfortunately the Articles required the unanimous consent of the state assemblies to make such proposals effective, and the impost, as it was called, was always one state short of ratification. The strictest economy could not make up for the resultant shortage of funds, and brought other disadvantages. For instance, at one point the standing
army was reduced to eighty men. Even those Americans who most passionately distrusted this potential instrument of tyranny could see that this was an unsatisfactorily small force. Its numbers were allowed to grow; that of course meant that its cost rose too; even so it never became effective: during Shays’s Rebellion it was the Massachusetts militia which saved the Springfield arsenal, much to the mortification of General Knox, the Secretary of War.

By 1786, then, it was clear to all well-informed men (especially to those who had served in Congress) that the national government needed a thorough overhaul if it was ever to be worthy of the name. Not everybody wanted it to be worthy of the name: the smaller states were nervous about their future in a strengthened federation, and in all the states there was a reluctance to sacrifice the joys of quasi-independent power. In one sense American unity had weakened in the years since Lexington: Congress had come to exist almost on sufferance, as the mere instrument of the state governments, which ran themselves without interference – except from each other, and in some cases their bickering was getting out of hand. They erected customs barriers and taxed each other’s trade where possible: for example, New York imposed a tax on all vessels trading through her waters to New Jersey or Connecticut. This sort of thing generated a great deal of ill-feeling, leading some observers to expect an inter-state war in the near future.

The men who had fought the British regarded all this with ever-increasing dismay, but also with a determination not to let their achievements be undone. Far away in London John Adams wrote a long, able, ill-organized work on the principles of republican government, which at least forced its readers to think. Nearer at hand, Alexander Hamilton, so early as 1780, suggested that ‘a Convention of all the States, with full authority to conclude finally upon a General Confederation’ ought to be summoned. This was the plan eventually adopted, but political talents of a different order from Hamilton’s were required to bring it about.

Hamilton served in Congress in 1782–3. While there he got to know a promising Virginian, a few years his senior, a small, quiet man called James Madison (1751–1836). They struck up an alliance, for their strongly nationalist views were, at this period, largely identical, although Hamilton already favoured a much more powerful, aristocratic government than did Madison. For the rest, their talents were complementary. Hamilton was the more dazzling and eloquent, depending less on information than on intellectual power. Madison was deeply learned in public law and constitutional theory; a man of pellucid intellectual clarity; a most hard-working, conscientious public official, whether as a member of Congress or of the Virginian assembly; above all, a man whose human warmth and reliability won him friends and allies wherever he went. He was a consummate politician, and, as Jefferson’s right-hand man (they first joined forces in the strenuous and successful battle to disestablish the Anglican church in
Virginia), was always sure of good advice when his own subtlety failed him. It was he, more than anyone else, who made sure that when the opportunity for reform occurred it was seized. He began by bringing about a conference between Maryland and Virginia to settle problems arising out of the joint navigation of the river Potomac. The conference did little for the Potomac navigation, but it popularized the idea that a larger conference, between all the states, might be useful in sorting out the Union’s commercial entanglements. Virginia sent out an invitation to the other states to meet at Annapolis, Maryland, in September 1786 to confer on ‘the trade of the United States’. Only five states in the end sent delegations, but that was all to the good. Hamilton and Madison were among those present; so was Edmund Randolph, a cousin of Jefferson, governor of Virginia, and much influenced by Madison. Thanks to Madison’s diplomatic skill Hamilton was induced to write a moderate, and therefore acceptable, letter to the states arguing that the problems of trade could never be solved until the Articles of Confederation were re-drafted; and Randolph approved it. Hamilton’s document called for a convention, to meet at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May 1787. Its purpose was

to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear… necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union; and to report an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled as, when agreed to by them and afterwards confirmed by the Legislatures of every State, will effectually provide for the same.

The three clever young men then persuaded their nine colleagues at Annapolis to adopt this report; and went home to persuade the state governments too.

At this point Shays’s Rebellion occurred. For a moment all, or almost all, were convinced: Mr Madison’s scheme must be given a trial. Twelve states (Rhode Island was the exception) agreed to send delegates to Philadelphia; Congress approved the plan; and on 14 May 1787 the convention officially opened.

It was a unique occasion in American history (indeed, it is not easy to think of a parallel anywhere: perhaps the closest is the Council of Nicaea). It was the crowning act of the American Revolution; next to the decision for independence, it was the most important; and it was a huge, though not unqualified, success. Add to this the personnel of the convention, and it is not surprising that Americans have traditionally regarded it with religious awe. Thomas Jefferson, the American minister in Paris, set the tone when he wrote from afar that ‘it is really an assembly of demigods’ (a remark which he later regretted). At times the air of reverence has grown so thick as to be stifling, notably at the end of the nineteenth century; this in turn has provoked a healthily sceptical reaction. Still, the truth must not be
overlooked: the constitutional convention of 1787 was indeed an astonishing and impressive affair; history’s business is to characterize and explain its success, not to question it.

The problem that the delegates had to solve was daunting but finite: how to devise a permanent framework for the government of the American nation. So put, it is obvious that one of the reasons for their success was that this problem had been in the offing ever since the foundation of Jamestown. Various expedients had been tried, including substantially complete independence for each new settlement (during the seventeenth century) and government from Westminster (during the eighteenth); their failure had convinced almost all Americans that their future must lie together, as one confederated body politic. Even during the convention, various other suggestions would be made, but usually only as debating points. The great decision was implicit in the history of the previous 180 years and had been amply confirmed by the events of the Revolution: the United States would be a nation. The framers of a new constitution would only have to settle the details.

Their success in this task was undoubtedly due to their own exceptional qualifications for the work. The political and social conditions which had bred such a generation of wise, capable and public-spirited men have already been sufficiently described: the long experiment in self-government, whether as attempted in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania or Virginia, now reached its logical culmination. Equally important was the personal experience of the delegates. They were not a random group, but the cream of the Revolutionary leadership. There were some notable absentees: Jefferson; Adams; Patrick Henry, who was elected, but refused to serve, explaining later that he smelt a rat; Sam Adams, who was not elected. But for the rest, the great makers of the Revolution were all present, from John Dickinson, who had attended the Stamp Act Congress, to Rufus King of Massachusetts, one of the chief architects of the North-West Ordinance. Alexander Hamilton was a New York delegate. Connecticut had sent a strong team, dominated by Roger Sherman, who according to Jefferson never said a foolish thing in his life: he had signed the Declaration of Independence. But for star quality, no state could rival the Pennsylvanian and Virginian delegations. Pennsylvania sent its President, Dr Franklin, now a martyr to gout and stone, but still alert and acute; James Wilson, Scottish-born, one of the ablest men in the convention; Gouverneur Morris, one of the most forceful; and Robert Morris (no relation), who had suffered nearly as much in his attempts to handle the finances of the Revolutionary War as had Washington in the field, and for the same reasons. Virginia sent Washington himself (it had taken the most earnest efforts of Randolph and Madison to persuade the General to accept his election); George Mason, the patriarch of the state’s politics, the indispensable adviser of his more visible countrymen, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison; Edmund Randolph; and James Madison. The convention was a surprisingly young body: nearly half its members
were under forty, and one, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, was under thirty. But almost all of them had been seasoned in the great drama of the Revolution. In the early days of their deliberations the learned Madison showed a tendency to dwell on the lessons to be derived from the Amphictyonic League of ancient Greece; but such musty reasoning was never usual and was soon almost entirely abandoned. Instead the records of the convention are full of allusions to American experience, whether before or after independence; at war or at peace; at state or at national level. These veterans of the army, of the Continental Congress, of the Revolutionary state assemblies and of high diplomacy had been too profoundly shaped by their service ever to forget that what they produced must fit Americans, and be justifiable in terms of the American experience and American aspirations. Only Alexander Hamilton, the high flyer, wasted the convention’s time by orating at length on the beauty of principles that had no chance of popular acceptance. The rest were intensely practical, though some of them wasted time in other ways: Luther Martin, of Maryland, brilliant, drunken, was a notable bore.

Many of them had worked together before; if they had not, they quickly learned how, for they knew the value of time, the necessary arts of compromise and the importance of not expecting other people to be angels. In many cases they were agreeably surprised to find that colleagues from strange parts of the country were as sensible as themselves. The convention’s deliberations were secret, and were not published in any form for twenty years afterwards; this meant that there was no temptation to play to the gallery. There was comparatively little loss of temper, and no discourtesy.

What above all helped the business along was the fact that these were revolutionaries who wanted their revolution to succeed for ever. Their basic agreement on the meaning and purpose of the American Revolution was complete; they were all nationalists and republicans, and most of them were on the way to becoming democrats. They could debate practicalities so incessantly because they shared the same principles. There was no ideological rift, no left, right and centre. In fact it is extremely difficult to settle who was conservative and who progressive at the convention: everyone seemed to be both. They all dreaded ‘anarchy and confusion’ (another recurrent phrase), which would result if the Articles were not reformed; they all believed, with George Washington, in a ‘Government of respectability under which life, liberty, and property will be secured to us’. In their own opinion they were radical, for were they not aspiring to consolidate the old Whig programme, deriving from the Puritan Commonwealth, and dispense with kings, nobles, militarism and privilege? To us they seem conservative, for they did not propose to remodel the foundations of society. Whichever description is apter, there is no doubt that it covers them all.

But their agreement was not perfect, which was also all to the good. They represented the variousness of America, as well as her unity; probably each of them had to sacrifice some cherished belief or proposal before agreement
was possible. For the convention was wiser than any one of its members, since no one member could know the American people and the American continent as well as the whole did. Only by long discussion could it become clear whether a particular idea would be acceptable throughout the republic. It had to be chewed over by men from the North as well as from the South, by men from small states as well as men from large, by men from the country as well as men from towns. What finally emerged, after nearly four months’ debate, stood a very good chance of being acceptable to the people, for it had been thoroughly tested in argument by men who were truly their representatives. If one single explanation of the durability of the Constitution is needed, this is it.

All through May the delegates drifted into Philadelphia: a quorum was finally formed on the twenty-fifth. George Washington was promptly and unanimously elected President of the convention, a post which he accepted in his usual anxious style, sure that he was unfit for it. As usual he was a great success, and the prestige of the convention and its product owed not a little to the fact that Washington, of all Americans the most universally trusted, had in this fashion lent it his prestige. Franklin’s presence was an asset too, though the Doctor was now too old to make any great mark on the proceedings: his chief contribution was to keep people in a good humour with his sayings, jokes and stories.