TGC 8525 - America's Founding Fathers Guidebook PDF

Topic Subtopic
History American History
America’s Founding
Fathers
Course Guidebook
Professor Allen C. Guelzo
Gettysburg College
Smithsonian®
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ALLEN C. GUELZO, PH.D.
HENRY R. LUCE PROFESSOR OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA
DIRECTOR OF CIVIL WAR ERA STUDIES
GETTYSBURG COLLEGE
A and the Director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College in

llen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from

the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Guelzo is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President

and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America,
both of which won Gettysburg College’s Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
and the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s
Annual Book Award. He is also the
author of a volume of essays entitled
Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas,
which won an Award of Merit from
the Illinois State Historical Society.
Professor Guelzo’s other books include
Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates
That Defined America; Lincoln: A
Very Short Introduction; and Fateful
Lightning: A New History of the Civil
War and Reconstruction. His book on
the Battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg:
The Last Invasion, spent eight weeks
on the New York Times best-seller list
and won several awards, including the
Lincoln Prize for 2014, the inaugural
Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military
i
History, the Civil War Round Table of New York’s Fletcher Pratt Award,
and the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta’s Richard Barksdale Harwell
Book Award. Professor Guelzo’s most recent publication, Redeeming the
Great Emancipator, originated as the 2012 Nathan I. Huggins Lectures at
Harvard University.
Professor Guelzo has written for The New York Times, The Washington
Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian
Science Monitor, First Things, U.S. News & World Report, The Weekly
Standard, National Review, The Daily Beast, the Claremont Review
of Books, and Books & Culture. He has also been featured on NPR’s
Weekend Edition Sunday and On Point, The Daily Show, Meet the Press’s
PRESS Pass, and Brian Lamb’s Booknotes.
From 2006 to 2013, Professor Guelzo served as a member of the National

Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2016, he
received the James Q. Wilson Award for Distinguished Scholarship on the
Nature of a Free Society. He is also one of Power Line’s 100 top professors
in America.
Professor Guelzo’s other Great Courses include Making History: How Great
Historians Interpret the Past; The American Revolution; The American
Mind; Mr. Lincoln: The Life of Abraham Lincoln; and The History of the
United States, 2nd Edition, which he team-taught with Professors Patrick N.
Allitt and Gary W. Gallagher.
Professor Guelzo lives in Paoli and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with his

wife, Debra. ■
ii
ABOUT OUR PARTNER
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ounded in 1846, the Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum
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the Smithsonian has embarked on four Grand Challenges that describe
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Valuing World Cultures, and Understanding the American Experience.
The Smithsonian’s partnership with The Great Courses is an engaging
opportunity to encourage continuous exploration by learners of all ages
across these diverse areas of study.
Designed as a chronological narrative and richly supported by images

and artifacts from the Smithsonian’s unparalleled collections of historical
Americana, this course, America’s Founding Fathers, takes you from the
closing days of the American Revolution to the opening decades of the United
States under the newly created U.S. Constitution. The Founding Fathers
highlighted in this course were each integral to what makes the Constitution
the complex document it is today. Each profile of these historic figures is
supplemented in the video with historic portraits from Smithsonian’s National
Portrait Gallery as well as important historical documents and artifacts
from the National Museum of American History, giving a human dimension
to such near-mythical figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. This course offers something few
other historical surveys can: the combination of a dynamic professor with the
unrivaled American history collections and expertise of the Smithsonian. ■
America's Founding Fathers iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Professor Biography.............................................................................i
Foreword.......................................................................................... viii
Scope..................................................................................................1
Lecture Guides
Lecture 1
George Washington’s Doubts��3
Lecture 2
Thomas Mifflin’s Congress�� 11
Lecture 3
Robert Morris’s Money��19
Lecture 4
Benjamin Franklin’s Leather Apron��27
Lecture 5
Thomas Jefferson’s Books��36
Lecture 6
Daniel Shays’s Misbehavior��45
Lecture 7
Alexander Hamilton’s Republic��53
Lecture 8
James Madison’s Conference��62
iv Table of Contents
Lecture 9
Patrick Henry’s Religion��71
Lecture 10
James Madison’s Vices��79
Lecture 11
Edmund Randolph’s Plan��87
Lecture 12
William Paterson’s Dissent��94
Lecture 13
Roger Sherman’s Compromise��102
Lecture 14
Elbridge Gerry’s Committee�� 110
Lecture 15
James Wilson’s Executive�� 118
Lecture 16
John Rutledge’s Committee��125
Lecture 17
Rufus King’s Slaves��132
Lecture 18
David Brearley’s Postponed Parts��140
Lecture 19
John Dunlap and David Claypoole’s Broadside��148
Lecture 20
Alexander Hamilton’s Papers��156
Lecture 21
Patrick Henry’s Convention��165
Lecture 22
George Washington’s Inaugural��173
America's Founding Fathers v

Lecture 23
Alexander Hamilton’s Reports��181
Lecture 24
Thomas Jefferson’s Party��190
Lecture 25
William Findley’s Whiskey��198
Lecture 26
Benjamin Banneker’s Survey��207
Lecture 27
John Jay’s Treaty��215
Lecture 28
John Adams’s Liberty��224
Lecture 29
Hector Saint John de Crèvecoeur’s Americans��233
Lecture 30
Timothy Dwight’s Religion��240
Lecture 31
James McHenry’s Army��247
Lecture 32
Thomas Jefferson’s Frustration��255
Lecture 33
Aaron Burr’s Treason��263
Lecture 34
John Marshall’s Court��271
Lecture 35
James Madison’s War��279
Lecture 36
Alexis de Tocqueville’s America��288
vi Table of Contents
Supplemental Material
Bibliography��297
Image Credits��308
America's Founding Fathers vii

THE ORDER OF HISTORY:
THE IMPORTANCE OF POLITICS
IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC
David C. Ward
SENIOR HISTORIAN
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
I relocated from his native Maryland to Philadelphia. The move was

n 1776, that most significant year, the artist Charles Willson Peale
significant for Peale personally, as he expanded his practice of portraiture

from the wealthy gentry to the political leadership that had gathered
in Philadelphia to create the contours of the American republic. Peale
was recognizing an opportunity to create public portraiture that would
support not just the careers of individuals but the emerging American
revolutionary cause.
Peale would soon become one of the foremost portraitists of American

political and public life. He painted the first portrait of George Washington
at Mount Vernon in 1772, and he built on this relationship to create
several extensive portrait series on the Father of His Country. Peale was
especially assiduous at commemorating Washington as a military leader,
not least because the artist had fought under the general during the New
Jersey campaign.
For Peale, the portraits were a means to a livelihood, of course, but they
also spoke to his own commitment to the revolutionary cause: Peale was
also active in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania politics. Peale’s portraits of
the revolutionary generation, while celebrating the personal virtues and
heroic achievements of individuals, went far to the creation of a civic
or public celebration of those men. Private and public ambitions and
viii Foreword
achievements merged in
Peale’s handsome effigies
in a way that the Founders
understood: The appetite
for fame (or fama, to give
the term its classical root
in the political ideology of
antiquity) was justified when
it was directed to a larger
societal purpose. Moreover,
in a revolutionary ideology
founded on individualism,
the achievements of the
individual would be given
their full artistic appreciation
within an evolving pantheon
of American heroes.
CHARLES WILLSON PEALE

When placed in Peale’s
(1741–1827)
Philadelphia Museum, which
opened to the public in 1786, the
revolutionary generation was shown above the natural history specimens,
indicating humankind’s superiority to nature as well as the rationalist belief
that all things could be known and understood. Peale’s arrangement
was a heuristic model for the good society, and the museum was
explicitly intended to create good citizens. Paradoxically, though, Peale’s
arrangement of the portraits, especially over time, drained them of their
historicity and decontextualized them from the dramatic events that led to
the creation of the United States.
So long as political history was the dominant mode of the profession,

portraits served as illustrative signposts of the nation’s political evolution
for historians. But by the mid-20th century, political history had fallen
dramatically out of fashion. By the turn of the 21st century, it was not even
part of the history curricula at most colleges and universities. During
the 1960s, as historians pursued a “history from the bottom up,” paying
attention to the lives of working men and women of all races, both free and
America's Founding Fathers ix

enslaved, the very existence of fine art portraiture was taken as evidence of
the rule of elite, privileged white men—the phrase “great white fathers” was
not coined as a compliment. Political history had suffered the worst fate of
all: It was dull.
After World War II, the humanities in America, especially history,

undoubtedly needed a shake-up. Under the impact of the first American
studies movement and then the influence of the new social history
in England that pioneered the study of the lives of labor, the range and
scope of historical inquiry was widened and deepened. However, that this
should occur alongside and perhaps cause the decay of political history
was unfortunate. The spine of political history, which had always provided
an armature for scholars around which they could skein their narratives,
was lost. But political history was partially culpable in its own demise: It
had become a dry recitation of facts about seemingly arcane issues (the
tariff, the coinage, political patronage) whose salience was inadequately
conveyed to anyone outside a narrow range of specialists.
Fortunately, it appears that we are in the midst of a revival of the fortunes of

political history, not least by historians who are eager to link political to social
issues. Moreover, there has even been a revived interest in biography. The
American public has always hungered to read about exemplary lives, and
for scholars, the examination of a specific life is still the most efficient entry
point into the past, charting the wider contours of a society against the
index of an individual’s trajectory.
This preamble necessarily simplifies (or even distorts) a complicated

process in American intellectual history. But it is intended to give a backdrop
to Professor Allen Guelzo’s lively, insightful, and engaging survey of the
people and politics of the formative years of the American Republic. First,
what Guelzo’s lectures confirm is the importance of style to the scholar—
and the audience. As history, in the late 19th century, became more objective,
“scientific,” and professionalized, there was a conscious campaign to make
scholarly writing dry, colorless, and certainly unemotional, encouraging
presentations that actively discouraged a wider readership. Gulezo’s
lively, opinionated, and insightful pen portraits are evidence of a welcome
reverse trend.
x Foreword
To say that Guelzo is opinionated is only to say that he argues forcefully
from the evidence, not that he permits a personal political point of view
to drive his narrative. He generally plays things down the middle, basing
his narrative on the words of his subjects and explicating the specific
arguments that animated the large questions that confronted the nation’s
leaders. (He also brings in artifacts of material culture and art, including
portraiture, not only to illuminate specific points but also to establish more
general linkages between the personal and the political.)
Such issues include, but are not limited to, the relationship between the city
and the countryside, the beginnings of national fiscal and economic policy,
and, above all, the overwhelming problem of slavery. That question would,
of course, permeate the American 19th century, from politics to culture to
manners and mores—the world that the protean revolutionary generation,
so ably depicted by Allen Guelzo, brought into being. ■
America's Founding Fathers xi

xii
SCOPE
G towards corruption” and must be rescued “at certain periods by the

overnments, said Samuel Johnson, are “perpetually degenerating
resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original

constitution.” The creators of the U.S. Constitution were contemporaries of
the great Dr. Johnson, and they would not have disagreed. The question,
however, is what method to use in paying that visit to our “first principles.”
It’s been done by legal analysis, by comparative government studies, and
even by philosophy. This course, however, uses a different method—
biography—to answer the following questions: Who were the Founders?
How did their lives shape their ideas, and how did those ideas get a hearing
in the creation of the new American republic?
This course begins with George Washington, the indispensable man

of our novus ordo seclorum (“new order in the heavens”). But it takes in
the lives and contributions of both the prominent and the obscure, the
brilliant and, on several occasions, the downright fraudulent. The course
considers James Madison, often called the father of the Constitution, as
well as Patrick Henry, who did his best to obstruct him. It also examines
Alexander Hamilton, who almost singlehandedly laid down the architecture
of the American economy, and Thomas Jefferson, who tried—and failed—
to stop him. The course also includes important figures who have faded
over time but deserve some dusting off: the hesitant Edmund Randolph;
the rakish and one-legged Gouverneur Morris; Roger Sherman, simple
but shrewd; James Wilson, the greatest lawyer in America; and Benjamin
Banneker, the African American surveyor. Over the course of 36 lectures,
there are preachers, such as Timothy Dwight (lecture 30); judges, such as
John Marshall (lecture 34); and even printers, such as David Claypoole
and John Dunlap (lecture 19), who printed the first broadside copies of the
Constitution. But there are also the scoundrels: Aaron Burr (lecture 33),
the chief of American scoundrels; Thomas Mifflin (lecture 2), a political
scoundrel; and Daniel Shays (lecture 6), the Massachusetts rebel.
America's Founding Fathers 1

Each lecture that makes up this course takes one of these Founders as
its target, using that individual’s principles, ambitions, foibles, suspicions,
and words to create a whole picture of the Americans who fashioned
our “first principles.” In the first six lectures, you will meet (in addition to
George Washington), Thomas Mifflin, Robert Morris, Ben Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson, and Daniel Shays and learn from them how the ending of the
American Revolution in 1783 only seemed to increase the anxieties of
these Americans about their future. The following four lectures set up
the solutions proposed by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and
Patrick Henry.
Over the course of lectures 11 through 18, the eyes of Edmund Randolph,
James Wilson, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, William Paterson, and
David Brearley will be used to watch the Constitutional Convention
slowly weld together a new government for the republic and then move
through the next four lectures to understand how and why people as well
intentioned as Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton could take such
violently different positions on whether to ratify the Constitution. For the
next 14 lectures, you will discover how George Washington, John Adams,
Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison struggled as presidents to bring
the Constitution to bear on the problems of the republic. In the process, you
will watch John Jay craft an important but controversial treaty (lecture 27),
sober up with William Findley and the challenge of the Whiskey Rebellion
(lecture 25), admire James McHenry for creating an army (lecture 31), and
wince as Aaron Burr commits treason (lecture 33). The course will end
with a retrospective, using the observations of a French visitor, Alexis de
Tocqueville, to see what the finished product of the Founders’ work looked
like (lecture 36).
They are quite a gang: Rufus King, attacking slavery in lecture 17;
Robert Morris, lending money in lecture 3; Hector Crèvecoeur, praising
“this new man, the American” in lecture 29. Together, they form maybe
the most collectively gifted lineup of saints and sinners that ever lived in
one generation and in one place. You’ll meet them all, and those “first
principles,” in this course. ■
2 Scope
Lecture 1
GEORGE
WASHINGTON’S
DOUBTS
T operating instrument of government in the

he U.S. Constitution is the oldest continuously
world. Since the Constitution was ratified in

1788, we have undergone a civil war and two
world wars, industrialization on a vast scale,
and the emergence of a society whose sheer
diversity exceeds anything since the days of the
Roman Empire. Yet many believe that whenever
we encounter some unprecedented crisis or
problem in American life and develop a novel way
of responding to it, the Constitution prohibits it.
Indeed, those who wrote the constitution were all
white, reasonably wealthy men, who wore knee
britches and buckle shoes. We might well ask
what mysterious power they should have over a
generation six times removed from them.
3
WHO WERE THE FOUNDERS?
¾¾ Almost from the beginning, the men who wrote the U.S.
Constitution—and the document they produced—have been
accorded an almost mystical reverence, but who were these men
who created the Constitution? Were they the offspring of the gods,
like Hercules? Were they mythical progenitors of great dynasties
and states, like Aeneas, or mighty conquerors, like Alexander?
The answer to all these questions is: Don’t be silly.
¾¾ Some of these men were dignified, but others were small and
tending toward hypochondria, such as James Madison. Some
were wise beyond their years when they sat down to write—
and none more so than Alexander Hamilton—and some were a
disaster almost every time they stood up and spoke off-the-cuff—
which brings Hamilton to mind again.
¾¾ Some of them hated each other; John Adams and Benjamin

Franklin had all the fellow-feeling of Sherlock Holmes and
Professor Moriarty. Some of them saw friendships of many years
break up over the Constitution, while others who disagreed
violently over the Constitution somehow managed to remain close.
They had both clay feet and golden minds, and it was the rare bird
in this flock who was entirely one or the other.
¾¾ What may be a real mystery for us is who we should actually

include in this unusual company. We speak of these men as the
Framers, the Founders, or even the Founding Fathers. But the
founding of the American Republic was a process that involved
more than writing the Constitution; it included the Continental
Congress, which guided American affairs during the Revolution,
negotiated with foreign allies, and wrote the Declaration and the
peace treaty that made us an independent nation.
¾¾ By various counts, such as signers of the Declaration, we come up

with a variety of names of the Founders, including John Adams,
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris, and John
4 Lecture 1 • George Washington’s Doubts

Witherspoon. But we also omit some of those who seem to be
vital, such as George Washington, James Madison, Alexander
Hamilton, and others. And our list would also include some
peculiar names we may never have heard.
¾¾ Putting together various signing lists, we end up with some

overlapping areas that encompass a few prominent names
intermittently popping up, surrounded by a large population of
here-today-gone-tomorrow mediocrities. In this course, we will
look at many well-known figures and some who are not quite so
well-known but proved indispensable to the founding, including
William Paterson, Elbridge Gerry, Thomas Mifflin, Daniel Shays,
Edmund Randolph, and James McHenry. Each lecture will be built
around a single Founder, will illustrate a particular challenge, and
will show how that individual struggled to come to terms with it.
¾¾ We will cast our net widely in terms of a timeframe, as well,

bracketing not just the Constitutional Convention and the ratification
of the Constitution but the overall planting-time of the republic,
from the ambiguities and dislocations at the end of the Revolution
and the Articles of Confederation, through the Constitutional
Convention, to the great tests of the “successful administering” of
the Constitution in the presidential administrations of Washington,
Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.
¾¾ We’ll close with a figure who wasn’t even an American citizen,

Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured the United States in 1831 to
1832 to gather material for his great study, Democracy in America.
We will let Tocqueville be the voice who provides an answer to the
question with which the course begins: Would the “experiment” in
creating a republic—a government based on the consent of the
governed rather than the authority of kings—really work?
¾¾ We’ll hear first from a voice that posed that question once the battle
smoke of the Revolution had blown away and a treaty of peace
had been signed with Britain—a voice belonging to someone
whose claim to be a Founder hardly even needs to be explained,

GEORGE WASHINGTON
(1732–1799)
much less defended—the voice of George Washington. But even

Washington had his doubts about whether the whole enterprise
might turn out to be a fool’s errand.
WASHINGTON ON THE REPUBLIC
¾¾ Washington was ordinarily not a man given to much self-searching

and was privately embarrassed in the company of lawyers and

scholars. “I have not leisure to turn my thoughts to commentaries,”
he sighed in a letter in 1785, “a consciousness of defective
education, and a certainty of the want of time, unfit me for such
an undertaking.” Yet at age 53, he soared above the reputations of
all his fellow Americans as the soldier who had held off the British
for seven long years and ensured American independence, then
resigned it all to return to the life of a Virginia gentleman in peace.
¾¾ He might have remained in retirement at Mount Vernon, but in the

two years that had passed since his resignation as the commanding
general of the Continental Army, the “principles of republicanism”
were not wearing well. It had been one of the cardinal tenets of
the Enlightenment that republics, however much they be the most
natural form of human society, are also the most vulnerable.
For one thing, republics—unlike monarchies—are held

together by the virtue, public-spiritedness, and self-denial of
the people. Sovereignty, after all, rests in a republic with the
people, rather than with kings or nobles, and if the people
prove to be corrupt, selfish, and indolent, they will bring the
roof of their republic down on their heads faster than any
hostile emperor could.
Further, republics were supposed to work only on a relatively

small scale, like the city-state republics of Renaissance Italy,
the cantons of Switzerland, or the ancient Roman Republic.
Size dissipated the energies and fellow-feeling of republican
citizens and left large-scale republics open to internal tumult
and dissolution. It did not help, either, that the history of past
republics was a history of failure, tainted by the persistence
of hierarchy.
¾¾ What Washington saw in post-Revolutionary America made

him afraid on all three counts. With the end of the Revolution,
Americans found themselves released from the economic
constraints placed on them by the former British colonial overlords

and went on a binge of speculation and consumption. The bubble,
as bubbles always do, burst in the spring of 1784.
Five banking houses in London that had allowed Americans to

buy on credit went bust because Americans ran out of specie
(hard coin) with which to pay their debts; suddenly, American
merchants could buy nothing further and closed their own
doors. Credit collapsed, land values fell, mortgages defaulted,
and worst of all, the people behaved like savages instead of
republican citizens.
Nor did the Articles of Confederation, which had been ratified

as a governing instrument by the new United States in 1781,
have much power to deal with this sudden evaporation
of virtue. Based on the distaste for imperial rule they had
experienced under the British, the members of the Continental
Congress had deliberately created a minuscule government.
This might have been acceptable in a small Florentine republic
in the 15th century but did not promise much as a government
for a nation that included around 3.5 million people and close
to 900,000 square miles.
The Congress created by the Articles of Confederation had no

power to levy taxes on the states, which meant that the United
States had no reliable way of repaying its wartime debts to
bankers in Paris and Amsterdam; without that authority, no
one would lend to Americans.
Nor did the Confederation government have much sway

even closer to home; the 13 colonies that had thrown off
British allegiance in 1776 retained significant powers for
themselves, even as they became member-states in the
new Confederation—powers that they did not hesitate to
use against each other in economic disputes, in printing
worthless paper money to pay debts, and in enacting laws
that prevented sellers and lenders from collecting what they
were owed. This lethal combination of increased taxes and

a deflated currency produced misery, but debt-relief laws
passed by the state legislatures only jeopardized the future of
capital borrowing.
¾¾ This was not the kind of republicanism that Washington had fought
for. “Our Independence … our respectability and consequence in
Europe … our greatness as a Nation, hereafter, depend upon …
giving sufficient powers to Congress,” he warned in 1781.
Otherwise, “each Assembly, under its present Constitution, will
be annihilated, and we must once more return to the Government
of G: Britain.”
¾¾ Even after the peace treaty GEORGE WASHINGTON

with Britain was signed in 1783,
Washington wondered whether
“the want of energy in the
Federal government, the
pulling of one state and
party of states against
another and the commotion
amongst the Eastern
people have sunk our
national character much
below par” and “brought
our politics and credit to the
brink of a precipice.”
¾¾ The British government,

incensed at American defaults,
was threatening to retain control
over forts on the frontier that it
was supposed to have surrendered
under the peace treaty. “Notwithstanding
the boasted virtue of America,” Washington wrote in dismay to
John Jay, “it is more than probable that we shall exhibit the last
melancholy proof, that mankind are not competent to their own
Government without the means of coercion in the Sovereign.”

¾¾ What Washington was looking at was a catastrophe not just for
America but for the entire principle of government by a people
competent to administer their own affairs. But if reason and virtue
were not sufficient to guide the affairs of the American people,
what was? By 1786, the need to answer that question had become
the single greatest vexation of Washington’s life.
SUGGESTED READING
Bernstein, The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, chap. 1 and appendix.

Diggins, On Hallowed Ground, chaps. 2–3.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
1. What qualifies someone to be regarded as a Founder?
2. What made George Washington afraid for the future of the American
republic?

Lecture 2
THOMAS MIFFLIN’S
CONGRESS
W nine
e do not have long memories of the first
presidents, who all served under
the Constitution of 1781. In fact, before the
Revolutionary War was over, America had a
different constitution and a succession of different
presidents, who were, strictly speaking, presidents
of Congress. They had been elected by the
membership of the Congress created by America’s
first constitution, the Articles of Confederation.
Each served only a year’s term, and only one—
John Hancock—was necessarily memorable.
Third on this list was Thomas Mifflin. In this lecture,
we’ll learn about the problems Mifflin faced during
his year in office.
11
BACKGROUND ON MIFFLIN
¾¾ Mifflin was almost 40 on the day in 1783 when Washington

appeared before him in the Annapolis State House to resign as
general-in-chief of the army. Mifflin had been born into a well-
off family of Pennsylvania
Quakers who were torn
between the Quaker demand
for simplicity and self-denial
and a desire for Thomas to
enjoy the fairly substantial
collection of worldly goods his
industrious father had won for
the family.
Young Mifflin was

educated at the College
of Philadelphia. As soon
as he graduated, he was
suitably positioned with
a Philadelphia merchant,
married a well-connected
cousin, and went into
business with his brother
THOMAS MIFFLIN
George in 1765 in a store (1744–1800)
in Philadelphia.
Money flowed into Mifflin’s grasp with unQuakerly

effortlessness, and by 1770, various high-profile public-
service appointments were falling into his lap: city warden,
manager of the Pennsylvania Hospital, director of the Library
Company, and trustee of his alma mater.
¾¾ The coming of the American Revolution did nothing to disturb the

arc of Mifflin’s rise. He was one of the supporters of the embargo
on British imports that protested the Stamp Act, was elected to
12 Lecture 2 • Thomas Mifflin’s Congress

the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1772, and was named to represent
Pennsylvania in the First Continental Congress in 1774. When the
news of Lexington and Concord arrived, Mifflin organized a military
company of his own, and with the organization of the Continental
Army, Washington tapped Mifflin as a staff member.
¾¾ Although Mifflin quickly climbed the ladder of rank, something

about this man with the silver Quaker spoon in his mouth seems
to have acquired tarnish for Washington. In 1775, Washington
shunted Mifflin from front-line service to quartermaster-general
of the army. This affronted Mifflin, who conceived of himself as
a military genius; although he sullenly agreed to serve, he never
ceased to agitate for restoration to field command. When front-line
command failed to materialize, Mifflin turned his disappointment
on Washington.
¾¾ Bitterly critical of Washington’s failed attempt to defend

Philadelphia in 1777, Mifflin resigned his commission and joined
the agitators known as the Conway Cabal who were seeking to
depose Washington as general-in-chief. The conspiracy failed, but
Mifflin was soon back in the political saddle as a member of the
Continental Congress, and in November 1783, he was elected the
third president of Congress under the Articles of Confederation.
FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES
¾¾ And there began Mifflin’s career of woe. The American colonies

had always had closer ties, individually, to Great Britain than they
had had to each other; indeed, it had been no small achievement
to even get the states send representatives to the Stamp
Act Congress in 1765 and the Continental Congress in 1774
and 1775.
¾¾ As it was, the Continental Congress was merely a deliberative

body: It had no official powers, no revenue to pay bills, and no
means of enforcing its decisions apart from the army, which it paid

in such a penny-pinching matter that it was twice on the edge
of mutiny.
¾¾ The states themselves sometimes seemed more intent on

pursuing their own agendas than in a joint effort to fight off the
British. Virginia sent militia beyond the Appalachians to stake
claims to territory in the west; Connecticut and Pennsylvania
fought over who had proper title to Wyoming Valley in northeastern
Pennsylvania; and so on. It was only when America’s French allies
made it clear that they would do nothing more for the Americans
until they submitted to a common government that the delegations
in Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation.
Even then, the Articles stated, “Each state retains its

sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction, and right.” And it took four years, from 1777 until
1781, before the states finally ratified the Articles.
The ratification was greeted with the discharge of artillery in

Philadelphia and Delaware, but otherwise, the Continental
Congress simply continued to conduct business as usual,
now as the Confederation Congress. And the Continental
Congress’s presiding officer, Samuel Huntington, continued
in that role until Thomas McKean was elected as the first
president under the articles.
¾¾ But the surrender of British forces at Yorktown in the fall of 1781

gave less cause for rejoicing than might be thought. The articles
had provided no new means of raising revenue, and the wartime
debts Congress had incurred to the French government, Dutch
bankers, Americans, and others totaled more than $410 million.
¾¾ By the time Mifflin had assumed the role of president, the

Confederation Congress had tried to remedy its financial woes
by proposing the adoption of a federal import tariff, known as an

impost. This amounted to a 5 percent tariff on all foreign goods
imported into the States. This was not a particularly onerous
measure—the total proceeds would have done little more than
keep up interest payments—but even so, the impost failed in 1782
and again in 1783.
THE CONTINENTAL ARMY
¾¾ Nor was this the only problem confronting President Mifflin when
he assumed office on November 3, 1783. The Continental Army,
underpaid and undervalued, had nearly taken Congress by the
neck in 1781, when the Pennsylvania regiments, starving and
shivering in camp in New Jersey, sent an angry delegation of
sergeants to Philadelphia to meet with a committee of Congress
about their grievances.
¾¾ A far more ominous outburst occurred at the beginning of 1783,

when a delegation comprising General Alexander McDougall and
two colonels showed up in Philadelphia to meet with Congress.
Not only had they gone unpaid, but with the nearness of peace,
they suspected that Congress would attempt to disband the Army
and send it home with nothing more than promises.
¾¾ Washington himself would give no countenance to what was

an attempt to frighten Congress into action, and he staged a
showdown at Newburgh, New York, in March with his officers, to
make it plain that he wanted neither part nor lot with any plans
to use force on Congress. But in June, 80 men of the Third
Pennsylvania Regiment took matters in their own hands, marched
on Philadelphia, surrounded the State House (now Independence
Hall) where Congress was sitting, and menacingly warned
Congress to act.
¾¾ Congress promptly adjourned, with outgoing President Elias

Boudinot wisely announcing that the next session would convene

on June 26 in Princeton, New
Jersey. It did—after a fashion.
It took another month, until July
29, for a quorum of Congress’s
23 members to show up. Nor
was it always possible to keep
a quorum once obtained; thus,
Congress resolved to move
again, to Annapolis.
MARYLAND STATE HOUSE,

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
TREATY WITH THE BRITISH
¾¾ It was an omen that Congress had elected Mifflin as president

the day before adjourning in Princeton—while Mifflin was not in
attendance. On November 22, the newly arrived Treaty of Peace
between Great Britain and the United States was delivered to
Mifflin in Philadelphia, and if ever a topic should have brought a
quorum to a congressional session, it should have been the vote
ratifying the treaty, especially since the British had set a deadline
of March for acceptance.
But neither the treaty nor Mifflin could make a quorum

happen; every state had to send at least two delegates under
the articles, and seven such state delegations had shown up
by December 13. But three days later, Jefferson, serving as a
delegate from Virginia, complained that there was no certainty
that the other delegations would appear.
Mifflin had to prod by letter delegations from New Hampshire,

Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, and

Georgia because “the safety, honor and good faith of the
United States require the immediate attendance of their
delegates in Congress.”
In fact, Congress would not have enough representatives on

hand in Annapolis to take a vote on the treaty until January
14. Only because the British wanted peace as badly as the
Americans was the deadline finally extended until May 12,
when the ratifications were formally exchanged.
Thereafter, even the feeble urgency summoned up by the peace

treaty disappeared: Over the next four months in Annapolis,
Congress was able to achieve a quorum on only three days;
the others were passed in adopting “teasing resolutions.”
When Congress finally adjourned on June 3, it resolved to

reconvene in Trenton. There, it would elect a new president
to relieve the unhappy Mifflin. It proceeded to wait for nearly
a full month before enough delegations showed up to elect
Richard Henry Lee as Mifflin’s successor. In January 1785,
Congress would move again, this time to New York City,
where it would end its days four years later.
SUMMING UP THE CONFEDERATION CONGRESS
¾¾ The Confederation Congress was not a total failure. It managed

to head off further conflict between states with claims on western
land, and it wrote trade agreements with Britain, France, and
Spain. It struggled to recall a substantial portion of the valueless
paper money and certificates it had put into circulation during the
Revolution. It also successfully demobilized the Continental Army
before it could turn on its creator.
¾¾ But none of those accomplishments could dispel the larger cloud

of failure that hung over the Confederation and, perhaps, over the
American cause itself. “It has already been spread throughout
Europe by the emissaries of the British Court,” wrote North

Carolina representative Richard Spaight, “that the United States
are only united in name and that a little time will show that we are
incapable of governing ourselves.”
¾¾ Mifflin retired from his congressional presidency and spent most

of the remaining 16 years of his life in Pennsylvania politics and
in what one critic described as “a state of adultery with many
women.” Several towns and structures were named for him, but
he also burned through most of his family’s fortune and ended
up hiding from bill collectors. One wonders, in that light, if Mifflin
might not have seen a glint in Washington’s eye as the general-in-
chief handed over his commission in 1783: My troubles are now
over, and yours have just begun.
SUGGESTED READING
Burnett, The Continental Congress, chaps. 28–30.

Jensen, The New Nation, part 4.
1. Why did the impost fail?
2. Are there any things that the Confederation Congress did right?

Lecture 3
ROBERT MORRIS’S
MONEY
T government in America with money problems,

he Confederation Congress was not the only
or, for that matter, even the worst problems. That

the Congress had no practical way of dealing with
those woes was bad, but the states didn’t have the
means to deal with their money problems either,
and the decisions they made about those problems
almost make the paralysis of the Confederation
Congress look appealing. In this lecture, we’ll
explore those decisions and, in particular, the
contribution made by the Philadelphia merchant
Robert Morris.
19
FINANCING THE REVOLUTION
¾¾ Financial problems appeared in the states almost as soon as

the Revolution began. In the spring of 1775, the Pennsylvania
Assembly began purchasing firearms and stores and established
a 25-member Committee of Safety to oversee the purchases.
Benjamin Franklin was named the committee’s chair, but the real
leadership fell to a Philadelphia merchant, Robert Morris, a partner
in the Philadelphia trading firm of Willing & Morris.
¾¾ At the time, no one knew what the costs of the conflict with Britain
might be, and the Pennsylvania treasury was, until new tax
measures were passed and funds collected, wholly inadequate to
the first demands made on it. Morris obligingly advanced to the
state £25,000 from his own purse, but this amount didn’t last long.
¾¾ When the Pennsylvania Assembly turned to consider raising new

funds through tax revenues, it encountered the unpleasant legacy
all the colonies had inherited from British policy over the previous
quarter century. The fundamental problem was that America’s
most abundant asset was land; its least abundant was specie—
hard coin.
This was, in large measure, a product of British commercial

regulation. Britain’s transatlantic commercial philosophy
was built around mercantilism, which assumed that national
wealth was a zero-sum game: Every nation started with a
piece of the pie of wealth and could only become richer by
taking pieces of other’s peoples’ slices. The means for doing
so were threefold: (1) Create financial reserves of hard coin;
(2) regulate the nation’s economy to produce goods for which
other countries would pay hard coin; and (3) establish colonies
in places with valuable resources that could be extracted.
By these means, Britain starved its colonies of specie. Every

piece of British commercial legislation from 1660 onward
reached deeper into the colonial economies to ensure that
20 Lecture 3 • Robert Morris’s Money

the colonies served Britain’s economic interests. The colonies
got by for themselves by issuing paper currency and IOUs in
the form of tax-anticipation notes and land banks, which lent
money to farmers for improvements, taking their existing land
as collateral.
But Parliament forbade the creation of corporations or banks in

the colonies; thus, there was no mechanism for accumulating
significant reserves from what small amounts of specie came
into American hands. For such merchants as Morris, business
transactions were handled through privately written IOUs
known as bills of credit or bills of exchange. By the outbreak
of the Revolution, three-quarters of all the money circulating
in the colonies was paper of various sorts.
PAPER CURRENCY
¾¾ Both Congress and the states were ill-equipped to meet the

sudden demand for financing the Revolution. In both cases, the
most familiar expedient was the issue of massive amounts of
paper currency. By the end of the Revolution, 7 of the 13 states
had authorized the emission of paper money.
¾¾ Thus, while the Confederation Congress limped by on grudging

foreign loans and contributions from the states, the states
themselves felt free to print their own money. Further, farmers and
small-scale borrowers discovered that this a painless way to make
their own commercial debts disappear. Loans and mortgages
that had been contracted before the Revolution could now be
effortlessly paid off in cheap paper currency. And if lenders and
merchants balked at accepting the paper money, the legislatures
passed penalty laws that criminalized such refusals.
¾¾ The depreciating paper currency also created a problem between

states. When merchants in Massachusetts or Connecticut
demanded payment for goods sold in Rhode Island and were
presented with paper currency they knew was worthless

anyplace except Rhode Island, there was nothing the Rhode
Island legislature could do to reach across state boundaries and
compel them to accept the money. Nevertheless, the legislature
permitted Rhode Islanders to pay the amounts owed in Rhode
Island currency to the Rhode Island courts, which then declared
the out-of-state debts legally satisfied. This triggered an uproar in
the Confederation Congress.
¾¾ The frustration felt over the behavior of Rhode Island and other
states had a much more dangerous political corollary, because
it suggested that republican forms of government, which lodged
sovereignty in the people as a whole, would sooner or later
prove that large numbers of those people were wholly unworthy
to exercise sovereignty—that given political power, they would
embark on increasingly reckless schemes for defrauding others.
¾¾ But in the state legislatures, such complaints were dismissed

as the whining of the rich and propertied. In Philadelphia, the
Freemans’ Journal indignantly prophesied that without paper
money, the people will “shrink in despair from the magnitude and
frequency of the tax bills.” Paper money is, in fact, “the traditional
medium of America.”
MORRIS AS SUPERINTENDENT OF FINANCE
¾¾ Robert Morris was originally from Liverpool and came to the

colonies when he was 13. His father eventually apprenticed the
boy to a merchant in Philadelphia, Charles Willing. When Willing
died in 1754, Morris was made a partner in the company. He
rose in wealth and standing, eventually being appointed as a port
warden for Philadelphia and, in 1775, was tagged to represent
Pennsylvania in the Second Continental Congress.
¾¾ Morris was dubious about the wisdom of independence but signed

the Declaration of Independence anyway; he was also dubious
about the wisdom of Pennsylvania’s new state constitution. But
none of these doubts prevented him from advancing money from

ROBERT MORRIS
(1734–1806)
his own pocket to pay the Revolution’s bills, probably, all told,
more than £1 million. Not surprisingly, when the Confederation
Congress moved in February 1781 to create three “executive”
offices to manage its day-to-day affairs, Morris was unanimously
named superintendent of finance.
¾¾ Morris, however, did not accept the post until May of 1781, and
even then only on the conditions that: (1) he concentrate solely
on a new financial system, not the payment of old debts, (2) that
he have full power to appoint and dismiss “all person whatever
that are concerned in the official Expenditure of Public Monies,”

and (3) that he be permitted to carry on his own private business
affairs at the same time.
¾¾ Morris achieved a series of small financial wonders for the

Confederation Congress, including new loans from the French
and the Dutch, but he also made enemies. The Virginian William
Lee, whose brother Richard Henry Lee had proposed the original
motion for independence in 1776, denounced Morris as the
“most dangerous man in America” and accused him of plunging
the country into “public Bankruptcy, while he at the same time
amassed an immense fortune for himself.”
¾¾ In July 1779, a congressional committee report attacked Morris

for profiteering. But even more damning to his reputation was his
opposition to paper money. From 1779 until his appointment as
superintendent of finance, Morris fought the issue of paper money
in the Pennsylvania Assembly, especially when it was suggested
that Pennsylvania’s paper money, like Rhode Island’s, be declared
legal tender, with penalties for non-acceptance. Morris was
eventually acquitted of all charges, but not before they had almost
cost him his life.
On October 4, 1779, a street mob, whipped up by charges that

Morris was at the heart of all their economic woes, attacked
Morris and other members of a “Republican Society” at City
Tavern in Philadelphia. Morris and the Society retreated to
the home of James Wilson, and when the mob pursued them,
they barricaded the doors.
Someone began shooting, and in short order, the mob

stormed the house, breaking down the doors and trading
gunfire on the stairs. The mob wheeled up a small howitzer
but was eventually dispersed.
¾¾ No one could have blamed Morris after the “battle of Fort Wilson”
for washing his hands completely of public affairs; nor could

anyone in Congress blame him for driving a hard bargain over his
powers as superintendent of finance in 1781.
¾¾ William Livingston, the governor of New Jersey, tried to soothe

Morris’s disgruntlement with the assurance that “you have done
too much for your Country not to create Enemies,” but it was also
true that the Revolution had spawned what one Boston newspaper
complained about as a “private, selfish, and basely avaricious
spirit … in the room of public virtue.” It was difficult for Morris
to insist on strict financial probity when American “commerce is
so managed, as that it becomes a public nuisance, instead of a
common benefit.”
¾¾ But as clearly as Morris understood that America’s chief peril lay

in “the derangement of our Money Affairs,” he could not get the
states or the Confederation Congress to agree to any solution he
proposed. On July 29, 1782, Morris submitted to the Confederation
Congress an ambitious plan for restoring “the intimate Connection
between the Commerce, the Agriculture and the Finances of a
Country” that included:
The approval of the 5 percent impost passed by Congress

in 1781
A national property tax on land
The recall of paper money by exchanging it for a national loan

offered at 4 percent interest
The establishment of a Bank of North America.
¾¾ Rhode Island sabotaged the impost by refusing to approve it,

and a renewed initiative for it in 1784 failed, as well. The Bank
of North America was chartered by the Confederation Congress,
incorporated by the Pennsylvania Assembly, and began operations
in 1782. But in 1785, Morris’s enemies in the Pennsylvania

Assembly engineered a repeal of the state incorporation of
the bank.
¾¾ Morris damaged his own standing by egging on the Continental

Army’s mutiny in in the hope that he could somehow use the
soldiers’ threat to beat back his foes and critics. By October of
1783, the Massachusetts legislature was instructing its delegation
to the Confederation Congress to “have the office of the
superintendent of finance abolished.”
¾¾ Disgusted, Morris turned in his resignation and left his post on

November 1, 1784. “My Attention to the Public Debts,” he wrote the
president of Congress, Elias Boudinot, “arose from the Conviction
that funding them on solid Revenues was the last essential Work
of our glorious Revolution. … But other Circumstances have
postponed the Establishment of public Credit in such Manner, that
I fear it will never be made.” And Massachusetts, ironically, would
soon offer the first proof of Morris’s dread.
SUGGESTED READING
Main, The Anti-Federalists, chaps. 4–5.

Rappleye, Robert Morris, chaps. 12–14.
1. What was specie, and why didn’t Americans seem to have any?
2. What caused the “battle of Fort Wilson”?

Lecture 4
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S
LEATHER APRON
“A the philosopher David Hume to Benjamin

merica has sent us many things,” wrote
Franklin, “but you are … the first great man of

letters, for whom we are beholden to her.” Franklin
had been awarded the Royal Society’s Copley
Medal for his experiments with electricity, named
a member of France’s Académie des Sciences,
and showered with honorary doctorates. In 1774,
his fellow Philadelphian Benjamin Rush marveled
over Franklin, saying that his name would be
“handed down to posterity among the first and
greatest characters of the world.” And no one had
worked harder throughout his life to make himself
into an object of honor, especially considering the
low rung of the ladder of his birth.
27
FRANKLIN’S EARLY CAREER
¾¾ Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, one

of 17 children sired by Josiah Franklin. In 1717, Benjamin was
apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. This initially satisfied
Benjamin, who had always loved reading, but reading was not
what James wanted from his brother, and in 1720, Benjamin ran
away to Philadelphia.
¾¾ The city of Philadelphia was less than 40 years old when Franklin
disembarked at the foot of Market Street, but it already was home
to 2,000 people and the seat of government of Pennsylvania’s
ruling family, the Penns.
William Penn, the founder of the Pennsylvania colony, had

obtained his charter as an absolute proprietorship, which
meant that he and his heirs literally owned Pennsylvania in
the old manner of medieval lords. But Penn had not had a
cheerfully medieval time managing the colony.
Penn was a convert to Quakerism, which imposed on him

an ethic of nonviolence and decision making by consensus
that turned out to be poor instruments for governing a colony.
Penn’s sons and heirs, however, clung tightly to the family
proprietorship, insisting on the right to collect quit-rents and
name the colony’s governor.
¾¾ In Philadelphia, Franklin found work with another printer, Samuel

Keimer. He then traveled to London for a business venture with
the governor of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith, but found himself
stranded abroad when Keith’s letters of credit proved worthless.
Two years later, Franklin returned to Philadelphia and set himself
as an independent printer. He became a model of the industrious,
leather-apron tradesman.
¾¾ Franklin produced a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette; began

issuing Poor Richard’s Almanac; and in 1730, was named as the
28 Lecture 4 • Benjamin Franklin’s Leather Apron

Pennsylvania Assembly’s official printer. Six years later, he was
elected to a seat in the assembly and, in 1737, was named deputy
postmaster for the colonies. Franklin also franchised his print-
shop operations to other cities and, by 1743, had interests in three
other firms. He bought shares in paper mills, purchased rental
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(1706–1790)

properties, and in 1748, had become wealthy enough to retire
from active business. He had become a gentleman.
FRANKLIN AS A GENTLEMAN
¾¾ In the 18th century, a gentleman did not work with his hands,
and Franklin, after 1748, turned his attention to his scientific
experiments and to civic leadership. He also transformed himself,
as befitted a gentleman, into a man of public affairs. He struck an
“appearance of impartiality” in the ongoing struggles of the Penn
family to cling to their proprietorship of Pennsylvania, and in 1757,
he was rewarded with the lucrative appointment as the colony’s
agent (lobbyist) in London.
¾¾ Franklin served as Pennsylvania’s agent until 1762, when he

was recalled to become speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly
and lead the effort to have Pennsylvania transformed into a royal
colony, with a governor appointed by the king. When that failed,
Franklin was again dispatched to England as Pennsylvania’s agent
to continue the fight. The fight he became involved in, however,
was about Parliament’s new Stamp Act.
It seemed logical to Franklin that the Stamp Act, which

extended royal taxing powers into the colonial economy,
should be greeted by Pennsylvanians as being of a piece with
the effort to replace the proprietors with royal government.
It wasn’t, and Franklin’s support for the Stamp Act caused
ripples of outrage in Pennsylvania.
Thus, Franklin promptly switched sides again, writing a

series of articles for the London press that warned against
the consequences of further efforts at imperial taxation.
He also released a collection of six letters that had come
surreptitiously into his hands, detailing the machinations
of Massachusetts’ royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson, for
“an abridgement of … English liberties” in the colonies. The
Massachusetts Assembly demanded that the king remove

Hutchinson as governor, and hearings were scheduled before
the Privy Council, to which Franklin was summoned as
a witness.
If up to this point Franklin believed that he had earned

the status of gentleman, the Privy Council hearings soon
disabused him of that notion. “Private correspondence has
hitherto been held sacred,” raged the solicitor-general and
leader of the hearings, Alexander Wedderburn. Franklin’s
behavior stripped him of any pretense to the status of
gentleman and returned him to what he was, a colonial laborer
who dressed himself above his station, just as the colonies
themselves were trying to do.
PENNSYLVANIA GOVERNMENT
¾¾ In 1775, in the wake of the hearings, Franklin decided to return to

Philadelphia, just as the tensions between the colonies and the
mother country exploded at Lexington and Concord. He arrived in
Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, and within 24 hours, found himself
selected by the Pennsylvania Assembly to sit in the Second
Continental Congress. Twelve months later, he was appointed,
along with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to the committee
to draft the colonies’ Declaration of Independence.
¾¾ The disruption of the colonies’ ties to Britain had been accompanied

by the disruption of all the colonial governments that represented
British rule, including the overthrow of the Penns’ proprietorship. A
state convention with Franklin as president proceeded to tear down
the old proprietary government and replace it with a government,
not of gentlemen but of the people in the streets.
¾¾ The new Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 began with a Bill of

Rights that included several gems that would have stuck in the
craw of both proprietors and gentlemen: “that all men are born
equally free”; that “government is, or ought to be, instituted for
the common benefit”; and that “the people have a right, at such

32 Lecture 4 • Scope
periods as they may think proper, to reduce their public officers to
a private station, and supply the vacancies by certain and regular
elections.”
¾¾ By the time the convention finished its work on the new state
constitution in September, it had produced a document that
proposed to govern Pennsylvania through a unicameral assembly,
abolished all property qualifications for voting (apart from paying
“public taxes”), limited terms in the new legislature, and stipulated
that elections be held annually.
¾¾ As radical as it was, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 was

a fair counterpart to the Articles of Confederation. It would have
been more radical still if the convention had not agreed to delete
its most explosive resolution, one allowing the states to discourage
possession of large portions of property by individuals. Without the
checks and balances provided by a bicameral legislature, the new
Pennsylvania Assembly bolted ahead to revoke college charters,
override judicial decisions about property, shut down Robert
Morris’s Bank of North America, and more.
¾¾ Critics of the Pennsylvania Constitution saw it as wielding too

much power, and they found all the proof they needed that power
had gone too much into the wrong hands when the street battle
over “Fort Wilson” broke out in 1779. The Revolution had been
waged on the assumption that power was the enemy of liberty,
and while no government could do without some power, it had to
be monitored.
¾¾ It was no consolation that the new assembly could be, by turns, both
high-minded and whimsical; in 1780, it would inaugurate a phase-
out of slavery in Pennsylvania, but it would also pass legislation
that criminalized “profane swearing, cursing, drunkenness.” It tried
to fix prices, seize the property of suspected Tories and pacifists,
impose loyalty oaths, and shut down the College of Philadelphia
for “an Evident Hostility to the present Government.” Cooler

heads in a second house might have tactfully pigeon-holed such
legislation but not in a unicameral legislature.
FRANKLIN IN PARIS
¾¾ In October 1776, the Continental Congress dispatched Franklin

to the court of Louis XVI of France to recruit French support
and recognition for the new republic. Set aside now were all the
pretensions to gentleman’s status, and Franklin transformed
himself yet again into the very model of Poor Richard, the wise but
simple, untutored but intelligent, purely American nobleman.
¾¾ The transformation was popular in France, and in 1778, Franklin

was able to jockey the French into signing an alliance with
the United States that turned the tide of the Revolution against
Britain. Five years later, he signed the peace treaty that ended the
Revolution and guaranteed an independent American Republic.
¾¾ From his perch in Paris, Franklin issued a stream of assurances

to various European inquirers that the new American governments
ensured “an enlightened People, with respect to our Political
Interests.” Yet when he finally returned to Philadelphia, Franklin
was more than a little shaken by the results of the Articles of
Confederation and the Pennsylvania Constitution.
RETURN TO THE COLONIES
¾¾ The Pennsylvania Assembly promptly elected Franklin as its

president, but that only forced him closer to the oddball operations
of the assembly. Robert Morris had been Franklin’s chief ally in
raising money in Europe for the United States, but Morris was now
denounced as a criminal.
¾¾ In addition, the newspapers Franklin had founded had become

unrestrained engines of “affronting, calumniating, and defaming
one another.” Franklin was also alarmed to find that the scaled-
back voting requirements allowed immigrants a voice in

Pennsylvania’s government. And it was no comfort to learn from
Benjamin Rush that the Pennsylvania Constitution assumed
“perfect equality, and an equal distribution of property … among
the inhabitants of the state.”
¾¾ Further, Franklin was chagrined that on his return from Europe,

the government had made no provision for him as a retired foreign
minister. It was, Franklin sighed, always “the reproach thrown on
republics, that they are apt to be ungrateful.”
¾¾ If a leather-apron philosopher-cum-gentleman like Franklin could

gradually find fault with the new republican experiments he
returned to discover on his doorstep, then the way clearly was
open for a serious reconsideration of what the Revolution and
the states had created in the Articles of Confederation and in
state constitutions.
SUGGESTED READING
Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, chap. 16.

Lyons, The Society for Useful Knowledge, chaps. 1 and 3.
1. Define the term gentleman in its 18th-century usage.
2. What convinced Franklin that English society would never concede the
status of gentleman to him?
3. Why did the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 lack checks and

balances?

Lecture 5
THOMAS JEFFERSON’S
BOOKS
T Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1743. As an adult,

homas Jefferson was born near modern
he described his father as “being of a strong mind,

sound judgment, and eager after information,”
and though “my father’s education had been quite
neglected … he read much and improved himself.”
The same defect would not be repeated in
Thomas Jefferson, whose education began when
he was 9. At the age of 17, he was packed off to
the College of William and Mary. There, Jefferson
studied a curriculum heavy on classical literature,
rhetoric, logic, and ethics. In this lecture, we’ll look
at Jefferson’s reading to see its influence on his
thought and politics.
36
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
¾¾ The first European universities offered their students a vision

of the world that was wrapped around two principles: authority
and hierarchy. The path to truth, wisdom, and beauty had been
laid down for all to see in the Bible and the writings of Aristotle.
Although the pious raised an eyebrow at Aristotle, both of these
sources were understood, ultimately, to be compatible.
¾¾ The universe was viewed as a rational, reasonable place, in

which all the parts fit together logically—a hierarchy. The physical
universe was arranged with the earth at the bottom or center, and
then, in ascending order of perfection, the moon, planets, stars,
and the realm where God dwelled.
All these parts of physical nature were, in turn, held together

logically by certain relationships to each other based on their
possession of certain intelligent or moral qualities. Why do
stones fall to earth? Because they share a common moral
quality of baseness with the earth that causes them to seek
the earth’s level.
Human society followed the same pattern of hierarchy, like a

pyramid, in which kings ruled over nobles and nobles ruled
over the commons. Human society, too, was held in place by
differing qualities and status: Why did more peasants than
kings die of smallpox? Because peasants were inherently
closer to the earth.
¾¾ These twin principles of authority and hierarchy gave European

intellectual life stability for 400 years, but at the dawn of the 1600s,
they cracked.
By the beginning of the 17th century, new telescopes were

available through which to behold the heavens. And when
astronomical observers, such as Galileo Galilei, looked

through those telescopes, they did not see much that looked
like hierarchy.
The earth, of course, everyone knew to be deformed by

mountains, valleys, and so on, but when Galileo trained his
telescope on the moon, he discovered that it was even more
uneven and disfigured. By Aristotle’s reasoning, the moon,
since it was higher than the earth, ought to have been more
perfect in shape. It wasn’t; nor were the other planets.
Nor, Galileo soon concluded, were the physical movements

of the moon and the planets governed by moral relationships
of superiority and inferiority to each other. Put a round ball on
a flat plane, Galileo argued, and it will roll on forever, without
any concern for the occult qualities possessed either by the
plane or by itself.
¾¾ When Isaac Newton refined this to explain the movement of

all physical objects in terms of a simple force (“attraction at a
distance”), then the idea of the universe as a harmonious whole,
with its various parts adhering to each other on the basis of their
possession of intelligent qualities, went by the wayside. The
universe became an assortment of material substances, governed
only by indifferent physical laws and forces. And one no longer
searched in the Bible and Aristotle for truth, wisdom, or beauty, but
in the world. This was the start of the Scientific Revolution.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
¾¾ It took no great length of time before Europeans began wondering

whether the same rules that shattered the hierarchy of physical
nature might not be applied to the hierarchy of human society.
Were there natural laws of politics that paralleled natural physical
laws? The task of discovering such social laws fell especially to
John Locke, Adam Smith, and Montesquieu.
38 Lecture 5 • Thomas Jefferson’s Books

¾¾ Locke, for instance, asked
readers in his Two Treatises
of Government to perform
a thought experiment.
Suppose several of us
were shipwrecked on a
deserted island. In order
to eat, we would need to
begin harvesting fruit and
berries, then plant crops for
harvest. Investing our labor
in producing food from the
land is what sanctions our
calling this land our property.
JOHN LOCKE
But another fact would
(1632–1704)
soon impress itself on
us: Some people would rather steal other
people’s harvest or property than do the work themselves.
Thus, it would become necessary to improvise some form
of social organization or risk descending into cannibalism
and murder.
We are in what Locke called “a state of nature,” and in that

state, we are free to do what we wish. If we are successful,
we manage to plant crops, hunt game, and build shelters, but
to get security for our property, we must surrender a portion of
the freedom we enjoyed in the state of nature and institute a
political society.
That, for Locke, explained the natural laws of politics. Every

society emerges as an organized whole because people need
to look out for their property—not because some royal law-
giver imposes divine order. And whenever a society decays
or is diverted from that basic purpose of protecting rights

and property, the people who made that society can devise
something new.
Locke was happy for British society to remain a monarchy,

because he regarded the British system as the mildest form
of monarchy in the world. But there had always been more
radical voices, arguing that monarchs of any sort were an
unnatural imposition on the sovereignty of the people, and
therefore, the only true and natural form of government was
a republic.
¾¾ What was true for politics would also be true for economics. As long
as society was conceived of as a hierarchy, kings were assured
the top spot, followed by nobles and the
commons. The idea that there might
be another class, composed
of tradesmen, merchants,
and bankers, excited only
disdain from the nobles
and resentment from the
commons. But to Adam
Smith, if there was
any virtue to be found
in human society, it
was in that much-
despised commercial
class, whose sober
concentration on profit
and trade was the real
enrichment of everyone.
¾¾ Just as the protection of

property explained to Locke
the reason for government, ADAM SMITH
trade explained to Smith what made (1723–1790)
societies happy and prosperous. Taken
together, this new understanding of society and

of the physical universe created what was known in English as the
Enlightenment.
JEFFERSON’S EDUCATION
¾¾ James Blair, the first president of William and Mary, corresponded

with John Locke, but little in the college’s curriculum reflected
that connection, and when Jefferson arrived there in 1760 as a
student, its minuscule faculty was preoccupied more with adapting
the new sciences to the rule of the old logic than emancipating
them from it.
¾¾ Jefferson’s real education came from two sources with only

tenuous ties to the college: George Wythe, under whom he studied
law, and Virginia’s lieutenant-governor, Francis Fauquier. Jefferson
became part of Fauquier’s circle and learned much from him. How
much that instruction revolved around Enlightenment poles can be
seen from the booklists Jefferson compiled for purchase, which
included Locke, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith.
¾¾ Enlightenment politics came easier for Americans than

Englishmen because the history of the colonies seemed to follow
precisely the stages of social formation that Locke had described.
That the British government would not only fail to understand that
but attempt to govern the colonies as though they really were an
inferior segment of an imperial hierarchy propelled Jefferson into
the colonial resistance movement.
¾¾ It also set him to work writing, in 1774, one of the resounding

statements of that resistance, A Summary View of the Rights of
British America. “Our ancestors,” Jefferson wrote, “possessed a
right which nature has given to all men, of … establishing new
societies, under such laws and regulations as to them shall seem
most likely to promote public happiness.” They, and not the king,
were the real sovereigns of America.

¾¾ The reputation Jefferson earned from the Summary View got him
the ticket as one of Virginia’s delegates to the Second Continental
Congress, and it was there, in 1776, that he was chosen to
draft the Declaration of Independence—his finest statement of
Enlightenment politics.
JEFFERSON IN POLITICS
¾¾ The curious thing about Jefferson’s political eloquence is that

Jefferson the man did not particularly care for politics or commerce
once they had to be translated into everyday affairs. “Science is
my passion,” he once said, “politics my duty,” and it was not a duty
he found very agreeable.
¾¾ He declined reelection to the Continental Congress but agreed

to serve in the new Virginia Assembly from 1776 to 1779, when
he unenthusiastically allowed himself to be elected governor of
Virginia. He was right not to be enthused. The British staged a
major invasion of Virginia during his tenure; the assembly printed
paper money with abandon; and when he left office, the assembly
resolved to hold an inquiry into “the conduct of the Executive of
this State for the last twelve months.”
¾¾ Nor can it be said that Jefferson was always consistent, or even

generous, in his embrace of the Enlightenment’s principles.
In 1777, he had been the prime advocate of a statute securing
freedom of religion in Virginia. But it was not always clear whether
Jefferson meant freedom of religion or from religion.
¾¾ Jefferson was also less than enthusiastic about commerce. It was

not merchants and trade but “cultivators of the earth” who “are the
most valuable citizens,” Jefferson insisted to John Jay in 1785,
because landowning guaranteed virtue, and virtue was supposed
to be the abiding concern of a republic.
¾¾ But a far more sensational departure from the Enlightenment’s

denunciation of hierarchy and despotism was the fact that

THOMAS JEFFERSON
(1743–1826)
Jefferson himself was a hierarch and a despot—a large-scale

slave owner. He professed opposition to slavery, but that did
not prevent him, after the death of his wife in 1782, from taking
a slave woman, Sally Hemings, as his lover. He refused to free
Hemings from bondage and sired at least five unacknowledged
slave children by her.

¾¾ What Jefferson did see clearly, however, was that the ramshackle
structure of the Articles of Confederation was doing nobody in
America any good. He half-expected “some two States” to “commit
hostilities on each other.” In 1784, mourning the death of his wife,
Jefferson agreed to become the American diplomatic minister to
France, and he found there that “the nonpayment of our debts,
and the want of energy in our government” had seriously damaged
the “American reputation in Europe.”
SUGGESTED READING
Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, chaps. 16 and 18.

McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum, chaps. 3–4.
1. How did the scientific revolution of the 17th century undermine authority
and hierarchy?
2. How did Jefferson capture the spirit of Enlightenment politics in the

Declaration of Independence?

Lecture 6
DANIEL SHAYS’S
MISBEHAVIOR
G to have doubts about the wisdom being

eorge Washington was not the only one
shown by the Confederation, its Congress,

and its presidents. But his doubts existed at one
end of a spectrum; at the other end were the
unhappy and contentious farmers of western New
England. Although there had been comparatively
little fighting in New England after 1776, new state
governments still had to be formed to replace the
provincial ones, the wartime economy completely
redirected the usual flows of commerce, and there
were soldiers to be recruited for the Continental
Army and the state militias. In this lecture, we’ll
explore the fallout of this economic distress,
Shays’s Rebellion.
45
BACKDROP TO THE REBELLION
¾¾ Like the Confederation Congress and the other states, at the

outset of the war, Massachusetts resorted to paying its bills by
issuing paper. However, there was so little specie in the hands
of the Massachusetts government to back up its currency that it
was soon circulating at 1/4 its face value and, by 1781, at 1/40 its
face value.
¾¾ Valiantly, Massachusetts pledged to redeem all of its paper at face

value, which was awful for those who had exchanged handfuls
of it earlier at the depreciated value, such as discharged soldiers
returning to their farms. Conversely, it became a bonanza for
speculators in Boston, who bought up state debt at 1/8 or 1/10 its
face value and who now stood to gain hugely if and when the state
ever managed to redeem the paper.
¾¾ And redeeming that paper was what the Massachusetts

legislature, the General Court, set itself to do—by increasing taxes
more than 500 percent and requiring payment in hard coin. Ten
percent of the revenue from these taxes would come from state
impost and excise taxes; the rest would come from increases in
property taxes and poll taxes.
¾¾ The blow of these tax increases would fall hardest on those who
made their living from the land they owned: farmers, who made up
70 percent of the Massachusetts population. And the farmers were
the least well-prepared to absorb that blow because few of them
dealt in cash.
¾¾ The new taxes set off two chains of reaction. First, the requirement
of paying in specie set off a desperate search for hard coin, which
usually meant calling in any IOUs or promissory notes a farmer,
store owner, or artisan might have accepted from others. Second,
farmers who failed to find enough specie to pay their property and
poll taxes found themselves in court, faced with the auction of their
farms to satisfy the taxes.
46 Lecture 6 • Daniel Shays’s Misbehavior

¾¾ The General Court and Governor James Bowdoin might have
seen what was coming. In 1782, an earlier tax hike payable in
specie had triggered an outburst in western Massachusetts’
Hampshire County, led by an itinerant preacher named Samuel
Ely. Ely was promptly arrested. But furious farmers under a former
revolutionary captain descended with 600 men and released Ely
from jail. Now, four years later, an even larger outburst was about
to occur.
SHAYS’S REBELLION
¾¾ The outburst began, as before, in Hampshire County at the end of

August 1786. When the court’s three judges arrived to open the
county court of general sessions, they were stopped by an angry
crowd of several hundred men who sought to prevent the court
from sitting. The judges tried opening the court session at an inn
but ultimately announced that all cases would be continued to the
next session in November.
¾¾ The next week, the county court in Worcester, less than 50 miles
from Boston, was closed down by another angry, armed crowd
and announced that it, too, would remain closed until November.
From there, the trouble threatened to snowball.
The Middlesex County court was prevented from opening on

September 11, 1786. The judges called for the assistance of
the local militia, but the militia balked, and the judges were
eventually advised to leave town for their own good.
Two weeks later, when the Supreme Judicial Court of

Massachusetts tried to open its session in Springfield,
Massachusetts, it took the precaution of having the Hampshire
County militia turn out in force under its commander, General
William Shepard. Although the militiamen numbered 1,000 or
more, their opponents had acquired still greater numbers and
a leader in the form of Captain Daniel Shays.

¾¾ Born in 1747 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, Shays had served in
the Massachusetts militia at Bunker Hill and Ticonderoga in 1775;
he was then commissioned as a captain in the Fifth Massachusetts
Regiment and fought at the Battle of Saratoga.
Like many of his fellow officers, Shays was paid only fitfully,
and in 1780, he was forced to resign his commission; he
simply lacked the money to keep up appearances as an
officer and a gentleman.

Shays moved to Pelham, Massachusetts, where he managed
to eke out a living as a small farmer. By 1785, he was in debt
to 10 different lenders; by 1786, he was already under threat
of suit for taxes. But he evidently did not think of himself as
an insurgent and turned down an appeal from his Pelham
neighbors to join in the closure of the Northampton court.
¾¾ By the end of September, however, Shays found himself at the

head of “great numbers of people” descending on Springfield.
“Finding that the government party were acting on the defensive,”
Shays sent “an insolent demand” to Shepard’s militiamen “that no
civil cases should be tried except where both parties were willing.”
Shepard refused, and Shays had some difficulty restraining his
men from attacking the courthouse directly. Because Shays’s
rebels prevented anyone from entering the courthouse, at length,
the court adjourned, and Shepard irritably dismissed the militia.
¾¾ Alarmed, Governor Bowdoin called the Massachusetts legislature

into special session on September 27 in Boston, and the General
Court responded by passing “three different laws for easing the
burdens of the people.” But it was too little too late. When the
Worcester County court attempted to reopen its sessions on
November 21, another mob of Shaysites closed them down again.
¾¾ By now, Governor Bowdoin was in a panic, as was the

Confederation Congress. Not only had the Massachusetts militia
proven a weak reed, but the Congress maintained an arsenal
at Springfield. If Shays got his hands on those weapons, the
rebellion might begin to assume much larger proportions. They
would “march directly to Boston,” Shays promised, “burn [the
courthouse] and lay the town of Boston in ashes.”
¾¾ The recruitment of 1,340 troops was hastily authorized, but

Bowdoin could not wait for the Confederation Congress to come to
his rescue. On November 28, he issued arrest warrants for five of
the Shaysite leaders closest to Boston. On January 4, he called for
the recruitment of 4,400 volunteers to put down the insurrection,

privately funded by 153 wealthy Bostonians and commanded by
the Revolutionary War hero General Benjamin Lincoln. In two
weeks, Lincoln managed to whip his little army into presentable
shape and, on January 19, set out to secure the Springfield
arsenal and bring Shays to bay.
¾¾ Shays acted at once to beat Lincoln to the punch, but when

he arrived at Springfield with between 1,500 and 2,000 men,
he discovered that General Shepard had been faster still and
occupied the arsenal with approximately 1,200 militiamen. On
January 25, Shays and his officers planned a three-pronged
assault on the arsenal, which they hoped would bluff Shepard’s
militiamen into surrender.
¾¾ But Shepard was in no mood to be bluffed: He drew up his militia

in line of battle in front of the arsenal, planting two artillery pieces
along the line. “Shays immediately put his troops in motion &
marched on rapidly near one hundred yards,” Shepard reported.
He tried to stop them by ordering the artillery gunners to fire two
warning shots over the Shaysites’ heads, “but it had no effect
on them.”
¾¾ With the next discharge, Shepard’s artillerymen fired “through the

centre of [Shays’] column,” and the next after that “put the whole
column into the utmost confusion.” Shays struggled to rally them
“but in vain.” Shepard was ready to charge “upon their rear and
flanks with my infantry and the two field pieces, and could have
killed the greater part of the whole army within five minutes.” But
he had done enough already. Four of Shays’s men were dead.
¾¾ Shays and the remnants of his army retreated northward to

Petersham, and there, on February 3, they were surprised by the
appearance of Benjamin Lincoln and Governor Bowdoin’s private
militia. Lincoln captured 150 of them, but most of the others,
including Shays, melted into the woods, heading for sanctuary
elsewhere. A few made it to Canada, where they appealed to the

governor-general, Lord Dorchester, for arms and supplies, but the
Foreign Office in London refused, and Shays’s Rebellion was over.
THE AFTERMATH
¾¾ Shays’s Rebellion touched a deep sense of unease about the

stability, not only of Massachusetts but the entire Confederation.
“Not only this Commonwealth but the Union at large are in the
most confused and confounded condition,” wrote Samuel Lyman
of Springfield, “We do not yet feel that sameness or unity of interest
which is the only cement of any nation, and which is absolutely
necessary to be felt in order to make us respectable & important.”
¾¾ Still, for all the terror Shays’s Rebellion had inspired, Massachusetts
proved singularly cautious about turning any of the rebels into
martyrs. Two rebels, John Bly and Charles Rose, were hanged on
December 6, 1787. Sixteen more were condemned to death but
pardoned, while 4,000 of the insurgents signed confessions and
took an oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth. Shays himself
petitioned successfully for a pardon from Vermont, but he never
returned to Massachusetts and died in 1825 in New York.
¾¾ Interestingly, the impact of Shays’s Rebellion was more profound

the further one moved from its epicenter in Massachusetts.
Henry Knox, Washington’s former artillery chief and now the
Confederation’s secretary of war, complained that Shays had
sparked “a pretty formidable rebellion” which had determined
“to overturn, not only the forms, but the principles of the
present constitutions.”
Washington’s former cavalry general, Henry “Light-Horse

Harry” Lee, was convinced that some of their leaders avowed
the “subversion” of the Confederation “to be their object
together with the abolition of debts, the division of property
and re-union with G. Britain.” And what was worse, “In all the
eastern states the same temper prevails more or less, and

will certainly break forth whenever the opportune moment
may arrive.”
The one silver lining, said Knox, was that Shays’s near
success had “wrought prodigious changes in the minds of
men in that state respecting the powers of government—
everybody says they must be strengthened, and that
unless this shall be effected, there is no security for liberty
and property.”
SUGGESTED READING
Richards, Shays’s Rebellion, chap. 1.

Szatmary, Shays’ Rebellion, chap. 6.
1. How did the new Massachusetts taxes create a crisis for farmers such
as Daniel Shays?
2. Why did Shays’s Rebellion unsettle Washington?

Lecture 7
ALEXANDER
HAMILTON’S REPUBLIC
A
s much as Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton
believed that the most natural form of
government was a republic in which everyone
would have the freedom to exercise his natural
rights. Hamilton wrote, “I am affectionately
attached to the republican theory. I desire above
all things to see the equality of political rights,
exclusive of all hereditary distinction, firmly
established by a practical demonstration of its
being consistent with the order and happiness
of society.” From that point onward, however, no
two individuals among the Founders could have
appeared so utterly different than Hamilton and
Jefferson. In this lecture, we’ll look at Hamilton’s
view of a republic, as opposed to Jefferson’s.
53
HAMILTON’S EARLY LIFE
¾¾ Hamilton was born around 1757 on the island of Nevis in the British
West Indies. His father was James Hamilton, and his mother was
Rachel Faucett Lavien. Unhappily for Alexander, Rachel not was
married to James Hamilton but to Johan Michael Lavien, a planter
on the island of St. Croix.
Rachel eventually succeeded in getting a divorce from her

husband but not for the purpose of marrying James Hamilton.
Hamilton set up a lackadaisical business on St. Croix,
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
(1755/57–1804)
54 Lecture 7 • Alexander Hamilton’s Republic

and then, with the excuse of business matters on St. Kitts,
disappeared.
Undismayed, Rachel set up her own retail business and

farmed 12-year-old Alexander out to a merchant firm, where
he flourished. By the time he was 14, his employer was
leaving orders and sales in his hands. But he was also bored;
life in the British West
Indies was a dead-end
street for a young man
with ambitions.
BY 1770, THE BRITISH

SUGAR ISLANDS WERE
EXPORTING 132,000 TONS
OF SUGAR, 11 MILLION
GALLONS OF MOLASSES,
AND 41 MILLION LITERS
OF RUM—ALL ON THE
BACKS OF SLAVE LABOR.
¾¾ The islands of the West

Indies were a cockpit of
political rivalries between
the great European powers,
especially the British and
the French. Their value
lay in the commodity the
West Indies grew better
than anywhere else in the
world: sugar. As early as
the 1660s, the West Indian
sugar crop was yielding
more than three times the value of tobacco cultivation in the
Chesapeake Bay. Compared to the North American colonies, per
capita wealth for whites on a sugar island, such as Jamaica, was
£1,196, while in New England, it was £32.

¾¾ The riches from the sugar trade created greater concentrations
of land and wealth in fewer hands, and all of it was produced by
the labor of black slaves. By the 1750s, slave imports in Jamaica
reached 6,000 a year, and by 1780, 91 percent of the population of
the entire British West Indies were black slaves. In that world, the
future for fatherless working boys was decidedly bleak.
¾¾ But in 1772, Hugh Knox, a Scots-Irish Presbyterian missionary,

arrived in St. Croix. He took the 15-year-old Hamilton under his
wing and ultimately sent him to King’s College (now Columbia
University). But Hamilton never actually took his degree, because
by 1775, the American Revolution had begun, and Hamilton was
already in the thick of revolutionary activities.
THE WAR YEARS
¾¾ Hamilton made his first mark

as early as the summer
of 1774, speaking at anti-
British rallies for the Sons
of Liberty and publishing
his first revolutionary tract
in December. His message
was simple, blunt, and
straight out of the playbook
of Enlightenment politics:
“That Americans are entitled
to freedom is incontestable
on every rational principle.”
Hierarchy and aristocracy
were fictions created
by the powerful, not the WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
arrangement sanctioned by (1723–1780)
nature.
¾¾ Three months later, Hamilton was further refining his notions of the
politics of nature. He did not, however, begin with Locke but with

William Blackstone’s description of human nature. This natural law
undergirded all human society, and “all civil government” had to be
constructed in harmony with it.
This precluded any idea that kings had some God-given

sanction to impose their rule on people. To the contrary, “The
origin of all civil government,” Hamilton argued, “must be a
voluntary compact between the rulers and the ruled.” In the
case of the king of England, therefore, “He is king of America”
only by “virtue of a compact between us and the kings of
Great Britain,” and if that compact had become corrupted, it
was time to terminate it.
In an unusually sophisticated insight, Hamilton went on to

observe that kings are not the only ones liable to become
drunk with power. Parliament, fully as much as George III, was
culpable in the oppression of America, and merely the fact
that it was an elected legislature would do nothing to restrain
it from being “a more intolerable and excessive species of
despotism than an absolute monarchy.” There was nothing
inherently just, wise, virtuous or fair in legislative assemblies.
Power must be dissipated, divided, and distributed in small

enough packets to prevent its mutating into the monstrous
shapes Hamilton had seen it take in the islands of his birth.
It was not that Hamilton was contemptuous of commerce,
but he had also seen that the great sugar planters, left
to themselves, had warped and twisted commerce into a
human catastrophe.
¾¾ By the summer of 1775, Hamilton had formed his own ad hoc

artillery company. He commanded them through the disheartening
campaigns of 1776 and, in February 1777, was promoted to
lieutenant colonel and a place on the staff of George Washington.
Hamilton was the ideal aide-de-camp for Washington, handling
Washington’s correspondence and carrying out special

assignments. Washington became a sort of surrogate father
to Hamilton.
REQUIREMENTS OF A REPUBLIC
¾¾ With the end of the Revolution, Hamilton married into the influential
Schuyler family of New York and began practicing law. In 1782,
he was designated as a member of New York’s delegation in the
Confederation Congress. He had never ceased reading, nor had
he ceased thinking in terms that moved in different directions than
the man who would become his archrival, Thomas Jefferson.
¾¾ Americans now had themselves a republic, which was, in short,

any form of government in which sovereignty resided in the people,
not in a separate ruling class or king. But republics varied along a
wide spectrum, from oligarchies to true democracies. Unhappily,
there had been only a few examples of successful republics in
human history—particularly, Rome and Athens—and they offered
only a handful of useful rules for guidance:
First, a republic must be harmonious. It cannot be divided in

purpose; it must be guided by a common vision of the public
good.
Second, it must be homogeneous—composed of citizens who

are ethnically, economically, and socially more or less equal in
wealth and status.
Third, a republic must be small, if only because harmony

and homogeneity break down whenever the boundaries of
a republic are drawn to include too many different kinds of
people or so much territory that people cannot keep vigil over
their fellow citizens.
Fourth, every citizen of a republic must be independent and

self-sufficient enough to be able to occupy a public office.

¾¾ These were certainly the rules that guided Thomas Jefferson’s
notion of a republic. But Hamilton had learned from two very
different sources that these rules—and Jefferson’s satisfaction
with them—might not be quite so admirable as they sounded.
¾¾ One of those sources was his reading of David Hume. What he

learned from Hume was that governments—including republican
governments—cannot be invented out of thin air or pressed into an
iron maiden of theory. Hume had no particular love for monarchy,
but he did not believe that the British monarchy had been bad in
all cases or that it merited being thrown out entirely. Politics should
rest on experience, not theory; on practical realities, not ideology.
Such considerations rendered Hamilton suspicious of reliance

on the rule of virtue, much less on reliance of economies
limited to agriculture or expectations that keeping republics
small would keep them pure. The West Indies, on that logic,
should have been showcases for republicanism, which they
were decidedly not.
Hamilton also felt with personal keenness that Jeffersonian

rules about homogeneity and harmony were most likely to
operate to the exclusion, not of the corrupt, but of honest
outsiders like himself, who had no land, no inheritance,
nothing but talent and ambition to offer the new republic.
“There is a bigotry in politics, as well as in religions,” Hamilton
wrote, “equally pernicious in both.”
¾¾ The other source that fed Hamilton’s skepticism about elegant

but rigid concepts of republicanism was the behavior of the
Confederation Congress. Even during the Revolution, he had
been sickened by the “folly, caprice [and] want of foresight” which
“characterize the general tenor of their actions.”
What had been folly in war turned out to be folly in peace,

as the states asserted their veto over the impost proposal, all

the while spewing out unsecured paper money and claiming
sovereignty over their own portions of the U.S. war debt.
“Our prospects are not flattering,” Hamilton sighed to John

Jay in 1783, “Every day proves the inefficacy of the present
confederation, yet … we are receding instead of advancing in
a disposition to amend its effects.”
The cherry on top was the New York legislature’s move, early
in 1786, to begin buying up the Confederation Congress’s
bonds and notes with $500,000 of paper money. Ostensibly,
this was done as an act of charity toward New Yorkers, who
had been waiting since the Revolution for Congress to redeem
the IOUs and securities it had issued for goods and supplies.
What it really did was make Congress a creditor of New York,
so that the state legislature had a financial stick with which to
beat Congress.
Worse still, in another gesture of phony charity, the New York

legislature offered to allow the Confederation Congress to
collect the long-desired impost on New York commerce—
but only if Congress agreed to dedicate the revenue from
the impost to servicing its debt, which of course, meant
that the impost would end up in the pockets of the New
York legislature.
From his seat in the state legislature, Hamilton protested,

“The United States are intrusted with the management of the
general concerns and interests of the community— they have
the power of war and peace, they have the power of treaty. …
Let us not endeavour still more to weaken and degrade the
federal government, by heaping fresh marks of contempt on
its authority.” It did no good.

SUGGESTED READING
McDonald, Alexander Hamilton, chaps. 1–4.

Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, chap. 13.
1. What was a republic, according to most Americans’ understanding?
2. Why was Hamilton suspicious of relying on legislatures, commerce,

or virtue?

Lecture 8
JAMES MADISON’S
CONFERENCE
O Vernon,
n the day he finally returned to Mount
George Washington had been
absent for a decade, and in the meantime, much
had gone by the wayside. At the time of his
retirement, Washington wondered whether he
even had the stamina necessary to bring Mount
Vernon back to productivity. He was also involved
in efforts to establish the Potowmack Navigation
Company, which aimed to develop the Potomac
River as a major artery of commerce. In this
lecture, we’ll see how those efforts highlighted the
ineffectiveness of the Continental Congress and
resulted in the call for a constitutional convention
in Philadelphia.
62
MOUNT VERNON,
FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA
THE POTOWMACK COMPANY
¾¾ The American colonies had always been blessed with one great
asset and two great debits. The asset was land; the debits were
the shortage of labor to work the land and the lack of capital to
buy more. As long as the colonies were colonies, Americans had
ready access to British capital and to politicians who could smooth
the way for land acquisitions. But now, the British politicians were
gone, as was access to British capital.
¾¾ Before the Revolution, Washington and his brothers had made

substantial investments in land development schemes, and
he later became deeply involved in plans for the Potowmack
Navigation Company, which aimed to develop the Potomac River
as a major artery of commerce, linking it with the Ohio River.

¾¾ A survey of the headwaters of the Potomac cost Washington the
equivalent of $1 million in modern currency, but the company would
need to attract the equivalent of $40 million from investors if it
were to succeed. And that capital was not going to be forthcoming
so long as foreign investors feared that reckless state legislatures
would allow American borrowers easy relief from their obligations.
¾¾ Investment capital would also not be forthcoming so long as

jurisdiction over the Potomac River itself lay between the two states
that shared it as a boundary, Virginia and Maryland. Maryland’s
17th-century charter set its southern boundary as the far bank of
the Potomac, effectively giving Maryland legal jurisdiction over
the entire river. But Washington was able to arrange a meeting
between representatives of Maryland and Virginia to iron out the
legal difficulties concerning jurisdiction of the river.
¾¾ Two of the Virginia commissioners, James Madison and

Edmund Randolph, never received word of the meeting and
missed it entirely. When the others met in March 1785, the
Marylanders balked: They wanted Virginia to eliminate the tolls
it charged on shipping at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay,
renegotiate fishing rights, and share costs for lighthouses. The
commissioners deadlocked.
¾¾ Finally, on March 24, Washington himself intervened: Both

delegations were invited to Mount Vernon and, once there, agreed
that the Potomac should be declared a “common highway,” with
remission of the Virginia tolls and a variety of other concessions
“very important to the commerce of the two states.”
¾¾ More important, however, was the recommendation Mason made

to the Virginia legislature in his report of March 28, 1785: that “it
may be proper for the two legislatures, at their annual meeting in
the autumn to appoint commissioners to meet, and communicate
the regulations of commerce and duties proposed by each State,
and to confer on such subjects as may concern the commercial
interests of both States.”
64 Lecture 8 • James Madison’s Conference

¾¾ The Maryland legislature was only too happy to agree and
proposed inviting two other parties, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
The Virginia Assembly went one step further by proposing that the
next meeting of the commissioners “take into consideration the
trade of the United States.”
MADISON’S EARLY CAREER
¾¾ The man who offered that resolution

to the Virginia Assembly was James
Madison, who was supposed to be
present at the earlier conferences
but didn’t receive word of his
nomination in time. He was now
prepared to make up for that
guiltless oversight, because he
was about to become the prime
mover, not only of the next Potomac
River conference but of an entirely
new governing document for the
United States.
¾¾ By the time Madison was born in

March 1751, his family was the
largest landowner in King George
County. In 1769, “Jemmy” was sent
JAMES MADISON
to Princeton, where he managed to (1751–1836)
complete his courses in two years and spent
a third year under the personal tutelage of
Princeton’s president, John Witherspoon. Though Witherspoon
might have been Presbyterian, his reading lists for students
embraced all the great names of the Enlightenment, including
Locke, Montesquieu, and Hume.
¾¾ After college, Madison went through the motions of reading law,

although it seemed clear that this would never serve as more
than a personal adjunct to the far larger responsibility he would

one day inherit from his father as a Virginia grandee. He was
commissioned in 1775 as a colonel in the county militia, but his
ill health probably prevented him from serving. It actually came as
something of a surprise when he was elected to the convention of
Virginia in 1776, which was charged with proposing a declaration
of independence.
¾¾ He served four years in the Virginia legislature, where he met and

formed a lifelong friendship with Thomas Jefferson. In December
1779, just after Jefferson’s election as governor of Virginia,
Madison was appointed a member of Virginia’s delegation to the
Continental Congress.
MADISON IN POLITICS
¾¾ Madison was primarily appointed to Congress to defend Virginia’s

interests, and he did so on three vital points. The first concerned
the Mississippi River: Assuming that the United States would
prevail in its Revolution, Congress wanted it clearly understood
that the country’s western boundary would inevitably have to be
fixed at the Mississippi River.
It was another question, however, whether Spain, which still

ruled the Louisiana territory and most of the western banks
of the Mississippi, would open the river to American trade.
Congress hesitated: The revolutionaries needed Spain as an
ally, and some of the delegates were willing to trade navigation
rights on the river for Spanish assistance against the British.
Madison disagreed. If the American boundary reached the

Mississippi, so would Virginia’s, and Madison stubbornly
insisted that Congress had no business giving away Virginia’s
claims on the river’s commerce.
¾¾ Madison was just as stubborn on a second issue: the call by

Congress for Virginia to cede all its claims to western territory

in order to induce small states, such as Maryland, to ratify the
Articles of Confederation.
¾¾ Third, he resisted Congress’s decision to recognize Vermont

as an independent state because Vermont had been carved
out from lands originally claimed by New York. “If the district in
Question was comprehended within the Jurisdiction of one or
more of the United States,” Madison insisted, “it must necessarily
follow, that the Inhabitants could have no Right to set up an
independent State.”
¾¾ But Madison soon enough learned, as many others did in the

1780s, that a Congress powerless to control the states made for
a nation in which no one abroad had confidence. This lesson was
brought home to Madison when he made his first big investment in
900 acres of land in upstate New York.
He would have purchased more, but he had not been

able to find lenders willing to finance his investment. He
turned to Jefferson, who by then was serving as American
representative in Paris, to see if French financiers could lend
him some money. But Jefferson told him frankly that not even
Washington had been able to find lenders for the Potowmack
Company in Paris, because of to the “habitual protection of
the debtor” by state legislatures.
Congress would have to take the lead by demonstrating that

it had the power to pay off its existing wartime loans and by
showing that it could control the waywardness of the state
legislatures in tax and money matters.
¾¾ Madison’s solution was to support granting Congress the power to

levy tariffs, such as the 5 percent impost proposed in 1781. But his
pleading on this issue was to no avail, and it left Madison covered
with embarrassment when Virginia, which had originally ratified
the impost, rescinded the ratification.

JAMES MADISON
¾¾ Madison gave up the struggle in December 1783 and

took a seat in the Virginia legislature, fighting off proposals to
pay state debts in paper money. He missed the Mount Vernon
conference, but he persuaded the assembly to endorse George
Mason’s call for a larger conference and got himself appointed as
one of the commissioners. A letter was sent to the other states,
inviting them to appoint their own commissioners and to meet in
Annapolis, Maryland, in September 1786.
THE POTOWMACK CONFERENCE
¾¾ Madison was not exactly giddy with anticipation or optimism

before the conference. He feared that “the expedient is no doubt
liable to objections and will probably miscarry.” His real hope,

as he told Jefferson, was that the Annapolis Convention would
pave the way “to a Plenipotentiary Convention for amending the
Confederation” as a whole, but he also wrote that he “despaired”
of its accomplishment.
¾¾ At first, Annapolis seemed to confirm Madison’s direst fears. Eight

states had pledged to send delegates, but only five delegations
actually appeared, comprising only 12 commissioners, and
Madison was almost prompted to postpone the meeting to another
time and place.
¾¾ But among those commissioners were precisely the individuals

most capable of carrying the convention forward, including
Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Dickinson of Delaware,
the architect of the original Articles of Confederation. Once they
began deliberating, matters moved ahead handsomely, shifting
swiftly from problems in regulating interstate commerce to “the
fundamental and essential principles of the Union.”
¾¾ On the fourth day of the convention, the delegates adopted

an “Address” to their respective state legislatures. Given the
importance of regulating trade, the “Address” called for an
“adjustment of other parts of the Federal System.” Without pausing,
it went on to specify just what mechanism the confederation should
adopt for this adjustment:
a Convention of Deputies from the different States … to take

into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise
such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to
render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate
to the exigencies of the Union; and to report such 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.

¾¾ There had been motions in the Confederation Congress for
convening a national assembly to reconstruct the articles as
early as 1784, but it would take pressure of a kind no one in the
Confederation Congress had yet experienced to make a national
convention possible. On this occasion, however, the pressure
appeared. By the time the Annapolis commissioners had returned
home, they were greeted by the news of Daniel Shays’s assault
on the courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts.
SUGGESTED READING
Ketchum, James Madison, chaps. 7–8.

Randall, George Washington, chap. 18.
1. Why was investment (such as the Potowmack Company) at the mercy

of state squabbling?
2. What role was played by the Annapolis Convention in calling for an

overhaul of the Articles of Confederation?

Lecture 9
PATRICK HENRY’S
RELIGION
H phrase; unfortunately, that phrase occurs in

e is immortalized for Americans by one
a speech whose only printed version first appeared

40 years after the event. He is the subject of Peter
Rothermel’s greatest painting, although again, the
painting was finished 70 years after the event it
depicts. He was a man of the most devout personal
Christianity, yet he took the lead in stripping the
largest church in his state of its tax revenues. His
name was Patrick Henry, and he is, above all of
the other Founders, the most self-contradictory,
the most contrarian, and—sadly—one of the most
consistent losers.
71
THE COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT
¾¾ Patrick Henry’s father, a Scot named John Henry, arrived in

Virginia in 1727, with a letter of introduction to his half-brother,
John Syme, a minor landowner in the Virginia Piedmont. When
Syme died four years later, John Henry married his widow, and
Patrick, their second son, was born in 1736. John Henry now had
more than 7,000 acres and access to an ever-escalating series of
civil offices, including vestry of his local Church of England parish,
chief justice of the county court, and colonel of the county militia.
¾¾ These were still small holdings compared to the great Tidewater

planters, but they gave the Henry family enough leisure that young
Patrick could spend his time fishing and roaming in the woods.
There was in him “no hint or token … of the possession of any
intellectual gift.” That is, until he encountered the formidable
Reverend Samuel Davies.
¾¾ Davies arrived in Hanover County in 1747 and brought with him an

alternative universe to the one Patrick Henry had thus far enjoyed.
It was especially an alternative universe to that of the 18th-century
Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment loved reason because reason,

untrammeled by authority, was understood to have the power
to peer into the mysteries of human life, discern their true and
natural patterns, and present them whole and complete to
reshape the world.
But lives lived strictly according to reason had two great

defects: First, they became stale, chilly, and unexciting;
second, no single human reason was capable of
comprehending, sorting, and retaining all the data that the
world offered. Every mystery reason solved opened up two
more, and reason fell far short of offering an ultimate answer
to the most fundamental question of all: How did everything
come into being in the first place?
72 Lecture 9 • Patrick Henry’s Religion

Blaise Pascal, the French Catholic and mathematical genius,
put his finger squarely on reason’s limitations when he wrote
that “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an
infinite number of things which are beyond it.”
Pascal was only one of several starting points of a vast

religious reaction known as the Counter-Enlightenment that
was embraced in diverse European Christian movements.
But they all had in common a profound conviction that reason
told you only so much about life, that religion and the heart
had to be an important, even controlling, aspect of human
personality and society.
THE GREAT AWAKENING
¾¾ In some respects, the preachers of Counter-Enlightenment

Christianity remained very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment,
because they, too, sought to throw off the restraints of authority
and find in experience the genuine springs of religious life. And
some of them turned out to be quite formidable reasoners on their
own. But the religion of the heart remained the central guide of
their lives.
¾¾ This evangelical experience made its transit to the British

colonies of North America primarily through the agency of George
Whitefield. Whitefield was one of the greatest preaching talents of
the 18th century.
Like John Wesley, he was ordained in the established Church

of England and his preaching of the strangely warmed heart
often made him persona non grata among the more sedate
neighborhoods of the Church of England; his solution was to
strike out on his own.
In 1739, Whitefield proposed founding an orphanage in the

British colony of Georgia; he embarked on a fundraising
campaign through the colonies that featured himself as the

principal attraction.
The movement he
sparked became
known as the Great
Awakening.
¾¾ One of the pupils being

trained for the ministry
at the time was Samuel
Davies. He arrived in
Virginia in 1747 on what
was supposed to be a
missionary tour of the
scattered Presbyterian
congregations of the
Piedmont, but he was
so well received th
at he decided to settle
in Virginia.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD
(1714–1770)
¾¾ By 1752, however, the commissary
in Williamsburg complained to
the bishop of London that Davies was causing “a great defection
from our religious assemblies.” But Davies proved to be as
savvy politically as he was religiously, and a direct appeal to the
governor’s council in Williamsburg and the king’s attorney-general
in England “put the affair at rest.”
PATRICK HENRY’S AWAKENING
¾¾ Patrick Henry thought that Davies was “the greatest orator he ever
heard,” and even though Henry remained technically a member
of the established church, he became attached to the religion of
the heart. But the religion made little impression on his father, who
was determined to apprentice his son to a merchant.

¾¾ Soon thereafter, Henry met Thomas Jefferson, who suggested that
he begin reading law. He could have devoted little more than six
weeks before showing up in Williamsburg to request a law license,
which the colony’s four law examiners seem to have granted with
understandable reluctance.
¾¾ Henry adapted the oratorical brilliance of the Awakeners to the

practice of Virginia law, and between 1760 and 1763, he was
attorney of record in 1,185 cases in Hanover and neighboring
counties. In an age when law was a genteel side pursuit of the
great landowners, Henry took law as his life; even more, he took to
the drama of courtroom trials.
In December 1763, Henry was hired to serve as defense

lawyer for the parish vestry of Fredericksville, in Louisa
County, in a case involving the so-called Two-Penny Act of
1758. The act stipulated that Church of England clergy in
Virginia be paid in paper money rather than in tobacco. The
Reverend James Maury sued to recover the real value he
thought he had been deprived of and appealed to the king’s
Privy Council, which supported Maury.
But Henry defended the Two-Penny Act on the grounds that

neither the king nor the Privy Council had the authority to annul
laws duly and properly passed by a legislature of the people.
In his defense, Henry said, “The King, from being the father
of his people, had degenerated into a tyrant, and forfeited all
right to his subjects’ obedience to his order regarding it.”
This was an extraordinary raising of the stakes in what was

otherwise a simple civil suit, but Henry was accustomed to
seeing great consequences in small decisions, and the
“excited people … seized their champion and bore him on
their shoulders in triumph around the court-yard.” A year and a
half later, they elected him to the House of Burgesses.

¾¾ The Awakeners also imparted to Patrick Henry a suspicion of
authority, whether it was the Church of England in Virginia or
more distant versions. And that suspicion blossomed in the 1760s,
as Parliament began reaching ever-deeper into the colonies to
control and regulate the colonial economy for Britain’s benefit.
In May 1765, the House of Burgesses adopted a series of

resolutions Henry had composed protesting the Stamp Act,
and Henry strode to the floor in their defense with a blistering
eloquence. The Stamp Act, Henry declared, was tyranny, and
tyranny would meet with only one end.
1n 1774, when he called on the House to begin arming

Virginians for resistance to the Crown, Henry spoke his
most famous words: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as
to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as
for me … give me liberty, or give me death!”
HENRY IN POLITICS
¾¾ But the man known as the “Demosthenes of America” did not

prove terribly successful beyond oratory. He was elected governor
of Virginia in 1776, but in general, his accomplishments were few
and unremarkable—something for which Henry unhesitatingly
blamed his fellow Virginians’ lack of virtue.
¾¾ Henry was not any more enamored of the Confederation

Congress. When he left office, he declined election to the
Congress, and to the surprise of George Mason, used his seat in
the Virginia Assembly to begin promoting a variety of debt-relief
measures, including delaying tax payments, prohibiting British
merchants from doing business in Virginia, and permitting Virginia
debtors to pay off prewar debts to those merchants in depreciated
Virginia paper money.

An effort to impose new taxes, Massachusetts-style, was met
by Henry’s argument “that this was a premature attempt; that
policy required that the people should have some repose after
the fatigues and privations to which they had been subjected,
during a long and arduous struggle for independence.”
Mason, however, sternly reminded Henry in 1783 that the

Revolution had not been waged “to avoid our just debts,
or cheat our creditors; but to rescue our country from the
oppression and tyranny of the British government, and to
secure the rights and liberty of ourselves, and our posterity.”
¾¾ Oddly, however, Henry believed that the one mechanism for

restoring virtue to Virginia and preserving liberty to America
was in public funding for religion, not a state-established church
but support for “teachers of the Christian religion,” regardless
of denomination. In 1784, he proposed a general assessment
on Virginia taxpayers that would support the teachers of
any denomination.
Henry’s bill left the jaws of Madison and Jefferson hanging

open. The whole “project” was, as Madison wrote to Jefferson,
“extraordinary,” and would probably have expired quietly in
committee had it not been “preserved from a dishonorable
death by the talents of Mr. Henry.”
But not even Henry’s fabled eloquence was a match for

Madison’s relentless logic or for his sharp hand at political
maneuvering in the assembly. When the bill came up for
debate in December 1784, Madison skewered it by asking
a series of embarrassing questions. In the end, the bill died
in committee.

SUGGESTED READING
Kidd, The Great Awakening, chap. 5.

———, Patrick Henry, chap. 2.
1. How did Patrick Henry establish his reputation for oratorical brilliance?
2. Why did Henry favor public financial support for religion?

Lecture 10
JAMES MADISON’S
VICES
I figures in moving the republic from under the

t is somewhat curious that the most important
shadow of the Articles of Confederation were men

with tenuous connections to family and place.
George Washington, for example, compensated
for his lack of a large family by creating a “military
family” around Alexander Hamilton, the marquis
de Lafayette, John Laurens, and others. Such
men as Madison and Washington came out of
the Revolution unencumbered by vast family
responsibilities and, thus, were free to think in
broad, national terms. As one observer wrote
of Madison, because he was “unencumbered
with the cares of a family,” he was free to do a
substantial amount of homework before leaving for
Philadelphia and the Confederation Congress.
79
JAMES MADISON
LEAD-UP TO THE CONFEDERATION CONGRESS
¾¾ It seems as though, at almost the last minute, the Confederation

Congress realized how long things had been let slide and how
needy the Articles of Confederation were for amendment or
more. At the end of Lecture 8, we mentioned that in the spring
of 1786, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina had upbraided the
Confederation Congress about the need to put its house in order,
only to run hard into the refusal of New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island, and other states.
¾¾ In August of 1786, a Grand Committee that included Pinckney

proposed a series of amendments to the Articles of Confederation
that added seven new articles and amended the others to give
Congress “the sole and exclusive power of regulating the trade
80 Lecture 10 • James Madison’s Vices

of the States as well as foreign nations ... with each other, and
of laying such prohibitions and Imposts and duties ... as may be
Necessary for the purpose” and to levy a 10 percent fine on states
that failed to submit their financial quotas.
¾¾ But this was all too little, too late, especially after the eruption
of Shays’s Rebellion that fall and the paralyzed indecision with
which Congress greeted it. Instead, on February 21, 1787, the
Confederation Congress meekly approved the proposal of the
Annapolis Convention for “a convention of representatives … for
the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation” to render “the
federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of the Government
& the preservation of the Union.”
¾¾ James Madison, meanwhile, had already embarked on his own

private study of “ancient and modern Confederacies,” surveying
the classical confederations and trolling through Montesquieu,
Polybius, Plutarch’s Lives, Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of
the World, and other sources. Alongside this compendium of
examples, Madison then composed a summary of what he called
the “vices of the political system of the U. States,” from which
he would survey the failures of the Articles of Confederation in a
fashion so unsparing that any thought of mere amendment would
be worthless. Madison listed 11 such vices:
“Failure of the States to comply with the Constitutional

requisitions”—in other words, to pay up their portion of the
federal budget.
“Encroachments by the States on the federal authority,” which

Madison saw particularly in “the troops raised and to be kept
up by Massachusetts” during Shays’s Rebellion.
“Violations of the law of nations and of treaties.” Madison

had seen how individual states, including his own Virginia,
interpreted the treaty of peace with Great Britain, France,
and Holland to suit themselves, either by refusing to return

confiscated Loyalist property or to satisfy prewar debts to
British subjects.
“Trespasses of the States on the rights of each other,”

particularly with regard to the flood of state paper money.
“Want of concert in matters where common interest requires it.”
“Want of Guaranty to the States of their Constitutions and

laws against internal violence.” Customary as it was to regard
the chief threat to a republic as coming from power imposed
from the top down by a conqueror, Madison had seen in
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and western Massachusetts
that a few unscrupulous demagogues can whip up the body
politic, seize power, and make themselves fully as dictatorial a
tyranny as any king’s.
Madison’s seventh “vice” flowed directly out of the sixth: “Want

of sanction to the laws, and of coercion in the Government
of the Confederacy.” Time and experience had shown that
“it is no longer doubted that a unanimous and punctual
obedience of 13 independent bodies to the acts of the federal
Government ought not to be calculated on.” The national
government had the responsibility to ensure that the nation
remained a republic, not only as a nation but in its component
parts, too.
“Want of ratification by the people of the articles of

Confederation.” Madison had noticed that recognition of the
Confederation’s authority had never been incorporated into
several of the state constitutions and “has received no other
sanction than that of the legislative authority.”
“Multiplicity of laws in the several states.”
“Mutability of the laws of the states.”

Finally, in the 11th point, Madison unleashed his most personal
arrow, for not only were the state laws as changeable as
the weather, but their very instability suggested something
ominous about republican government itself. Madison wrote,
in terms as stinging as they were accurate:
Individuals of extended views and of national pride may

bring the public proceedings to this standard, but the
example will never be followed by the multitude. Is it to be
imagined that an ordinary citizen or even Assemblyman
of R. Island, in estimating the policy of paper money, ever
considered or cared in what light the measure would be
viewed in France or Holland, or even in Massachusetts
or Connecticut? It was a sufficient temptation to both that
it was for their interest; it was a sufficient sanction to the
latter that it was popular in the State; to the former, that it
was so in the neighbourhood.
The state legislatures, to be blunt, are filled with greedy,

small-minded, provincial types who are incapable of
rising above the narrow horizons of self-interest—an
attitude not only fatal to the articles, but a contradiction
of the self-denial and civic virtue that was supposed to
suffuse a republic and one that made the world wonder,
as Washington had feared, that a republic might be
beyond the capacity of ordinary people.
MADISON’S PROPOSALS
¾¾ In mid-April 1787, Madison laid his ideas for an entirely new frame
of government before the one man who, more than any other,
could make it happen: George Washington. In fact, Washington
told Madison that “a thorough reform of the present system is
indispensable.” That was enough of an opening for Madison, who
submitted some of his ideas for a new system.

¾¾ First, wrote Madison, there is no need to believe that the “individual
independence of the States is utterly irreconcileable with their
aggregate sovereignty.” The solution was not to abolish the states
and consolidate them into a whole. Instead, what Madison had
in mind was “some middle ground, which may at once support a
due supremacy of the national authority” yet “not exclude the local
authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful.”
The way to this, Madison recommended, was through “a

change … in the principle of representation” in Congress.
Representatives in Congress should be elected directly by the
people of the states in proportion to each state’s population.
The Congress would then become the representatives of the

people, not the states, and “the lesser States [for example,
Rhode Island] must in every event yield to the predominant
will.”
¾¾ In contrast, Madison wanted none of the unicameral Pennsylvania

nonsense when it came to the structure of Congress. “The
Legislative department might be divided into two branches; one

of them chosen every years by the people at large, or by the
legislatures; the other to consist of fewer members, to hold their
places for a longer term, and to go out in such a rotation as always
to leave in office a large majority of old members.”
¾¾ Next, Madison proceeded, give “the national Government …

positive and compleat authority in all cases which require
uniformity; such as the regulation of trade, including the right of
taxing both exports & imports, the fixing the terms and forms of
naturalization, &c.”
¾¾ In order to prevent the states from passing the multitude of

laws they would pass to obstruct this “compleat authority,”
Congress should be given “over and above this positive power, a
negative”—a veto—“in all cases whatsoever on the legislative acts
of the States.”
¾¾ Finally, Madison added, “a national Executive must also be

provided” and not just a chairman or president of Congress. For
this executive, Madison already had in mind Washington himself.
¾¾ Washington took careful notes on Madison’s letter and filed them

away with correspondence he had been conducting with John Jay
and Henry Knox on the same subject. But would he do anything
about it? Madison had made sure that Washington’s name,
along with his own, appeared on the list of Virginia’s delegates
to Philadelphia. But Washington was feeling his years that winter.
Even though Shays’s Rebellion had quickened his fury and
frustration, he was not exaggerating when he told Henry Knox that
he was finished with public life and wanted only to retire.
¾¾ As opening day for the convention arrived, Madison was

disheartened that “the number as yet assembled is but small.” But
he had despaired too quickly. On Sunday, May 13, the chiming
of bells, the noise of crowds thronging the streets, and the
clatter of the First City Troop of Cavalry announced the arrival of

Washington. The first man of the republic had come to bless the
convention with his participation.
SUGGESTED READING
Glover, Founders as Fathers, chap. 1.

Ketcham, James Madison, chap. 9.
1. What were the 11 vices Madison detected in the Articles of Confederation?
2. What recommendations for reform did Madison make to Washington?

Lecture 11
EDMUND
RANDOLPH’S PLAN
I Madison’s
f Washington’s arrival gladdened James
heart and reassured him that
the greatest man in America would be at the
convention to add the imprimatur of his presence,
then he was only slightly less happy when, on May
15, Edmund Randolph arrived in Philadelphia.
In this lecture, we’ll explore the opening of the
convention in May of 1787; the characteristics of
the delegates; the selection of the president and
secretary; and Randolph’s plan for revising the
Articles of Confederation.
87
BACKGROUND ON RANDOLPH
¾¾ The ancestry of the Randolphs, like so many of the Tidewater

aristocracy, stretched back to 1643. They had intermarried with
the Jeffersons, founded the College of William and Mary, and
generated various governors, members of the Governors’ Council,
and members of the House of Burgesses. Edmund Randolph’s
father, John Randolph, was “a man of literary tastes, a skeptic
in religion, and not much inclined to politics”; he was also the
king’s attorney.
¾¾ Edmund was born in 1753, and at his father’s Williamsburg home,

he was introduced to everyone in Virginia society worth being
introduced to, including Washington, Jefferson, Richard Henry
Lee, and George Wythe. He went to William and Mary and read
law with his father to become an attorney himself.
¾¾ The Revolution, however,

was a bolt of destruction to
the Randolphs. John left for
England in 1775, never to
return. Edmund felt keenly
the shadow of suspicion that
fell over him, and in August,
he volunteered himself to
Washington as a staffer.
But Edmund had more than
enough redeeming qualities
to make up for the deficits of
his father’s Toryism.
¾¾ He was soon recalled to

Virginia to serve as a delegate
to the Virginia Convention
of 1776, and he was elected
EDMUND RANDOLPH
attorney-general under the (1753–1813)
new state constitution; he was
88 Lecture 11 • Edmund Randolph’s Plan

then elected to the Continental and Confederation Congresses,
where he formed a close attachment to Madison. Like Madison, he
was convinced that the inability of the Confederation to fund itself
would sooner or later undermine the advantages of the Revolution.
¾¾ But Randolph would soon be in a position to do something about it.

On January 21, 1786, he was appointed by the Virginia Assembly
to head the Virginia delegation to the Annapolis Conference, and
the following November, he was elected governor of Virginia.
Washington was delighted at his old staffer’s elevation to the
governor’s mansion. In December, Randolph was one of the five
Virginians dispatched to Philadelphia.
¾¾ Like Madison, Randolph had already been thinking ahead toward

the likeliest results of the convention. He feared that resistance
to any substantial change from Patrick Henry and others would
mean that “the alterations should be grafted on[to]” the Articles
of Confederation; the proposals he eventually wrote out were
anything but mere band-aids.
Randolph had had enough of a confederation where the states

behaved as though they were independent powers. There
must be a new “compact in which the people themselves
are the sole parties, and which they alone can abrogate.” It
should have, Randolph wrote, a preamble and a declaration
to establish a “supreme legislative, executive, and judiciary.”
He also specified that the supreme legislative body “shall
consist of two branches: viz. (a) a House of Delegates; and
(b) a Senate.”
At the end, Randolph added what turned out to be a highly

perceptive requirement: “The ratification of the reform is … to
be made by a special convention in each State— … to be
chosen for the express purpose of considering and approving,
or repealing it in toto.”

Whatever came out of the convention, Randolph wanted to
take no chances that a jealous Congress or truculent state
legislatures would strangle it in its cradle. The new frame of
government would go before special conventions in each of
the states, outflanking both the Confederation Congress and
the state legislatures, and it would have to be taken as a
single piece, not picked to death by special interests.
INDEPENDENCE HALL,
PHILADELPHIA, PA

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
¾¾ This was all music to Madison’s ears, and when the last member
of the Virginia delegation, George Mason, arrived on May 17,
it began caucusing with the Pennsylvania delegation on the
direction they wanted the convention to take once a quorum was
reached. And to Madison’s relief, that quorum was finally achieved
on May 25. Delegates included those from Pennsylvania, Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Delaware,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Georgia. Rhode Island refused
to participate.
¾¾ There was no sense in which these men were intended to be

representative of the people of the United States. They were, for
one thing, there to represent the interests of the states that had
sent them, not the people at large or on average.
¾¾ New York had sent a surprisingly feeble delegation, and two of its
delegates departed the convention in protest after little more than
a month. The joint letter they wrote to New York Governor George
Clinton announced, “A general government, however guarded by
declarations of rights, or cautionary provisions, must unavoidably,
in a short time, be productive of the destruction of the civil liberty
of such citizens who could be effectually coerced by it.”
¾¾ That left the representation of New York in the hands of one man:
Hamilton, who arrived in Philadelphia on May 25. As a general
rule, people either adored or hated Hamilton, and those who hated
him did so with a perfect passion. Another colorful—and rakish—
figure at the convention was Gouverneur Morris. He became
Robert Morris’s assistant and protégé as the confederation’s
financial officer. (Although they shared the same last name, they
were not related.) Gouverneur Morris was impatient with the
financial weakness of the confederation and was unguarded in his
expressions of contempt for it.

¾¾ Thus, the members of the
Constitutional Convention
represented a different
stratum of American
society than the one they
could see around them
in Philadelphia. Even the
numbers of the convention’s
delegates effectively meant
that there would be only 1
delegate in the convention
for every 71,000 Americans;
even worse, counting only
those delegates who sat
consistently throughout
the whole convention, the
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
number would be 1 for
(1752–1816)
every 118,000 Americans.
Still, when the delegates finally
convened for their first working session on May 25, 1787, no
one expressed any hesitation about the authority with which they
proposed to act.
¾¾ The issue of the presidency of the convention was taken up by

Robert Morris and the Pennsylvanians as the first trick, and they
were determined to win it. Morris nominated Washington, who
was unanimously elected. William Jackson, one of the inner ring
of Washington’s old staff, was chosen as secretary. In the end,
Jackson’s election didn’t matter, because James Madison pulled
up a chair at the secretary’s table. There, in no capacity except his
own self-appointed one, Madison proceeded to take meticulous
notes on the convention’s proceedings.
¾¾ The next item of business was to create a Rules Committee,

which fell into the hands of Hamilton, the South Carolinian
Charles Pinckney, and the Virginian George Wythe. In fact, there
was only one sour note to disturb the first day’s proceedings: As

the credentials of each of the state delegations were read into
the record, George Read of Delaware added the proviso the
Delaware legislature had tacked on: “that those from Delaware
were prohibited from changing the article in the Confederation
establishing an equality of votes among the States.”
Read did not mind revising the Articles to award stronger

powers to Congress, but he did not want his little state, with
only 60,000 people, to lose the equal standing it had with
every other state in the Confederation Congress.
Madison, Morris, and Washington might have won the brief

first round of the Convention, but Read’s words were an
ominous reminder that the way ahead was liable to be filled
with longer and more difficult rounds. And they all agreed: The
man to take the point was Edmund Randolph.
SUGGESTED READING
Beeman, Plain, Honest Men, chap. 5.

Stewart, The Summer of 1787, chap. 5.
1. What did Edmund Randolph believe were three indispensable reforms

of the Articles of Confederation?
2. Which of the following delegates to the Philadelphia Convention would

you most like to meet: Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, or
Edmund Randolph?

Lecture 12
WILLIAM PATERSON’S
DISSENT
T Convention
he Rules Committee of the Constitutional
reported on Monday, May 28:
A quorum of seven states was necessary to
do business, all speakers were to address the
president, all deliberations would take place behind
closed doors, and motions to reconsider items
would always considered. These might seem to be
mere procedural matters, but in fact, they turned
out to be important. Closing the proceedings
allowed members of the convention to speak
their minds freely. And keeping all subjects open
for reconsideration allowed the delegates to keep
their minds open and malleable as the scaffolding
of a new instrument of government emerged.
94
RANDOLPH’S RESOLUTIONS
¾¾ The main business of the convention opened on May 29, initiated

by Edmund Randolph of Virginia. Randolph respectfully ticked off
a list of “defects” in the articles that had emerged in the course
of their implementation, including commercial discord among
the states, foreign debts, the havoc of paper money, and the
violations of treaties. Randolph then laid 15 resolutions before the
convention as Virginia’s plan for a new national government:
Congress should be restructured “to consist of two branches.”
Representation “in the National Legislature ought to be

proportioned … to the number of free inhabitants” in each state.
“The first branch of the National Legislature ought to be elected

by the people of the several States,” and the “members of the
second branch of the National Legislature ought to be elected
by” the “individual Legislatures” of the states.
This “National Legislature … [should] be impowered to …

legislate in all cases to which the separate States are
incompetent, or in which the harmony of the United States
may be interrupted by the exercise of individual Legislation; to
negative all laws passed by the several States, contravening
in the opinion of the National Legislature the articles of Union;
and to call forth the force of the Union agst. any member of
the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof.”
Almost as radical was Randolph’s resolution that “a National

Executive be instituted” with “a general authority to execute
the National laws.” This executive would represent a second,
independent department of the government.
There was also to be a third department, “a National Judiciary”

to hear “cases in which foreigners or citizens of other States

applying to such jurisdictions may be interested, or which
respect the collection of the National revenue.”
Just to make it clear that political power was now shifting

decisively from the state to the national level, Randolph added
a penultimate resolution: “that the Legislative, Executive, and
Judiciary powers within the several States ought to be bound
by oath to support the articles of Union.”
¾¾ Although Randolph may have had a hand in drafting these

resolutions, the voice was clearly that of Madison, which made all
the more surprising the proposal by the next speaker of the day:
Charles Pinckney.
PINCKNEY’S PLAN
¾¾ The South Carolina delegation was composed of two men

with the name Pinckney; the first was the influential Charles
Cotesworth Pinckney, who had led South Carolina into the
Revolution. His younger cousin, Charles Pinckney, had also
fought in the Revolution, but he was discounted by many as an
empty-headed fop.
¾¾ It was entirely outside of Madison’s careful planning to have the

younger Pinckney announce that he had his own “draught of
a federal government.” What was even more galling was that
Pinckney’s plan was not a bad one; in fact, it was not dissimilar
to what Madison and the Virginia delegation had worked on so
carefully. The plan included the following:
There should be a bicameral national Congress (consisting of

the Senate and the “House of Delegates”).
The House of Delegates was to be elected by the citizens

of the United States as a whole, with “one Member for every
thousand Inhabitants,” while the Senate was “to be elected
96 Lecture 12 • William Paterson’s Dissent

from four Districts,” either by the House of Delegates or
directly by “the People at large.”
Together, the House of Delegates and the Senate “shall

by joint Ballot annually chuse” a “President” in whom “the
executive authority of the U. S. shall be vested.”
Every state would retain “its Rights,” but like Randolph’s

plan, state laws and legislation would be subject to review by
the Congress.
¾¾ In fact, Pinckney’s plan was actually slightly more radical than

Randolph’s, and it is peculiar that Madison’s otherwise exquisitely
detailed notes make no mention of any of the Pinckney plan’s
provisions. Whether Pinckney really drafted a viable forerunner of
the Constitution on his own or (as Madison believed) confected
such a plan after the fact to
boost his own self-importance
remains a mystery.
PATERSON’S OBJECTIONS
¾¾ The most vocal opponent of

any plan to change the voting
rules was William Paterson
of New Jersey. Irish by birth,
Paterson had been brought to
New Jersey by his immigrant
parents and graduated
from Princeton in 1763. He
became a lawyer, had been
the first attorney-general of
WILLIAM PATERSON
(1745–1806)

revolutionary New Jersey, and represented Somerset County in
the New Jersey legislature.
¾¾ Like Patrick Henry, Paterson was unreconciled to the idea of

rewriting the articles. For all the years of the Continental Congress
and the Confederation Congress, small states, such as New
Jersey, had enjoyed the same vote in Congress that large states,
such as Virginia, had—that is, one apiece.
In the minds of Randolph and Madison, this was absurd. A

state with only 1/10 the population of Virginia was accorded
equal say in national policy and, in the case of Rhode Island,
could obstruct, defy, and even veto legislation as though it
had the same heft as Virginia.
But to Paterson, this was the only safeguard small states

would have against being ground up as bait by the Virginians
or the Pennsylvanians. This was not because Paterson
had any personal sympathy with the fast-and-loose money
policies of state legislatures. But as he listened to Randolph’s
presentation on May 29, he began scribbling extensive notes,
punctuated by expressions of dismay.
¾¾ Even as Paterson scribbled, Randolph was planning to keep

the initiative firmly in the hands of the Virginians by moving that
the convention “resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole” to
discuss his plan. A committee of the whole is a parliamentary
device that allows a deliberative or legislative body to convert
itself into a committee; as such, the usual procedural rules can
be relaxed, proposals made or withdrawn, and ideas batted
around informally—all without any sense of final decisions being
irretrievably made.
¾¾ For the next nine days (May 30–June 8), the initiative stayed firmly
in the hands of the Virginians, and the ebb-and-flow of discussion
centered entirely on the Randolph proposals. In case there was
any doubt what the ultimate result of the Randolph Plan might be,

Gouverneur Morris took the opportunity to make the proposals
clear on May 30:
“That a Union of the States merely federal will not accomplish

the objects proposed by the articles of Confederation.”
“That no treaty or treaties among the whole or part of the

States, as individual Sovereignties, would be sufficient.”
“That a national Government ought to be established

consisting of a supreme Legislative, Executive & Judiciary.”
¾¾ In other words, the Virginians sought to discard the Articles of

Confederation and invent a new document. There was a good
deal of disagreement, but the momentum was irresistible: A vote
on Morris’s three guidelines passed with the support of six of the
eight state delegations.
¾¾ For the next several days, the business of the Committee of the
Whole was taken up with questions of how to adopt the Randolph
Plan. One by one, Randolph’s proposals were relentlessly pushed
toward the committee’s vote:
The “equality of suffrage” for each state mandated by the

articles would yield to representation based on size of
population.
The national legislature would have two branches, the first

elected generally by the people.
The first branch would be the place where all legislation would
originate.
The national legislature would have authority to “negative all

state laws contravening in the opinion of the Nat. Leg. the
articles of union.”

A national executive would “consist of a single person” and be
elected by the national legislature.
¾¾ But Randolph could not quite erase muttered suspicions and

dissents over several annoying details, and that muttering finally
found a voice on June 9, when William Paterson spoke.
He believed that the whole proposal for a new national

legislature based on proportional representation rather
than an equal number of votes per state struck at the very
“existence of the lesser States.” He went on: “The articles of
the Confederation were therefore the proper basis of all the
proceedings of the Convention,” and “we ought to keep within
its limits.” Even if everyone in the assembly room agreed with
Edmund Randolph’s plan, that was not what the American
people had called them to Philadelphia to do.
Paterson continued: “Give the large States an influence

in proportion to their magnitude, and what will be the
consequence? Their ambition will be proportionally increased,
and the small States will have every thing to fear.” The idea
that Virginia or Pennsylvania should have more representation
in Congress simply because they had greater populations
was like saying “that a rich individual citizen should have more
votes than an indigent one.” Eventually, Paterson warned,
“If we are to be considered as a nation, all State distinctions
must be abolished.”
What, Paterson asked, was so wrong with the current

system of equal representation for each state in Congress?
“It has been said that if a Natl. Govt. is to be formed … the
representatives ought to be drawn from the people.” Was that
goal less well served when Congress is supplied by delegates
chosen by the states? Aren’t the state legislatures that
choose these delegates “filled … by the people who chuse
the State Legislatures?” With a flourish of defiance, Paterson

announced that “N. Jersey will never confederate on the plan
before the Committee. She would be swallowed up.”
¾¾ It had seemed until that moment that the Randolph Plan was
sailing to adoption by the Committee of the Whole. But the waters
Paterson had roiled were too disturbed to be pacified, just as the
momentum Randolph and Madison had built behind the Randolph
Plan was too great to be stopped by Paterson’s speech alone.
¾¾ Starting on June 11, the Committee of the Whole began voting

on the Randolph resolutions, with the New Jersey and Delaware
delegations almost always voting no, and enough of the others
voting yes to carry them all through, now in the form of 19
resolutions to be presented to the convention.
SUGGESTED READING
Collier and Collier, Decision in Philadelphia, chap. 13.

1. What were the main elements of the Randolph Plan?
2. Why did William Paterson’s June 9th speech threaten to derail the goal
of the convention?

Lecture 13
ROGER SHERMAN’S
COMPROMISE
W on the Randolph Plan and the ease with

illiam Paterson had prepared his attack
which he believed the Virginians intended to force

into place an arrangement that would guarantee
their dominance of any new modeled Congress.
He needed one more day after the report of
the Committee of the Whole to complete an
alternative “purely federal” plan. With the opening
of the convention’s session—now as a convention
again—Paterson was ready to lay before “the
Convention the plan which … several of the
deputations wished to be substituted in place of
that proposed by Mr. Randolph.” Paterson’s plan
resulted in weeks of deadlock, but Roger Sherman
would respond with a compromise formula of
his own.
102
THE NEW JERSEY PLAN
¾¾ As the Committee of the Whole proceeded, Paterson had

circulated among the other small-state delegations, confecting a
plan of his own, cementing alliances, and lining up individuals to
speak to any objections from the Madison-Randolph quarter. In
the words of Madison, Paterson’s efforts “began now to produce
serious anxiety for the result of the Convention.”
¾¾ John Dickinson had, in passing, remarked to Madison in a

patronizing tone that the Virginians had wanted too much, too
fast in creating a single, powerful national government. It may
well be that the delegations would embrace a bicameral national
legislature, but the representation in both houses had to be as it
was in the Confederation Congress: each state, one vote.
¾¾ Of course, to Madison, this was no improvement on the Articles

of Confederation; single states would continue to carry an outsize
weight in any new Congress, and the results would always be the
same: paralysis at the national level and reckless abandon at the
state level. After enough recklessness, the whole Union would
come tumbling down.
¾¾ But not even Madison dared deny the degree to which equal
representation of states in the new government was a fetish for
the small states. Just how alluring that fetish would be became
apparent as Paterson took the floor at the beginning of the June
15 session. He had nine resolutions to submit, making up what
would be called the New Jersey Plan.
First, in the spirit of reasonableness, Paterson allowed that

“the articles of Confederation ought to be so revised, corrected
& enlarged, as to render the federal Constitution adequate
to the exigencies of Government, & the preservation of
the Union.”

He was even willing to admit that Congress should “be
authorized to pass acts for raising a revenue” and “to pass
Acts for the regulation of trade & commerce”—provided that
all “punishments, fines, forfeitures & penalties to be incurred
for contravening such acts rules and regulations shall be
adjudged by the Common law Judiciaries of the State in which
any offence … shall have been committed or perpetrated.”
That meant the delivery of a veto power over the operation
of “trade & commerce” to state courts. Under the veneer of
reasonableness, Paterson was already ensuring more of the
status quo.
¾¾ Paterson next turned to the kind of taxation that would be

necessary to support a new national government. He said that
Congress should levy taxes on the states “in proportion to the
whole number of white & other free citizens & inhabitants of every
age sex and condition including those bound to servitude for a
term of years & three-fifths of all other persons not comprehended
in the foregoing description.” Here was a scheme for proportionate
representation that even Madison could applaud—except that it
was about taxation, not representation.
¾¾ Fourth, Paterson conceded that it would be a good idea to elect

“a federal Executive” with “general authority to execute the
federal acts.” But Paterson left unstated whether this executive
should be one person or a committee. Further, Paterson wanted
this executive to be “removeable by Congs. on application by a
majority of the Executives of the several States.”
¾¾ Finally, Paterson was willing to see “a federal Judiciary …

established to consist of a supreme Tribunal, the Judges of which”
would be “appointed by the Executive.” But its powers would be
limited to strictly federal matters. Nothing was said about the
federal judiciary having any restraining power on the actions of
the states.
104 Lecture 13 • Roger Sherman’s Compromise

¾¾ The New Jersey Plan created the semblance of a new national
government but granted it hardly any new powers and certainly
none that might seriously threaten the free hand of each state to
do what it wanted.
HAMILTON: A RETURN TO MONARCHY?
¾¾ Nothing, Madison later wrote, “created more embarrassment, and

a greater alarm for the issue of the Convention” than Paterson’s
plan. “The little states insisted on retaining their equality,” while
“the large States … urged that as the new Government was to be
drawn from the people immediately and was to operate directly on
them … it was necessary that the representation … should be in
proportion to their size.”
¾¾ The situation was not helped by the confused response of the

delegates who rose to defend the Virginia Plan. James Wilson,
a Pennsylvania legal scholar, offered a patient, logical contrast of
Randolph’s and Paterson’s plans, pointing out that people looked
to “Natl. Councils” when they expected relief. He further noted that
smaller governments are notoriously the most corrupt, primarily
because corruption is easier to achieve in smaller groups.
The same principle applied to the kind of unicameral legislature

Paterson was advocating. “If the Legislative authority be not
restrained, there can be neither liberty nor stability. … It can
only be restrained by dividing it within itself, into distinct and
independent branches. In a single House there is no check.”
But the same principle worked in reverse when it came to an

executive. “In order to controul the Legislative authority, you
must divide it,” but “in order to controul the Executive you
must unite it. … Three will contend among themselves till one
becomes the master of his colleagues.”
¾¾ When Alexander Hamilton followed Wilson on June 18, he nearly

threw the game away entirely. Hamilton, of course, had no use for

Paterson’s New Jersey Plan, but he had little more for Randolph’s.
He was “fully convinced, that no amendment of the Confederation,
leaving the States in possession of their Sovereignty could
possibly answer the purpose” of the convention. Only by lodging
“a compleat sovereignty in the general Governmt” would the
American experiment in republicanism survive.
¾¾ Then, Hamilton committed the unthinkable: He proposed as a

serious alternative to both plans the model of the British monarchy.
He was willing to allow a bicameral legislature if Randolph insisted,
but “Let one branch of the Legislature hold their places for life.”
And “let the Executive also be for life.” Was this a republican
government? Yes, Hamilton answered confidently, “if all the
Magistrates are appointed, and vacancies are filled, by the people,
or a process of election originating with the people.”
¾¾ With this speech, Hamilton handed Paterson, Luther Martin, and

Gunning Bedford a stick with which to beat the Virginia Plan on
the grounds that anything that pointed toward a strong national
government was tantamount to monarchy. No one spoke in reply
or seconded Hamilton’s plan. When Madison took the floor the
next day to assail the New Jersey Plan, he never even referred
to Hamilton.
ROGER SHERMAN’S PROPOSALS
¾¾ Now began nearly three weeks of deadlocked misery in the

convention, as the partisans of the Virginia Plan—Madison,
Randolph, James Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris—traded
fruitless, wearying blows with the partisans of the New Jersey
Plan—Paterson, John Lansing, Robert Yates, and Luther Martin.
At one point, Franklin felt desperate enough that he urged the
convention to get down on its knees and pray for guidance. But
even this plea fell short.
¾¾ By June 30, tempers in the convention had grown so short that

James Wilson actually told the small-state opposition that they

might as well go form their own confederation. Gunning Bedford
retorted that if the small states really had no choice but the Virginia
Plan, they “will find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith,
who will take them by the hand and do them justice.” Drearily, the
convention voted on July 2 to take an extended adjournment “to
attend to the celebrations on the anniversary of Independence.”
¾¾ Despite the deadlock, though, the means for resolving the standoff
already lay at hand, and in two forms. The first was a seemingly
innocuous proposal by Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, submitted
back on June 11: “that the proportion of suffrage in the 1st. branch
should be according to the respective numbers of free inhabitants;
and that in the second branch or Senate, each State should have
one vote and no more.”
¾¾ Sympathetic as he was in many ways to Paterson, Sherman

understood that “the national debt & the want of power somewhere
to draw forth the National resources, are the great matters that
press.” On June 20, he agreed to have two legislative branches,
with a proportional representation in one of them, “provided each
State had an equal voice in the other.” This time, more of the
delegates were listening.
¾¾ But Madison was unyielding. “The History & fate of the several
confederacies modern as well as Antient” proved to Madison’s
satisfaction that nothing less than a legislature with proportional
representation by population would serve American interests.
James Wilson likewise dug in even deeper: “Can we forget for
whom we are forming a Government?” he bellowed angrily on
June 30. “Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called States?”
¾¾ Not even Madison and Wilson could persuade the convention

that they were not on the brink of breaking up. When they forced
a vote “for allowing each State one vote in the second branch,”
the convention split straight down the middle. “We are now at full
stop,” Roger Sherman warned.

CHARLES COTESWORTH
PINCKNEY (1746–1825)
CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY’S SOLUTION
¾¾ The solution came in the form of a proposal by Charles Cotesworth

Pinckney. He had voted against the New Jersey Plan, but he
conceded that “some compromise seemed to be necessary.”
To that end, he suggested the creation of a Grand Committee,
“consisting of a member from each State,” which should take the
opportunity of the Fourth of July adjournment “to devise & report
some compromise.”
¾¾ Thus, in addition to Sherman’s compromise proposal, the

convention appointed a committee to consider compromise.
Madison fought it to the last minute, but the vote to create the
Grand Committee was lopsidedly in favor, nine to two. Still, nobody

was celebrating as the convention broke up for the adjournment.
Even Washington wrote, “I almost dispair of seeing a favorable
issue to the proceedings of our convention, and do therefore
repent having had any agency in the business.”
SUGGESTED READING

Hall, Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic, chap. 5.
1. Give a summary of Paterson’s New Jersey Plan of June 15th.
2. Why was Hamilton’s speech of June 18th a blunder?

Lecture 14
ELBRIDGE GERRY’S
COMMITTEE
T resolve the deadlock between the Virginia

he composition of the Grand Committee to
and New Jersey plans for a national government

could not have offered much consolation to either
James Madison or James Wilson, fixed as they
were on the proposal for a two-house Congress,
both popularly elected by the people at large
rather than chosen by the state legislatures. Each
state delegation was to contribute one member
to the Grand Committee, and it all leaned in the
opposite direction from Madison and Wilson.
The committee’s chairman was Elbridge Gerry of
Massachusetts, who hadn’t said a word in support
of Madison and Wilson.
110
THE GRAND COMMITTEE
¾¾ The Grand Committee set to work as soon as the convention

adjourned on July 2. The atmosphere was tense. Elbridge Gerry,
the chair of the Grand Committee, thought the moment was “so
serious as to threaten a dissolution of the Convention.” But Franklin
pressed on the committee a series of formulas that he believed
would placate both Madisonian big-staters and Patersonian
small-staters.
¾¾ According to Franklin’s formula, there would be two houses

to the national Congress. The lower house—the House of
Representatives—would be elected by the population at large,
so that the large states would have a disproportionately large
representation over the small states, and one representative
would be elected to the House for every 40,000 inhabitants.
The upper house—the Senate—would be the place where each
state, regardless of size, would be represented equally. Finally, all
legislation concerning money and taxation would be the domain of
the House and all bills for apportioning and spending money would
originate there.
¾¾ Gerry, as the chair of the Grand Committee, would make the

report when the convention reassembled on July 5. A spare,
thin, sunken-cheeked merchant, Gerry graduated from Harvard
in 1762, went into the family business, went into politics, and
was elected to the Second Continental Congress. He was, by
temperament, suspicious; he also had limitations as a speaker.
Gerry was clear enough, though, when he made the report of the
Grand Committee:
1. That in the 1st. branch of the Legislature [the House of

Representatives] each of the States now in the Union shall
be allowed 1 member for every 40,000 inhabitants. … [and]
that each State not containing that number shall be allowed
1 member: that all bills for raising or appropriating money,

and for fixing the Salaries of the officers of the Governt. of the
U. States shall originate in the 1st. branch of the Legislature,
and shall not be altered or amended by the 2d. branch: and
that no money shall be drawn from the public Treasury but in
pursuance of appropriations to be originated in the 1st. branch
2. That in the 2d. branch [the Senate] each State shall have an
equal vote.
¾¾ The report set off Wilson and Madison. Wilson accused the
Grand Committee of having “exceeded their powers.” Madison
was furious. Making concessions to the small-staters would
merely perpetuate the problems that had brought them all to the
convention in the first place. Madison
also warned that the delegates should ELBRIDGE GERRY
not be deceived “by threats (1744–1814)
from the small-staters to
break up the Union.”
¾¾ But Gerry, in fact, defended

the bargain precisely
because it was the only
one that would keep all
the states together. If no
compromise took place,
some states might secede,
and the American republic
would fall apart and
become easy prey to the
empires all around them.
George Mason chimed in
weightily: “There must be
some accommodation on
this point.”
112 Lecture 14 • Elbridge Gerry’s Committee

¾¾ If there was any one moment in the Constitutional Convention’s
proceedings when it felt that something tectonic was shifting under
the feet of the delegates, it surely came with Mason’s declaration.
Whatever disappointment it spelled for Madison, from this moment
on, there was no more serious debate on whether there should
be one or two houses or whether they should be elected by the
general population or by the states.
ELECTION DETAILS
¾¾ The next order of business was to arrange the details of how the
House of Representatives and the Senate were to be elected.
Franklin’s idea had fixed on having one representative in the lower
house for every 40,000 inhabitants.
¾¾ But Gouverneur Morris was ready with an objection: Any states

with populations below 40,000 would still be entitled to at least
one representative. This cheated the larger states, because 3,000
or 4,000 people in a smaller state would get more of a say in
Congress than the same number of people in the larger states.
¾¾ Other objections crowded in. How, exactly, should the states be

represented in the Senate—with one vote for both senators or
with each senator voting as he saw fit? Eventually, the convention
settled on allowing each state two senators, each of whom would
be permitted to vote independently.
THE ISSUE OF SLAVERY
¾¾ What proved infinitely more contentious was the idea of reckoning

property into the formula for determining representation in the
lower house. Any discussion of property led ineluctably to a
subject almost everyone in the convention would sooner have
ignored: slavery.
¾¾ By the best calculations we have, the United States was home

in 1787 to about 800,000 Africans—most of them enslaved as

AT THE TIME OF THE
CONVENTION, EVERY
SOUTHERN STATE EXCEPT
GEORGIA HAD BEGUN
RESTRAINING THE SLAVE
TRADE, AND EMANCIPATION
RESTRICTIONS IN
MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA
WERE LOOSENED.
the human property of their owners. This population was heavily

skewed toward the Southern states; almost half of South Carolina’s
population was black, and so was 40 percent of Virginia’s.
¾¾ Yet slavery was by no means a robust institution, in part because it

squarely cut across the political philosophy of the Enlightenment.
“All men are originally equal,” wrote the Scottish philosopher
Francis Hutcheson, because every human being is born with the

same set of natural rights. Hence, Hutcheson concluded, “Nature
makes none masters, none slaves.”
¾¾ Another issue stemmed from pure economics: Slave labor was

introduced into the Chesapeake in the 17th century largely for
growing tobacco, and many were the Virginia and Maryland
fortunes that had been built on the back of it. But tobacco as a
cash crop had been in trouble for a long time. Another slave-grown
crop, rice, flourished in the Carolina lowlands in the 1700s, but the
price had gone flat in the 1770s.
Meanwhile, ordinary grain crops that did not require the labor-
intensity of tobacco or rice were taking off. “As population
increases,” observed Oliver Ellsworth at the convention, “poor
laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery
in time will not be a speck in our Country.”
But that would not be the case if slaves were going to be

counted among the population that determined each state’s
number of representatives; for small states, such as New
Jersey and Delaware, adding slaves would create even more
of an imbalance in the lower house.
¾¾ On July 6, a five-member panel was created to specify how many

representatives each state would receive based on the 40,000 per
representative rule. On July 9, the panel reported that the House
of Representatives would have 56 representatives: Virginia, 9;
Pennsylvania, 8; Massachusetts, 7; New York, North Carolina, and
South Carolina, 5; Connecticut and Maryland, 4; New Hampshire
and Georgia, 2; and Rhode Island and Delaware 1.
¾¾ This struck Roger Sherman as odd: “It did not appear to

correspond with any rule of numbers,” and he quizzed them for
the basis of their calculations. Nathaniel Gorham vaguely replied,

“The number of blacks & whites with some regard to supposed
wealth was the general guide.”
But that set Paterson off, who could only imagine the
Virginians stacking their representation in Congress on the
basis of counting black slaves and free whites equally—this,
despite the fact that black slaves had no say in the politics
of Virginia.
No one counted slaves as the basis for representation in the

Virginia legislature. Why here? What this really meant was
“an indirect encouragemt. of the slave trade.”
¾¾ Paterson’s assault on including slaves in the formula for

determining representation stung the slaveholders in the
convention, especially those from the South, and on July 12,
William Davie of North Carolina had had enough. He assured the
convention that North Carolina “would never confederate on any
terms that did not rate them [slaves] at least as three-fifths. If the
Eastern States meant therefore to exclude them altogether the
business was at an end.”
¾¾ Three-fifths was the formula that had been used under the Articles
of Confederation for assessing contributions from the states, and
no one less than Edmund Randolph rose to support Davie. He
was not pleased at this prospect, but given that slavery existed,
any “design” to ignore it would be construed as a plan “by some of
excluding slaves altogether.”
¾¾ Again, tempers mounted, and Gouverneur Morris frankly declared

that “the people of Pena. will never agree to a representation of
Negroes as slaves, by any fifths.” Just as vehemently, Pierce Butler
of South Carolina responded that a three-fifths representation
of slaves was necessary as “security” against the possibility that
“their negroes may not be taken from them.”

¾¾ When the entire report of Gerry’s Grand Committee finally came
to a vote on July 16, it still embodied the fundamental proposition
that there would be “an equality of votes in the 2d branch.” The
number of representatives in the lower house was now set at 65,
based strictly on population, with a census to be taken every 10
years to provide data for adjustments.
The vote was far from unanimous, and the next morning, the
nay-voting delegations caucused ominously on their own. “No
good Governnt. could or would be built on” the notion of equal
state representation, even when it was limited to just one
house of Congress,” and maybe, some of the wondered, they
should simply walk out of the convention.
But, as Madison recorded in his notes, this was mostly

“vague conversation … without any specific proposition or
agreement.” And for now, any determination of what fraction
of the slave population—if any—would be used for calculating
representation in the future was left unresolved.
SUGGESTED READING
Berkin, A Brilliant Solution, chap. 4.

1. What formulas did the Grand Committee develop to defuse the standoff
between the Randolph Plan and the New Jersey Plan?
2. How did the question of slavery encroach on the debate over

representation?

Lecture 15
JAMES WILSON’S
EXECUTIVE
F place
or all practical purposes, the vote that took
on the Grand Committee’s report
on July 16 settled the question of what the new
Congress would look like: two houses, the lower
house to be elected broadly by the people as a
whole, the upper house to elected by the state
legislatures, and the authority for originating all
revenue matters lodged with the lower house.
This was a compromise, and neither James
Madison, who wanted everything elected broadly,
nor William Paterson, who wanted everything in
the new Congress to represent state interests,
was entirely happy with the result. But that result
yielded at once to the next great subject before the
convention: the shape of a new national executive.
118
COLONIAL GOVERNORS
¾¾ The question of the national executive promised to be no less

thorny than the issue of representation in Congress, primarily
because the colonial governors presented such an unappealing
executive example. Before the revolution, every colony had a
legislative assembly elected by the people and a governor and a
governor’s council appointed by the Crown (only Connecticut and
Rhode Island elected their own governors).
The lot of the colonial governors was not a happy one.

Because their appointment came from the Crown, they
were expected to represent the Crown’s interests; they had
the power to make land grants and appointments to public
office to their friends, but their salaries were provided by
the legislatures, and the legislatures never hesitated to use
salaries as leverage to counteract the authority of the Crown.
In 1754, the royal Committee of Council for Plantations

complained to New York’s colonial legislature that it had
apparently taken over the responsibilities of the governor,
including the use of public money, the regulation of the military,
and more. No wonder so many of the Crown’s governors
actually stayed in England and delegated authority to some
hapless appointee who was really the lieutenant-governor.
¾¾ The governors who did stay in America only made the reputation
of governors worse in the 1770s by stubbornly resisting the
movement toward independence. By the end of the Revolution,
Americans wanted as little to do with high-and-mighty executives
as they could.
¾¾ The American political climate had not been much better for
governors under the Confederation, either. “The temper of the
people,” wrote the Revolution’s first historian, David Ramsay,
“would not permit that any one man, however exalted by office, or

distinguished by abilities, should have a negative on the declared
sense of a majority of their representatives.”
¾¾ The state constitutions that emerged from the Revolution, when

they provided for a governor at all, ensured that they were kept on
short leashes, with one-year terms, limitations on reelection, and
election by the legislature. In several states, an executive council
created by the legislature further limited the governors’ authority.
¾¾ As we saw earlier, the Articles of Confederation were no more

eager to authorize any form of free-wheeling executive. The
Confederation Congress reserved virtually all government powers,
legislative and executive, to itself, and only provided for a standing
committee to manage affairs during Congress’s adjournment and
“to appoint one of their number to preside, provided that no person
be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year in
any term of three years.”
¾¾ But a Congress that could only haphazardly summon a quorum

could not begin to handle both the legislative and executive
business of the United States. Thus, because the Articles of
Confederation had also provided Congress with the authority
“to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be
necessary,” it created superintendents for the treasury, foreign
affairs, and war. But even then, Congress struggled to keep
as many of the reins of government in its hands as possible,
appointing a confusing plethora of temporary committees.
¾¾ As James Madison explained to Jefferson, any talk about

a national executive would sharpen the old fear of power
jeopardizing liberty. “Wherever the real power in a Government
lies, there is the danger of oppression.” But there was no refuge
from oppression in merely emasculating the executive power and
handing it all to the legislatures. As Madison said, “There is a
tendency in all Governments to an augmentation of power at the
expence of liberty.”
120 Lecture 15 • James Wilson’s Executive

THE EXECUTIVE
¾¾ The seventh of Edmund Randolph’s original Virginia Plan

resolutions had called for the creation of “a National Executive …
to be chosen by the National Legislature” with “a general authority
to execute the National laws.” The first debate on the subject
followed almost immediately, on June 1, as the convention went
into a Committee of the Whole; four days were spent in what
amounted to preliminary skirmishing around the idea of the
“National Executive.”
¾¾ Madison was not, as he admitted to Washington, prepared to

enter a discussion of the executive. Others were, however, and on
both sides. The primary advocate for a chief executive was a legal
scholar from Pennsylvania, James Wilson.
Wilson was as fully prepared as Madison to raise “the

federal pyramid to a considerable altitude” and, together
with Madison, fought a doomed rearguard action against
the concessions made by the Grand Committee to William
Paterson’s objections.
Like so many of the confederation’s critics, Wilson had been

stymied by the states’ erratic fiscal policies in his investments
in western lands, yet he was no elitist aristocrat and denied
that “property was the sole or primary object of government
and society. The cultivation and improvement of the human
mind was the most noble object.”
¾¾ Wilson snatched the lead on the executive debate almost at once,

seconding Pinckney’s motion for a “vigorous Executive” and adding
that it should be filled by “a single person,” preferably “a single
magistrate.” But Edmund Randolph’s notion of an executive had
not been that of a quasi-king. Madison intervened at this moment
and diverted the subject: “It would be proper before a choice shd.
be made between a unity and a plurality in the Executive, to fix the
extent of the Executive authority” and let that determine whether

the executive should be a single person or, as Randolph preferred,
a committee of three.
¾¾ But Wilson was ready to continue the fight, arguing that the
executive should be elected at large by the people, that the term
of office should be three years, and that an option for reelection
should be allowed. Especially, Wilson was determined that the
executive should be filled by a national election, not by the new
Congress or by the state legislatures.
¾¾ The direct election idea horrified Roger Sherman even more than
a single executive had disturbed Edmund Randolph, and Sherman
retorted that he “was for the appointment by the Legislature,
and for making him absolutely dependent on that body. … An
independence of the Executive on the supreme Legislature was …
the very essence of tyranny if there was any such thing.”
¾¾ But Wilson had his eye not on the past, where all the examples
from British rule had underscored the corruption that flowed from
kings, but on the future. An executive appointed by the state
legislatures would always be beholden to them; an executive
appointed by either house of the new Congress would likewise
be beholden to them. Only “Appointment by the people,” Wilson
argued, would guarantee a national executive free of such
dependence, and fully in a position to check the Congress and the
states from careening off the republican track. This was consistent
with the overall desire of the Virginia Plan.
¾¾ Wilson “repeated his arguments in favor of an election without the

intervention of the States” over the following week, and just as
tenaciously, critics of such an executive waved the bloody shirt of
kings. Wilson won at least a partial victory: The Committee of the
Whole voted in favor of “a single Executive” but also in favor of
electing “the Executive by the national Legislature for the term of
seven years.” After that, the more contentious matter of Congress
and representation took over, and Wilson had to wait.

ALL EYES ON WASHINGTON
¾¾ From the moment the Committee of the Whole committed itself

to “a single executive,” Pierce Butler noticed that “many of
the members cast their eyes towards General Washington as
President; and shaped their Ideas of the Powers to be given to a
President, by their opinions of his Virtue.”
¾¾ By the time the convention was ready to deal with the committee’s
conclusions on the executive on July 17, the likelihood that
Washington would be the first occupant of the “single executive”
became an increasingly powerful persuasive in favor of a nationally
elected president, with a full array of executive powers that ranged
from a veto over congressional legislation to commander-in-chief
of the armed forces.
¾¾ This time, Wilson did not have to fight alone; James Madison had
finally made up his mind that Wilson’s notion of the executive
was the best way forward, and Gouverneur Morris now became
Wilson’s pit bull. The “one great object of the Executive is to
controul the Legislature,” Morris frankly announced. Continuing,
he said, “The Executive … ought to be so constituted as to be the
great protector of the Mass of the people.”
¾¾ But not even Morris could overcome the resistance of Roger

Sherman, who insisted that “the sense of the Nation would be
better expressed by the Legislature, than by the people at large,”
or of George Mason. According to Mason, the people at large were

uneven in their capacity to estimate the worth of an individual for
this office, in part because of the sheer size of the country.
¾¾ When the question was called on direct election “by the people
instead of the Legislature,” the vote was nine to one against.
Wilson then proposed a compromise: Let the people at large vote,
not for a national executive but for a group of electors, who would,
in turn, do the voting for the executive. At first, the resolution
passed, but it was reversed on July 24.
¾¾ Elbridge Gerry, who had chaired the Grand Committee, proposed

resorting to the same strategy: the formation of a Committee of
Detail, which would take up all of the issues before the convention
and provide a set of recommendations. At the end of the day on
July 26, the convention wearily voted to create a Committee of
Detail and refer to it all the resolutions it had adopted thus far.
Then, having sat for two months in the heat of a Philadelphia
summer, the convention adjourned for a week’s recess, hoping
that the Committee of Detail could resolve what the convention
had not.
SUGGESTED READING

Thach, The Creation of the Presidency, chap. 5.
1. What were James Wilson’s arguments in favor of a single-person

executive?
2. What arguments were put forward for direct election of the executive?

Lecture 16
JOHN RUTLEDGE’S
COMMITTEE
T when the members agreed to adjourn, partly

he convention had been sitting for two months
to let the Committee of Detail do its work and

partly to take a break. On Monday, Washington
rode to Moore Hall, an estate near Valley Forge;
his mind turned back to the sufferings of that
winter. On Friday, he traveled to Trenton, the
site of his greatest victory. In August, he paid a
visit to Whitemarsh “and contemplated on the
dangers which threatened the American Army at
that place.” At least then, the enemy had been
identifiable, and one dealt with him in simple
terms of winning or losing. The wranglings in the
convention were a different matter, where nothing
ever seemed decisive.
125
THE CONVENTION’S RECESS
¾¾ During the adjournment, James Madison received nagging letters

from his father and an uncle, begging for news of the convention,
but Madison stood behind the rule of silence that governed the
convention. The problem was that silence was creating a vacuum,
and into the vacuum rushed imagination.
A rumor was circulating in New England that the convention

was near collapse and was about to invite Frederick
Augustus, the duke of York (and the second son of George III)
to be “crowned King over this continent” as a solution to “the
inefficacy of our Government & the tumults which prevailed in
Massachusetts during the last winter.”
The newspapers veered in the other direction: The

Pennsylvania Packet rejoiced to hear that “so great is the
unanimity, we hear, that prevails in the Convention upon all
great federal subjects that it has been proposed to call the
room in which they assemble Unanimity Hall.”
¾¾ For a few members of the convention, the recess was an

excuse to leave Philadelphia for good. George Wythe of the
Virginia delegation had already bolted home before the recess
because his wife was in ill health. James McClurg of Richmond,
one of Madison’s strongest supporters, left for the recess and
informed Madison that he had no plans to return. Hamilton had
to keep another member, William Pierce of Georgia, from being
sent indefinitely beyond recall, when one of Hamilton’s clients
challenged Pierce to a duel. William Paterson, having gotten the
equal representation he wanted in the Senate, left on July 23 and
didn’t put in a further appearance at the convention until it was
ready to close.
126 Lecture 16 • John Rutledge’s Committee

JOHN RUTLEDGE
¾¾ Meanwhile, the Committee of Detail pitched at once into its work.

The committee was constructed to represent each region of the
republic and included precisely the people best situated to get
things done, especially on the unresolved question of the national
executive: James Wilson, Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Gorham,
Oliver Ellsworth, and John Rutledge. Unlike the Grand Committee,
which had to address only the question of representation, the
Committee of Detail had been assigned to resolve the logjam over
the executive and gather up all the resolutions the convention had
adopted thus far and work them into a single document.
¾¾ Up to this point in the convention, Rutledge, an attorney, had had

comparatively little to say. He had followed the family profession by
studying law in Britain. He returned to the colonies in 1761 to begin
a practice that, over 26 years, was reputed never to have sustained
a loss in court. By 1764, he was state attorney-general; in 1765,
he represented South Carolina in the Stamp Act Congress, then in
the Continental Congress in 1774 and 1775. The South Carolina
legislature elected him as its president in 1776. He was closely
allied to Madison from the start and had urged that representation
in the new Congress be based “in proportion to their wealth” rather
than with the Paterson Plan’s scheme for equal state voting.
¾¾ The convention had, up to this point, adopted 23 “resolutions,”

based on the original Randolph Plan and subsequently debated,
teased, reworked, reconsidered, and sometimes left unfinished.
Given that Randolph had submitted the original plan, it only made
sense for him to take the lead in pulling the results together in a
coherent format, and he took as his guide two markers: “to insert
essential principle only” and “to use simple and precise language.”
Working from a copy of the resolutions prepared by Wilson,

Randolph then set out “the legislative, judiciary and executive
in their order,” followed by “miscellaneous subjects as they
occur.” The legislature would consist of a “house of delegates”

and “a senate,” and its responsibilities would be “to raise
money by taxation, unlimited as to sum, and to establish rules
for collection.”
Voting for the lower house would be regulated by the rules

prevailing “in the particular states,” rather than spelled out
nationally by the legislature. It would “regulate commerce
both foreign and domestic” but lay no tax on exports nor
pass “a navigation act,” regulating foreign trade. And it would
be limited by a strict enumeration of powers, rather than a
general grant; this was an important distinction, because
enumerated powers would limit the legislature to only those
powers specified, while a general grant of authority would
give the legislature a freer rein to claim new powers.
Randolph had reconciled himself to the idea that the executive

would be a “single person,” elected by Congress, with a veto
on legislation and a term of seven years. The judiciary would
consist of “one supreme tribunal” whose members would be
appointed by the Senate.
¾¾ Wilson took over from Randolph and inserted a preamble. In it,

the states were given their due, but the primary authority would
be that of the “We the people.” Wilson also changed the title of the
lower house from delegates to House of Representatives. He was
originally inclined to insert a requirement that only freeholders—
owners of property—be allowed to vote, but in his final version,
the freehold requirement was dropped; Wilson acquiesced in
Randolph’s formula for letting the states decide who did or didn’t
qualify as a voter. Like Randolph, Wilson proposed a specific list
of enumerated powers: to collect taxes, regulate commerce, coin
money, and so on.
¾¾ Wilson was even more specific about the executive, substituting

the title president for governor, in whom a broad “Ex. Authority of
the U.S. shall be vested,” and adding Randolph’s requirement that
this be “a single person … elected by Ballot by the Legislature.”

The president was to “attend to the Execution of the Laws of
the U.S.,” “be Commander in Chief of the Land Forces of U.S.
and Admiral of their Navy,” and have a veto over congressional
legislation that could only be overridden by a two-thirds vote of the
“House in which it shall have originated.”
¾¾ Wilson also substituted a new title for Randolph’s “supreme

tribunal,” which now became a Supreme Court. And he extended
Randolph’s ban on “a navigation act” to forbid any “Tax or Duty …
on Articles exported from any State; nor on the Emigration or
Importation of such Persons as the several States shall think
proper to admit; nor shall such Emigration or Importation be
prohibited”—an innocuous-sounding proposition that would soon
come back to haunt the committee.
¾¾ We can only trace Rutledge’s contribution to the committee’s

work in marginalia he scrawled on Randolph’s proposals. But he
must have ruled from the chair fairly vigorously, because in its 11
days of work, the Committee of Detail produced an expansive
document of 23 articles. In so doing, the Committee of Detail took
a long step toward producing a working constitution that contained
a number of features not included in the resolutions but now seen
as cornerstones of American constitutionalism:
The limitation of the powers given to Congress by explicitly

enumerating them
A similar list of powers prohibited to the states
The basic wording for several of the key terms and clauses
that eventually found their way into the final version (e.g.,
president, the necessary-and-proper clause)
A clear commitment to a single executive, the president.

REVIEWING THE COMMITTEE’S DOCUMENT
¾¾ The committee printed copies of its draft constitution, with wide

margins for notes, ready to distribute when the convention
reassembled on August 6. Rutledge, as the committee’s chair,
introduced the document. When discussion began, Rutledge,
Wilson, Ellsworth, and Gorham were ready to act as the
document’s guardians. The preamble and the first two articles
sailed past without a single dissent; some heavy going began on
the third article, describing the two houses of the legislature. But
Gorham, Wilson, and Randolph shouldered aside everything but
the most minor amendments.
¾¾ The first subsection of Article IV brought the most heated debate,

because its provisions for electing members of the House of
Representatives left the qualifications for voting to the states;
Gouverneur Morris at once objected that this would let down the
bar to anyone who wanted to vote if their states permitted it. And
he was not entirely wrong to see where this would lead; already
voting-rights restrictions had fallen in many of the states.
But Morris’s objection had more to it than social snobbery. In

the first place, he objected to what amounted to a concession
to the states to determine who could vote. “The clause as it
stands … makes the qualifications of the Natl Legislature
depend on the will of the States,” which he thought “not proper.”
He was also motivated by a fear that failing to limit voting rights

to “freeholders” would be not the way to prevent aristocracy,
but the fastest method to ensure it. “Give votes to the people
who have no property,” Morris declaimed, “and they will sell
them to the rich who will be able to buy them.”
Look to the future, he urged: “The time is not distant when

this Country will abound with mechanics & manufacturers,”
and when that time arrives, the people who work for the
manufacturers will also be the people “who receive their bread

from their employers.” Did anyone suppose they would be
immune to bribery or threat? “The ignorant & the dependent
can be … little trusted with the public interest.” But Ellsworth,
Rutledge, and Wilson leapt to the defense of the section on
voting as written, and Morris’s motion was defeated.
After that, the balance of Article IV was approved in swift

fashion—until the convention hit the fourth subsection,
where the Committee of Detail had set the “number of
representatives … at the rate of one for every forty thousand.”
The section, in fact, had only just been introduced when
Rufus King of Massachusetts threw a lighted bomb into the
debate by asking, “what influence the vote just passed was
meant to have on … the admission of slaves into the rule of
Representation.” Slavery had returned, unheralded, as the
ghost at the constitutional banquet.
SUGGESTED READING

Wood, The Idea of America, chap. 8.
1. Who wrote the preamble of the Constitution, and why was it so

remarkable?
2. What fundamental cornerstones of American constitutionalism were

developed by the Committee of Detail?

Lecture 17
RUFUS KING’S SLAVES
R ufus King’s family had owned slaves, but the

Revolution had painted the Massachusetts
lawyer into a tight ideological spot: It was difficult
to reconcile owning slaves with protests against a
British monarch for treating Americans like slaves.
King served in the Revolution before hanging
out his shingle in 1780. He was elected to the
Massachusetts state legislature in 1783 and to the
Confederation Congress in 1784. But he continued
to be nagged by the incongruity of slave owning in
the midst of a revolution for liberty. In 1785, it was
King’s motion in the Confederation Congress that
required “that there shall be neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude in any of the States” to be
formed from the Northwest Territories.
132
SLAVE OWNING AMONG THE FOUNDERS
¾¾ Slavery was legal in all the states but Massachusetts in the 1780s,
and a rough count of the number of slaves in the entire republic
would have yielded approximately 650,000. Although much of this
slave owning was concentrated in the South, even Pennsylvania,
which had begun a gradual emancipation plan in 1780, still had
a slave population of 3,700 at the time of the Constitutional
Convention. Of the 55 delegates selected for the convention,
just under half of them were slave owners, and 19 of those relied
heavily on their slaves to provide their livelihood and leisure.
¾¾ This was all despite the fact that Americans understood clearly that
slavery was a horror—the diametric opposite of the liberty they so
cherished. There was no sentimental romanticization of happy
slaves, dancing away the hours to the pluck of the banjo. Slavery
meant, in the words of a famous sermon by the South Carolinian
Hugh Alison in 1769, “to live at the mere mercy and caprice of
another,” and was laden “with ignorance, wickedness and misery.”
Slavery was “a continual state of uncertainty and wretchedness;
THE SLAVE, WROTE SOUTH

CAROLINA DELEGATE
HENRY LAURENS, HAVING
NO “FUTURE PROSPECTS”
WAS “THE MOST MISERABLE
OF ALL MEN, DOOM’D TO
LABOUR IN THE PLANTING &
WATERING, WITHOUT HOPES
OF REAPING THE HARVEST.”

often an apprehension of violence; often the lingering dread of a
premature death.”
¾¾ There were other signs, too, that the dissonance between liberty
and slavery was taking its toll on American patience. Just after
independence, all but three of the states began to enact bans
on the importation of slaves. In Massachusetts, a proposed state
constitution in 1778 would have explicitly legalized slavery; it was,
however, rejected, and a rewritten constitution in 1780 began
with the declaration: “All men are born free and equal, and have
certain natural, essential and inalienable rights; among which may
be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and
liberties.” In 1780, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed a gradual
emancipation bill.
DEBATES AT THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
¾¾ No state legislature gave any of its delegations to the Constitutional

Convention any directives on what to do about slavery, and indeed,
the issue seemed to have been peripheral to what the delegates
thought they were doing.
The Articles of Confederation were originally supposed to

levy assessments on the states based on wealth, but in 1783,
the difficulties in making this sort of determination moved the
Confederation Congress to switch the assessment basis to
population, taking care to count slaves as only three-fifths of
a person.
This three-fifths stipulation had nothing to do with

representation, because the Articles of Confederation had
fixed representation in Congress at one vote for each state.
¾¾ The convention did not spend much time on the subject of

slavery for the first two months of its sittings. When the subject
of proportional representation had surfaced, there was serious
grumbling about whether slaves should be included in the
134 Lecture 17 • Rufus King’s Slaves

base population used for determining each state’s number of
representatives, and the three-fifths formula from the Articles of
Confederation was trotted out as a pacifier. The Committee of
Detail hoped it could be made to work again. But they had not
reckoned with Rufus King.
¾¾ King did not particularly like slavery, but his primary concern was
whether counting slaves to determine representation gave an
incentive to slave owners to import more slaves. King was sure
that “the people of the Northern States could never be reconciled
to it,” at least not without some national prohibition in the new
Constitution on “the importation of slaves.” He never could agree
“to let them be imported without limitation & then be represented in
the Natl. Legislature.”
¾¾ The guardians of the Committee of

Detail swung into action to snuff
out objections. Roger Sherman
assured King that he, too,
regarded “the slave trade
as iniquitous; but the point
of representation having
been settled after much
difficulty & deliberation,”
it was not a good idea to
rock the boat. However,
Gouverneur Morris then
moved to insert free before
the word inhabitants. In
other words, no-fifths of the
slaves would be counted.
Unlike King, Morris’s rationale
for such an amendment rasped
directly across the dissonance of
slavery and liberty. RUFUS KING
(1755–1827)

¾¾ Needless to say, Morris’s motion went down to a resounding
defeat (only New Jersey’s delegates voted in favor). But if the
slave owners in the convention hoped that Morris’s eruption was
going to be only an isolated moment, they reckoned without the
formidable Luther Martin.
Although Martin was himself the owner of six slaves, he

saw better than most in the convention that, without some
alteration, the Committee of Detail’s report would end up
granting the larger slave states an untoward edge in the
deliberations of the new Congress.
Because “five slaves are to be counted as 3 free men in the

apportionment of Representatives,” and because “such a
clause wd. leave an encouragement to” the importation of
more slaves, the solution, Martin announced, was “to allow
a prohibition or tax on the importation of slaves.” To let things
stand “was inconsistent with the principles of the revolution
and dishonorable to the American character.”
¾¾ Up until this moment, the Southern state delegations had been

remarkably restrained in the face of this criticism; they could
afford to be, because they were winning most of the points. But
tempers were now fraying dangerously, and South Carolina’s John
Rutledge, the chair of the Committee of Detail, was on his feet at
once with a violent riposte to Martin.
Rutledge “did not see how the importation of slaves could be

encouraged by” the three-fifths rule. But what galled him were
the top-lofty moralisms he had heard from the other critics.
“Religion & humanity had nothing to do with this question,”

Rutledge warned. “Interest alone is the governing principle
with nations.” If the convention wanted to consider prohibiting
slave imports or taxing them, then the question would become
“whether the Southn. States shall or shall not be parties to
the Union.”

¾¾ Once again, the guardians swung into action, with Roger Sherman
assuring Rutledge that he “disapproved of the slave trade; yet as
the States were now possessed of the right to import slaves, as
the public good did not require it to be taken from them, & as it was
expedient to have as few objections as possible to the proposed
scheme of Government, he thought it best to leave the matter as
we find it.” After all, slavery was dying out on its own.
¾¾ But Gouverneur Morris’s denunciation of slavery on principle could

not be stuffed back into the genie’s bottle. Now it fell to one of the
greatest slave owners in the convention, George Mason, to wield
the antislavery sledge hammer: “This infernal traffic originated in
the avarice of British Merchants” and “the British Govt.” It was
time now for the slave “to be properly given up,” and the way to
do it was “that the Genl. Govt. should have power to prevent the
increase of slavery.”
¾¾ It was one thing for a New Yorker, such as Gouverneur Morris,

to attack slavery; it was quite another for one of the most
prominent slave owners in the convention to do so, and Mason’s
fellow Southerners turned on him in a paroxysm of rage. Charles
Pinckney resented the implication that there was something wrong
with slavery, and his older cousin, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,
insisted that slavery was actually good for the republic. But the
Pinckneys got nowhere; too many members of the convention
agreed in whole or in part with Morris, Mason, and King about
the embarrassment slavery posed to the public reputation of the
United States.
¾¾ The way out of this corner was proposed by Edmund Randolph: a

committee. And with only a few dissenting votes, the convention
gratefully handed the future of slavery to 11 of the delegates.
CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS’ VIEWS
¾¾ In the years to come, people would debate—often angrily—

whether the convention had managed to encourage or discourage

slavery and whether its Constitution was a proslavery or an
antislavery document.
¾¾ The optimists in the historical profession understand slavery

in the new republic as a contradiction of the fundamentals of
American independence, which the Constitutional Convention set
about undermining—but slowly and subtly. No effort was made
to convert slavery into a nationally legalized institution, holding
off what could have been a fatal slide toward enshrining a race
barrier in American life. The national government was given power
to regulate slave imports and abolish the Atlantic slave trade. Even
the concession of a provision authorizing the rendition of fugitive
slaves across state boundaries was so vaguely worded that no
one knew quite how to enforce it.
¾¾ For centuries, almost all Europeans and Americans had to

labor from first light to dusk just to keep the wolf from the door,
and for many of them, it seemed that labor under the duress of
circumstances was little different from labor under the duress
of bondage.
But the American environment had changed the nature of

labor simply because labor was no longer doomed to produce
a subsistence living; in America, labor was the path to
unprecedented prosperity and wealth.
Slavery, instead of appearing merely as part of labor’s

spectrum of drudgery, now began to appear as an aberration,
and people who tried to defend it would be forced into
increasingly bizarre arguments, until they finally decided
that the new American experiment itself, including both the
Declaration and the Constitution, had been a mistake.
¾¾ Progressive historians are more pessimistic. They see a society,

for all its love of liberty, palsied with racism and perfectly willing
to limit liberty to white people, and from this, they conclude that
the Founders’ failure to demolish slavery in 1787 suggests that

the Constitution actually entrenched slavery more deeply. The
progressives are a useful reminder that the Founders were not
prophets, only men, and it was not given them as a group to see
the tiger slavery would grow into. But Rufus King would.
SUGGESTED READING

Stewart, The Summer of 1787, chaps. 10 and 16.
1. Which states had banned slavery by the time of the Philadelphia

Convention?
2. Why did the arguments for banning slavery in the Constitution fail to
win support?

Lecture 18
DAVID BREARLEY’S
POSTPONED PARTS
A formed to produce a compromise on the

ppointed on August 22, the committee
issue of slavery was ready with a report on August

24. Despite the high words spoken on the floor
of the convention, the climate of the committee
meeting was substantially lower. “Notwithstanding
their aversion to slavery,” recalled Luther Martin,
the delegates from the Northern states proved
“very willing to indulge the Southern States,”
especially if the Southern delegates were willing to
allow the federal government to tax slave imports.
Thus, “after a very little time the committee, by a
very great majority, agreed on a report by which
the general government was to be prohibited
from preventing the importation of slaves for a
limited time.”
140
DEBATING THE IMPORTATION ISSUE
¾¾ The report of the committee appointed to produce a compromise on

slavery called for a prohibition on government actions preventing
the importation of slaves for 13 years. When the committee report
came up for a vote on August 25, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
demanded that the limited time be extended to a full 20 years.
¾¾ This provoked James Madison. Although the Madisons were

themselves slave owners, Madison also loathed slavery as
an institution, and Pinckney’s amendment brought Madison to
his feet: “Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be
apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term
will be more dishonorable to the National character than to say
nothing about it in the Constitution.”
¾¾ Madison’s objection did no good. Pinckney’s amendment passed,

although at least Madison’s own Virginia delegation voted against
it. In response, Gouverneur Morris savagely proposed that the
convention drop all pretense to embarrassment over slavery and
simply rewrite the entire clause to call it “the importation of slaves.”
But the South Carolina delegation was not finished.
¾¾ On August 29, Pierce Butler proposed yet another amendment,

making the extradition of fugitive slaves a matter of federal
responsibility, which in effect, forced the Northern states into legal
cooperation with Southern slaveholders in hunting down runaway
slaves. This time, no one even bothered to object.
¾¾ The South Carolinians had held the entire Constitution hostage.

“Great as the evil is,” Madison sighed, “a dismemberment of the
union would be worse,” and he would not have put it past South
Carolina to “disunite from the other states” and “solicit and obtain
aid from foreign powers.”

BREARLEY AND THE COMMITTEE
ON POSTPONED PARTS
¾¾ The fact that a single objection to the Committee of Detail’s work

had almost derailed the entire convention was not a good sign. It is
easy to become weary in doing good, and with the end of August
looming and no conclusion to the wrangling over the Committee
of Detail in sight, John Rutledge began complaining about “the
length of the Session, the probable impatience of the public and
the extreme anxiety of many members of the Convention to bring
the business to an end.”
¾¾ It is also easy, though, to lose sight of how great a service the

Committee of Detail performed. The 23 articles that the committee
drafted contained almost all of the Constitution as we know it
today. But by August 27, the convention still had not finished its
deliberations over 12 of the 23 articles. On August 31, the 12
articles that had failed to generate a consensus were referred to a
Committee on Postponed Parts.
¾¾ This was the fourth committee the convention had created, and at
first, its prospects did not look encouraging, largely because the
convention handed the chairmanship to William Paterson’s friend
David Brearley.
A lawyer, Brearley had served as a lieutenant-colonel in the

Continental Army. In 1779, he was named chief justice of the
New Jersey Supreme Court and attached himself politically to
William Paterson, the architect of the one-state-one-vote New
Jersey Plan.
Brearley inspired respect but not enthusiasm or loyalty.

William Pierce described him as “a man of good, rather than
of brilliant parts.” Others were more blunt: “Although hardly a
brilliant figure, he was capable and respected.”
142 Lecture 18 • David Brearley’s Postponed Parts

Brearley owned neither land nor investments and was not the
man to carry the New Jersey Plan forward on his own; after
Paterson quit the convention in July, Brearley begged him to
return, but Paterson refused.
¾¾ Despite having Brearley in charge, in many respects, the

Committee on Postponed Parts turned out to be the most effective
committee the convention created. Its principal business was to
reconcile the competing demands about the shape of the new
national president, and they did so in unusually direct ways,
ultimately settling on election by a “college of Electors … chosen
by those of the people in each State.”
The committee also ironed out the issues of the qualifications

for office, the term of office, and the foreign and domestic
powers the president should exercise.
In addition, the committee added provisions requiring the

states to grant “Full faith and credit … to the public acts,
records, and Judicial proceedings of every other State” and
granted to Congress the power “to raise and support armies.”
¾¾ The Committee on Postponed Parts made its report over

several days, and after a flurry of proposed amendments, Roger
Sherman navigated the report, piece by piece, to approval. A fifth
committee—the Committee on Style—was then formed “to revise
the stile of and arrange the articles which had been agreed to by
the House.”
THE COMMITTEE ON STYLE
¾¾ Strictly speaking, the sole task of the Committee on Style was that
of smoothing everything that had been agreed to in the convention
into a single flowing document. But neither Madison nor Morris
could quite let go of one last opportunity to push the Constitution in
the directions they had always favored.

¾¾ Morris, in particular, had the itch and the talent to make words
work; he would, years later, actually claim that he had written the
Constitution. He initially wrote the states out of the Committee
of Detail’s preamble. The preamble now read, as Madison and
Morris had both wanted it, as the action not of the states but of the
American people as a whole.
¾¾ In four days, Morris trimmed the 23 articles of the Committee

of Detail’s report down to just 7. One article each dealt with the
presidency, the national legislature, and the judiciary; another
regulated the interaction of federal and state governments; a fifth
described a process for amending the Constitution; and the sixth
dealt with national indebtedness, the prohibition of any “religious
Test” as a qualification for public office, and Morris’s federal
supremacy clause. The last article simply stated, “Ratification
of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the
Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying
the Same.” Ratification would be the job of special-purpose
state conventions.
DEBATING THE CONSTITUTION
¾¾ On September 12, committee chair William Samuel Johnson had

the full text of the new document ready for distribution. Yet even
at this last hour, there were surprises, the first of which came
from Elbridge Gerry. He now decided to make an issue of the
provision that delegated to Congress the power to “make war; to
raise armies; to build and equip fleets.” On the last day of debate,
Gerry promised not to sign the Constitution if Congress retained
authority to “raise armies and money without limit.”
¾¾ Gerry found a surprisingly sympathetic spirit in George Mason,

who had come to the convention in May fully prepared to endorse
a replacement for the Articles of Confederation, but who had been
gradually hemorrhaging enthusiasm for the new Constitution as
the weeks dragged by.
144 Lecture 18 • David Brearley’s Postponed Parts

Three months before, Mason was convinced that “the present
confederation was not only deficient in not providing for
coercion & punishment agst. delinquent states; but argued
very cogently that punishment could not in the nature of things
be executed on the States collectively, and therefore that
such a Government, was necessary as could operate directly
on individuals.”
But Mason was uneasy over the creation of a single national

president and over the powers awarded to the Senate, and he
was genuinely alarmed at the 20-year allowance granted to
slave imports.
By the time the Committee on Style submitted its draft of the

Constitution to the convention, Mason had convinced himself
that the real threat was posed, not by too feeble a government
but by a too-powerful government, and at that point, he took
the floor to ask that the Constitution be “prefaced with a Bill
of Rights.”
¾¾ By itself, no one who had endured the storm of the American

Revolution would have any resistance to a bill of rights. But Madison
was incredulous at Mason’s motion for a number of reasons.
First, the Constitution did little else other than set limits on the
power of government.
Second, the Constitution in fact contained a number of

specific protections for rights.
Third, Mason, by insisting on the need for one, was suggesting

that the new Constitution was endangering the rights that
all previous bills of rights had been created to protect. That,
Madison perceived as a subtle attempt at sabotage, especially
when the Constitution was submitted for ratification to the
states’ conventions.

¾¾ More alarming was the dissent from the man who had introduced
the first plan of the Constitution at the end of May, Edmund
Randolph. Like Mason, Randolph had grown more uneasy over
the powers being ceded to the new national government. By
September, he was no happier with the finished Constitution, and
on September 10, he warned that “if no change should be made
in this part of the plan, he should be obliged to dissent from the
whole of it.”
Randolph had come to the convention with “a set of republican

propositions as the basis and outline of a reform” of the
Articles of Confederation. But these “Republican propositions
had … been widely, and … irreconcilably departed from.”
His best hope was that the state ratifying conventions would
offer “amendments to the plan” and that these amendments
should be incorporated into a second constitution, drafted by
a second convention.
When this warning was ignored, Randolph repeated it on

September 15, adding that “Should this proposition be
THE OFFICIAL SIGNING CEREMONY OF THE

U.S. CONSTITUTION WAS HELD ON SEPTEMBER
17, 1787; 39 OF 55 DELEGATES AFFIXED THEIR
SIGNATURES TO THE PARCHMENT.
146 Lecture 18 • Scope

disregarded, it would … be impossible for him to put his
name to the instrument.” Mason joined him, prophesying
that the “dangerous power and structure” of the new national
government “would end either in monarchy, or a tyrannical
aristocracy,” and he, too, called for a second convention.
Gerry, of course, followed suit.
¾¾ But to Madison’s relief, the convention turned a deaf ear to

these complaints. The motion to provide for a second convention
was unanimously voted down; on “the question to agree to the
Constitution as amended,” every state delegation voted aye. The
convention adjourned.
SUGGESTED READING
Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, chap. 7.

McDonald, We the People, chap. 8.
1. How did the Committee on Postponed Parts define the presidency?
2. What was the significance of the ratification process prescribed by the

Committee on Style?

Lecture 19
JOHN DUNLAP AND

DAVID CLAYPOOLE’S
BROADSIDE
O adjourned,
ne day after the Constitutional Convention
500 copies of the new
Constitution were printed in The Pennsylvania
Packet and Daily Advertiser, published by David
Claypoole and John Dunlap. William Jackson,
the convention’s secretary, took some of the
copies to New York City for the Confederation
Congress; Washington and other delegates picked
up copies before leaving Philadelphia for home.
The publication of the Constitution must have
come as a surprise to anyone outside the circle
of the convention’s delegates. The delegates had,
after all, been given the mandate of rewriting the
Articles of Confederation, not creating an entirely
new instrument of government, and there was no
telling what the response was likely to be, starting
with Congress itself.
148
THE NEW CONSTITUTION
¾¾ The first emotion felt at the end of the convention was not relief
but anxiety. A cover letter, signed by Washington and added as
an addendum to the first printing, tried to smooth the shock of
the new Constitution. Preemptively, the letter conceded that the
convention did not expect that the new Constitution “will meet the
full and entire approbation of every state.” But “it is liable to as
few exceptions as could reasonably have been expected” and will
“promote the lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all, and
secure her freedom and happiness.” The letter was, of course,
whistling in the dark.
¾¾ What was it about the new Constitution that generated so much

uneasiness in the minds of those who had written it? The obvious
answer was that they had not been commissioned to write a
new Constitution; consequently, Congress had every right to
reject it and call a new convention. Nor would Congress show
any greater appreciation when it discovered that the ratification
process proposed by the convention—using popularly called state
conventions—bypassed it completely. Yet 18 of the 33 members
of the Confederation Congress had been in the convention and
were not likely to vote against their own handiwork.
¾¾ After only two days of debate, Congress obligingly referred the new
Constitution “to the several legislatures in Order to be submitted
to a convention of delegates chosen in each state by the people
thereof in conformity to the resolves of the Convention.” It was in
those state conventions that Madison, Washington, and the other
promoters of the new Constitution had reason for worry, because
it was the authority of the states that took the most severe beating.
¾¾ The preamble announced that the purpose of the Constitution

would be “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure
domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote
the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” The
implication from the outset, therefore, was that the states had

failed in doing these things. To correct that, the Constitution would
give five new powers to the new federal Congress and impose five
restrictions on the states’ powers.
¾¾ The first new congressional power was taxation, allowing

Congress to levy taxes for its needs: national tariffs on imports,
excises (or user fees), and direct assessments. Of the three, tariffs
would be the most important, partly because they would generate
a substantial volume of revenue and partly because the revenue
would come from commercial sources, not farmers.
¾¾ The second new power, linked to the taxing authority, was the
authority Congress would have to “regulate Commerce with
foreign Nations, and among the several States.” There would be
no more need for clumsy interstate commercial conventions, such
as the one at Annapolis. Further, a gigantic free-trade zone would
be created in place of the welter of state tariffs and duties that had
prevailed under the Articles of Confederation.
¾¾ As the third new power, Congress could now preempt the states’
control of their own armed forces by “calling forth the Militia to
execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel
Invasions.”
¾¾ Congress was also authorized to use the militia of the states “to
protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the
Legislature, or of the Executive … against domestic Violence.”
This was clearly intended as an insurance policy against further
Shays-style rebellions.
¾¾ The most sweeping new power was the provision that authorized
Congress “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and
proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and
all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government
of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
Ostensibly, the necessary-and-proper clause was only intended
to ensure, according to James Wilson, that Congress “shall have
150 Lecture 19 • John Dunlap and David Claypoole’s Broadside

the power of carrying into effect the laws which they shall make
under the powers vested in them by this Constitution,” not a grant
of “general legislative power.”
After all, Rutledge’s Committee on Detail had clearly decided

that the federal government’s powers were to be enumerated,
rather than providing a general grant of powers; in other
words, those powers were to be identified one by one, so that
it was clear that the new government would be exercising only
those powers and none other. Madison concluded, “whatever
meaning this clause may have, none can be admitted that
would give an unlimited discretion to Congress.” A law must
be necessary, not merely convenient.
But Edmund Randolph had made the “general clause

concerning necessary and proper laws” one of his chief
objections to signing the Constitution, precisely because
he feared it would give Congress power to enact any law it
pleased under the guise of it being necessary and proper.
Elbridge Gerry had also objected on the same grounds.
¾¾ The Constitution put no restrictions on the internal powers the

states could exercise, but anything beyond internal powers now
became vastly curtailed. Article I, Section 10, set out a lengthy
list of powers the states were forbidden to exercise, including no
“Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation … no Letters of Marque and
Reprisal … no Bills of Credit,” and so on.
No longer would the states be the tail that wagged the

American dog. In particular, the free-wheeling fiscal carnivals
in the state legislatures would stop: Under these terms, states
could not issue paper currency or even mint their own specie.
Further, they could not threaten to strike up alliances with

suspiciously friendly foreign nations. And debtors could not
hide behind state boundaries and courts to evade payment
of their debts. No wonder North Carolina delegate William

Davie thought Section 10 was “the best in the Constitution”
and “founded on the strongest principles of justice.” Charles
Pinckney thought it was “the soul of the Constitution.”
¾¾ Of course, this was not entirely a one-way street. Article I, Section

9, had limitations for Congress, as well: No export taxes could
be levied, no money could be spent without explicit legislative
authorization, and no titles of nobility could be given. States could
not be subdivided against their will by Congress, and Congress
could not use the bill of attainder, which had allowed Parliament to
function as a court in determining the guilt of high crimes.
¾¾ There were also powers that some members of the convention

had wanted for Congress, but in the end, the Constitution failed to
include. Madison had hoped for a direct congressional veto power
over state legislation but had to settle for a blander statement.
George Mason had wanted Congress to have the power to pass
laws to forbid the import of luxuries and to restrict voting rights
based on property ownership; he got neither.
ANALYZING THE CONSTITUTION
¾¾ In many ways, the Constitution continues to harbor surprises.

For one thing, the American Constitution was, and is, remarkable
just for being written. In English jurisprudence, there is a British
Constitution, but it is actually an accumulation of parliamentary
statute, judicial decisions, and the common law. Because the
American Constitution was ratified through state conventions
rather than by an act of the Confederation Congress, it is superior
even to statute law. The American Constitution sits above and
outside the government, drawing circles of containment around it.
¾¾ The American Constitution is also unique for the way it divides

sovereignty. We sometimes call this the separation of powers, and
by that, we usually refer either to the division of political powers
between the states and the federal government or among the
three branches: the executive, Congress, and the federal courts.

In most contexts in 1787, the idea of dividing sovereignty was
thought to be delusionary; what a nation wanted to do was to
concentrate sovereignty, to mass its power behind a king or a
representative institution, such as Parliament.
The American Constitution does the exact opposite: It permits

the states to enjoy some exercises of sovereignty over their
internal affairs but places other exercises of sovereignty
with the federal government; it does the same thing with the
branches. In the eyes of Europeans, such separation looked
suicidally clumsy; however, Americans were not concerned in
the Constitution with efficiency but with liberty.
¾¾ The Constitution is a document of mixtures. It created neither

a classical republic nor an outright democracy. It makes no
assumptions about the virtue of the citizenry and imposes no
requirements for civic virtue. Unlike the Articles of Confederation,
it made no statement about being a permanent arrangement,
yet it also made no reference to its dissolution and contained no
instruction for withdrawal from its rule.
It provided for a federal judiciary but only specified the

creation of a Supreme Court and left it to Congress to create
“inferior Courts.” It winked at slavery, gave no countenance
to women’s rights, and failed to specify the qualifications for
national citizenship—or even what citizenship was.
The Constitution was a statement of what political theorist

Isaiah Berlin once described as “negative liberty”; it was meant
to free citizens from molestation by power, not to empower or
require them to behave in certain ways. It was designed, as
historian John Patrick Diggins once wrote, to prevent evil, not
to realize some virtuous good; to control the abuse of power,
not to shape beliefs and values.
The Constitution did not so much attempt to resolve American

conflicts as to detach conflict from authority. In the view of

the Founders, it was only men of sinister motives who hoped
to link their fortunes to authority; the free citizen pursued
his own ends and interests apart from government, and the
Constitution was designed to secure that pursuit.
¾¾ In this way, the Constitution decisively addressed the critical

issues of the 1780s—of who should and should not hold power, of
the disjointed animosity of the states, of the peril of drifting alone in
a sea of aristocratic and monarchical sharks. And for every selfish
privilege it cancelled, it managed to hold out a compensating
advantage. It would need to. Even before leaving Philadelphia,
George Mason had prepared the first round of attacks on it.
SUGGESTED READING
Maier, Ratification, chap. 3.

McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum, chap. 8.
1. Why did the delegates sign the Constitution as states rather than
individuals?
2. What were the new powers granted by the Constitution to Congress?
3. What restrictions were placed on the powers of the states?
4. What is meant by the separation of powers?

Lecture 20
ALEXANDER
HAMILTON’S PAPERS
G James
eorge Mason left Philadelphia in what
Madison called “an exceeding ill
humor.” He had agreed to give a lift to Baltimore
to delegate James McHenry, who (like Mason)
had reservations about the Constitution but who
(unlike Mason) had signed it anyway. The two
argued for most of the trip between Philadelphia
and Baltimore, before Mason’s carriage
overturned outside the city. Both Mason and
McHenry were injured, and a month later, Mason
was still complaining about head and neck pains.
His injuries, however, did nothing to alter his “fixed
disposition to prevent the adoption of the plan if
possible” by the state ratifying conventions.
156
MASON’S “OBJECTIONS”
¾¾ On their return from the convention, neither Madison nor Mason

let any grass grow under their feet. Writing on the reverse of the
printed copy of the Constitution provided by the Committee of
Style, Mason began drafting what he shortly published in pamphlet
form as the text of resistance to the Constitution, his “Objections to
This Constitution of Government.”
¾¾ The “Objections” repeated much of what Mason had already said

during the convention. The House of Representatives is too small,
which means that each representative will have to represent a
district so large that he will never be able to speak for everyone
in it. By the same token, in such large districts, the only names
likely to gain any recognition (and votes) would be the wealthy
and famous.
¾¾ The vagueness of the commerce clause would allow the House

of Representatives to “grant monopolies in trade and commerce,
constitute new crimes, inflict unusual and severe punishments,
and extend their powers as far as they shall think proper.” Not that
it would matter, because the Senate was too big; it would “destroy
any balance in the government, and enable them to accomplish
what usurpations they please upon the rights and liberties of
the people.”
¾¾ The judicial branch was just as bad. It would “absorb and destroy
the judiciaries of the several States; thereby rendering law as
tedious, intricate and expensive, and justice as unattainable
… as in England, and enabling the rich to oppress and ruin the
poor.” But the president was even worse. “The President of the
United States” will become a tool to the Senate, and together,
“by declaring all treaties supreme laws of the land, the Executive
and the Senate have, in many cases, an exclusive power
of legislation.”

¾¾ What troubled Mason most was the absence of a bill of rights.
“There is no Declaration of Rights,” he objected, “and the laws
of the general government being paramount to the laws and
constitution of the several States, the Declarations of Rights in the
separate States are no security.”
OTHER ANTICONSTITUTIONALISTS
¾¾ Madison expected to hear from New York’s George Clinton, who

had stymied the confederation’s attempt to levy the impost of 1785
because it threatened to dry up New York’s tariff revenues. Sure
enough, the first volley from the Clinton faction appeared in the
New York Journal only a week after the printing of the Constitution,
from someone writing under the classical pseudonym Cato.
¾¾ Cato was brief but cleverly indirect: “If you find that the influence
of a powerful few, or the exercise of a standing army, will always
be directed and exerted for your welfare alone, and not to the
aggrandizement of themselves, and that it will secure to you
and your posterity happiness … adopt it; if it will not, reject it
with indignation.”
¾¾ Cato was followed on October 5 in Philadelphia by an author

calling himself Centinel, probably the work of George Bryan, a
former president of Pennsylvania under its 1776 constitution, or
his son Samuel Bryan.
The Constitution, argued Centinel, concentrated “all the great

executive powers of a confederation.” It allowed for “a Standing
Army in time of peace,” imposed “absolute control over the
commerce of the United States,” and through the necessary-
and-proper clause, “may construe every purpose for which the
State legislatures now lay taxes, to be for the general welfare,
and thereby seize upon every object of revenue.”
Like Mason, Centinel was convinced that the congressional

districts were too large. The real moving power would be in
158 Lecture 20 • Alexander Hamilton’s Papers

the Senate, which would be composed of an aristocracy and
would reduce the president to “a mere pageant of State.”
And like Mason again, Centinel objected that the Constitution
made “no provision for the liberty of the press … [and] no
declaration of personal rights.”
¾¾ The damning chorus of Cato and Centinel was joined on October

8 by the Federal Farmer and on October 18 by Brutus, both
probably New Yorkers, writing at George Clinton’s direction.
Indeed, for the next six months, the newspapers would teem with
a mounting crescendo of denunciation, coalescing around six
principal objections:
The Constitution had not created a reformed federal

government to replace the Articles of Confederation but an
entirely new monstrosity of a single, consolidated government.
The size of the United States would force this consolidated

government to rule with a heavy hand.
The powers awarded to the consolidated government were

put in such vague terms that no one could find ground on
which to stand against them.
The president and the Senate had too much power and were
the seeds of a monarchy.
The new Congress should not be given the power to maintain

a national professional army.
There was no bill of rights.
RESPONSES TO THE ANTICONSTITUTIONALISTS
¾¾ The first freestanding counterattack on the Anticonstitutionalists

came in Philadelphia on October 6, when James Wilson
addressed “a very great concourse of people” outside the State

House “to explain and elucidate the principles and arrangements
of the constitution that has been submitted to the consideration of
the United States.” He did not actually spend much time explaining
but moved right away to punch back at the Anticonstitutionalists’
arguments.
Wilson argued that there should be no bill of rights in the

Constitution; the document gave the national government
only limited and enumerated powers, and restrictions of
basic rights—especially ones already secured by state
constitutions—were not among them.
On the issue of the standing army, Wilson asked, what nation

in the world “has not found it necessary and useful to maintain
the appearance of strength in a season of the most profound
tranquility”?
Would the Constitution “reduce the State governments to

mere corporations and eventually … annihilate them”? Wilson
claimed that couldn’t happen when the Senate is elected
by the state legislatures, and the president is chosen by an
electoral college whose members are “nominated in such
manner as the legislature of each State may direct.”
If there are errors in the Constitution, “it should be remembered

that the seeds of reformation are sown in the work itself” by
the procedures it specifies for amending it.
¾¾ Wilson’s speech was met with “loud and unanimous testimonies

of approbation, but he was at once drowned out by a cascade of
refutations, including one from Centinel. Something more thorough
and analytic than a speech would have to be mustered in support
of the Constitution before the ratifying conventions began to meet.

¾¾ Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s one-time aide, had left
Philadelphia confident that the Constitution had everything it
needed to carry it through ratification. He was jolted when he
returned to New York City in early October to find “the full flood of
official influence is let loose against” ratifying the Constitution. He
began laying plans for a series of newspaper articles that would
“explain and elucidate” the Constitution in far greater depth than
Wilson had been able to do. The partners Hamilton recruited for
this endeavor included John Jay (the confederation’s secretary of
state) and Madison.

¾¾ Hamilton chose the title of his series, The Federalist, which was
at that moment a daring act of aggression, because it was the
Anticonstitutionalists who saw themselves as the defenders of
federalism and a confederation. With this title, Hamilton would gain
the high ground by asserting that the Constitution represented a
better version of federalism than the Articles of Confederation. He
also gave a collective pseudonym to his authors: Publius.
¾¾ Overall, the series had 85 articles, 51 written by Hamilton, 29

by Madison, and 5 by Jay. Hamilton and Madison were not
content merely to offer rebuttals to the Anticonstitutionalists—
who now, by default, became the Antifederalists. In the very first
Federalist, Hamilton laid down six themes by which Publius would
demonstrate the indispensability of the new Constitution:
1. The utility of the Union to your political prosperity
2. The insufficiency of the present confederation to preserve

that Union
3. The necessity of a government, at least equally energetic with

the one proposed, to the attainment of this object
4. The conformity of the proposed constitution to the true

principles of republican government
5. Its analogy to your own State constitution
6. The additional security, which its adoption will afford to the

preservation of that species of government, to liberty and
to property.
¾¾ It was a remarkable collaboration, and all the more remarkable for

the flashes of ingenuity The Federalist Papers demonstrated in
handling the Antifederalists’ objections.

In Federalist 10, Madison confronted the argument that
the United States was too large to sustain a single national
government without resorting to tyranny by replying that
the size of the United States was exactly what would cause
tyranny to fizzle away. Conflict would not have to be stamped
out by the national government because it “will be unable to
spread to a general conflagration through the other states.”
In Federalist 23, Hamilton defended the necessary-and-

proper clause with an argument that “carries its own evidence
along with it,” that “the means ought to be proportioned to the
ends.” How can we confide “to a government the direction of
our most essential national concerns, without daring to trust
it with the authorities which are indispensable to their proper
and efficient management”?
Above all, Madison, in Federalist 51, turned the necessity

of separating the powers of the executive, legislative, and
judicial branches in the Constitution into a positive by arguing
that the three branches, precisely by being separate, would
be too occupied with minding each other’s boundaries to have
time to plot against the liberties of the people.
¾¾ In 1821, looking back on the achievement of the Founders,

Chief Justice John Marshall would call The Federalist Papers
the “complete commentary on our constitution,” and Jefferson
would describe them as the “best commentary on the principles of
government which ever was written.” It would not, however, be the
decisive word on the fate of the Constitution. That would depend
on what was said in the state ratifying conventions.

SUGGESTED READING
Broadwater, George Mason, chap. 9.

Maier, Ratification, chap. 11.
1. Who were the principal critics of the Constitution once it was published?
2. What were the objections registered by the opponents of ratification?
3. What six themes did Hamilton, Madison, and Jay develop in defense of
the Constitution?

Lecture 21
PATRICK HENRY’S
CONVENTION
A
s we saw earlier, Patrick Henry was
unenthused about the calling of the
Philadelphia Convention in the first place; he
was not any more enthused when he saw what it
produced. “I have to lament that I cannot bring my
mind to accord with the proposed Constitution,”
he told Washington, who personally appealed to
Henry to swing his considerable influence and
talents behind it. Henry protested that he had only
the “highest reverence” for Washington’s opinion,
but “The concern I feel on this account, is really
greater than I am able to express.” That concern
meant that Henry would mobilize every political
resource and employ every political strategy at
his command to stop the new Constitution in
its tracks.
165
THE RATIFYING CONVENTIONS
¾¾ As the Constitution prepared to make its passage through the state

ratifying conventions, it had four elements working in its favor:
prestige, surprise, organization, and momentum. Franklin and the
Pennsylvania delegation moved at once to lay the Constitution
before the Pennsylvania Assembly and ask for a state convention.
¾¾ Franklin, in his role as president of the assembly, wanted quick

action, largely because he also wanted Pennsylvania to be the
first to offer the 10-mile square district that would become the
national capital. He would not get his wish, though, because
the assembly was scheduled to adjourn from September 29 to
October 9 for elections; not even Franklin could ask for the calling
of a convention until word had been received from New York that
Congress was actually sending the Constitution to the states.
¾¾ When that word finally arrived on September 28, George Clymer

(one of the Pennsylvania delegates) moved to call a state ratifying
convention, which would hold elections on the first Tuesday in
November and meet on the last day of November. That slight delay
gave the Delaware legislature the chance to jump ahead and call
a convention, with elections to be held on November 9 and 10.
When the Delaware convention met on December 4,

the 30 members had but one thing in mind: The new
Constitution would unshackle the tiny state from paying
tariffs to Pennsylvania for goods shipped through the port of
Philadelphia. The move to ratify on December 7 was swift and
unanimous.
In short order, Connecticut and Massachusetts called their

town meetings to choose delegates to a state convention
to meet in November and January; New Jersey called a
convention that ratified the Constitution on December 18,
followed by Georgia, whose convention was called on
October 26.
166 Lecture 21 • Patrick Henry’s Convention

¾¾ From that point, however, the momentum began to slow. The
Pennsylvania ratifying convention met in Philadelphia on
November 20, but its members showed no sense of urgency in
their deliberations. Just as he had done in October, James Wilson
leapt forward with a lengthy speech in support of ratification
and supporting the call of Thomas McKean, the chief justice
of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, for a single vote on the
whole Constitution.
Taking his cue from The Federalist Papers, Wilson insisted that
the new Constitution was a genuinely federal document that
struck the middle-of-the-road note between a disconnected
shambles and a centralized despotism. It would “admit all
the advantages, and … exclude all the disadvantages which
are incidental to the known and established constitutions
of government.”
But Wilson was just as promptly brushed back by a vicious

attack by John Smilie, a small farmer from Fayette County,
who demanded that the convention begin “to alter or amend”
the Constitution piece by piece. Thus, the Pennsylvania
convention commenced plowing doggedly through each
article. Again, the absence of a bill of rights was cited as
a “radical wrong,” and the nightmare of a consolidated
government was conjured.
On November 26, Wilson and McKean won a test vote and,

on December 12, managed to force a vote on ratification and
won. But the dissenting delegates were so unreconciled to the
ratification that they refused to sign the resolution.
¾¾ The Pennsylvania ratification was not a good sign, apart from the
single fact that it added a fourth state to the required nine. The
Connecticut convention, which had been called in mid-October,
did not assemble in Hartford until January 3, and several of the
town meetings instructed their delegates to bring up proposed
amendments. Once assembled, the convention then moved

tediously through a review of each article, and not until January 9
did Connecticut finally vote to ratify. That made five states, but the
issue was clearly losing its headway.
Because New Hampshire’s legislature was not scheduled to

meet until January 1788, John Sullivan, the state president,
called a special session of the legislature for December 14;
a ratifying convention was duly authorized, but it would not
meet until February 13. After nine days, it voted not to ratify
but to adjourn.
In New York, the unsympathetic governor, George Clinton,

waited until the legislature convened in its regular session in
January 1788. The legislature then scheduled the ratifying
convention for June.
Maryland ignored Federalist demands for a ratifying

convention until November and, even when it authorized the
convention, did not schedule it until April. The South Carolina
legislature did not take up the Constitution until January and
held its own debate before finally authorizing a convention
in May.
More might have been hoped for from Massachusetts,

which issued a call for a convention in late October. But the
lower house of the legislature refused to schedule a ratifying
convention’s first meeting in Boston until January 9, and even
then, the delegates arrived with instructions from their town
meetings to demand a variety of amendments, including a bill
of rights and religious tests for federal officeholders.
The president of the convention was John Hancock, who

refused to declare himself for or against ratification; another
old revolutionary, Samuel Adams, was chosen as a delegate
from Boston and had no hesitation in expressing himself as
absolutely against the Constitution.

JOHN HANCOCK
(1737–1793)
SAMUEL ADAMS
(1722–1803)
Beginning on January 14, the Massachusetts convention

proceeded to pick its way through the Constitution paragraph
by paragraph; this went on until January 23, when a Federalist
delegate moved to consider the Constitution as a whole. The
debates dragged out until February 6, and the final vote to
ratify was an uneasy 187 to 168, with 9 absences.
VIRGINIA’S CONVENTION
¾¾ The Constitution’s decaying momentum set an unhappy stage for

what everyone understood would be the ultimate test: Virginia. The
Virginia General Assembly, meeting in October, set the meeting
of the convention in June. Virginians were clearly divided among
those who wanted the Constitution as it was, those who were
prepared to concede the necessity of amendments, and those,
such as Patrick Henry, who refused any part of it.
¾¾ The long prelude to the Virginia convention was a gift to Virginia’s

Antifederalists, including Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, and
of course, Patrick Henry, to (as Madison put it) “create difficulties.”
They were joined by Virginians from whom Madison had hoped for
more cooperation.

PATRICK HENRY
(1736–1799)
¾¾ Richard Henry Lee took the lead as a writer, publishing a 64-page

pamphlet of extracts from the Constitution, along with vitriolic
attacks on them. But it was Henry who orchestrated “with his usual
address, every possible interest into a spirit of opposition.” He
shrewdly frightened Virginians who had unpaid prewar debts to
British merchants or who had occupied confiscated Tory properties
with the specter of being dragged into far-away federal courts.
¾¾ Elections to the convention became fiercely competitive, but the

real test would come in the convention itself, which assembled
on June 2, 1788. On a motion from George Mason, the delegates
agreed to begin a “full discussion, clause by clause.” But they
were not really weighing the clauses; they were waiting for Henry,
and on June 4, he did not disappoint them. “I conceive the republic
to be in extreme danger,” he announced solemnly. This anxiety
“arises from a proposal to change our government—a proposal

that goes to the utter annihilation of the most solemn engagements
of the states.”
The evidence was to be found at the very beginning, in

the first three words of the Constitution: “We the People.”
Henry said, “Who authorized them to speak the language of
We, the People, instead of We, the States? States are the
characteristics, and the soul of a confederation. If the states
be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great
consolidated national government.”
George Mason was quick to follow Henry’s line of attack.

“Whether the constitution be good or bad,” Mason claimed,
is irrelevant; the power to levy tariffs without the consent of
the individual states “clearly discovers, that it is a national
government, and no longer a confederation.” Mason asked
whether a national government could supervise a nation
as large as the United States without becoming tyrannical
by necessity.
¾¾ Still, for all the rhetorical fireworks, Henry and Mason would not be
allowed to hijack the convention. Speaking briefly at the end of the
June 4 session, Madison paved the way for Henry “Light-Horse
Harry” Lee to go on the attack. Why, Lee asked, was Patrick Henry
resorting to scare tactics? What could be more proper than to
begin a constitution by appealing to the people whose sovereignty
it embodied?
¾¾ On June 6, Madison delivered a calm dissection of Henry’s alarm.

Was Henry fearful for a loss of liberty? “Upon a review of history, he
would have found, that the loss of liberty very often resulted from
factions and divisions—from local considerations, which eternally
lead to quarrels—he would have found internal dissentions to
have more frequently demolished civil liberty” than consolidated
government. The truth is, Madison continued, that the new
Constitution created a middle ground between a disconnected
group of states and a single, concentrated government.

¾¾ For nine days, the arguments swayed back and forth. On June 25,
after three weeks of wrangling, a roll-call vote was demanded by
George Mason, and ratification won.
¾¾ But the Federalists had not won their victory without conditions.
The ratifying resolutions required that “any imperfections” in the
Constitution be remedied by amendments, particularly the rights
to religious freedom and freedom of the press. In shorter terms,
Madison and his fellow Federalists had pledged themselves to
concede a bill of rights.
¾¾ The irony of the concession was that, technically speaking,

Madison need not have made it. Tardily, the Maryland and South
Carolina conventions ratified the Constitution in April and May.
New Hampshire’s convention voted to ratify in June, making it
the ninth state and, thus, giving the Constitution legal standing
even while the Virginia delegates were still voting. New York, its
Antifederalists felled by the news of Virginia’s ratification, would
narrowly follow suit in July. The Constitution had arrived at last.
SUGGESTED READING
Kidd, Patrick Henry, chap. 9.

Labunski, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights, chaps. 4–5.
1. What factors were operating in favor of ratification?
2. What made Madison concede the writing of a Bill of Rights?

Lecture 22
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S
INAUGURAL
O that the ninth state needed to ratify the

n July 2, 1788, Congress was informed
Constitution had done so. It was typical of the

history of the Confederation Congress that it now
proceeded to tie itself in knots over where the new
Congress should meet. It was not until September
14 that the members set New York as the meeting
place; other dates were set for each state to
appoint presidential electors and for the electors
to cast their votes for the first president. All the
operations of the new Congress and government
would begin on the first Wednesday in March
1789. But as we’ll see in this lecture, the new
government was off to an erratic start.
173
LAUNCHING THE NEW GOVERNMENT
¾¾ After setting the dates for the new government to begin operations,
Congress briefly adjourned on October 2, which seems to have
been the signal for almost everyone to leave. By October 14,
attendance dwindled to just two states; after November 1, the
members met only “occasionally,” and after February 19, no one
bothered to show up at all except for the ever-faithful secretary,
Charles Thomson.
¾¾ North Carolina and Rhode Island still declined ratification, but

few observers expected that they would hold out for long. North
Carolina finally ratified in November 1789. The holdouts in the
Rhode Island legislature fought the calling of a convention until
January. The convention finally met on March 1, 1790, then
adjourned. Not until the new Congress voted to embargo all trade
with Rhode Island did the convention reassemble and vote—
to ratify.
¾¾ No one was more relieved at the final result than Washington.

Madison was able to breathe deeply, too. Writing to Jefferson
in Paris, Madison predicted, “Notwithstanding the formidable
opposition made to the New federal Government … there is now
both a certainty of its peaceable commencement in March next,
and a flattering prospect that it will be administered by men who
will give it a fair trial.”
¾¾ Madison fully expected to be one of those men, but Patrick

Henry, in a spasm of vengeance, secured the election of two
Antifederalists—Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson—to be
Virginia’s first two senators and tried to induce the state legislature
to rig the boundaries of Madison’s new congressional district to
deny him election to the House of Representatives. But when
Virginia voters went to the polls on February 2, Madison was
easily elected to the new House.
174 Lecture 22 • George Washington’s Inaugural

¾¾ What was not up for grabs was the presidency. “General
Washington will certainly be called to the Executive department,”
Madison informed Jefferson. Washington, of course, would not
campaign for election; he even refused to declare whether he
would serve if elected. At one point, Washington suggested that
John Adams might be worth considering as an alternative to
himself, but nobody was listening. When the state electors met on
February 4, 1789, all of them cast their first ballot for Washington;
Adams had the second highest number and was “duly elected
Vice President.”
WASHINGTON’S INAUGURATION
¾¾ The new Congress assembled for its first session on March 4,

1789, only to prove shy of a quorum in both houses. Only eight
senators were in attendance. When no other senators appeared
after a week, they resolved to send “a circular letter … to the
absent members, requesting their immediate attendance.” The
stragglers finally began to appear on March 19, and finally, on
April 6, a quorum was declared—with 12 senators.
¾¾ They proceeded at once to draw up an official tally of the electoral

votes in the Senate chamber. John Adams took the chair of the
Senate on April 21, politely protesting his own inadequacy and
praising the election of Washington.
¾¾ Word of his election was carried personally to Washington at

Mount Vernon on April 14. Washington left Mount Vernon on April
16, and at every stop between Alexandria and New York, he was
hailed with crowds, banners, bell-ringing, and cannon salutes.
¾¾ Washington took the presidential oath from New York chancellor

Robert Livingston on the second-floor balcony of Federal Hall on
April 30. To the skeptical eye of one Pennsylvania senator, William
Maclay, the 57-year-old general looked as though he would have
been more comfortable leading a charge against the British than
enduring the inaugural ceremony. In delivering his inaugural

FEDERAL HALL, NEW YORK, NY
address, Washington “trembled, and several times could scarce

make out to read, though it must be supposed he had often read
it before.”
¾¾ No one, of course, had ever been inaugurated as president of

the United States; thus, there was some buzzing in the Senate
about the proper titles to be used. Some suggested “Excellency”
or “Elective Highness.” It took jockeying from James Madison
for Congress finally to agree to address Washington simply as
“president of the United States” and “Mr. President.”
THE NEW HOUSE AND SENATE
¾¾ According to the Constitution’s initial apportionment of

representation, the House of Representatives was to be composed
of 59 representatives and, until North Carolina and Rhode Island
ratified the Constitution and chose members of Congress, 22
senators. There were a number of familiar faces, including those

who had been at the Philadelphia Convention the year before, but
there were also a number of new faces—not only new to Congress
but new to national political life. These included William Maclay
from Pennsylvania, James Jackson from Georgia, Judge Aedanus
Burke from South Carolina, and Fisher Ames from Massachusetts.
¾¾ Ames was easily the most interesting of the new Congressmen.

Shays’s Rebellion had startled him into political action in 1786,
and he laid the blame for Shays squarely on the shoulders of
the Articles of Confederation. People readily compared Ames to
Alexander Hamilton, and indeed, Ames lauded Hamilton for his
“integrity and honor.” But Ames lauded Washington even more.
¾¾ Denial of a Senate seat had deeply wounded James Madison,

much as he struggled to conceal it. Fisher Ames drew a shrewd
bead on Madison when he wrote that Madison was “a man of
sense, reading, address, and integrity.” But at the same time,
Ames observed that Madison was “not a little of a Virginian, and
thinks that state the land of promise,” and is, therefore, “afraid of
their state politics, and of his popularity there, more than I think he
should be.”
Theodore Sedgwick, also from Massachusetts, drew the

same conclusion: “No man, in my opinion, in this country has
more fair and honorable intentions, or more ardently wishes
the prosperity of the public,” and yet Madison “is constantly
haunted with the ghost of Patrick Henry.”
Nevertheless, as Cyrus Griffin, the outgoing president of

the Confederation Congress, told Madison as he left, “We
consider you as the main pillar of the business,” and to that
business Madison turned.
¾¾ The first order of business touched on the fundamental reason

the new Constitution had been written: revenue. As soon as the
House had a quorum and adopted a set of rules, Madison was
on his feet to propose the first national import tariffs on rum, wine,

coffee, molasses, steel, and more, plus a variety of targeted tariffs
that would favor countries willing to sign commercial treaties with
the United States.
That, of course, was a smack in the face of the British, who

had still not completely fulfilled their obligations under the
Treaty of Paris, much less sought any new agreements
with the United States. Still, if that triggered a trade war with
Britain, so be it: “I have … no fears of entering in a commercial
warfare with that nation,” Madison declared, “if fears are to be
entertained, they lay on the other side.”
But he could not easily wish away the ghost of Patrick

Henry; thus, Madison “gave notice, that he intended to
bring on the subject of amendments to the Constitution”—
and by amendments, what he meant was the bill of rights
Henry and George Mason had clamored for at the Virginia
state convention.
¾¾ Madison had been suspicious of calls for amendments, fearing

that they would chip away the powers the Constitution had won
for the national government. He was even less enchanted with the
demand for adding a bill of rights. Once it had been agreed that the
Constitution would be a grant of enumerated, rather than general,
powers, the need for a bill of rights that a general grant of powers
could not touch seemed pointless. If the Constitution granted the
national government only certain specified powers, there should
be no worry about it reaching for powers that the states already
secured in their own bills of rights.
¾¾ But Madison had not been able to convince Virginians of that

at the ratifying convention, and their ratification had come with
attachments demanding a bill of rights; unless Madison wanted
to jeopardize his own political future with Virginia voters, he
had every reason for changing his mind. On June 8, 1789,
he presented 19 amendments to the House, beginning with a
rewriting of the preamble to include an appeal to the natural rights

Jefferson had identified in the Declaration of Independence. The
other amendments would guarantee:
That “the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of

religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be
established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience
be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.”
That “the people shall not be deprived or abridged of their

right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the
freedom of the press … shall be inviolable.”
That “the people shall not be restrained from peaceably

assembling.”
That “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not
be infringed.”
In addition, Madison added prohibitions against self-

incriminations, against deprivation “of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law,” against unreasonable search and
seizure, and a promise that “The powers not delegated by this
constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to
the States respectively.”
¾¾ Oddly, Madison was least successful in persuading his Federalist

sympathizers in the House. He wanted the amendments inserted
into the body of the Constitution at various relevant places; Roger
Sherman objected that this would mutilate the Constitution he had
signed in Philadelphia and proposed to attach them at the end.
¾¾ After wrangling in committee, finally, on August 24, the House

forwarded Madison’s bill of rights, now recast as 17 amendments,
to the Senate. The Senate did its own wrangling until September
14, condensing the list to 12, and on September 24, the House
approved the Senate’s changes. The whole document then had

to go out to the states, and they took until March 1, 1792, to finish
their ratifications.
SUGGESTED READING
Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, chap. 1.

Randall, George Washington, chap. 19.
1. Why were people worried about how Washington should be

addressed?
2. What was at the top of the to-do list of the first Congress?

Lecture 23
ALEXANDER HAMILTON’S
REPORTS
A “the executive power shall be vested in a

rticle II of the Constitution stipulates that
President of the United States of America.” Apart

from creating an office of vice president and a
vague reference to certain “executive departments”
and their “principal officer,” the Constitution said
nothing more about what should compose the
executive branch. Thus, it was not clear what these
executive departments should be or what should
be the roles of the people who filled them. There
was, however, the precedent set under the Articles
of Confederation for departments of finance, state
affairs, and war, and in fact, the holders of those
offices under the Confederation would continue
to act in those capacities until something different
emerged.
181
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS
¾¾ On May 19, 1789, New Jersey representative Elias Boudinot

introduced the subject of “departments of an executive nature in
aid of the President,” calling for the formation of offices to handle
the “finances of the United States,” as well as a war department
and a department of foreign affairs. When Boudinot’s motion
looked like it would lose, Madison stepped forward and offered a
sweeping motion that at once established the three offices and the
secretaries to fill them.
¾¾ But who would Washington appoint to fill these secretaryships?

For the War Department, it would be Washington’s old artillery
chief, Henry Knox. For the new Department of State, Washington
invited Thomas Jefferson, and for the Department of the Treasury,
Washington nominated Alexander Hamilton, who set to work in
September 1789.
AMERICA’S DEBT
¾¾ The task confronting Hamilton was daunting. The new Constitution

gave the national government a dependable source of revenue,
but that revenue would probably meet only the government’s
current operating costs. It would not do much to deal with the
vast debts the United States had incurred during and after
the Revolution.
¾¾ In compiling his initial report on the credit status of the United

States, Hamilton found that the overall position of the country
broke down in this fashion:
Foreign debt: The United States owed $10 million in direct

foreign loans. Annual interest on these loans amounted to
approximately $1 million a year, but already, the United States
was $1.6 million in arrears on interest payments and $1.4
million behind on repayment of principal.
182 Lecture 23 • Alexander Hamilton’s Reports

U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF THE TREASURY,
WASHINGTON, DC
Domestic debt: The Confederation had financed the war by

issuing a dismaying variety of bonds, notes, warrants, and
certificates for the pay and supply of the Continental Army.
Overall, the United States was obligated to repay $16 million
just in principal; together with the unpaid interest, the total
came to $40 million.
State debt: Under the loose reins of the Confederation,

individual states had accumulated their own indebtedness,
which tacked another $25 million onto the bill.
¾¾ Against this, Hamilton could expect an overall income from federal

tariffs and excise taxes of a little more than $4.4 million, and most
of that would go to fund current operations. The possibilities for
dealing with this situation were not appetizing. The national
government might:
Repudiate the debt as a responsibility of the confederation,

which no longer existed or, at least, repudiate the unpaid

interest and pay off the principal at the current depreciated
market value.
Discriminate, that is, pay interest and principal only on notes

and debts still held by the original owners, not by second
buyers.
Pay off the entire national debt by imposing enormous taxes

and by selling public land in the west.
¾¾ Repudiation was the simple solution, but it meant that no lenders

in either Europe or America would ever agree to loan money to
Americans. For the indefinite future, the American economy would
be cash-poor, American enterprises would be capital-poor, and the
whole country would remain what it had been under British rule:
an agricultural appendage of Europe.
¾¾ Discrimination satisfied the moralizers, who didn’t mind paying

off what they deemed to be honest debts but who condemned
rewarding speculators. The problem was that not everyone who
had bought up discounted government securities and notes was
a speculator.
¾¾ Paying off the debt entirely also had the appeal of being simple,
but the kind of taxes necessary to do so were precisely what had
sparked Shays’s Rebellion. Further, any expectation that the sale
of western lands would bring in sufficient cash to pay off the debt
collided with the need to clear those lands of the Indian tribes who
occupied them.
¾¾ None of these solutions did anything toward extinguishing the

state debts, and as long as those debts remained outstanding,
foreign investors would shy away from lending to Americans.

HAMILTON’S SOLUTION
¾¾ Despite all the complexities, Hamilton was ready, once Congress

reassembled on January 4, 1790, with the Report Relative to a
Provision for the Support of Public Credit. What he proposed was
to look at the debt, not as a problem but as an asset.
¾¾ Borrowing, after all, is what makes possible “trade … agriculture

and manufactures.” Rather than treat the debt as an illness to be
cured, treat it as a plant to be cultivated “by being well-funded.”
Payoff, repudiation, and discrimination would all scare off further
investment; instead, let the federal government pledge, through
its tax revenues, to fund the debt on a gradual but dependable
schedule, with regular interest payments coming from specifically
dedicated tax resources. Moreover, Hamilton recommended, let
the U.S. government assume the indebtedness of the states.
¾¾ Of course, funding the debt would require new revenue, even if it

was not in the quantities that a complete pay-down would require,
ALEXANDER HAMILTON

and Hamilton proposed to find that new revenue in western land
sales and taxes on luxuries, such as alcohol. To manage the
funding of the debt, Hamilton also proposed “the medium of a
National bank.”
¾¾ The fury that Hamilton’s report let loose exceeded all but the most
acrimonious debates in the Constitutional Convention. Fisher
Ames, however, vigorously defended the report: “What, let me
inquire, will be the pernicious consequences” of not funding the
debt as Hamilton recommended? “No individual would be found
willing to trust the Government, if he supposed the Government
had the inclination and power, by virtue of a mere major vote, to
set aside the terms of the engagement.”
¾¾ What was surprising, though, was Madison’s contribution to the

debate. Madison moved to defuse the issue of discrimination
by suggesting that the current owners of notes and warrants be
issued new ones based on the highest price the original securities
had fetched on the open market. This was not Madison’s brightest
moment; any effort to re-rig the price of redeeming securities would
have driven foreign investment out of America, and Madison’s
proposal was defeated on February 22.
¾¾ The back-and-forth raged with few intermissions in the House

until June, when the House passed a funding bill incorporating
Hamilton’s recommendations; it took another month for the
Senate to agree. But the effects of the Report on Public Credit
were immediate. U.S. government securities tripled in value,
thus handing Americans $30 million in capitalization that had not
existed before.
THE NATIONAL BANK
¾¾ But Hamilton was not through with generating political explosions.

The next arrived on December 13, 1790, when he submitted a
report to implement his proposal for creating a national bank.

¾¾ If the funding report was intended to stabilize the republic’s credit
status, the report on a national bank would take that one step
further toward the creation of an active economy. Banks, after
all, are the legal means whereby groups of individuals pool their
private wealth, make it available for entrepreneurs to borrow, and
in the end, receive profits in the form of interest or dividends. They
are the pumping-stations of capitalism.
¾¾ What Hamilton now proposed to Congress was the creation of a

joint public-/private-sector venture, a bank of the United States,
in which both the federal government and private investors would
pool funds up to $10 million. The federal government would provide
one-fifth of the capitalization from its own revenues and, in return,
would use the bank as its instrument for receipt and disbursement
of funds and use the bank’s paper notes as its national currency.
¾¾ The federal government’s involvement in the bank would guarantee

its soundness for private investors, and the remaining four-fifths of
the bank’s capitalization that they contributed would be available
for lending out to businesses to fuel economic development. The
profits the bank would earn would not only enrich the private
depositors but would also help pay off the remaining federal debt.
¾¾ The proposal for a bank of the United States was greeted with a
new round of derision and hostility. Once again, Madison parted
company with Hamilton in calling for a discussion of the bank as
“a constitutional question in the Committee of the whole.” The
powers of the federal government do not include “a general grant
… it is a grant of particular powers only, leaving the general mass
in other hands”; among those particular powers, Madison found no
trace of authority to create a bank of the United States.
¾¾ The bill to incorporate a national bank squeezed through the

House after approval by the Senate, but Jefferson intervened
with a lengthy letter, at Washington’s request. The letter claimed
that because “all powers not delegated to the United States by
the constitution … are reserved to the States or to the people. …

To take a single step beyond the boundaries … is to take
possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of
any definition.” And “the incorporation of a bank, and the powers
assumed by this bill,” are perfect examples of such constitutional
overreach.
¾¾ Hamilton plied Washington with an equal amount of argument

to support his position that a national bank was a necessary-
and-proper function of a national government. He understood
Jefferson’s larger point, that “no government has a right to
do merely what it pleases.” But in this case, there is a “natural
& obvious relation between the institution of a bank, and the
objects of several of the enumerated powers of the government.”
Washington signed the bill on February 5.
¾¾ It was a political victory for Hamilton, but it came at a cost, first

in alienating Madison and Jefferson, then in opening a fissure in
Congress that Fisher Ames described as a line between “the two
ends of the continent”—north and south. “To the northward, we
see how necessary it is to defend property.” But in the South, “A
debt-compelling government is no remedy to men who have lands
and negroes, and debts and luxury, but neither trade nor credit,
nor cash, nor the habits of industry, or of submission to a rigid
execution of law.” They “have assiduously nursed the embryos
of faction, which the adoption of the Constitution did not destroy,”
and it done something none of the Founders anticipated: “made
two parties.”
SUGGESTED READING
Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, chap. 18.

McDonald, Hamilton, chaps. 7–9.

1. How bad was the American debt situation in 1789?
2. What options were open to dealing with the debt crisis?
3. What convinced Washington to sign the bank bill?

Lecture 24
THOMAS
JEFFERSON’S PARTY
T Alexander Hamilton until he arrived in New

homas Jefferson may not have met
York City to serve as secretary of state, but

it took him no time to conclude that Hamilton
was the consummation of every political evil in
Jefferson’s dictionary. “Hamilton was indeed a
singular character,” Jefferson wrote years later,
“a compromise between the two systems of
royalism & republicanism.” Washington had hoped
that “Hamilton & myself would coalesce in the
measures of the govmt,” but Jefferson frankly told
Washington it was his “wish … to see both houses
of Congr. cleansed of all persons interested in the
bank or public stocks,” and especially of “a corrupt
squadron of voters in Congress at the command
of Treasury.”
190
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
¾¾ When Louis XVI became king of France in 1774, his sole

qualification for exercising absolute power was his birth. He
was utterly unequipped by temperament, training, or intellect to
comprehend the seriousness of the problems he had inherited.
France was on the edge of bankruptcy and faced population
pressure, agricultural failures, the mismanagement of the treasury,
and more; all these failures finally came together in a crescendo
of crisis in 1789.
¾¾ In desperation, the king had called together a national convention,

the États-Généraux, in the spring of 1789 to force reforms down
the throat of an unwilling aristocracy. The États-Généraux swiftly
declared itself a National Assembly with full governing powers
for the nation. But the assembly’s deliberations were themselves
overtaken by bread riots in the streets of Paris in June and July.
These climaxed on July 14, when the rioters captured the royal
armory in Paris’s old Bastille.
¾¾ Ten days after the Bastille fell, the assembly began debate on a
new constitution for France, beginning with a Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizen, which distilled into 17 articles the
whole of the Enlightenment’s notions of human society. In the four
months between May and July 1789, France was transformed
from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, with real
political power now belonging to the National Assembly.
¾¾ Until 1784, when he was posted to Paris as the chief American

diplomatic representative, Jefferson’s Enlightenment had been a
conventionally English one, dominated by John Locke, and his
first impressions of America’s principal ally in the Revolution were
not positive ones. The events of the spring of 1789 soon changed
his opinion, however. “The National Assembly,” he wrote Thomas
Paine, “having shewn thro’ every stage of these transactions a
coolness, wisdom, and resolution to set fire to the four corners of
the kingdom and to perish with it themselves rather to relinquish an

iota from their plan of a total change in government” had excited
his imagination as nothing before.
¾¾ Jefferson’s admiration for the French Revolution seemed to

increase in direct proportion to his distance from it, and once he
returned to America at the end of 1789, one of his chief motives
for taking the post of secretary of state was to observe and
encourage the French eruption. When the National Assembly
seized and redistributed the lands of the Catholic Church; when
the king foolishly attempted to flee France, only to be captured
and executed; and when the Reign of Terror began, Jefferson
continued to describe the French Revolution as part of “the holy
cause of freedom.”
HAMILTON’S
¾¾ The most obvious question that the creation of a bank of the United
States had posed was: In whose interest would a national bank
operate? Hamilton’s answer to that question was the Report on
Manufactures, submitted to Congress on December 5, 1791. “The
expediency of encouraging manufactures in the United States,”
Hamilton asserted, “which was not long since deemed very
questionable, appears at this time to be pretty generally admitted.”
The United States could not forever remain an agricultural

nation, depending on exporting its surpluses to Europe and
using the proceeds to purchase manufactured goods from
abroad. Britain’s unwillingness to open its ports, especially
in the West Indies, to American trade, was proof of the folly
of that.
To attain real independence, the United States needed to

develop its own manufacturing base and let its agricultural
profits stay at home to buy American-manufactured goods.
Manufacturing would promote foreign emigration, stimulate
entrepreneurship, and render the United States “least
dependent on the combinations, right or wrong, of foreign
192 Lecture 24 • Thomas Jefferson’s Party

HAMILTON SEIZED ON A NEW
DEVELOPMENT AS A PARTICULAR
EXAMPLE OF THE PRODUCTIVITY OF
MANUFACTURING: THE DEPLOYMENT
OF ARTIFICIAL MEANS OF POWER THAT
CONCENTRATED THE PRODUCTION OF
GOODS IN A MILL OR FACTORY.
policy.” Admittedly, it would also produce rivalry and conflict.

But Hamilton saw no difficulty in economic rivalries sitting
happily beside a national consensus on liberty.
¾¾ Hamilton proposed to aid manufacturing by “the funded debt.” The

bank of the United States would become the chief guarantor of
investments in manufacturing. Hamilton fully anticipated that this
would generate “a question … concerning the constitutional right
of the government of the United States to apply this species of
encouragement.” But Hamilton waved this away as easily as he
had waved away the same objection to the bank, this time citing
the Constitution’s authority to “provide for the common defense
and general welfare.”

¾¾ These proposals maddened
Jefferson, who had raised
no stop sign to the progress
of the first two of Hamilton’s
reports and had not even
succeeded in obstructing
Hamilton’s establishment
of a national mint and a
new, heavier coin as the
American gold standard.
And they raised the hackles
of agrarians, such as John
Randolph of Roanoke, who
believed that American farm
interests were now going to
be fleeced for the benefit of
JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE
“speculators,” “monarchists,”
(1773–1833)
“aristocrats,” and “Tories.”
¾¾ In the face of such evil, Jefferson saw no “corrective of what

is corrupt in our present form of government” except “the
augmentation of the numbers in the lower house, so as to get
a more agricultural representation, which may put that interest
above that of the stock-jobbers.”
The idea that a republic was composed of “interests” was a

fearful one in the minds of the makers of the new government.
It wasn’t that varieties of special interests didn’t exist; it was
that, according to the model of virtuous classical republicanism,
they shouldn’t exist or, if they did, should be deplored, because
interests promoted conflict rather than consensus.
Madison, in Federalist 51, had suggested that although

interests would exist in the United States, the sheer number
of them would cancel out each other’s influence and prevent
any one from gaining the upper hand. He was by no means
applauding the existence of special interests as a good but,

rather, as a manageable evil. In a monarchy, interests ran
wild, and the collision of those interests produced corruption,
instability, and political factions, or parties.
¾¾ At best, parties were mere engines of patronage; at worst, they

were conspiracies against the common good. Jefferson had been
so averse to the notion of parties that in March of 1789, he had
written Francis Hopkinson from Paris to denounce them. Now,
however, Jefferson began the formation of the first American
political party through three distinctive actions: assembling allies,
appealing to carefully selected individuals to run for Congress,
and playing for control of the media.
HAMILTON’S FIGHT
¾¾ Just how much heavy political weather Jefferson could generate

soon became apparent when Congress took up Hamilton’s Report
on Manufactures in February 1792.
Hamilton began off-balance: His longtime business partner,

William Duer, had embarrassed him in December by setting
up charters for three new private banks in New York City, all
to be capitalized at more than $1 million apiece and seeming
as if they wore a Hamiltonian blessing. But the speculation
collapsed in March 1792, with prices of shares plummeting,
Duer’s partners fleeing the city, and Duer himself spending
the next seven years in debtors’ prison.
Hamilton was also in the grasp of a blackmail scandal

involving a flirtatious 23-year-old widow, Maria Reynolds, who
turned out not to be a widow at all. When her husband, James
Reynolds, reappeared, he tried to get money out of Hamilton
and offered to hostile Congressmen to “make disclosures
injurious to the character of some head of a department.”
¾¾ Hamilton managed only to get approval for new tariffs before

the Jeffersonians rose in the House on March 8, 1792, to blame

the New York City bank failures on Hamilton and to demand
Hamilton’s resignation from the treasury. He was saved by a
vote of 31 to 27, with Fisher Ames leading his defense. Later in
March, the Jeffersonians demanded an investigation into military
procurements; again, Hamilton was exonerated.
¾¾ Finally, in September, Jefferson launched his ultimate missile at

Hamilton: a letter to George Washington, listing Hamilton’s crimes
against the republic.
Jefferson had always planned, as

secretary of state, to “intermeddle
not at all with the legislature,
& as little as possible with my
co-departments.” But Hamilton
had “duped” him in the reports
on public credit and the national
bank; Jefferson now wanted
satisfaction. “His system flowed
from principles adverse to liberty,
& was calculated to undermine
and demolish the republic, by
creating an influence
of his department THOMAS JEFFERSON
over the members of
the legislature.”
Especially, the Report on Manufactures is a scheme “to draw

all the powers of government into the hands of the general
legislature, to establish means for corrupting a sufficient corps
in that legislature to divide the honest votes & preponderate,
by their own, the scale which suited, & to have that corps
under the command of the Secretary of the Treasury for
the purpose of subverting step by step the principles of the
constitution, which he has so often declared to be a thing of
nothing which must be changed.”

¾¾ But Washington had been deeply wounded by the partisan turn
of the newspapers, and now, he turned the tables on Jefferson by
threatening not to stand for a second presidential term that fall if
the bickering went on.
He had known, he told Jefferson, “that there was a marked …

difference in our political sentiments, but he had never
suspected it had gone so far in producing a personal difference,
and he wished he could be the mediator to put an end to it.”
This, of course, was wishful thinking on Washington’s part. But
for the moment, Washington held all the cards. In the fall, the
state electors once again handed Washington a unanimous
ballot, and John Adams, a resounding 77 for vice president.
But the challenge of parties—especially Jefferson’s party—

would not go away either. Jefferson was convinced that the
congressional elections in 1792 “have produced a decided
majority in favor of the republican interest.” Hamilton’s
Report on Manufactures was never fully adopted, and what’s
more, Washington and Hamilton were soon to hear another
challenge, this time in the echoes of Daniel Shays.
SUGGESTED READING

O’Brien, The Long Affair, chaps. 4–5.
1. Why was Jefferson so entranced by the French Revolution?
2. How did Jefferson go about mobilizing an opposition party?

Lecture 25
WILLIAM FINDLEY’S
WHISKEY
W translated, means “water of life” or “lively

hiskey is a Gaelic word that, roughly
water.” It’s a surprisingly recent concoction, as the

history of fermentation goes, and only made its
first appearance in the 15th century as a medicinal
prescription. But on the frontier of the early
republic, the making and selling of whiskey was a
major business, chiefly because it allowed farmers
who grew surpluses of wheat to convert them into
a liquid and easily storable form. This explains why,
when Pennsylvania farmers learned of Hamilton’s
proposal to fund the national government’s
debt with an excise tax on whiskey, their first
response was wrath as hot and vehement as the
whiskey itself.
198
EXCISE TAX ON WHISKEY
¾¾ Because specie was difficult to find in the Appalachian back

country, whiskey became the coin of the realm. This explains
why, when western Pennsylvania farmers learned that Hamilton
proposed funding the national government’s debt with an excise
tax on whiskey, the first response was outrage.
¾¾ Unlike tariffs, which are levied on goods imported from abroad and
extracted before the goods pass into American hands, an excise
tax is domestic and internal. And the levying of internal taxes had
been at issue in the 1760s between Britain and America with the
Stamp Act.
IN THE WAKE OF THE

REVOLUTION, WHISKEY
BECAME THE COIN OF THE
REALM IN APPALACHIA,
WITH A GALLON GOING
FOR $0.50 IN THE WEST AND
DOUBLE THAT IN THE EAST.

¾¾ Thus, it was not any particular fondness for inebriation that set off
the second great Shays-like uprising in the life of the new republic
in the summer of 1794. Instead, it was, in the words of Joseph
Smith, a Presbyterian missionary, “an impression that they were
wrongfully and oppressively taxed in the very article which alone
they could turn to account in trade and commerce, and thereby
secure to themselves and families the very necessaries of life.”
REACTION IN PENNSYLVANIA
¾¾ The Scots-Irish and German emigrants who came to Pittsburgh

imagined that they had found the New Jerusalem. No one,
however, anticipates taxes in paradise. Public meetings in
Pittsburgh in 1792 adopted defiant resolutions, modeled on
the old Stamp Act protests and promising to withhold “all aid,
support, or comfort” from excise collectors; representatives in the
Pennsylvania Assembly adopted still more resolutions denouncing
the excise. Hamilton was flabbergasted, given that the excise
could be easily passed on by the producer to consumers.
¾¾ Washington, convinced that the opposition was being stirred up by

“demagogues,” issued a cease-and-desist proclamation against
“certain violent and unwarrantable proceedings … tending to
obstruct the operation of the laws of the United States for raising
a revenue upon spirits distilled within the same.” Congress acted
to “obviate causes of objection” by reducing the amount of the tax
in May 1792. Washington, who was responsible for appointing the
collectors, struggled to appease the back-country opposition by
reorganizing the administrative districts.
¾¾ Unfortunately, the unrest only spread, from Pennsylvania to

western Virginia, the Carolinas, and inland Georgia. And it did
not take Washington or Hamilton long to decide where to lay the
blame or what to do about it.
200 Lecture 25 • William Findley’s Whiskey

REPUBLICAN SOCIETIES
¾¾ The elections in the fall of 1792 had not produced any noticeable
backlash against Hamilton’s policies, but they had not made
dissent disappear either. On April 11, 1793, the “Germans” of
Philadelphia announced their creation of a political club whose
goal would be to lend “advice and watchfulness” to “Republican
government … that its principles may remain incorrupt.”
¾¾ Six weeks later, an even larger meeting in Philadelphia

incorporated itself as the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania.
Inspired by “the successive Revolutions of America and France,”
the Democratic Society promised “to discuss without fear
the conduct of the public servants in every department of the
government”—clearly, Hamilton—and “to aid and approve those
men and measures which have an influence in promoting the
prosperity of the Commonwealth.”
¾¾ The two Philadelphia clubs were followed in short order by the

organization of 42 more societies, from Massachusetts to Georgia.
The members were largely workingmen, artisans, and anyone
who blamed “commerce” for “introducing … corrupt principles …
injurious to the morals of the state.” And they were not shy about
the tactics they used. One of Hamilton’s allies in Congress was
threatened by “15 republicans and boys of Liberty” who were
pledged to “exterpate Torys” and, in his case, to “mangle his body.”
¾¾ The societies were the last stage in the emergence of that bane
of all virtuous republicans: a political party. Madison had already
bolted in this direction, and Jefferson soon followed. They did
not actually join the societies, but they didn’t need to, so long as
the societies were calling for “a radical change of measures” and
denying “the continuance of our confidence to such members of
the legislative body as have an interest distinct from that of the
people.” Just how radical this change might be was indicated by:
(1) the repeated assertions of the republican societies that the

interests of the American and French revolutions were bound
together and (2) what was happening in the French Revolution.
CITIZEN GENÊT
¾¾ Once Louis XVI was executed by revolutionaries in January

1793, aristocratic Europe (England, Spain, Prussia, and Austria)
declared war on France. The revolutionaries responded with the
Reign of Terror.
¾¾ Americans might have done nothing more than observe these

events, until the behavior of the new French emissary to America
began to suggest that the French had plans to export their brand
of revolutionary fervor to the American Republic.
Edmond-Charles Genêt was the son of a minor diplomatic

official in the government of Louis XVI. After the
execution of the king, Genêt allied himself with
the Girondist faction. In January 1793, while the
Girondists still held power, he was dispatched
to the United States as the revolution’s new
minister plenipotentiary. His instructions were
peculiar: to recruit any French-speaking
inhabitants of North America as volunteers
for an expedition against the Spanish along
the Mississippi River, commission American
merchant vessels as privateers
to wage war on British shipping,
and if possible, persuade the
Washington administration to join
France in a “national pact.”
EDMOND-CHARLES GENÊT
(1763–1834)

He arrived in Charleston on April 8, 1793, to a tumultuous
reception, which convinced Genêt that he had only to nudge
Washington to prod the old gentleman into compliance with
the French Republic’s wishes. Thus, he issued letters-of-
marque for four privateers, dropped hints that he planned to
“excite the Canadians to free themselves from the yoke of
England,” and even paid to outfit a captured British ship as a
14-gun French brig.
Washington erupted when he learned of Genêt’s activities,

and Genêt responded, in a breach of diplomatic protocol,
by announcing that he would appeal over Washington’s
head to the American people. It did nothing to endear
Genêt to Washington that Genêt allowed himself to be
elected president of one of the republican societies or that
Jefferson, as secretary of state, had been an audience to
Genêt’s schemes.
To Washington, Genêt posed the twin threat of starting wars

with both Spain and England at a time when the Americans
were barely starting to pay their own bills; to Hamilton,
Genêt was the symbol of a revolution gone awry, and he
did not hesitate to mimic the organization of the societies by
encouraging Rufus King and John Jay to sponsor anti-Genêt
rallies in New York and New England.
¾¾ Jefferson, struggling to disentangle himself from Genêt, announced

his resignation at the end of July 1793, but the societies were
another matter. Washington saw in the societies only the clubs
that had toasted “Citizen” Genêt, and he warned that they desired
“nothing short of the subversion of the Government of these
states.” Thus, when protests over the whiskey excise exploded in
violence in the summer of 1794, Washington was prepared to turn
his full wrath on the tax protesters as the treasonous offspring of
Genêt and “the first formidable fruit of the Democratic Societies.”

THE WHISKEY REBELLION
¾¾ In July 1794, a newly appointed federal marshal, David Lenox,

arrived in western Pennsylvania with 39 summonses for defiers
of the whiskey excise to appear in federal court in Philadelphia.
For aid in serving his writs, Lenox turned to the wealthy Federalist
John Neville.
¾¾ Lenox and Neville were shot at, and on July 16, a band of 50
armed men showed up at Neville’s farm, Bower Hill, just southwest
of Pittsburgh. Neville barricaded himself in his house, and shooting
began, leaving 5 attackers wounded. The next day, the attackers
returned, now swollen to between 400 and 800. Neville fled, and
Bower Hill burned to the ground.
¾¾ On August 1, a mass meeting of 7,000 “Whiskey Rebels” was called

at Braddock’s Field, urging defiance of the excise and promising
to march on Pittsburgh. The most hot-headed of the rebels, David
Bradford, openly called for “secession from the Union” and praised
the French “system of terror” as a means of intimidation.
¾¾ The connection to the societies explained everything to

Washington and Hamilton. The Pennsylvania democratic-
republican societies had been eager in denouncing the excise,
and similar riotous meetings had occurred in Morgantown and
Martinsburg, Virginia. This had one meaning for Washington: The
Whiskey Rebels had been given “every lenient measure”; their
continued defiance could only mean that they were actually being
manipulated by Genêt and his French minions.
¾¾ On August 7, Washington issued a proclamation, announcing that

“the very existence of Government and the fundamental principles
of social order” were in jeopardy and calling for the services of
the militias of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland
to assemble at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Washington himself
proposed to take direct command.

¾¾ Representative William Findley talked the rebels into appointing
him as an emissary to meet with Washington at Carlisle. When
Findley arrived there on October 9, as the militia was massing in
force, Washington received him with “politeness and attention.”
Findley blamed the entire outburst on Hamilton and accused

Hamilton of having used the excise to provoke the frontier and
“inflame the army in a high degree.” But Findley also insisted
that he spoke for the majority of western Pennsylvanians in
expressing “unfeigned satisfaction” at Washington’s response,
and assured the president that “in future the laws would be
obeyed and the officers protected.”
Washington was not entirely mollified, and the march on

Pittsburgh began on October 12. At every point, however,
Washington encountered, not resistance but cheers and
hospitality. On October 20, he had grown sufficiently confident
that no fighting would occur that he turned over command to
Hamilton and Henry Lee and returned to Philadelphia.
In the meantime, Findley managed to isolate the hotheads and

persuade the rank-and-file of the rebels to disperse. Twenty
of the rebels were eventually arrested; two were convicted
of treason but pardoned by Washington. As he explained to
Congress in November, the real culprits were “certain self-
created societies,” which dissolved in embarrassment over
the Whiskey Rebellion.
SUGGESTED READING
McDonald, Hamilton, chap. 13.

Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion, chap. 13.

1. Why was whiskey so important to rural agriculture?
2. Who was Citizen Genêt?

Lecture 26
BENJAMIN BANNEKER’S
SURVEY
T about public credit or banks, but it did say

he Constitution may well have said nothing
something specific about the creation of a national

capital: a “District (not exceeding ten miles square)
as may, by cession of particular states, and the
acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the
government of the United States.” This was, partly,
an attempt to silence a squall of demands that had
been blowing since the beginning of the Revolution
from more than 30 different locations for the
nod as the national capital. It was also, partly, a
recognition that designating a national capital
involved more than merely an agreement to set up
the operations of the new federal government in a
particular place.
207
CHOOSING A LOCATION
¾¾ The First Congress had been at work for only four months before
the first proposal was made, on August 27, 1789, to select “a
permanent residence … for the General Government of the United
States.” But when the House of Representatives tried to bring the
matter to a vote on September 3, the proposal bogged down in
three-way debate among advocates for a capital on the Delaware,
Potomac, and Susquehanna rivers.
¾¾ Not even James Madison could prevail over the tumult. He

personally favored a location on the Potomac. It could only have
multiplied his irritation that the House, when it finally resolved
the matter on September 7, voted to locate the capital “at some
convenient place on the banks of the river Susquehanna, in the
state of Pennsylvania; and that, until the necessary buildings be
erected for the purpose, the seat of Government ought to continue
in the city of New-York.”
¾¾ But Madison was unwilling to take no for an answer, nor were

his fellow Virginians. “The business of the seat of Government
is become a labyrinth,” he wrote to Edmund Pendleton. “We are
endeavoring to keep the pretensions of the Potowmac in view, and
to give to all the circumstances that occur a turn favorable to it.”
THE POTOWMACK NAVIGATION COMPANY
¾¾ Madison’s fixation on the Potomac was more than just an exercise

in Virginian self-importance. Like so much else in the formation of
the new government, there was a savvy element of self-interest at
work, as well.
¾¾ After all, the entire process that created the Constitution began
with a conference in 1785 to resolve commercial issues on
the Potomac between Virginia and Maryland. Commercial
development of the Potomac was the principal feature in the
creation of the Potowmack Navigation Company, George
208 Lecture 26 • Benjamin Banneker’s Survey

Washington’s project for developing Potomac River properties
and linking them by a system of canals with the Ohio. Planting the
national capital along the Potomac would only make the property
investments of the Potowmack Company more valuable.
¾¾ Washington had invested $12,000 of his own in the Potowmack

Company, along with another $22,000 as a gift of the Virginia
legislature. Madison, Henry Lee, and former Maryland governor
Thomas Johnson had also invested in the Potowmack Company,
and Washington eagerly tried to sign up “adventurers” in the
project from France.
¾¾ Washington’s plans could be more easily placed within the

Potowmack Company’s grasp if Congress could somehow be
persuaded to stop debating the issue and settle on a Potomac
River site for the federal district. The mechanism for securing that
agreement came to hand on a June evening in 1790.
From the time the first Congress reassembled for its second
session in January 1790 until June, the subject that consumed
virtually all its time was Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit. It
was a harrowing experience for Hamilton, whose “look was
somber, haggard, and dejected beyond description.”
Much of that dejection was due to James Madison’s resolute

opposition to Hamilton’s plan, especially the provision for
takeover of state debts by the federal treasury. But Madison
wanted the Potomac, too, and Hamilton had something
that he could deliver for Madison: the votes of New York’s
congressional delegation.
Thus, with Jefferson acting as host, Madison and Hamilton

met over dinner and cut a deal: Madison would drop his
opposition to the takeover of state debts, and Hamilton would
line up his congressional allies behind the Potomac scheme.

¾¾ Without another word in public, a new bill for locating the capital on
the Potomac appeared in the Senate, specifying that the federal
government would begin business there on the first Monday of
December 1800. This Residence Bill passed both the Senate and
the House in July.
¾¾ There was a last-minute surge of discontent from several Southern

members, led by Aedanus Burke of South Carolina. He saw no
purpose in building a new capital from scratch, but he was not
willing to let the capital go to Philadelphia, even for a short while.
CREATING THE FEDERAL CITY
¾¾ It is one of the delicious ironies of the debate over the capital

that, in their eagerness to ensure that the capital moved to the
Potomac and not merely stayed in Philadelphia out of inertia, the
Southern members of Congress inadvertently threw the work of
surveying and laying out the new city into the hands of a free black
mathematician, Benjamin Banneker.
¾¾ The Residence Bill had actually given Washington a 150-mile

stretch of river to use in selecting a site, but he had no doubts
where he wanted the federal city built: at the eastern branch (the
Anacostia River), only 15 miles upriver from Mount Vernon.
¾¾ To survey the new district, he turned to Andrew Ellicott, who had

completed the survey of the Mason-Dixon Line in 1784 and been
involved in surveying missions in western Pennsylvania and the
Northwest Territory. And Ellicott, in turn, hired Benjamin Banneker
as his assistant.
Banneker, born on November 9, 1731, was an unusual man.

He was noticed from the start as a mathematical prodigy and
blessed with total recall. He briefly attended “an obscure and
distant country school,” but not until 1787, when the Ellicott
family began employing him as a clockmaker, did he begin
show even more astonishing capacities.

The Ellicotts fed his
curiosity by lending
him three books on
astronomy, which he
effortlessly absorbed
and made “the great
object of his life.” He
issued an almanac in
1792 with corrections of
the astronomy textbooks
he had read and, in short
order, found himself a
celebrity.
BENJAMIN BANNEKER
(1731–1806)
¾¾ Banneker’s immediate task

in February of 1791 was to join a surveying team headed by
Andrew Ellicott and including Pierre L’Enfant, Isaac Roberdeau,
and William and Nicholas King. The surveyors set up a temporary
base in Alexandria on February 7.
¾¾ Together, Ellicott and Banneker laid out the square of the district,
starting at Jones Point on the Potomac and laying out four angles.
Ellicott finished walking out the first boundary line by February 23,
while Banneker checked all sightings by an astronomical regulator.
On April 15, they laid the first stone boundary marker at Jones
Point, then began marking the remaining boundary lines through
the summer.
¾¾ The next stages of the creation of the federal city would not go
nearly so smoothly. Washington’s engineer, L’Enfant, had been
commissioned to begin designing the best layout of streets and
buildings. What he produced for Washington’s inspection on March

28, 1791, was a curious-looking plat of long avenues, meeting at
unusual angles to form circles.
Compared to the plain and unassuming grid of Philadelphia’s

streets, L’Enfant’s plan looked exotic. But Washington loved it,
and L’Enfant went on to select “the most desirable position …
for to erect the Public Edifices.”
The principal of these locations was Jenkins’ Hill, where

L’Enfant planned to build the “Congress House”; a mile due
west, L’Enfant would construct the “President’s mansion.”
Connecting the two would be a wide boulevard—the present-
day Pennsylvania Avenue. North of the president’s home,
L’Enfant proposed to block out 15,000 building lots, which
when auctioned, would provide more than enough revenue
for the construction of the city. In deference to the president,
Congress decreed in September that the city would bear the
name Washington.
¾¾ The first auction of town lots was scheduled for October 17. But at
the last moment, L’Enfant decided that the auction was a mistake:
The commissioners should borrow the money they needed for
L’Enfant’s construction projects and hold back the town lots to a
later date, when their value would have increased still more. The
sale fizzled, and Washington had L’Enfant fired in March 1792.
¾¾ Washington turned next to Samuel Blodget, who proposed to

take over management of a second auction in October 1792.
Blodget’s auction was no more successful than its predecessor. In
late September 1793, a third selloff was held, this time, under the
direction of James Greenleaf, who had made a fortune during the
Revolution as an agent for Dutch bankers.
Greenleaf’s plan was to buy up as many as 7,325 lots,

financed by his Dutch banking friends, but by the time of the
auction, the French Revolution had broken out, and with it,
war between France and the great European monarchies.

U.S. CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, DC
Investment capital dried up, and by mid-August 1794,

Greenleaf and his partners were bankrupt.
To make matters worse, Washington and the commissioners

had given the go-ahead for construction to begin on the
Capitol building and the White House; there might not have
been cash to pay for the construction, but if the construction
was not completed and ready for congressional occupancy
by the due date in 1800, the national capital would remain by
default in Philadelphia.
¾¾ Finally, on January 8, 1796, Washington admitted defeat. He

addressed a message to Congress, stating with as much dignity
as he could muster that the plans for “locating a district for the
permanent Seat of the Government of the United States,” which
he had hoped could “be completed … without aid from the Federal
Treasury,” had met “new and arduous … difficulties.” He now had
to submit a request from the commissioners for intervention—a
loan from Congress for $500,000.

¾¾ Naturally, the House of Representatives choked. But, warned
Jeremiah Crabb of Maryland, without the loan, Congress “would
strongly convey the idea … that the General Government was
not serious, not firmly fixed in their purpose of making the present
location the permanent Seat of Congress.” On March 31, the
House approved the loan.
¾¾ “By the obstructions continually thrown in its way, by friends or

enemies, this city has had to pass through a fiery trial,” Washington
remarked, “Yet I trust it will ultimately, escape the ordeal with
éclat.” And it would, in more ways than Washington could have
imagined. It would rest on a foundation laid, not by Washington but
by a black mathematician and his white employer.
SUGGESTED READING
Bordewich, Washington, chaps. 3–4, 7.

Ellis, Founding Brothers, chap. 2.
1. What issues made the selection of a site for the national capital so
contentious?
2. How did the work of Benjamin Banneker and Pierre L’Enfant

complement each other?

Lecture 27
JOHN JAY’S TREATY
“T
he Great Rule of conduct for us, in
regard to foreign Nations,” wrote George
Washington, is “to have as little political connection
as possible.” And certainly the aggravations
involved in creating the new government described
in the Constitution, putting firm checks on the
waywardness of the states, restructuring the feeble
public finances, drawing in foreign investment, and
managing the talented but fractious personalities
who composed the new republic’s leadership—
these alone would have taxed the patience and
wisdom Solomon, much less Washington. He
did not welcome foreign distractions. But as we’ll
see in this lecture, the troubles in the transatlantic
world of the 1790s did not give Washington the
peace and detachment in foreign affairs that
he craved.
215
TRADE WAR WITH BRITAIN
¾¾ In the 1790s, international crises threatened to drag the United

States into other peoples’ conflicts with demands that foreign
armies be allowed free transit over American territory to attack
their enemies. The French Revolution posed an even greater
threat of disruption.
¾¾ There were, for one thing, too many Americans (such as

Jefferson) who were convinced that the French Revolution
deserved American sympathy and cooperation. They would spend
fruitless years discovering this hard truth: that democracies make
revolutions, but revolutions do not make democracies.
¾¾ There were, to be sure, no shortages of Americans who saw little

in common between the French and the American revolutions.
Patrick Henry, whom Washington had approached as a successor
to Jefferson as secretary of state, feared that the French
Revolution was “destroying the great pillars of all government and
of social life.”
¾¾ But what was of more immediate concern to Washington was the

reaction of the British, who were now entangled in what would
prove to be a war of two decades against the French Republic.
The British had proven uncooperative in observing the terms

of the Treaty of Paris. They remained an ominous imperial
presence on the U.S. northern border, and they placed trade
barriers in the path of American shipping to the sugar islands
of the British West Indies.
To the Francophiles who had made up the democratic-

republican societies, these were reasons to put American
bets on France; to Washington, these were reasons not
to antagonize the British with ill-conceived outbursts of
enthusiasm for the French Republic.
216 Lecture 27 • John Jay’s Treaty

¾¾ The British, of course, had their own view of this situation, which
was that any friend of France was the enemy of Great Britain.
The British inflamed American outrage by arming and

supplying black slave rebellions in the French West Indian
islands; by stopping American merchant ships on the high
seas and involuntarily pressing American sailors into service;
and by issuing orders-in-council that permitted the Royal
Navy to seize any neutral ships and cargoes bound to or from
France and to confiscate shipping engaged in trade with the
French West Indies.
These “insults” provoked Washington, in December 1793, to

warn Congress that “there is a rank due to the United States,
among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost,
by the reputation of weakness.” And that meant making it
clear “that we are at all times ready for war.”
¾¾ Madison thought he was taking a cue from Washington, and

on January 3, 1794, he introduced a series of resolutions that
amounted to a declaration of trade war on Great Britain. This
would, in turn, have the desirable political result of freeing America
from “the influence that may be conveyed into the public councils
by a nation directing the course of our trade by her capital” and
aligning the United States with France.
¾¾ But Washington was only rattling his sword, not unsheathing it.
The United States had sold the British $8.5 million of goods
in 1790–1792, twice what had been sold to France; it imported
$15.28 million from Britain and only $2.06 million from France.
Moreover, another order-in-council rescinded most of the
restrictions on neutral trade, and the prime minister, William Pitt
the Younger, insisted that any seizures made under the previous
orders were “contrary to instructions given, and that the most
ample compensation to the sufferers would be given.” Seizing
that moment, Washington appointed a special mission to London,

headed by John Jay, and sent them off to negotiate a commercial
agreement with Great Britain.
JAY AS SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
¾¾ Born in New York City, John Jay was a graduate of Columbia

in 1764 and was licensed as a lawyer in the New York courts in
1768. Jay was the youngest member of New York’s delegation
in the First Continental Congress and sat on the committee for
foreign correspondence that sent the first American emissary,
Silas Deane, to Europe in search of aid and allies. In 1779, he
turned diplomat himself as minister plenipotentiary to Spain. It was
in this position that he was named to the team that negotiated the
Treaty of Paris.
¾¾ Jay expected to return to his legal practice once the Treaty of

Paris was signed, but he had barely stepped off the boat in New
York City in July 1784 when he was
notified that the Confederation JOHN JAY (1745–1829)
Congress had nominated him
to fill the post of secretary for
foreign affairs. This was bound
to be a thankless task, as Jay
discovered when dealing with
the Spanish in 1785.
¾¾ The frustrations of always

dealing the confederation’s
poor hand convinced Jay that
“the construction of our federal
government is fundamentally
wrong. To vest legislative,
judicial, and executive powers
in one and the same body of
men, and that, too, in a body
daily changing its members,
can never be wise.”

¾¾ Jay’s post as secretary for foreign affairs precluded a seat in
the Constitutional Convention but not in the New York ratifying
convention. After ratification, Jay stayed on as interim secretary
for foreign affairs until the recall of Jefferson from Paris in 1789;
as soon as Jay laid down that office, Washington appointed him
to another, chief justice of the new Supreme Court. But in April of
1794, it was foreign affairs that reclaimed Jay’s attention, and on
May 12, he left for England.
¾¾ Jay was formally presented to King George III on July 2, and for the
next four months, Jay and the foreign secretary, William Grenville,
pieced together a comprehensive treaty that would address, not
only the commercial issues of 1794 but all the unfinished business
left over since the Treaty of Paris. A final draft of a treaty was ready
as early as August 30, and it was signed on November 19. At its
core, the 28 articles of Jay’s Treaty involved four major deals:
Britain would complete the evacuation of the military posts it

had held onto since the end of the Revolution by June 1, 1796,
while debts owed to British merchants since the Revolution
would be appraised by a five-member commission and the
United States would “make full and complete Compensation.”
Disputed boundaries between the United States and British

Canada would be resolved by three-member commissions.
There would be “a reciprocal and entirely perfect Liberty of

Navigation and Commerce, between their respective People.”
Britain would grant most-favored-nation status to the United

States in East Indian trade, plus access to the West Indian
islands for trade strictly between the United States and
the islands.

RESPONSE TO THE TREATY
¾¾ Given the disparity in power between the United States and the
British Empire, the treaty was not a bad arrangement; in fact, one
measure of how much it accomplished was the panic that ensued
in the minds of Madison and Jefferson when news of the treaty
was gradually leaked to the British, French, and American press.
¾¾ The treaty did not arrive in Philadelphia until March 7, 1795, but
until then, suspicion about its contents grew. And that suspicion
was more than sufficient to blow the embers of the democratic-
republican societies into a flame, roaring that Jay’s Treaty could
only be a sellout.
¾¾ Madison was sure that “the bargain is much less in our favor than
might be expected” and was nervous that “Jay has been betrayed
by his anxiety to couple us with England.” When the treaty
finally arrived, four days after Congress adjourned, Washington
sequestered it until Jay himself could arrive and called for a closed
special session of the Senate for June 8, 1795.
The actual proceedings in the Senate were comparatively

tame. Federalists held a safe majority there, and the Senate
took only two weeks of debate before advising and consenting
on June 24.
The real explosion came once the Senate adjourned and

unsympathetic anti-treaty senators released their copies
to the newspapers: A Fourth of July parade in Philadelphia
turned into a protest riot; a mob in New York City burned a
copy of the treaty on Jay’s front door; and when Alexander
Hamilton offered to debate the treaty publicly, he was greeted
with a volley of stones.
¾¾ It didn’t help that Washington was delaying signing, but he

ultimately did so on August 18.

SECOND PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
¾¾ A month after signing the Jay Treaty, Washington announced that

he would retire from the presidency at the expiration of his second
term, in March 1797. This announcement set off “party racers.”
¾¾ The elections of 1792 were the first intimation of a “struggle

between the Treasury department and the republican interest.”
The uproar over the Jay Treaty only gave party polarization an
unlooked-for boost. But the final thread was sewn in the spring
of 1796, when the anti-treaty members of Congress, now calling
themselves simply Republicans, held their own caucus to endorse
candidates for the upcoming presidential election.
¾¾ The principal Republican candidate, it was clear, would be Thomas

Jefferson; because the Constitution mandated that presidential
electors vote for two candidates, the caucus supplied a second
name from its newer ranks, Aaron Burr of
New Jersey.
AARON BURR
(1756–1836)
¾¾ At the same time, the
Federalist majority in
Congress held their own
caucus and produced
their own nominees for the
presidency, John Adams
(the sitting vice president)
and Thomas Pinckney of
South Carolina. What’s
more, Adams enjoyed the
blessing of Washington.
But balanced against

Washington’s prestige
was the tumult over
the Jay Treaty, and one member of the Federalist caucus,
William Bingham of Pennsylvania, warned Rufus King, “The

JOHN ADAMS
(1735–1826)
friends of Mr. Adams may calculate on a majority in his favor,

but so small, that on so momentous an occasion, it would be
risking too much to trust entirely thereto.”
When the electoral votes were counted on February 8, 1797,

it turned out to have been a near-run after all. Adams won 71
votes, but Pinckney had tallied only 59. Sixty-eight had gone
to Jefferson, thus making the two logger-head opponents
president and vice president, in what would turn out to be
the most unequally yoked presidential administration in
American history.

SUGGESTED READING
Combs, The Jay Treaty, chaps. 9–11.

1. What were the four deals made with Great Britain by the Jay Treaty?
2. Why was the treaty received in such a hostile fashion?

Lecture 28
JOHN ADAMS’S
LIBERTY
I
f George Washington represented the heart of
the American Republic, John Adams aspired
to be its brains. And it should be said that few
people had better reason for such an aspiration.
Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1735, Adams
was a fifth-generation New-Englander, son of a
deacon and town selectman. He was packed off to
Harvard College in 1751, his father expecting that
Harvard would make a clergyman of him; instead,
it made him a lawyer. He married his third cousin,
Abigail Smith, in 1764, a union that lasted for 54
years and produced six children.
224
ABIGAIL ADAMS
(1744–1818)
BACKGROUND ON ADAMS
¾¾ Adams made his first mark politically during the Stamp Act frenzy
in 1765, sat in both Continental Congresses, and was a member of
the committee appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence
in 1776. His first political opus, “A Dissertation on the Canon and
Feudal Law,” vividly denounced the Stamp Act officers. The 12
essays he published in the winter of 1775 under the penname
Novanglus argued that the colonies ought to be thought of as a
second part of the British Empire, independent of the Parliament
and answerable directly to the king.
¾¾ When Lexington and Concord cut short the Novanglus essays,

Adams concluded “that there is no good Government but what

is Republican … If the thirteen Colonies, were all possessed
of such Forms of Government, and a Confederation for the
above Purposes, was agreed on in Congress and ratified by the
Assemblies, they would be unconquerable by all Europe.”
¾¾ Adams was sufficiently imposing as an intellectual that the

Continental Congress dispatched him to France along with
Benjamin Franklin to represent the new United States; unlike
Franklin, however, he made no attempt to accommodate to the
free and easy mores of French life. To Count de Vergennes, the
French foreign minister, Adams has “an inflexibility, a pedantry, an
arrogance, and a conceit which renders him incapable of dealing
with political subjects.”
¾¾ But what Adams lacked in popularity, he made up in respect;

thus, partly because Adams had been out of the country on
diplomatic missions, had not participated in the Constitutional
Convention, and had not unduly antagonized anyone in America,
he snagged 34 electoral votes in the first presidential election,
coming in a distant second to Washington. He was duly installed
as Washington’s vice president.
¾¾ Adams’s two terms as vice president were politically uneventful,

but personally, he continued to blunder from one irritation to
another. In April 1790, he began publishing a series of essays,
“Discourses on Davila,” predicting that the French Revolution
would end up in much the same catastrophic way as France’s
religious civil wars.
¾¾ This view, of course, astounded James Madison: “J. Adams has

made himself obnoxious to many … by the political principles
avowed in his book.” Even Alexander Hamilton was not “without
apprehensions” that Adams would end up embarrassing the
Federalists “and give additional weight to the opposition to
the Government.”
226 Lecture 28 • John Adams’s Liberty

¾¾ But Adams had the blessing of Washington, and he was certainly
more acceptable for the presidency in 1796 to Hamilton and other
suspicious Federalists than the alternative, which was Jefferson.
Adams was also fortunate in the appalled reaction of the French
Republic to the Jay Treaty, in which the French inadvertently made
him the most popular man in America.
ADAMS AND THE FRENCH
¾¾ By 1796, the Reign of Terror had collapsed, and the French

Republic was now ruled by a five-man Directory that was still
embroiled in war. The Directory regarded the Jay Treaty as a stab
in the back of a fellow republic and responded by declaring open
season on American shipping.
¾¾ During the controversy over the British orders-in-council, Congress

had authorized the construction of six large frigates for the U.S.
Navy, only to suspend construction once the Jay Treaty was
signed. Now, in March 1797, Congress authorized the completion
of the first three. On March 25, Adams called for a special session
of Congress to consider what other measures he should take.
“My entrance into office is marked by a misunderstanding with
France,” he wrote to his son, John Quincy Adams, “which I shall
endeavor to reconcile, provided that no violation of faith, no stain
upon honor, is exacted.”
¾¾ In pursuit of reconciliation, Adams nominated a three-man

commission—Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Elbridge Gerry,
and John Marshall—“to conduct a negotiation with the French
Republic” for “a removal of prejudices, a correction of errors, a
dissipation of umbrages, an accommodation of all differences, and
a restoration of harmony and affection.”
¾¾ But from the beginning, nothing went well for this mission. The
Directory kept the commissioners waiting for weeks before
granting them an interview with its sleazy foreign minister, the
turncoat aristocrat Talleyrand.

Talleyrand, curiously, was not necessarily prepared to demand
hard bargains of the Americans. He “never disputed the right
of the United States to make even a shameful commercial
treaty with Great Britain provided it does not violate their
stipulations to us.”
But Talleyrand had been receiving reports from the French

consul in New York that France need be in no hurry to sign
an agreement of its own with the United States. “Mr. Adams,”
the French consul had been told, “is vain, suspicious, and
stubborn … but his presidency will only last five years; he is
only President by three votes, and the system of the United
States will change with him.”
If the commissioners continued to press for an agreement,

then Talleyrand concluded that they ought to be willing to pay
for it—an immediate “gratification” of $240,000 to Talleyrand
and a subsidy of $10 million to the Directory in the form of a
loan. The commissioners were dumbfounded, but Talleyrand’s
intermediaries made it clear: “It is money—it is expected you
will offer money.”
The diplomatic back-and-forth dragged on into the spring of

1798, when Marshall and Pinckney gave up and broke off the
negotiations; Gerry alone would remain in Paris to keep an
American ear to the ground.
RESPONSE TO THE XYZ AFFAIR
¾¾ In Philadelphia, Adams received his first dispatches from Pinckney,

Marshall, and Gerry on the evening of March 4, 1798, and the next
day he sent a notice to Congress that they had been received
and were being decoded. Despite mounting public demands for
publication, Adams wanted to be sure that the commissioners
were safely away from Paris before finally, on April 3, sending the
dispatches to Congress.

¾¾ Even then, Adams declined to reveal the names of the French
officials involved—substituting the letters X, Y, and Z—but the
impact remained staggering. When the texts were released to the
newspapers, they reacted in anti-French fury. “To be lukewarm
after reading the horrid scenes is to be criminal,” screamed the
New York Gazette, “and the man who does not warmly reprobate
the conduct of the French must have a soul black enough to be fit
for treasons, strategems, and spoils.” Pinckney’s angry outburst
of refusal became “Millions for defense, but not one cent for
tribute”; Adams became the hero of the hour; and France, the
mortal enemy.
¾¾ No actual declaration of war was issued, but naval combat—Quasi-

War—broke out wherever French and American warships collided.
Nearly 80 French vessels were gobbled up by the American ships.
¾¾ When John Marshall arrived in Philadelphia on June 18, he was

greeted with parades and banquets as a hero. “Such a shock
on the republican mind,” admitted Jefferson, “as has never been
seen since our independence.” Everywhere, Republicans hid their
heads, while Federalism flourished as patriotism.
ADAMS’S BLUNDERS
¾¾ And then, with staggering ineptitude, Adams proceeded, through

two catastrophic blunders, to bobble away all the political
advantages he had acquired. The first blunder was the passage of
a series of acts, fueled by the public panic, that were to eliminate
the possibility that the French would use French sympathizers
in America to undermine the administration. The acts, known
collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts, were really four
separate bills that dealt with immigration and permitted the arrest
of those who spoke out or wrote against the government.
But the enforcement of these laws backfired. Its principal

victims were not French secret agents but Americans who

did nothing more than disagree a little too vocally with
the Federalists.
Jefferson and Madison capitalized on Adams’s blunder by

drafting two sets of anti-administration resolutions for the
legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky to adopt in defiance
of the acts. Let these acts stand, warned the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions, and it might be necessary for the
individual states of the Union to declare them “void and of
no force.” Madison hinted even more darkly that the ultimate
remedy might have to be secession of states from the Union.
¾¾ Adams might have been able to withstand the wave of revulsion

that followed the Alien and Sedition Acts if the Quasi-War had
finally climaxed, as almost everyone expected it would, in a
full-scale war with France. But in August 1798, the Royal Navy,
under the direction of Admiral Horatio Nelson, destroyed the
core of the French republican navy at the battle of Aboukir Bay
and, thus, removed much of the Directory’s means for disturbing
American shipping.
¾¾ The Directory itself was on shaky political ground, and in November

1799, its most successful general, Napoleon Bonaparte, would
overturn it in a coup d’etat and install himself as de facto ruler
of France. Desperate to shore up its political position at home,
the Directory now struggled to convince Americans that it was
“sincerely desirous of restoring harmony between this country &
the United States.”
¾¾ This gave Adams the opportunity to reproduce for his administration

the kind of diplomatic success Washington had achieved in the
Jay Treaty, and on February 18, 1799, he announced that he
was appointing William Vans Murray, the current U.S. minister to
the Dutch, “to be minister plenipotentiary of the United States to
the French republic … to discuss and conclude all controversies
between the two republics by a new treaty.”

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
(1769–1821)
¾¾ By the time Murray

finally had a treaty ready
for signing, Napoleon
was in charge, and the
French refused to offer
compensation for losses
suffered by American
merchant ships. Murray
signed it anyway, on
September 30, 1800. But
it did nothing to promote
Adams’s political standing.
¾¾ Adams still had enough

control over the Federalist
caucuses to control their
endorsement for reelection but not in the country at large. Thomas
Jefferson, in his second bid for the presidency, garnered 73
electoral votes, along with Aaron Burr, who would become his vice
president; Adams won only 65.
SUGGESTED READING

Toll, Six Frigates, chaps. 1–2.

1. Why did so many people dislike John Adams, even as they admired him?
2. Why did the XYZ Affair enrage American public opinion?
3. What political mistakes cost Adams any political advantage he would

have gained from the XYZ Affair?

Lecture 29
HECTOR SAINT JOHN

DE CRÈVECOEUR’S
AMERICANS
I torturous proposition, Europeans were no less

f Americans found dealing with Europeans a
perplexed by Americans. The great dictionary-

maker Samuel Johnson told James Boswell: “I am
willing to love all mankind, except an American”;
they were “Rascals—Robbers—Pirates.” Nor did
the American experiment in popular sovereignty
gain much applause from John Wesley, the
founder of Methodism and otherwise the great
proponent of free will: “No governments under
heaven are so despotic as the republican.” As
for culture, Thomas Cooper, in Some Information
Respecting America in 1794, scorned American
literature as nothing more than commercialism.
The French were no less dismissive, excepting
perhaps Hector Saint John de Crèvecoeur.
233
THE “NEW MAN”
¾¾ Born in Normandy in 1735, Hector Saint John de Crèvecoeur

had served as an officer in the French Canadian militia, and after
France’s defeat and the surrender of Canada to Great Britain,
he stayed on in America. Briefly marooned in Britain during the
latter part of the Revolution, Crèvecoeur published Letters from
an American Farmer, which frankly contradicted the viewpoint
Europeans held at the time of Americans.
¾¾ “The American is a new man,” Crèvecoeur wrote. Partly, this new

man was a product of republican government and the abolition
of aristocracy. America “is not composed, as in Europe, of great
lords who possess everything and of a herd of people who have
nothing. … We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and
bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world.
Here man is free; as he ought to be.”
¾¾ But a great deal of what made the American new was the newness
of the space he occupied. In Europe, vast numbers of people
were crowded into a small amount of land and were organized
around varying creeds, kings, and languages. But America had an
apparently infinite amount of space and comparatively few people,
and as Madison had anticipated in Federalist 10, that vast space
allowed the competing identities of the old nations and dogmas
to dissolve.
¾¾ “Zeal in Europe is confined; here it evaporates in the great distance

it has to travel.” Hence, Crèvecoeur triumphantly concluded, “He
is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices
and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he
has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank
he holds.”
¾¾ It would be easy to wave away Crèvecoeur’s love affair with

America as the passion of a convert. But Jefferson included him in
his circle of correspondents; Washington cited him in his projects
234 Lecture 29 • Hector Saint John de Crèvecoeur’s Americans

for land development; and Franklin had him elected as a member
of the American Philosophical Society. Any picture of Americans
at the end of the 18th century that emerges from the statistics
gathered by the first national census gives Crèvecoeur more than
a little credit for correctly understanding the newness of the “new”
American, for we were already a people who looked like no other
nation on earth.
THE 1790 CENSUS
¾¾ All told, the American population in 1790 numbered a little more

than 3.9 million. Population density in the United States was 4.5
people per square mile, while England, with a population of 7.5
million and 50,000 square miles, had a density of 150 people per
square mile.
¾¾ Americans were also overwhelmingly young. At the time of the

Philadelphia Convention, something close to half of all Americans
were too young to remember the Declaration of Independence;
the median age was 16, and life expectancy at birth was in the
low 30s.
¾¾ Americans were more or less evenly spaced into three zones:

New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the South, and fully
90 percent were of English or Scottish and Scots-Irish extraction,
followed by 8 percent German.
BLACK AMERICANS
¾¾ One demographic group not so evenly spread was the nearly

700,000 (mostly enslaved) Africans. In fact, African Americans
would make up a higher percentage of the American population
than they ever would at any later time in American history, even
subtracting those who left with the end of the Revolution. Those
who remained behind now took the struggle for freedom into their
own hands.

¾¾ In 1781, an enslaved woman in Sheffield, Massachusetts, known
as Mum Bett recruited a Stockbridge lawyer, Theodore Sedgwick,
to assist her in bringing a suit for her freedom, on the grounds
that the 1780 Massachusetts state constitution had declared “all
men are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential,
and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of
enjoying and defending their lives and liberties.” The case took all
of one day for the jury to hear and find in Bett’s favor.
A similar case was filed on behalf of a male slave, Quok

(or Kwaku) Walker, this time working its way up to the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1783. “Our
Constitution of Government,” announced Chief Justice William
Cushing, “sets out with declaring that all men are born free
and equal—and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and …
this being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent
with our own conduct and Constitution.”
Slavery thus had its legal underpinnings erased in

Massachusetts, and by 1790, there were no slaves remaining
in the state. In 1783 and 1784, New Hampshire, Connecticut,
and Rhode Island began the process of emancipating their
slaves, followed by New York in 1799 and New Jersey in 1804.
The pattern for all these abolition movements was established
in Pennsylvania, where the Pennsylvania legislature had
adopted a gradual emancipation program in 1780.
¾¾ The free black population of Maryland rose from 1,800 in the

mid-18th century to 20,000 by 1799; in 1782, Virginia’s free black
population amounted to only 1,800, but by 1800, it had swollen to
13,000. Manumission societies sprang up in New York, as well as
North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.
¾¾ Even when passing from slavery to freedom, however, life for black
Americans was not as free as it might be for whites. Whatever
other traditional restraints and hierarchies the Enlightenment had
thrown off, the bugaboo of race remained persistent. David Hume,

like Jefferson, could insist that all men are created equal; like
Jefferson, however, Hume could not rid himself of the belief that
“Negroes” are “naturally inferior to the whites.”
GROWING POLITICAL POWER
¾¾ In the 1790s, few Americans lived alone. Whether as working

households or blood-related dynasties, Americans conceived of
themselves as parts of networks, and even slaves on plantations
were governed by expectations of belonging to a household.
Strangers were viewed with fear and suspicion.
¾¾ Between 8 and 9 out of every 10 Americans lived and worked in

the countryside. Only about 5 percent of the population lived in
urban centers of more the 2,500 inhabitants. A quarter of all town-
dwellers were concentrated in and around Philadelphia, New York,
Boston, and Baltimore. Within these, the most obvious division
was skilled and unskilled workers.
Skilled workers included everything from apprentice tailors

to master carpenters and goldsmiths. Laborers, merchant
sailors, shoemakers, and tailors made up between one-
quarter and one-half of all urban workmen. The rest were
unskilled and manual laborers—the “working poor.”
There were substantial numbers of blacks in these urban

centers, but most of them were consigned to the lowest
rungs on the economic ladder. Nevertheless, these urbanites
considered themselves as “unfettered and unrestrained”
as Crèvecoeur the farmer. Johann David Schoepf, who had
served during the Revolution, wrote that “the inhabitants
of Philadelphia … think, act, and speak here precisely as it
prompts them.”
¾¾ Moreover, these same people, urban or rural, were acquiring an

increasing say in who spoke for them politically. Although even
Pennsylvania’s open-ended 1776 Constitution only enfranchised

“free men having a sufficient evident common interest with and
attachment to the community,” this still opened voting privileges
far more widely for Americans than for Britons.
In America, widespread land ownership in fee simple and the

addition of non-landholding taxpayers to voting rolls opened
access to unprecedented numbers of ordinary citizens. For a
brief moment in the 1780s, even free blacks in 8 of the 13 states
could vote. By the time of Washington’s reelection in 1792, as
many as 80 percent of white males were eligible to vote.
On the national level, this growth in voting rights was muted

by the electoral process; in 1792, state legislatures still chose
the presidential electors, and the people could be said to
vote for a president only in an indirect way. But even that was
yielding to change: In the election of 1796, 8 states permitted
casting a direct vote for presidential electors. The Constitution
had framed a republic, not a mass democracy, but it was a
republic that was becoming increasingly democratic within the
Constitution’s framework.
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE
¾¾ One category of free Americans who did not have the vote was,
of course, American women. In hierarchical societies, women
scarcely had any independent existence, either socially or legally;
married women were legally classified as femmes couvertures
and could not be sued or sue, draft wills, make contracts, or deal
in property.
¾¾ But the solvent of liberty ate away even at these traditional

restraints. Jefferson might think that American women were “too
wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics,” but women thought
otherwise. “The Sentiments of an American Woman,” announced
a broadside posted in 1779 in Philadelphia, were “born for liberty.”

¾¾ In a society of political equals, marriage itself was the first
institution to be reconceived—although, as with so much else in
the new republic, it was not the model of virtuous republicanism
that was pursued. If so, American women would have recast
themselves after the women of classical Rome, which meant no
equality, no natural rights, and an obligation to raise their sons as
warriors. American women of the 1790s had a far more Lockean
set of objectives in view.
¾¾ No longer would men be kings, nor would marriage be a kind of

domestic diplomatic arrangement between the fathers of brides.
Women began to consider themselves as the partners of their
husbands, and marriage itself was to be built on companionship
and affection, rather than the strategic placement of heirs.
¾¾ The road to equal rights, property, and access to power lay through
education. Benjamin Rush argued, “The cultivation of reason in
women is alike friendly to the order of nature and the private as
well as the public happiness.” Several “academies” for women were
opened in the 1780s and 1790s, and their graduates were not shy
about claiming a larger role for themselves in American life.
SUGGESTED READING
Glover, Founders as Fathers, chap. 5.

Nash, The Unknown American Revolution, chap. 8.
1. What factor did Crevecoeur believe made Americans distinctive?
2. How widely were voting rights established in the American states?

Lecture 30
TIMOTHY DWIGHT’S
RELIGION
A sought a natural order in politics, just as

s men of the Enlightenment, the Founders
Newton and Galileo sought a natural order in the

physical world. But a republic did not operate in
the same way as gravity. Locke had suggested
a little too simplistically that self-interest and self-
preservation would compel people to cooperate.
But societies cannot be built only on the self-
serving impulse to cooperate. The character and
spirit of a republican people could be preserved
only if they were persuaded to practice public
virtue for the common good. Madison had warned
the Virginia ratifying convention, “To suppose
that any form of government will secure liberty
or happiness without any virtue in the people is a
chimerical idea.”
240
VIRTUE AND RELIGION IN THE REPUBLIC
¾¾ To the great chagrin of the Founders, virtue did not pop

automatically out of the American hat. It was bad enough, under
the confederation, that the new state legislatures passed one
self-serving measure after another. It was worse, after the smoke
had cleared for the Revolution’s first native-born historian, David
Ramsay, to discover that “our morals are more depreciated than
our currency.”
¾¾ By 1783, Ramsay was convinced that “This revolution has

introduced so much anarchy that it will take half a century to
eradicate the licentiousness of the people.” One of Washington’s
correspondents complained that “Selfishness has so far prevailed
over that patriotic spirit which at first wrought wonder through the
Continent that I have little dependence on the virtue of the people.”
How was virtue to be replenished? What was virtue anyway?
¾¾ George Washington thought he knew what formed and shaped

virtue: religion. But Washington was not himself what we might call
a sterling model of piety. He was a practicing Episcopalian and
probably believed in a God who maintained some sort of active
control of human affairs. But more than that, Washington was too
reticent to reveal.
¾¾ Bear in mind, though, that there were a number among the

Founders who would have been happy to offer more fervent
religious credentials and who expected religion to play a larger role
in the formation of America’s republican virtue. Roger Sherman,
for example, was a serious convert to the same evangelical
Awakeners who had played so large a role in Patrick Henry’s life
and subscribed to the full menu of Puritan Calvinism.
¾¾ Patrick Henry was anxious, too, about ensuring a role for

evangelical Christianity in public life. Henry was infuriated by the
publication of Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason in 1794, which
popularized what was known as deism: the minimal belief “in one

God, and no more,” a hope “for happiness beyond this life,” and
“the equality of man.” Henry wrote, “The view which the rising
greatness of our country presents to my eyes, is greatly tarnished
by the general prevalence of deism; which, with me, is but another
name for vice and depravity.”
¾¾ But it was the evangelical Awakeners who lost the most in the
Revolution’s outcome. New Jersey and North Carolina eliminated
all state funding for churches in 1776, and New York followed suit
in 1777. By 1790, membership in evangelical churches founded
during the Great Awakening had waned to as little as 14 percent of
the white population.
¾¾ In 1785, Madison persuaded the Virginia legislature to drop all

public funding for religion. And although the First Amendment
was crafted by Madison to prevent the federal government from
making any “law respecting an establishment of religion,” he had a
much more expansive notion of what no establishment meant than
Roger Sherman.
He had opposed, in the Confederation Congress, the plan

to set aside public lands for the support of religion in the
Northwest Ordinance. Madison also opposed counting
ministers, as ministers, on the federal census, lest this lead
the government into the business of “ascertaining who, and
who are not ministers of the gospel.” He went on to oppose
the hiring of chaplains for Congress and for the American
military and urged Congress to tax church property.
Jefferson summed up his own attitude toward public religion

succinctly in 1802: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence
that act of the whole American people which declared
that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an
establishment of religion ...’ thus building a wall of separation
between church and state.”
242 Lecture 30 • Timothy Dwight’s Religion

BACKGROUND ON DWIGHT
¾¾ Timothy Dwight was born on May 14, 1752, in Northampton,

Massachusetts. Northampton was the Congregationalist parish
once presided over by the great theologian of the Awakening,
Jonathan Edwards, and had been its intellectual epicenter.
Dwight’s mother, moreover, was Edwards’s third child, and
his father, Major Timothy Dwight, had been one of the pillars of
support for Edwards when the congregation turned against him
in 1750.
¾¾ As befitted a grandson of Edwards, Dwight toddled into learning,

mastering Latin sufficient to pass the Yale College entrance exam
at age 8, although not actually matriculating at Yale until age 13.
At Yale, he formed one angle of a trio of ardent Federalists who
became known as the “Connecticut Wits.”
¾¾ By the time the cloud of war had passed over, the colleges were
more enamored with deism and the French Revolution’s cult of
the supreme being than with orthodox piety. At Yale, the youthful
Lyman Beecher recalled that when he began as a student in 1793,
“The college church was almost extinct.”
DWIGHT AT YALE
¾¾ At some point after the war, Dwight became convinced he should

enter the Congregational ministry and, in 1783, was ordained as
minister of Greenfield parish, in Fairfield, Connecticut. He at once
took up cudgels against “infidelity,” using poetry in defense of the
Great Awakener’s piety.
¾¾ Not poetry, however, but somber analysis formed the address

he delivered to the General Association of Connecticut, and he
made it clear that there could be no national virtue without national
religion. “The whole end singly aimed at in the New Testament, is
manifestly to make mankind virtuous,” Dwight said, and nothing
will promote virtue better throughout society than Christianity.

¾¾ That was enough to convince the powers in Connecticut that
Dwight was the man to muck out the intellectual stables at Yale,
and after the death of Yale president Ezra Stiles in 1795, Dwight
was duly installed as his successor. From there, Dwight went on
the offensive, denouncing unbelief as “the genuine source, the
Vesuvius” of the French Revolution. “There can be no halting
between two opinions,” he demanded, “Will you enthrone a
Goddess of Reason before the table of Christ? Will you burn your
Bibles? Will you crucify anew your Redeemer?”
¾¾ In short order, Yale was moved by an outbreak of religious revival

that confirmed that the grandfather’s mantle had descended on
the grandson’s shoulders. “The whole college was shaken,”
wrote Heman Humphrey, one of the college converts. “It seemed
for a time as if the whole mass of the students would press into
the kingdom.”
¾¾ But Dwight was shrewd, as well as pious. America was now a

republic, and if he really wanted to undercut “infidelity,” he was
not going to do it in the old tones of hierarchy. He cultivated a
“conciliating” manner, wrote the son of one of Dwight’s faculty. The
students he “addressed and treated as young gentlemen.”
Student ranking, which in colonial days had been done

on the basis of social status, was now based on academic
performance; hazing of freshmen was abolished; and in place
of fines “for neglect of study and other violations of duty, he
substituted private remonstrance” and “appeals … to the
conscience of the delinquent.”
Nor was Dwight an anti-intellectual enthusiast. He shunned

the more radical followers of Jonathan Edwards, and he
began hiring new faculty who were not theologians, including
the chemist Benjamin Silliman. In a republic where ordinary
citizens were free to choose their own affiliations, Dwight
understood that wooing, not commanding, was the new order
of the day.

¾¾ Dwight had more trouble translating his hostility toward the
French into practical politics. As president of Yale, Gardiner
Spring thought Connecticut Federalism “revolved around him as
the centre of that circle of intelligence and excellence.” Upon his
ascent to the Yale presidency, Dwight began purging pro-French—
and pro-Republican—faculty. He turned his rhetorical guns on
the democratic-republican societies in 1798, denouncing them
as “nothing but infidelity, irreligion, faction, rebellion, the ruin of
peace, and the loss of property.”
¾¾ But the prospect of Jefferson as president was the worst omen

of all. “Unless you make some exertions,” Dwight exhorted
Connecticut’s Federalist senator, James Hillhouse, “you will lose
perhaps the only and certainly best, opportunity of securing the
public safety. … Mr. Jefferson will ruin the Republic.”
¾¾ Nevertheless, Dwight found that he could not stop the Jeffersonian

juggernaut in 1800; he could not, in the end, even command Yale’s
students to toe the Federalist line. But Jefferson’s victory did not
mean the doom of virtue, either. Dwight stayed at the helm of Yale
until his death in 1817. In the process, he mentored a generation
of virtue-hungry activists and scholars, all of whom stood at the
headwaters of a second Great Awakening that would break over
the republic in the 1820s and all of them joined in a campaign
that, if it did not successfully Christianize American government,
certainly Christianized American culture.
¾¾ While Jefferson and Madison ensured public sponsorship for

Christianity would never get so far as actual federal tax support,
the disciples of Dwight would orchestrate a number of indirect
gestures of support for Christian institutions in the form of local
and state laws punishing Sabbath-breaking and blasphemy, the
introduction of religious exercises in state schools, restrictions on
the movement of the mail on Sundays, and proclamations calling
for days of public thanksgiving.

¾¾ And beyond government, the heirs of Timothy Dwight would create
an interlocking empire of voluntary societies and associations for
foreign missions, Bible distribution, and moral improvement that
Madison would complain were really “Ecclesiastical Bodies …
lurking under plausible disguises.”
¾¾ But Madison’s complaints didn’t matter. By 1825, the American

Bible Society was distributing the Bible in 140 languages; the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had
a budget twice the size of Harvard College; and between 1780
and 1820, American religious denominations built 10,000 new
churches and created 50 seminaries to train new volunteers for
the ministry. By defining Christianity as virtue, Christianity could
be treated as a necessary component of republican government,
whether Jefferson liked it or not.
SUGGESTED READING
Hall, Roger Sherman, chaps. 2 and 6.

Wells, The Devil and Doctor Dwight, chap. 4.
1. Were Protestant evangelicals the big losers of the American Revolution?
2. How did Dwight persuade Yale College to embrace religion as the

source of virtue?

Lecture 31
JAMES McHenry’s
ARMY
N one which had haunted Elbridge Gerry at

ever was a worry more misplaced than the
the Constitutional Convention—that of a Congress

creating a permanent, regular army that would
quickly turn into a latter-day Praetorian Guard,
threatening the very life of the republic. For
whatever Gerry’s anxieties about the power granted
to Congress to “raise and support Armies …
provide and maintain a Navy” and “make Rules for
the Government and Regulation of the land and
naval Forces,” the army and navy that Congress
actually called into being in the 1790s was so
absurdly small as to be unthreatening, not just to
the republic but to anyone else.
247
POSTWAR MILITARY FORCES
¾¾ The 86 regiments and battalions that had composed the army of

the United States during the Revolutionary War—the Continental
Army—technically ceased to exist as of June 3, 1784, when it was
ordered to disband. But Washington had warned Congress that it
should not fool itself into thinking that it needed no professional
military force. Washington hoped that Congress would retain at
least 2,631 long-service infantry and artillerymen, a nucleus of
trained professionals that could be expanded as needed.
¾¾ But all that the Confederation Congress voted to create was a

minuscule military force—only 700 men and 37 officers. The
states reserved the authority to commission the officers and recruit
the troops. Washington sighed: “a large standing Army in time of
Peace has ever been considered dangerous to the liberties of a
Country,” and so only the thought of “a few Troops” would even
be tolerated. “Fortunately for us, he added, “our relative situation
requires but few.”
¾¾ Washington could at least console himself with the thought that

army affairs had ended up better than those of the navy. The
Continental Navy had to be scraped into being from the purchase
of odds-and-ends of ships, and its expeditions generally did not
end well.
¾¾ For a brief moment, in response to Shays’s Rebellion, the

frightened Confederation Congress sluggishly moved to triple the
size of its diminutive army. But the states did little to recruit the
new force, and after the rebellion was put down, Congress happily
went back to the same comfortable policies it had been following
and disbanded its newly recruited soldiers.
¾¾ Perhaps Congress imagined it could get by with the services of the

state militias, although this wouldn’t be true of the navy. As soon as
the Treaty of Paris made it clear that American merchant shipping
was no longer protected by the mantle of the Royal Navy, pirates
248 Lecture 31 • James McHenry’s Army

from the coasts of North Africa began feasting on hapless American
merchantmen in the Mediterranean. They not only raided American
ships but held their crews as slaves until ransomed.
DOMESTIC CONFLICT
¾¾ Even the state militias might not be equal to more domestic troubles.
On the northern and northwestern frontier, the powerful Indian tribes
of the Iroquois federation were willing to concede that their allies,
the British, had been defeated in the Revolutionary War, but they
were much less willing to admit that they had been defeated.
Thus, when American commissioners and Iroquois chiefs

met at Fort Stanwix in 1784 to create a peace settlement,
the Iroquois balked at being treated as a conquered people.
However, the entire Indian population east of the Mississippi
amounted to little more than 160,000 people, and in the end,
the Seneca sachem Cornplanter bargained away land in New
York and Ohio in order to get peace.
Similar treaties with the Iroquois’ western allies followed in

1785 at Fort McIntosh and in 1786 at Fort Finney, while to the
South, the Cherokees and Creeks made similar bargains in
the treaties at Augusta and Hopewell.
But the bargains angered dissidents, who eyed the

agreements with suspicion. In 1785, low-level warfare
broke out with Indians in the Ohio country and Kentucky.
When the confederation proved unable to respond, the
extended North Carolina settlements made motions toward
proclaiming themselves the state of Franklin and began
conducting backdoor negotiations to put themselves under
the sovereignty—and protection—of Spain.
¾¾ Even though the convention authorized Congress to “raise and

support Armies … provide and maintain a Navy,” what Congress
actually raised and supported was not much of an improvement on

the confederation’s version of an army and navy. A Department of
War was created on August 7, 1789, to be headed by Henry Knox.
But when Knox introduced Washington’s plan for a “legionary

corps” of 2,000 men whose cadres would absorb the state
militias in times of emergency, the new Congress stiffened;
when Congress finally approved a plan on September 29,
1789, it provided for only a single regular regiment of 840
men. A year later, Congress grudgingly authorized a modest
expansion to 1,200 men.
They might have saved themselves that small trouble: In 1790,

three companies of the First Regiment, under the command
of Lieutenant-Colonel Josiah Harmar, along with 1,500
Pennsylvania and Virginia militia, attempted to track down
marauding Shawnee and Miami Indians along the Maumee
River in Ohio. The Indians instead turned on Harmer’s force,
sending the militia fleeing in panic and allowing the regulars to
stand and be massacred.
Congress was galvanized into authorizing a second regiment

of regulars. But when the governor of the Northwest Territory,
Arthur St. Clair, tried to lead them in a second expedition, St.
Clair blundered into an Indian ambush at the headwaters of
the Wabash River, and his forces were nearly annihilated.
Finally, in March 1792, Congress voted to reconstitute the two

existing infantry regiments and recruit three further infantry
regiments and four troops of mounted infantry. Armed with
the independent financial powers given by the Constitution,
Congress did not have to beg the states for money for these
troops; in fact, Congress passed a national militia bill in May 1792
that spelled out the federal government’s authority over the state
militias in explicit terms. With those resources finally in force,
revolutionary veteran Anthony Wayne brought the Shawnee and
Miami to bay at the battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794,
and ended at least that threat—for the moment.

JAMES McHenry
¾¾ It took the eruption of the

Quasi-War with France
under President Adams
before Congress would
take its obligations
to “raise and support
Armies” and “provide and
maintain a Navy” with real
seriousness, and it would
take Adams’s secretary of
war, James McHenry, to put
them into play for the first time.
¾¾ McHenry was Irish-born but JAMES McHenry

(1753–1816)
immigrated to America in 1771 and
became a physician, served as a surgeon
in the Revolution, and after the war, went into business and
politics as a member of the Maryland legislature. He became
part of Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist circle, and Hamilton
actually recommended McHenry to Washington after the disgrace
of Edmund Randolph as a likely secretary of state in 1796. But
Washington posted McHenry instead to the War Department, and
when John Adams succeeded Washington in the presidency a few
months later, Adams kept McHenry in place.
¾¾ McHenry at once announced that his priorities would be to “create

a navy and always maintain a formidable army.” This, for McHenry
meant an army of not less than 12,000 regulars and a navy with
at least 12 line-of-battle ships. In this, his most unlooked-for friend
was the French Republic, because once news of the XYZ Affair
broke, Congress was ready to give McHenry and Adams anything
they wanted.
¾¾ McHenry did not consider himself a navy man, and at his prompting,
Congress authorized the creation of an entirely separate Navy

Department under McHenry’s fellow-Maryland Federalist, Benjamin
Stoddert. McHenry’s attention was devoted to recruiting the new
“additional army,” and at its head, he wanted no one less than the
retired 66-year-old former president, Washington.
Surprisingly, Washington agreed, but with a provision that

made Adams choke: that Alexander Hamilton would be
appointed as his second-in-command.
As much as Adams wanted Washington in command in

order to fend of Republican critics who would accuse him of
creating the provisional army for a coup against Congress,
he was certain that Hamilton wanted to use the provisional
army to undermine his own presidential authority. But Adams
really had no choice: He signed a commission for Washington
as lieutenant-general; Hamilton would join him as the army’s
inspector-general, with the rank of major-general.
¾¾ Adams was right about Hamilton’s ambitions, and in fact, Hamilton

started by bestowing unwanted advice on McHenry about the
reorganization of the War Department staff. He then proposed
to Congress the recruitment of a further 24 regiments of infantry,
battalions of riflemen, artillerists, and engineers and 3 regiments
of cavalry. But while Hamilton was lighting a fire in McHenry’s
front, President Adams was lighting another in his rear, pressuring
McHenry to get Washington to change his mind about designating
Hamilton as his second-in-command; when Washington refused,
Adams blamed McHenry for conspiring against him.
¾¾ And yet, for all the backstairs maneuvering, McHenry launched

recruiting for the additional army, along with a revived military
staff; new fortifications were to be built, new uniform styles were
adopted, and a new weapons-manufacturing arsenal was begun
at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

EXPLAINING THE BUILD-UP
¾¾ What no one among the Federalists seemed to have stopped

to ask themselves was an obvious question: Why the build-up?
McHenry was sincerely convinced that France “intends … to bring
the United States, or a part of them, by her arms, added to her
intrigues, into the same state of vassalage.”
¾¾ It was only left, in McHenry’s thinking, for Adams to “recommend

to Congress … an immediate declaration of war, against that
nation.” But did anyone seriously think that the French Republic’s
army was poised to conquer its American counterpart? Even
Washington half-heartedly admitted that such an outcome seemed
difficult to believe.
¾¾ McHenry unwittingly fed Republican paranoia by asserting that

the additional army was needed because France’s policy is “to
prepare the country she designs to subdue by previous divisions,
among its citizens, before she strikes it.” McHenry was aghast
when, far from declaring war, Adams announced in February 1799
that he was sending William Vans Murray to France to reopen the
negotiations that the XYZ Affair had closed down. When Murray’s
mission produced an agreement with the French, Congress
cheerfully slashed funding for McHenry’s army.
¾¾ Congress only deprived McHenry of funding, however. In May

1800, the New York state legislative elections went against the
Federalists, and Adams interpreted this a devious plot by Hamilton
to undercut Adams’s upcoming battle for reelection against
Thomas Jefferson. On May 5, Adams summoned McHenry for a
meeting “of one minute,” which in fact turned into a maniacal tirade,
accusing McHenry of complicity with Hamilton in “indecorous & at
times outrageous” language. McHenry resigned as secretary of
war the next day.

SUGGESTED READING
Lambert, The Barbary Wars, chap. 5.

Robbins, James McHenry, chaps. 8 and 12–18.
1. What made Congress so allergic to maintaining a regular army?
2. What was the additional army?

Lecture 32
THOMAS JEFFERSON’S
FRUSTRATION
J place, that the Constitution was a good idea.

efferson had never been sure, in the first
He had been in Paris during the Constitutional

Convention and had returned to the United States
to find the political mechanics of the Constitution
already in full operation. But the Constitution did
not strike him as an improvement on the Articles
of Confederation. “I think all the good of this new
constitution might have been couched in three or
four new articles to be added to the good, old,
and venerable fabrick.” Twelve years of Federalist
rule—especially 12 years of dealing with Hamilton
and his onetime friend John Adams—had only
made the defects of the Constitution glare
more harshly.
255
JEFFERSON AS PRESIDENT
¾¾ To Jefferson, the American Revolution had begun with the purpose

of introducing “a just & solid republican government” that would
become a model for other countries. But it had been betrayed by
the machinations of the Federalists into copying much too closely
the trappings of a centralized British monarchy. At length, however,
Americans had come to realize their peril. And they had elected
Jefferson to correct the course of the republic.
¾¾ Surprisingly, Jefferson’s inaugural address was an eloquent

appeal for reconciliation after the turmoil of the Whiskey Rebellion,
the Jay Treaty, and the Quasi-War. “Let us ... unite with one heart
and one mind. ... Every difference of opinion is not a difference of
principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same
principle. We are all republicans: we are all federalists.”
¾¾ But unrepentant Federalists saw an iron hand inside the velvet

glove. “That speech,” snorted one Federalist newspaper, “was
but a net to ensnare popularity.” Nor was this just the customary
Federalist paranoia. In 1799, Jefferson wrote to the Elbridge Gerry
to outline exactly the plan he meant to follow if elected president:
First, he would dismantle the administrative apparatus

developed by Hamilton in his series of reports as secretary of
the treasury.
Second, he would not only demobilize the additional army

but slice spending on national defense as a whole, because
such spending only created tax burdens that erased the
independence of virtuous farmers.
Third, he would show no favoritism in foreign policy,

particularly to the British.
¾¾ What Jefferson really meant by in his speech by “all republicans,”

“all federalists” was actually no parties at all. “If we can hit on the
256 Lecture 32 • Thomas Jefferson’s Frustration

true line … which may conciliate the honest part of those who were
called federalists,” Jefferson wrote to Horatio Gates, “I should
hope to … obliterate … the names of federalist & republican.”
But whether the Federalists went willingly or not, Jefferson was
determined “by the establishment of republican principles …
to sink federalism into an abyss from which there shall be no
resurrection for it.”
JEFFERSON’S STRATEGIES
¾¾ Jefferson’s first strategy for creating the Federalist abyss was

to evict Federalists from federal officeholding, which he did with
gusto. Tax collectors and inspectors, and the whiskey excise they
had tried to collect, were also eliminated; the Sedition Law was
allowed to expire; and individuals who had been indicted under the
other anti-French acts were pardoned. The diplomatic corps was
reduced to just three missions, to Britain, France and Spain.
¾¾ Jefferson then turned his eye on the federal judiciary. In the last
weeks of the Adams administration, the Sixth Congress adopted
a Judiciary Act that reorganized the structure of the federal
judiciary, reducing the number of Supreme Court justices to five
and dividing the federal appeals courts into 19 district courts and
6 circuit courts.
What made this reorganization something less than a mere

reshuffling was the opportunity the Judiciary Act provided to
John Adams, first for more active enforcement of the Alien and
Sedition Acts, and then to appoint a full slate of Federalists to
fill 13 of the new judgeships.
Jefferson could not, constitutionally, dismiss federal judges.

But with a 65-to-40 majority in the House and only 2 votes
shy of a majority in the Senate, Jefferson was able to get the
Judiciary Act repealed by the Seventh Congress and replaced
in April 1802 with a new Judiciary Act. The jobs of some
judges thereby simply ceased to exist.

¾¾ Jefferson was even determined to republicanize the style of
the presidency. The Executive Mansion was still only “scantily
furnished with articles brought from Philadelphia,” and Jefferson
was disinclined to spend much money changing that, even closing
down the East Room entirely.
¾¾ When Jefferson decided to run for reelection in 1804, his victory

was even more smashing than the one of 1800, winning 162 out
of 176 electoral votes for himself and his new vice president, the
inveterate New York Federalist-hater, George Clinton.
JEFFERSON’S SECOND TERM
¾¾ Although he could kick Federalist officeholders into the Federalist

abyss, Jefferson could not kick Hamiltonian fiscal policy there quite
so easily. Despite his persistent shyness, Jefferson spent virtually
all of his life from 1774 in one form or
other of public service. But apart
from the Enlightenment eloquence
he poured into the Declaration
of Independence, he had
accomplished surprisingly little.
He had been governor

of Virginia during the
Revolution and failed
to keep the British from
chasing him out of office;
he had been minister to
France and Washington’s
secretary of state—mostly
without distinction. Jefferson’s
electoral victories were
due more to “the
THOMAS JEFFERSON

popularity of his doctrines, than by his strength of personal
character, or by the practical wisdom of his public measures.”
Now, as president, the pattern repeated itself. As much as he

hated Hamilton’s Bank of the United States and the decision
to fund the national debt in full, Hamilton had pledged the
nation’s honor to paying the debt, and to change that now
would hurt Americans who owned federal securities and
destroy American credit abroad.
¾¾ Nor did matters abroad cooperate with Jefferson’s wishes. No

sooner had Jefferson cancelled the remainder of the navy’s
frigate-building program in favor of building a fleet of 100 coast-
defense gunboats, than the Barbary pirates cheerfully renewed
their demands for bribes.
When Jefferson refused, Yusuf Karamanli, the pasha of

Tripoli, declared war, and Jefferson was forced to send the
decommissioned frigates to the Mediterranean to teach the
pirates a lesson, except of course, that the pirates proved
recalcitrant learners.
In 1805, Karamanli finally signed an agreement to end the

war, but only after Jefferson had pledged $60,000 to ransom
American sailors whom Karamanli was holding.
¾¾ And then there was France. In 1799, the last façade of the
revolutionary republic crumbled as Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew
the Directory and, in 1804, crowned himself emperor of France.
Jefferson wrote, “To whine after this exorcised demon is a disgrace
to republicans, and must have arisen either from want of reflection,
or the indulgence of passion against principle.”
Nevertheless, he was more than willing to barter with

Napoleon if opportunity beckoned, which it did in 1803, when
Napoleon offered to sell the Louisiana province to the United
States for $15 million in cash.

The Louisiana Purchase was approved by Jefferson before
consulting with Congress and justified afterward on grounds
very close to the invocation of necessary-and-proper powers
Hamilton had used for the Bank of the United States. The
Senate ratified the agreement in October, and American
officials took possession of Louisiana on December 20, 1803.
¾¾ The British were not amused by these dealings because they had
hoped to seize New Orleans for themselves and, thus, control the
Mississippi River valley. The great British naval victory at Trafalgar
in 1805 wrecked Bonaparte’s hopes of challenging British
preeminence at sea, but that only produced a whipsaw response
for American shipping.
Bonaparte declared a continental embargo of Britain in 1806

and threatened to seize any American ships in European
waters whom he suspected of trading with Britain; the British
responded with fresh orders-in-council that demanded search
privileges of American shipping they suspected of trading with
France. Ground between both stones, American shippers lost
1,500 ships to British and French seizure over nine years.
Nor did the British stop with merchant vessels: On June 22,
1807, the U.S. frigate Chesapeake was hailed by the British
frigate HMS Leopard off the Virginia capes. The British
demanded to search the Chesapeake’s crew for deserters.
The Chesapeake’s senior officer, Commodore James Barron,
stalled, but the British didn’t wait: A broadside from the
Leopard killed 3 American sailors and wounded 18.
Jefferson wrote that he had “never … seen this country in

such a state of exasperation as” it was over the Chesapeake
outrage. But Jefferson, through his own parsimony, had no
fleet at hand for retaliating against the Royal Navy. Instead,
he proposed a boycott on commerce with both Britain
and France.

Jefferson’s secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin, counseled
Jefferson that war would be preferable to a “permanent
embargo.” Nevertheless, when the Tenth Congress assembled
in December 1807—six months after the Chesapeake affair—
Jefferson recommended, in his annual message, a unilateral
embargo. After four days of deliberation, Congress obligingly
passed an Embargo Act on “any ship or vessel bound … to
any foreign port or place.”
The congressmen quickly had reason to regret their decision.

Jefferson liked to believe that an economy based on the
independent farmer had no need of imports or exports, but
this was an illusion. Britain lost 58 percent of the value of its
exports to the United States, but American exporters suffered
a catastrophic wipeout of 73 percent.
Ironically, the domestic manufacturing Jefferson despised

actually blossomed behind what was, in effect, an unlimited
tariff wall; there were 15 cotton mills in the United States in
1808, and by 1809, 87 had been built. But otherwise, the
impact was horrendous. Despite protests, Jefferson refused
to admit that the embargo had been a mistake, even though,
by the end of his second term, he had quietly given up trying
to enforce it.
¾¾ By the end of that term, Jefferson had grown weary of fighting

Hamilton’s incubus. “I am tired of an office where I can do no
more good than many others who would be glad to be employed
in it,” he sighed. “To myself personally it brings nothing but
unceasing drudgery & daily loss of friends. … My only consolation
is in the belief that my fellow citizens at large give me credit for
good intentions.”

SUGGESTED READING

Wood, Empire of Liberty, chap. 17.
1. What were Jefferson’s principal aims as president?
2. How did pirates, bankers, newspapers, the British, and his own
shortcomings sabotage Jefferson’s intentions?

Lecture 33
AARON BURR’S
TREASON
N intellectual
o one could claim a more distinguished
lineage in the Founders’
generation than Timothy Dwight, the grandson
of Jonathan Edwards, unless it was Aaron Burr,
Dwight’s cousin and also a grandson of Edwards.
But from that point, no two paths in the early
Republic diverged further. His father, Aaron Burr,
Sr., was a devoted disciple of the great Edwards
and became president of Princeton College in
1747. However, the senior Burr died when the
boy was less than two years old, followed in the
next few years by Burr’s grandfather, his mother,
and grandmother. The boy ended up in 1760 in
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in the care of his
aunt and uncle but with ₤3,000 for his education.
263
BACKGROUND ON BURR
¾¾ Burr joined the Continental Army early on and was attached to the
staff of General Richard Montgomery for Montgomery’s ill-fated
attempt to capture Quebec. Montgomery’s death left him without a
sponsor, but he found his footing again as an aide to Connecticut
general Israel Putnam, was promoted to lieutenant-colonel,
survived the winter at Valley Forge, and finally left the army in
1779. He turned to the study of law, married a wealthy widow, and
moved to New York City as the British evacuated it in 1783.
¾¾ Burr clashed almost at once with another newly minted New York
City lawyer, Alexander Hamilton, over the confiscation of property
from one-time Tory loyalists.
Given that the war was over, Hamilton reasoned, these people
were useful to the new republic. Why impoverish them and
the republic by punishing them further?
Burr looked at the question from the other end of the

telescope: Confiscated Tory properties could be sold and used
to compensate impoverished patriots for their sacrifices—
especially such impoverished patriots as Aaron Burr.
¾¾ In 1784, Burr was elected to the New York Assembly, where he

allied himself with George Clinton and won appointment as state
attorney-general. Burr increasingly served as Clinton’s foil to
Hamilton in New York politics, and in 1791, Clinton muscled Burr’s
election to the U.S. Senate through the state assembly, unseating
Hamilton’s father-in-law, Philip Schuyler. By 1796, Jeffersonian
Republicans were already talking of Burr as a possible candidate
to run for president against Adams.
¾¾ Yet Burr was already sending uneasy currents of anxiety through

even Republican ranks. His political ideas, if he had any, were glib
and mostly concentrated on his own self-advancement.
264 Lecture 33 • Aaron Burr’s Treason

JEFFERSON VERSUS BURR
¾¾ In 1800, Burr was picked to run as the Republicans’ candidate

for vice president with Jefferson. The problem was that the
presidential itch was now about to drive him over the line.
¾¾ Jefferson easily outscored Adams in the Electoral College, 73 to

65. But Burr, running on Jefferson’s coattails, had also tallied 73
electoral votes, and this meant that the House of Representatives
would have to sort out who would serve as president. Jefferson
wrote uneasily to Burr on December 15, 1800, to suggest that this
was simply an oversight, but it turned out to be an oversight of
near-fatal proportions.
¾¾ Hamilton would have preferred the devil to Jefferson as president,

and he did not hesitate to lay out suggestive snares in Burr’s path
that Federalists in the House might be willing to unload their votes
on him; for his part, Burr scooped up the snares with unbecoming
greed. He did not openly campaign against Jefferson, but he coyly
declined to issue any statement promising support for Jefferson,
and he allowed his allies to seduce Republican congressmen to
vote for Burr.
¾¾ When the House of Representatives convened on February 11,

1801, 19 ballots were cast without a clear majority before an
exhausted House recessed after midnight. Three more ballots
followed over the next two days. After seven days of haggling,
James Bayard, a Federalist and the lone representative of
Delaware, withheld his vote, and the election was finally over.
¾¾ But Burr, said Bayard, “had completely forfeited the confidence and
friendship of his party.” He enraged them still further by obstructing
Jefferson’s replacement Judiciary Act in 1802. By the time
Jefferson was ready for his second presidential campaign, he was
anxious to be rid of Burr, and in January 1804, called him to the
Executive Mansion to tell him as much. When the congressional

Republican caucus met on February 25 to renominate Jefferson,
not a single vote was cast for Burr to continue as vice president.
THE DUEL
¾¾ This ended Aaron Burr’s career as a public man but not his
ambitions or his thirst for revenge. Denied the vice presidency,
Burr threw his hat into the ring for the governorship of New York
in the spring of 1804. He lost and blamed Hamilton for it. He sent
Hamilton a letter claiming that Hamilton had defamed him during
the campaign and, ultimately, challenged Hamilton to a duel.
¾¾ The two met on July 11, on the bluffs overlooking the Hudson
River. Hamilton fired his pistol into the air; Burr, however, took
deliberate aim and hit Hamilton in the right hip, penetrating the
liver and striking the spine. He died at 2:00 the next afternoon.
¾¾ Burr was denounced as an “assassin” and indicted for murder in

August but slipped out of New York before he could be arrested,
heading southward. The charges were eventually dropped on
technicalities.
¾¾ With astonishing brass, even for Burr, the lame-duck vice president
showed up for the lame-duck session of the Eighth Congress in
Washington as though nothing remarkable had happened. He had
the impudence to give a farewell speech in the Senate on March
2, and then, in April, set off overland to Pittsburgh, arriving later in
New Orleans.
BURR IN LOUISIANA
¾¾ For 20 years after the Treaty of Paris, the American Republic

had squirmed in anxiety over what might happen along its distant
western borders. Indeed, the United States had nothing that
guaranteed that its boundary on the Mississippi River could be
protected from interference by foreign powers. The Louisiana

Purchase gave title to the whole region, including New Orleans,
but enforcing that title did not become any easier.
¾¾ Jefferson opened up every possible encouragement to western

settlement, but even at the best reckoning, there were only 50,000
settlers in the Northwest Territory, and only 9,000 in the southwest
outside of New Orleans. Let any of the European powers resolve
to recolonize in North America, and there would be little the United
States could do to stop it.
¾¾ As early as the summer of 1804, while he was still the vice

president of the United States, Burr began dropping hints to the
British minister in Washington, Anthony Merry, about his interest in
helping the British stir up trouble for the French in the Caribbean
by recruiting American mercenaries for clandestine operations.
The talks matured, and in short order, Burr revealed that he

was prepared to aid in “effect[ing] a Separation of the Western
Part of the United States from that which lies between the
Atlantic and the Mountains.”
All the British needed to do was back him with £110,000 and
a Royal Navy squadron to secure the mouth of the Mississippi
river, and the deed would be done.
¾¾ Merry was not without a certain incredulity at this proposition,

and rightly so, because Burr was also negotiating simultaneously
with the Spanish to deliver exactly the same western lands to
them. Still, Burr was doing more than just talk: he had recruited
between 4,000 and 5,000 volunteers and established a base on
Blennerhassett Island in the middle of the Ohio River. To all of
them, he confided that he had been specially commissioned by
Jefferson to lead an expeditionary force to conquer Mexico.
¾¾ But Burr had not counted on the double-crossing propensities of

General James Wilkinson. In October 1806, just before Burr was
ready to spring his plan, Wilkinson recalculated the odds of Burr’s

success, then wrote to President
Jefferson, betraying every detail of
Burr’s plan that he knew. Jefferson
promptly issued a cease-and-
desist proclamation on November
27, and Ohio and Virginia militia
staged a rowdy occupation of
Blennerhassett Island.
¾¾ Burr, however, eluded them.

For all his swollen promises,
he had only 16 boats and 60
men at hand. He did not
find about Wilkinson’s
betrayal until January
10, whereupon he
scattered his pathetic
force and took to
the hills. He didn’t
get far. Federal troops AARON BURR
arrested him on February 19 as he tried to
slip across the border into Spanish West
Florida.
PROTECTION OF THE CONSTITUTION
¾¾ It was at this moment that the Founders’ Constitution revealed one

of its most unsuspected strengths, and that was its willingness
to throw the arms of protection around the liberties even of the
people who meant it harm. Article III, Section 3, defines “treason”
as “only … levying War” against the United States, “or in adhering
to” its “Enemies.” That in itself pulled the punch of anyone eager
to convict someone else of treason, because treason had to be an
act rising to the very high level of war and its concomitants.

¾¾ It did not lighten the prosecution’s burdens to discover that the
case against Burr was not nearly so transparent as it seemed.
The constant crisscrossing of his intentions allowed Burr’s
defense to confuse the issues, and though Jefferson provided
his prosecuting attorney, George Hay, with blank pardons to
induce Burr’s co-conspirators to turn state’s evidence, too many
of them turned out to be suspicious and unreliable characters.
Further, though a number of Burr’s men had been assembled and
armed on Blennerhassett Island, Burr had not actually been there
himself, thus undercutting the actual association of Burr with an
armed plot.
¾¾ Hay tried to invoke the more expansive English common-law

definition of constructive treason, but Burr’s counsel insisted that
the Constitution’s narrower definition had superseded English
common law. Burr himself insisted that his party of armed travelers
were simply employees whom he was planning to use on new
lands he had bought in Louisiana.
¾¾ On August 31, after two weeks of trial, Marshall instructed the

grand jury that the treason indictment was groundless, because
it did not meet the technical definition and because Burr had not
been present on Blennerhassett Island where the plotters had
assembled. The grand jury deliberated for only a few minutes and
announced that they found Burr not guilty.
¾¾ Burr thus walked away a free man, and after several months of
dodging his creditors, boarded a packet-ship under the name H.
G. Edwards and sailed for England. He returned from Europe
in 1812 and, boldly opened up a law office at 9 Nassau Street.
He made only a scanty living, and people pointed him out on the
streets of New York City as “the greatest villain on earth.”

SUGGESTED READING
Isenberg, Fallen Founder, chaps. 1 and 9.

McDonald, Alexander Hamilton, epilogue.
1. How did Aaron Burr trigger a constitutional crisis in 1800?
2. Was Burr really guilty of treason?

Lecture 34
JOHN MARSHALL’S
COURT
I his first taste of the law. On February 5, 1778,

t was at Valley Forge that John Marshall got
Marshall was detailed to assist the judge-advocate

of the army as a “deputy judge-advocate.” He
evidently had the sort of mind that feasts on the
fine distinctions of law and arbitration. In 1779,
Marshall was sent home and put himself under
the tutelage of George Wythe at William and
Mary for a course in legal studies. At the end of
actual campaigning at Yorktown in 1781, Marshall
resigned his commission and took up law practice
in Richmond.
271
BACKGROUND ON MARSHALL
¾¾ In 1782, John Marshall won a seat in the Virginia legislature,

where his eyes were opened to the cause of the suffering of the
Continentals at Valley Forge: While the soldiers suffered, gaseous
politicians exhaled platitude-laden speeches in state assemblies
about the glories of liberty, then gutted every initiative on the
national level for victory.
¾¾ Elected to the state ratifying convention for the Constitution,

Marshall boldly bearded Patrick Henry in his own den. “The
JOHN MARSHALL
(1755–1835)
272
supporters of the constitution,” and not the Antifederalists, such as
Henry and George Mason, “claim the title of being sincere friends
of liberty and the rights of mankind.” Marshall continued:
What are the favourite maxims of democracy? A strict

observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence
to virtue. These, sir, are the principles of a good government. …
Would to Heaven that these principles had been observed
under the present government! Had this been the case, the
friends of liberty would not be so willing now to part with it.
¾¾ This astonished Henry, who thought what Marshall was advocating

revolution. But it delighted James Madison, who thought Marshall
had shown “a great deal of ability” in the ratifying convention. It
was not that Marshall was an eloquent orator, but the force of his
reason carried the day.
¾¾ By the mid-1790s, he had become a principal figure in Virginia

Federalism. Washington offered him the post of attorney-general in
1795; Adams tagged him as one of the three XYZ commissioners
in 1797 and then as Adams’s secretary of state; and when Oliver
Ellsworth resigned as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1800,
Adams nominated Marshall as his replacement.
DEBATING THE LAW
¾¾ Before the Revolution, lawyers’ primary duties involved supervising

community morals, determining tax assessments, issuing licenses,
appointing road commissioners, and the like. Judges had been
Crown appointees, settling disputes through the invocation of
English common law and its great interpreter, Sir William Blackstone.
¾¾ The Revolution, however, was nowhere more revolutionary than its

overthrow of these practices. Common law, which was little more
than the accumulated precedents set by English courts, was now
anathema to the new American order. Blackstone, whose whole
theory of law was based on the sovereignty of the monarch and the

glories of Parliament, was rejected as a holdover of Toryism. Every
dictate of Enlightenment reason and every respect for America as
a republic demanded a completely new kind of jurisprudence for
Americans, free from all-powerful judges, deferential to the right
of juries to interpret the law, and based on clearly written statutes
adopted by the legislatures as the voice of the people.
¾¾ The principal difficulty with this overthrow of common law was

that it was easier said than done. An entirely new republican
jurisprudence could not be invented by even the most diligent
state legislature, and none of them would tolerate the federal
government doing it. Moreover, Federalists, such as Alexander
Addison, suspected that Jeffersonian Republicans had other
motives in eliminating the common law.
“The common law is founded on the law of nature and the

revelation of God, to which all men are subject,” Addison wrote
in 1800, and though “the declaration of independence …
annulled the power of Britain over the colonies,” the colonies
“carried with them all the common law of England” in their
everyday operations.
Hamilton took this one step further in Federalist 78 by

casting the courts in the role of restrainers of state legislative
foolishness. “The courts,” he wrote, “were designed to be an
intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in
order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits
assigned to their authority.”
¾¾ The Jeffersonians feared both the extension of common law and

the authority of judges in using it. And this fear became all the
more urgent because the Constitution was never more vague
than in describing where the line lay between state and federal
judicial authority.
One of Jay’s cases, Chisholm v. Georgia in 1793, unwisely

declared that the state of Georgia could be sued by citizens
274 Lecture 34 • John Marshall’s Court

of other states; the state legislatures howled in protest, and in
1798, an Eleventh Amendment was added to the Constitution,
preventing the federal judiciary from claiming authority in “any
suit in law … against one of the United States by Citizens of
another State.”
But they would not be able to go to the amendment pump

every time an aggressive chief justice tried to clip the states’
wings, and John Marshall was nothing if not aggressive. He
would devise a national judicial sovereignty to match the
national constitutional sovereignty envisioned by Madison and
the national economic sovereignty proposed by Hamilton.
MARSHALL’S DECISIONS
¾¾ Just how aggressive he would be in this regard became apparent

in the Marshall court’s first major decision, Marbury v. Madison.
The case involved the delayed appointments of some justices of
the peace (JPs) after Jefferson took office.
One of these JPs, William Marbury, a Federalist, filed suit

on December 21, 1801, directly in the U.S. Supreme Court,
requesting a writ of mandamus (an order to correct an oversight)
to force delivery of his commission. Marshall handed down his
response for a unanimous court on February 24, 1803.
Marbury’s suit was technically invalid because it had been

filed at the wrong court level. As for the nub of the suit—
that Marbury had been entitled to an appointment that the
Jefferson administration had wrongly denied him—Marshall
was entirely in agreement, and “having this legal right to the
office, he has a consequent right to the commission.”
Thus, Marshall established the principle that the federal courts

have review power over the actions of both the presidency
and Congress.

¾¾ Marshall’s next step was to bring the state courts to heel. The
Reverend Denny Martin was the heir of the Fairfax family, whose
holdings on the Northern Neck of Virginia had been confiscated
by the state of Virginia from Lord Thomas Fairfax in 1777, and
portions sold to a land speculator, David Hunter, in 1789; Hunter,
in turn, moved to eject Martin’s tenants.
Because both the Treaty of Paris and the Jay Treaty required
an end to confiscations of Loyalist property, Martin won the
first round in the Virginia district court in 1794 and, in 1796,
an out-of-court settlement with an investors’ consortium
(which included John Marshall) that purchased title to
Martin’s property.
But Spencer Roane, Patrick Henry’s son-in-law and the most

ardent Jeffersonian judge on the Virginia Court of Appeals,
was determined to make the case a test of federal judicial
authority. Roane insisted that the Fairfax properties did not fall
under the treaty protections and reversed the 1794 ruling and
out-of-court settlement.
The consortium then turned to the U.S. Supreme Court,

which in a decision delegated by Marshall to Joseph Story,
overturned the Virginia decision. But Roane refused to
recognize the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction in a state matter;
thus, the case went back to the Supreme Court as Martin v.
Hunter’s Lessee.
This time, Story (acting as Marshall’s mouthpiece) delivered a

slap to state judicial authority. “It has been argued that such an
appellate jurisdiction over state courts is inconsistent with the
genius of our governments, and the spirit of the constitution,”
Story wrote. “We cannot yield to the force of this reasoning. …
It is a mistake” to think that “the constitution was not designed
to operate upon the states.” To the contrary, “the courts of the
United States can, without question, revise the proceedings
of the executive and legislative authorities of the states, and if

they are found to be contrary to the constitution, may declare
them to be of no legal validity.”
If Virginia possessed the power to nullify the provisions of

treaties, then there would be no hindrance to nullifying acts of
Congress, and the Constitution would collapse. Once again,
the Marshall Court had placed the authority of the federal
government, and the ghost of Alexander Hamilton, over that
of any of their rivals or critics.
McCulloch V. MARYLAND
¾¾ But in no case did Marshall come more decisively to the defense

of Hamilton’s agenda than in McCulloch v. Maryland, because that
case offered a direct and unambiguous challenge to Hamilton’s
creation, the Bank of the United States, and the power of the
federal government to have established it in the first place.
¾¾ In 1816, the Bank of the United States, which operated branches

in nine American cities, opened a branch in Baltimore without
applying to the Maryland legislature for a corporate charter. As
a federal entity, there seemed to be no reason to need a state
charter. But the Maryland legislature, teeming with Jeffersonians,
thought otherwise.
¾¾ On February 18, 1818, the Maryland General Assembly passed a

bill to limit the issuance of the bank’s notes to bills between $5.00
and $1,000.00 and to have a Maryland revenue stamp fixed to
each. The chief cashier of the bank’s Baltimore branch, James
William McCulloch, refused to purchase the stamps and was
promptly sued by the state of Maryland.
¾¾ McCulloch, in turn, appealed to the federal courts, and Marshall

began hearing the case on February 22, 1819. It may have been
the single greatest assembly of legal talent in one spot: not only
Marshall and Joseph Story on the bench, but George Washington’s
nephew Bushrod, as well; Luther Martin for the state of Maryland;

and William Wirt and Daniel Webster as counsel for McCulloch
and the bank.
¾¾ McCulloch v. Maryland was argued for nine days, with Luther

Martin arguing that it had exceeded the enumerated powers of
the federal government. But Marshall, with equal skill, reduced
all of Martin’s arguments to nitpicking. Of course, the federal
government may establish a bank as an exercise of its necessary-
and-proper authority. He could not tell what was more perverse:
Luther Martin insisting that every detail of the federal government’s
responsibilities as a government had to spelled out or the
Maryland General Assembly’s refusal to read the words that the
Constitution did spell out—that the document was the “supreme
law of the land.”
SUGGESTED READING
Newmyer, John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court, chap. 5.
Smith, John Marshall, chaps. 2 and 13.
1. What experiences made John Marshall a Federalist?
2. How did Marshall respond to arguments in favor of judicial deference

to the legislature?
3. In one sentence each, what were the principal lessons of Marbury v.

Madison, Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, and McCulloch v. Maryland?

Lecture 35
JAMES MADISON’S WAR
T
he election of John Adams to the presidency in
1796 and the Quasi-War with France seemed
to be the nadir of the Republicans. Even though
Jefferson, as Adams’s unwilling vice president,
would preside over the Senate, Jefferson himself
was certain that Adams intended to exclude him
from “participating in the administration” as much
as possible. But no one felt the discouragement
of the Republicans more than James Madison.
From his position as the de facto floor leader of the
opposition, he had been forced to watch as, one
by one, Hamilton’s plans were implemented, as
Washington became increasingly chilly and distant,
and as Madison’s own influence gradually declined.
279
MADISON IN JEFFERSON’S ADMINISTRATION
¾¾ In Madison’s eyes, the Jay Treaty was “full of shameful

concessions, of mock reciprocities, and of party artifices, that
no other circumstances than the peculiar ones which mark
our present political situation, could screen it from universal
execration.” Further, there seemed no point in protesting that
“the bill for establishing a national bank” was “not warranted by
the constitution,” because there were other members of the
Constitutional Convention sitting in the same House who insisted
exactly the opposite.
¾¾ In December of 1796, Madison decided not to seek reelection to

Congress and stayed in Virginia for the next four years. However,
the sudden collapse of Federalist political fortunes in the last two
years of the Adams administration and the election of Jefferson
to the presidency seemed suddenly to have brought the sun
from behind the clouds. The day after his inauguration, Jefferson
offered Madison the post of secretary of state, and together, they
plan to restore strict republicanism.
¾¾ Together with Jefferson’s secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin,

the three men believed that they were called to rescue the republic
from the grasping hands of would-be aristocrats. Madison’s day-to-
day responsibilities were more hum-drum: dealing with passports,
diplomatic correspondence, ships’ cargo manifests, and patents.
¾¾ Madison’s chief problem was how to deal with British arrogance

on the high seas. He composed a dense treatise on the subject
in 1805. But treatises were little answer to the broadsides of
HMS Leopard, and rather than face the prospect of outright war,
Madison endorsed Jefferson’s embargo.
¾¾ What surprised Madison was how little credit he, Jefferson, and
Gallatin received for their labors. John Randolph of Roanoke,
as the new floor leader of the Republicans in the House and
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, denounced the
280 Lecture 35 • James Madison’s War

Louisiana Purchase, Madison’s interest in land speculation, and
nearly everything else the administration did as “apostacies” from
true republicanism.
He gathered around him a dissident Republican faction, and

yet another faction, the War Hawks, blamed Jefferson and
Madison for doing too little to punish Great Britain.
Their most talented figurehead was the Virginia-born Henry

Clay, who was outraged that “the injuries we have received
from Great Britain remain unredressed.” But the War Hawks’
chief preoccupation was with the British, and their inevitable
answer to the British menace was to annex Canada.
HENRY CLAY
(1777–1852)

MADISON AS PRESIDENT
¾¾ Neither Randolph’s nor Clay’s factions could assemble enough

political mass to oppose the administration successfully. Thus,
when Jefferson announced that his second term as president
would be his last, the Republican caucus gave Madison its
blessing as the next Republican nominee for the presidency. And
he won handsomely. However, the Federalist vote had improved
by 30 percent over the 1804 election, and Federalist candidates
for Congress picked up 24 new seats.
¾¾ But Madison was less worried by the Federalists than he than he

was by the War Hawks of his own party, and not only because he
feared the consequences of a war with the greatest naval power
on earth, but also because he was determined not to be dictated to
by the upstart Henry Clay. Despite the appearance of “submission
to Foreign Edicts,” the embargo was allowed to expire and was
replaced by a much weaker Non-Intercourse Act.
Unhappily for Madison, the British clumsily undid every one

of his efforts to maintain a respectable peace. Madison had
hardly taken office as president in the spring of 1809 when the
new British minister in Washington, David Erskine, unrolled
a new British policy initiative that offered to mollify American
grievances over the Chesapeake-Leopard incident and
secure noninterference with American trade on the seas.
Madison was delighted at the offer, and Congress promptly

dropped the new military appropriations bill it had been mulling
over. However, Erskine, who was eager to placate American
interests, had exceeded his instructions from London, and
when the news of the agreements reached the desk of the
British foreign minister, they were angrily repudiated.
¾¾ The following spring, it was the turn of the French minister to

present an offer from Bonaparte that, in like manner, proposed
to ease French harassment of American trade. Madison took

Bonaparte at his word, and reinstated an embargo on trade with
Britain. To Madison’s embarrassment, Bonaparte then insisted
that his offer could not be fully implemented until the British also
agreed to lift their restrictions on American shipping. Once again,
Madison was left out in the cold.
¾¾ While these diplomatic insults boxed the American Republic on

one ear, two major military crises in 1811 boxed it on the other.
The first of these was the Tecumseh confederation, which the
War Hawks treated as nothing but a stalking-horse for British
recolonization of America. The second was the clash between the
American frigate President and the British sloop-of-war Little Belt,
which was won by the Americans.
¾¾ “Are we upon the eve of a declaration of our independence upon

G[reat] Britain being repeated … not by the pen, or by a general
Suffrage but by the mouths of our Cannon?” asked Benjamin Rush
at the end of August 1811. Light-Horse Harry Lee now confronted
Madison with the demand that Madison “take us out of the odious
condition … of half war … by drawing the sword.”
In mid-May, the Republican congressional caucus met to

select its presidential nominee for elections in the fall of 1812,
and led by Henry Clay, the caucus “plainly told” Madison
“that his being supported as the party candidate for the next
Presidency depended upon his screwing his courage to a
declaration of war.”
On June 1, Madison finally yielded: He sent a message to

Congress, reviewing the situation with the British and asked
Congress for a declaration of war. The House responded
promptly with a 79-to-49 vote in favor of the declaration;
Federalists in the Senate slowed the measure down but could
not stop it, and the war bill passed the Senate on June 17.
The next day, Madison signed it.

THE WAR OF 1812
¾¾ The United States was no better prepared to go to war against

England than it had been to go to war against the pasha of Tripoli,
only now the Americans were squaring off against the most
powerful empire on the globe. It is one of most obscure wars, and
with good reason, because there is much in it we can only look
back on with regret.
¾¾ The United States was disastrously unprepared for war: The

Royal Navy possessed 219 ships-of-the-line and 296 frigates; the
United States had 5 frigates and a flock of sloops, schooners, and
privateers. Some feverish prewar preparations had set the size of
the U.S. Army at 10,000 men, but by the time of the declaration of
war, only 6,750 had been recruited.
¾¾ And then there was the ballyhoo about seizing Canada.

Admittedly, the entire British garrison for Canada counted no
more than 5,600 regular British infantry. But the War Hawks would
have more difficulty than they imagined convincing skeptics that a
war declared in defense of “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights” had
anything to do with invading Canada. And it certainly gave no
cheer to Republican hearts when Albert Gallatin announced that
the war should be financed by excise taxes.
¾¾ As it was, Canada turned out to be a more difficult nut to crack

than anyone had imagined. Madison’s secretary of war, William
Eustis, drew up a comprehensive plan for invading Upper Canada,
but it fizzled ingloriously, as did the invasion of Lower Canada.
¾¾ To the disappointment of the War Hawks, it was the navy that

won the laurels. Oliver Hazard Perry, a lieutenant sent to take
charge of the tiny base at Presque Isle on Lake Erie in March
1813, managed to build a flotilla of 10 small ships, led by two 20-
gun brigs, Lawrence and Niagara, and defeated a British lake
squadron on Lake Erie.

¾¾ But American victories were only pinpricks in the hide of a Royal
Navy. When the American frigate Essex captured the British sloop
Alert and took 15 British merchantmen, the Royal Navy pursued
and sank the Essex off the cost of Chile.
¾¾ Nor did the Navy’s frigates do much to compensate for American

failures on land. In 1814, a reorganized American army
commanded by Major General Jacob Brown once again crossed
into the Niagara peninsula and, this time, soundly defeated
the British at Chippewa on July 5. But Brown had no resources
with which to exploit this achievement, and in three weeks, the
American invasion was almost back where it had begun.
¾¾ What was worse, Napoleon had finally been cornered, defeated,

and exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba, thus freeing up
troops and ships to undertake offensive campaigns against the
American coastline.
In a campaign of revenge for the destruction of York, a

combined British naval and army expedition, under the
command of Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane and Major
General Robert Ross, lunged up the Chesapeake Bay,
landing 4,000 infantry.
Cochrane prepared to land at Benedict, on the Patuxent River,

brushing aside a hastily assembled American defense force
at Bladensburg, and descending on Washington itself. There,
on August 24, the British burned the Executive Mansion, the
Capitol, the Treasury, and numerous other public buildings.
The fiasco might have been worse if the British had managed
to add the city of Baltimore to their bag. But an unexpectedly
stout defense put up by Major George Armistead and the
garrison of Fort McHenry, guarding Baltimore harbor, forced
them to abandon any more ambitious efforts to occupy the
Chesapeake Bay.

FORT McHenry,
BALTIMORE, MD
¾¾ The initial war enthusiasm guaranteed Madison’s reelection to the

presidency in 1812, but in mid-1813, he nearly died of an attack
of malaria. Cockburn earnestly hoped he could capture Madison
during the attack on Washington “and carry him to England for a
curiosity.” But Madison went no nearer the fighting than a hilltop
above Bladensburg; he had simply lost heart.
¾¾ Madison was relieved when, in February 1815, the British offered

to end the war and return to the prewar status quo. Like Jefferson,
he would accept no third term.
SUGGESTED READING
Hickey, The War of 1812, chaps. 2 and11.

Ketcham, James Madison, chaps. 18–20.

1. Who were the tertium quids? Who were the War Hawks?
2. How deeply did the British humiliate the United States in the War of 1812?

Lecture 36
ALEXIS DE
TOCQUEVILLE’S
AMERICA
O Alexis
n May 11, 1831, two French travelers,
de Tocqueville and Gustave de
Beaumont, stepped off the 500-ton brig Le Havre
in New York and proceeded to conduct one of the
most interesting journeys ever conducted across
the face of America. They were not explorers in
the usual sense of the term. They were in pursuit
of something more elusive, and that was the set of
fundamental principles that allowed the American
Republic to survive.
288
THE REPUBLICAN DREAM
¾¾ Republicanism might have been the darling political theory of the

Enlightenment, but after the American founding, it had enjoyed
a rocky and disappointing career as an idea of government. The
republic created by the French revolutionaries in 1789 in imitation
of the American one had declined swiftly into the hands of a
dictator. And when Bonaparte’s empire itself collapsed under the
blows of Europe, the victorious allies insisted on turning the clock
of French politics back to 1789 and placing a king, Louis XVIII, on
a restored French throne in 1815.
¾¾ Meanwhile, the political ideals of the Enlightenment were

challenged and succeeded by a violent gust of reaction known
as the Romantic Revolt. Not reason, insisted the Romantics, but
passion formed nations; not logic, but race and blood gave identity
to peoples. Thus, as Europeans planted themselves all over
the world, they did so at the behest of aristocratic governments,
gathering new strength from the practical failures of republicanism
and the stormy winds of Romanticism; only the United States
remained as the one large-scale example of a republic in
the world.
¾¾ Yet the republican dream lived on, and Tocqueville was one
example of its persistence. Tocqueville’s forebears were local
aristocrats from Normandy, but Alexis grew up with few starry-
eyed illusions about aristocrats. As a student at the Sorbonne
from 1829 to 1830, he came under the spell of the French liberal
republican François Guizot, from whom he learned that history
was a record of the movement of progress and that progress had
equality as its goal.
¾¾ Tocqueville caught a fleeting glimpse of that future for France

in 1830, but then a new monarch was installed, and Tocqueville
reluctantly took an oath of allegiance to him. No one seemed to
believe any more that a republic was a viable alternative; thus,
Tocqueville began casting around for an example that would

convince people otherwise. And
that, in 1832, was what brought
him to the United States.
¾¾ Tocqueville and his friend would

actually stay in America for only
slightly more than nine months,
where they considered their
real tasks to be “researching
statistics on the conditions of the
population, on public institutions,
and on all the political questions
that concern us.” They journeyed
upriver to Albany; west to
Niagara Falls; across the
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Great Lakes to Detroit,
(1805–1859)
Quebec, and Montreal, then
doubled back to Boston,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. By January, 1832, they had visited
Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans and made one
last turn through Washington and New York before departing
in February. Along the way, they met John Quincy Adams,
Andrew Jackson, Albert Gallatin, John Marshall, Henry Clay, and
many others.
JAMES MADISON
¾¾ By 1832, the ranks of the Founders had grown exceedingly thin.

Of the 39 who had signed the Constitution, 4 of them died in 1790,
including the tottering Benjamin Franklin. Washington himself died
in 1799, and the decade also saw the loss of Robert Sherman,
James Wilson, and Patrick Henry. The 1800s witnessed the losses
of John Rutledge, James McHenry, William Findley, Jefferson,
Adams, Rufus King, and John Marshall.
¾¾ That left, at the end, only one man standing: James Madison,
the last survivor of the Constitutional Convention. Now at age 80,
290 Lecture 36 • Alexis de Tocqueville’s America

he had come out of retirement only once, in 1829, to serve as a
delegate from Orange County to the new Virginia Constitutional
Convention, and in the only speech he delivered at the convention,
he might have been summarizing in advance for Tocqueville what
he would have told the Frenchman face-to-face:
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged

as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
In monarchies, the interests and happiness of nil may
be sacrificed to the caprice and passions of a despot. In
aristocracies, the rights and welfare of the many may be
sacrificed to the pride and cupidity of the few. In republics, the
great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect
the rights of the minority.
¾¾ Madison had never flagged in his belief that the great danger to
liberty was power. But it was an enemy without which liberty could
not survive, if only for the purpose of self-protection. In monarchies
and tyrannies, we always know in what direction power acts—from
the top down. The novelty in republics is that it can just as easily
operate from the bottom up, and all the labors Madison had devoted
to the Constitutional Convention had been aimed at preventing
bottom-up power from creating lawless local despotisms.
¾¾ Madison also took the opportunity to ask for a correction to the one
great oversight of the summer of 1787, and that concerned slavery.
Emancipation was the one remaining stone that would

complete the wonderful edifice of liberty, Madison asserted.
“Other nations are surprised at nothing so much as our having
been able to form Constitutions in the manner which has been
exemplified in this country. Even the union of so many States,
is, in the eyes of the world … a miracle.”
If Americans had been able to do so much so quickly, then

Madison was confident that, even “without a miracle,” we
could end slavery.

SELF-INTEREST
¾¾ In his travels through the United States, the one word that Alexis de
Tocqueville did not hear was virtue. “In the United States, it is almost
never said that virtue is beautiful.” What he heard about instead was
self-interest. “The doctrine of self-interest well understood … has
been universally accepted,” Tocqueville wrote, “one finds it at the
foundation of all actions; it pierces into all discussions.”
¾¾ Americans had not formed communities in search of righteousness

but in search of profits. Karl Marx, in the next decade, would write
about society and economics as a war between classes, in which
profits were the chief cause of personal alienation and conflict
the ceaseless order of the day. But the only conflict Tocqueville
saw in America was between profit-seeking individuals who were,
ironically, entirely in agreement with each other about the pursuit
of self-interest.
¾¾ Even more ironically, it was the pursuit of wealth that produced

virtue, rather than the other way around. “The doctrine of self-
interest well understood does not produce great devotion,”
Tocqueville acknowledged, “by itself it cannot make a man
virtuous; but it forms a multitude of citizens who are regulated,
temperate, moderate, farsighted, masters of themselves.” The
great exception to this self-mastery was, of course, American
slavery. But even among the enslaved, as Frederick Douglass
would later say, what the slave wanted most in freedom was the
free pursuit of self-interest.
¾¾ But the substitution of self-interest for virtue did have this

drawback: It made equality more important than liberty. No single
individual—no matter how wise, well-educated, or authoritative—
was entitled to more of a say in public affairs than any other self-
interested individual. This created an atmosphere in which only
numbers, not truth, were the effective force in American life. What
kept democracy from degenerating into mere mob rule were, as

Tocqueville noted, two uniquely American institutions: newspapers
and voluntary organizations.
Newspapers make “political life circulate in all sections of this

vast territory” and force “public men … to appear before the
court of opinion.”
Voluntary associations—organizations of citizens, collected at

their own prompting— performed much of the social work that
governments in Europe took unto themselves and formed a
MOST VOLUNTARY
ASSOCIATIONS IN
AMERICA WERE
RELIGIOUS, SUCH
AS CHURCHES,
BUT THEY ALSO
INCLUDED CLUBS
AND SOCIETIES
FOR CHARITABLE,
SOCIAL, POLITICAL,
AND INTELLECTUAL
PURPOSES.

layer of resistance to government forcing a tyrannical authority
downward or from a mob imposing a tyrannical force upward
on the government.
Most of these voluntary associations were religious. But

Americans also have “a thousand other kinds”: In fact, where
“at the head” of any “new undertaking” in France or England
you see the government or “a great lord,” in America, “you will
find an association.”
¾¾ Tocqueville was not being censorious. When he published his

observations as De la démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in
America), he did not believe that “the perils that equality brings to
human independence” were “insurmountable.” But he was worried
that the passion of equality was draining American democracy of
any art or culture.
He met “a great quantity of individuals who are interested in

things of the mind” but the “least occupied with literature” of
any “civilized country of our day.” The passion for equality
exerted a downward pressure on intellectual freedom, not
by aristocratic censorship from above, but from a spirit of
democratic conformity that resented intellectual superiority
and demanded conformity to the lowest common denominator
of thought.
Judgment, taste, and distinction become suspect; a

cheapened and debased public opinion rules self-righteously.
Each citizen becomes “a stranger to the destiny of all the
others; his children and his particular friends form the whole
human species for him.” At that moment, government steps in
to assume “an immense tutelary power” which “takes charge
of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate.”
¾¾ It was the rise of voluntary associations, especially the religious

ones, that saved Americans from despotism; when the day arrived

that these associations ceased to function, then a new form of
despotism—a soft despotism—would have arrived, in which
people thoughtlessly chained their own shackles to themselves.
¾¾ In an odd way, Tocqueville and Madison complement each other.

Both of them understood that free government is an awkward
and constantly adjusting dance between liberty and power; both
understood that the threat of power can come from below as
well as from above; both hoped that by divvying up power and
distributing it broadly (whether between branches of government
or in the form of voluntary associations), power could be made to
serve liberty’s purposes.
This might not make for efficiency, and in the modern world,
efficiency has become one of the principal disguises power
takes unto itself. But the Founders were not concerned with
efficiency; they were concerned with liberty. And they knew
that its life was always precarious.
Emerging from the locked doors of the Constitutional

Convention in September 1787, a voice called out to Benjamin
Franklin, “What is it? Republic or monarchy?” Franklin stopped
to reply, hopefully with a twinkle in his still-mischievous eye:
“A republic, if you can keep it.” The question, and its answer,
are still with us.
SUGGESTED READING
Diggins, On Hallowed Ground, chap. 4.

McCoy, Last of the Founders, chaps. 6–7.

1. How important in Tocqueville’s observation was self-interest to Americans?
2. What kept democracy from degenerating into mob rule?
3. What did Madison always believe was the relationship of liberty and
power?

BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL HISTORIES OF THE FOUNDING
Beeman, Richard. Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American

Constitution. New York: Random House, 2009. The most thorough one-
volume history of the Constitutional Convention.
Berkin, Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution. New

York: Harcourt, 2002.
Collier, Christopher, and James Collier. Decision in Philadelphia: The

Constitutional Convention of 1787. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.
Elkins, Stanley, and Eric McKitrick. The Age of Federalism: The Early
American Republic, 1788–1800. New York: Oxford University Press,
1993. An extraordinary reconstruction of the personalities and policies of
the Federalists.
Kaminski, John P., ed. The Founders on the Founders: Word Portraits
from the American Revolutionary Era. Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 2008.
McDonald, Forrest. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of

the Constitution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985. A virtuoso
introduction to the basic political principles of the Founders.
Stewart, David O. The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the
Constitution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. A vigorously written
popular history of the Constitutional Convention.

COLLECTIONS OF PRIMARY DOCUMENTS
The most often-cited source on the Constitutional Convention is the record

kept by James Madison, which appears as (a) “Debates in the Federal
Convention of 1787 as Reported by James Madison,” in Documents
Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States, edited by
C. C. Tansill (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1927)—a volume
that has the attraction of including in its single, mammoth bulk most of
the other relevant documents for the founding—and (b) in The Records
of the Federal Convention of 1787, edited by Max Farrand (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1911). As much as Madison’s notes stand apart as
a primary source, Madison forbade their publication until after his death,
and the notes themselves show evidence of Madison’s own tinkering and
editing of what was ultimately published.
On the ratification of the Constitution, see The Debates in the Several

State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Convention, edited
by Jonathan Elliott (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1836) and its modern
and much more expansive counterpart, The Documentary History of the
Ratification of the Constitution, edited by Merrill Jensen, et al. (Madison:
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976, 27 vols.).
OTHER PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

ON THE FOUNDING
Crevècoeur, Hector Saint John de. Letters from an American Farmer and
Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. Edited by Albert Stone. New
York: Penguin, 1981.
Gales, Joseph, ed. Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United
States: With an Appendix Containing Important State Papers and Public
Documents. Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1834.
Hyneman, C. S., and D. S. Lutz, eds. American Political Writing during

the Founding Era, 1760–1805. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1983. An
outstanding two-volume collection of political documents of the founding
era, outside the orbit of the founders themselves.
298 Bibliography
Storing, Herbert J., ed. The Complete Anti-Federalist. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1981.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Edited by Harvey C. Mansfield

and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Warren, Mercy Otis. History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the
American Revolution. Boston: Manning & Loring, 1805.
Wootton, David, ed. The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers.

Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003.
EDITIONS OF PAPERS AND WRITINGS

OF THE FOUNDERS
Abbot, W. W., ed. The Papers of George Washington: Confederation

Series. 6 vols. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997.
Allen, W. B., ed. George Washington: A Collection. Indianapolis: Liberty

Fund, 1988.
———. Works of Fisher Ames. 2 vols. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1983.
Boyd, Julian P., ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. 21 vols. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1950–2006.
Butterfield, Lyman H., ed. The Adams Papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1961.
Butterfield, Lyman H. et al, eds. The Book of Abigail and John: Selected
Letters of the Adams Family, 1762–1784. Boston: Massachusetts Historical
Society, 1975.
Cohn, Ellen R. et al, eds. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. 41 vols. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1959–2011.

Dillon, J. M., ed. John Marshall: Complete Constitutional Decisions.
Chicago: Callaghan & Co., 1903.
Ferguson, E. J., et al, eds. The Papers of Robert Morris 1781–1784. 9 vols.
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973.
Hall, K., and M. D. Hall, eds. Collected Works of James Wilson. 2 vols.
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007.
Rutland, Robert A., ed. The Papers of George Mason, 1725–1792. 3 vols.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.
Rutland, Robert, A. et al, eds. The Papers of James Madison. 38 vols.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press & Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press, 1962–2016.
Syrett, Harold C., ed. The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. 27 vols. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1961.
Twohig, Dorothy, ed. The Papers of George Washington: Presidential

Series. 18 vols. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987–2015.
BIOGRAPHIES: SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORIES
Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party

Ideology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
———. The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of
the Federal Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. The best one-
volume introduction to Madison’s political ideas.
Beeman, Richard. Patrick Henry: A Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974.
Bernstein, Richard B. The Founding Fathers Reconsidered. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2009.
300 Bibliography
Bodenhamer, David J. The Revolutionary Constitution. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Bordewich, Fergus. Washington: The Making of the American Capital. New

York: HarperCollins, 2008. A sprightly history of the creation of the District
of Columbia.
Broadwater, Jeff. George Mason: Forgotten Founder. Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Brookhiser, Richard. Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the

Rake Who Wrote the Constitution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Buel, Richard. America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle over the
War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005.
Burnett, Edmund Cody. The Continental Congress: A Definitive History of

the Continental Congress from Its Inception in 1774 to March, 1789. New
York: Macmillan, 1941. Although creaking with age, still the best overall
history of the Confederation years.
Chapin, Bradley. The American Law of Treason: Revolutionary and Early

National Origins. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964.
Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. A

highly successful and popular biography of Hamilton that became the basis
for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop musical, Hamilton.
Clarkson, Paul S., and R. Samuel Jett. Luther Martin of Maryland.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970.
Combs, Jerald A. The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground of the Founding

Fathers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
Diggins, John Patrick. On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the

Foundations of American History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Drez, Ronald J. The War of 1812, Conflict and Deception: The British
Attempt to Seize New Orleans and Nullify the Louisiana Purchase. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014.
Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
Ernst, Robert. Rufus King: American Federalist. Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1968.
Estes, Todd. The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution
of Early American Political Culture. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 2006.
Fleming, Thomas. Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of
America. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
———. The Louisiana Purchase. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.
Freeman, Joanne B. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Glover, Lorri. Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the
American Revolutionaries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.
Hall, Mark David. Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American
Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Chicago:

University of Illinois Press, 2012.
Holton, Woody. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution.

New York: Hill & Wang, 2007. A strikingly written account of the economic
motivations of the founders, harking back to progressive interpreters of the
Constitution in the early 20th century.
302 Bibliography
Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2003.
Isenberg, Nancy. Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr. New York: Viking
Penguin, 2007.
Israel, Jonathan. Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and

Human Rights, 1750–1790. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. This
massive tome, one of a series written by Israel on the Enlightenment, sets
the American political experiment in an international 18th-century context.
Jensen, Merrill. The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the

Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774–1781.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1940. The most thorough analysis
of the creation and content of the first American constitution.
———. The New Nation: A History of the United States during the
Confederation, 1781–1789. New York: Vintage, 1965.
Kaminski, John P. George Clinton: Yeoman Politician of the New Republic.

Madison: Madison House, 1993.
———. The Great Virginia Triumvirate: George Washington, Thomas

Jefferson, and James Madison in the Eyes of Their Contemporaries.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
Ketchum, Ralph L. James Madison: A Biography. Charlottesville: University

Press of Virginia, 1990. An extraordinary one-volume survey of the life
of Madison.
Kidd, Thomas. Patrick Henry: First among Patriots. New York: Basic
Books, 2011.
———. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in

Colonial America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Labunski, Richard. James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Lambert, Frank. The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic

World. New York: Hill & Wang, 2005.
Lyons, Jonathan. The Society for Useful Knowledge: How Benjamin

Franklin and Friends Brought the Enlightenment to America. New York:
Bloomsbury Press, 2013.
Maier, Pauline. Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–

1788. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. A wonderful single-volume
overview of the state ratifying conventions.
Main, Jackson Turner. The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution,

1781–1788. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. First
published 1961.
Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and His Time: Jefferson the President, First
Term, 1801–1805. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970.
Matthews, Marty D. Forgotten Founder: The Life and Times of Charles

Pinckney. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
McCoy, Drew R. Last of the Founders: James Madison and the Republican
Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Looks back on
Madison’s participation in the founding from the perspective of his last
years in retirement.
McDonald, Forrest. Alexander Hamilton: A Biography. New York: W. W.

Norton, 1979. The finest scholarly biography of Hamilton.
———. The Presidency of George Washington. Lawrence: University

Press of Kansas, 1974.
304 Bibliography
———. We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1958. A comprehensive reply to Progressive
Era denigrations of the Constitution.
Miller, William L. The Business of May Next: James Madison and the
Founding. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992.
Morris, Richard B. Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers
as Revolutionaries. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Myerson, Michael I. Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote

the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy
Safe for the World. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
Nash, Gary B. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of

Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. New York: Viking 2005.
Newmyer, R. Kent. John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme
Court. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
O’Brien, Conor Cruise. The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French
Revolution, 1785–1800. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. A no-
holds-barred attack on Jefferson’s naiveté about the French Revolution.
O’Connor, John E. William Paterson: Lawyer and Statesman, 1745–1806.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979.
Rael, Patrick. Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United
States, 1777–1865. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015.
Rakove, Jack. Original Meanings Politics and Ideas in the Making of the
Constitution. New York: Knopf, 1996.
———. The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the

Continental Congress. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.

Randall, Willard Sterne. George Washington: A Life. New York: Henry Holt,
1997. The best single-volume life of Washington.
Rappleye, Charles. Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Richards, Leonard L. Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final

Battle. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
Robbins, Karen E. James McHenry: Forgotten Federalist. Athens:

University of Georgia Press, 2013.
Sheehan, Colleen A. James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-

Government. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the

American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Smith, Jean Edward. John Marshall: Definer of a Nation. New York: Henry
Holt, 1996.
Stahr, Walter. John Jay: Founding Father. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005.
Szatmary, David P. Shays’ Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian

Insurrection. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980.
Thach, Charles C. Creation of the Presidency, 1775–1789: A Study in

Constitutional History. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2007. First published
1969.
Toll, Ian W. Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.
Vogel, Steve. Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks That Saved the
Nation. New York: Random House, 2013.
306 Bibliography
Wells, Colin. The Devil and Doctor Dwight: Satire and Theology in the Early
American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–

1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. A Pulitzer Prize–winning
survey of the early republic.
———. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969. One of the great books on
the ideas that ruled the minds of the founders, focusing on the domestic
sources of the revolution’s ideology.
———. The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States.
New York: Penguin, 2011. A collection of Wood’s finest essays.
———. The Radicalism of the American Revolution: How a Revolution

Transformed a Monarchical Society into a Democratic One Unlike Any That
Had Ever Existed. New York: Knopf, 1997. Alongside Forrest McDonald’s
Novus Ordo Seclorum, a marvelous account of the transformation of the
political ideas of the founding from monarchy to democracy.

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History American History

THE GREAT COURSES

Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2017

Printed in the United States of America

This book is in copyright. All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

A and the Director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College in

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from

Professor Guelzo is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President

From 2006 to 2013, Professor Guelzo served as a member of the National

Professor Guelzo lives in Paoli and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with his

In support of its mission—the increase and diffusion of knowledge—

Designed as a chronological narrative and richly supported by images

America's Founding Fathers iii

America's Founding Fathers v

America's Founding Fathers vii

I relocated from his native Maryland to Philadelphia. The move was

significant for Peale personally, as he expanded his practice of portraiture

Peale would soon become one of the foremost portraitists of American

CHARLES WILLSON PEALE

So long as political history was the dominant mode of the profession,

America's Founding Fathers ix

After World War II, the humanities in America, especially history,

Fortunately, it appears that we are in the midst of a revival of the fortunes of

This preamble necessarily simplifies (or even distorts) a complicated

America's Founding Fathers xi

G towards corruption” and must be rescued “at certain periods by the

resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original

This course begins with George Washington, the indispensable man

America's Founding Fathers 1

T operating instrument of government in the

world. Since the Constitution was ratified in

¾¾ Some of them hated each other; John Adams and Benjamin

¾¾ What may be a real mystery for us is who we should actually

¾¾ By various counts, such as signers of the Declaration, we come up

4 Lecture 1 • George Washington’s Doubts

¾¾ Putting together various signing lists, we end up with some

¾¾ We will cast our net widely in terms of a timeframe, as well,

¾¾ We’ll close with a figure who wasn’t even an American citizen,

America's Founding Fathers 5

much less defended—the voice of George Washington. But even

WASHINGTON ON THE REPUBLIC

¾¾ Washington was ordinarily not a man given to much self-searching

6 Lecture 1 • George Washington’s Doubts

¾¾ He might have remained in retirement at Mount Vernon, but in the

 For one thing, republics—unlike monarchies—are held

 Further, republics were supposed to work only on a relatively

¾¾ What Washington saw in post-Revolutionary America made

America's Founding Fathers 7

 Five banking houses in London that had allowed Americans to

 Nor did the Articles of Confederation, which had been ratified

 The Congress created by the Articles of Confederation had no

 Nor did the Confederation government have much sway

8 Lecture 1 • George Washington’s Doubts

¾¾ Even after the peace treaty GEORGE WASHINGTON

¾¾ The British government,

America's Founding Fathers 9

Bernstein, The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, chap. 1 and appendix.

For one thing, republics—unlike monarchies—are held

Further, republics were supposed to work only on a relatively

Five banking houses in London that had allowed Americans to

Nor did the Articles of Confederation, which had been ratified

The Congress created by the Articles of Confederation had no

Nor did the Confederation government have much sway

Young Mifflin was

Money flowed into Mifflin’s grasp with unQuakerly

Even then, the Articles stated, “Each state retains its

The ratification was greeted with the discharge of artillery in

But neither the treaty nor Mifflin could make a quorum

Mifflin had to prod by letter delegations from New Hampshire,

In fact, Congress would not have enough representatives on

Thereafter, even the feeble urgency summoned up by the peace

When Congress finally adjourned on June 3, it resolved to

This was, in large measure, a product of British commercial

By these means, Britain starved its colonies of specie. Every

But Parliament forbade the creation of corporations or banks in

On October 4, 1779, a street mob, whipped up by charges that

Someone began shooting, and in short order, the mob

The approval of the 5 percent impost passed by Congress

A national property tax on land

The recall of paper money by exchanging it for a national loan

The establishment of a Bank of North America.