CHAPTER II.
Ratifications of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut, without Objection.—Close of the Year 1787.—Beginning of the Year 1788.—Ratification of Massachusetts, the sixth State, with Propositions of Amendment.—Ratification of Maryland, without Objection.—South Carolina, the eighth State, adopts, and proposes Amendments.
The first State that ratified the Constitution, although its convention was not the first to assemble, was Delaware. It was a small, compact community, with the northerly portion of its territory lying near the city of Philadelphia, with which its people had constant and extensive intercourse. Its public men were intelligent and patriotic. In the national Convention it had contended with great spirit for the interests of the smaller States, and its people now had the sagacity and good sense to perceive that they had gained every reasonable security for their peculiar rights. The public press of Philadelphia friendly to the Constitution furnished the means of understanding its merits, and the discussions in the convention of Pennsylvania, which assembled before that of Delaware, threw a flood of light over the whole subject, which the people of Delaware did not fail to regard. Their delegates unanimously ratified and adopted the Constitution on the 7th of December.
The convention of Pennsylvania met, before that of any of the other States, at Philadelphia, on the 20th of November. It was the second State in the Union in population. Its chief city was perhaps the first in the Union in refinement and wealth, and had often been the scene of great political events of the utmost interest and importance to the whole country. There had sat, eleven years before, that illustrious Congress of deputies from the thirteen Colonies, who had declared the independence of America, had made Washington commander-in-chief of her armies, and had given her struggle for freedom a name throughout the world. There, the Revolutionary Congress had continued, with a short interruption, to direct the operations of the war. There, the alliance with France was ratified, in 1778. There, the Articles of Confederation were finally carried into full effect, in 1781. There, within six months afterwards, the Congress received intelligence of the surrender of Cornwallis, and walked in procession to one of the churches of the city, to return thanks to God for a victory which in effect terminated the war. There, the instructions for the treaty of peace were given, in 1782, and there the Constitution of the United States had been recently framed. For more than thirteen years, since the commencement of the Revolution, and with only occasional intervals, the people of Philadelphia had been accustomed to the presence of the most eminent statesmen of the country, and had learned, through the influences which had gone forth from their city, to embrace in their contemplation the interests of the Union.
They placed in the State convention, that was to consider the proposed Constitution of the United States, one of the wisest and ablest of its framers,—James Wilson. The modesty of his subsequent career,[411] and the comparatively little attention that has been bestowed by succeeding generations upon the personal exertions that were made in framing and establishing the Constitution, must be regarded as the causes that have made his reputation, at this day, less extensive and general than his abilities and usefulness might have led his contemporaries to expect that it would be. Yet the services which he rendered to the country, first in assisting in the preparation of the Constitution, and afterwards in securing its adoption by the State of Pennsylvania, should place his name high upon the list of its benefactors. He had not the political genius which gave Hamilton such a complete mastery over the most complex subjects of government, and which enabled him, when the Constitution had been adopted, to give it a development in practice that made it even more successful than its theory alone could have allowed any one to regard as probable; nor had he the talent of Madison for debate and for constitutional analysis; but in the comprehensiveness of his views, and in his perception of the necessities of the country, he was not their inferior, and he was throughout one of their most efficient and best informed coadjutors.
He had to encounter, in the convention of the State, a body of men, a majority of whom were not unfriendly to the Constitution, but among whom there was a minority very hard to be conciliated. In the counties which lay west of the Susquehanna,—the same region which afterwards, in Washington's administration, became the scene of an insurrection against the authority of the general government,—there was a rancorous, active, and determined opposition. Mr. Wilson, being the only member of the State convention who had taken part in the framing of the Constitution, was obliged to take the lead in explaining and defending it. His qualifications for this task were ample. He had been a very important and useful member of the national Convention; he had read every publication of importance, on both sides of the question, that had appeared since the Constitution was published, and his legal and historical knowledge was extensive and accurate. No man succeeded better than he did, in his arguments on that occasion, in combating the theory that a State government possessed the whole political sovereignty of the people of the State. However true it might be, he said, in England, that the Parliament possesses supreme and absolute power, and can make the constitution what it pleases, in America it has been incontrovertible since the Revolution, that the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power is in the people, before they make a constitution, and remains in them after it is made. To control the power and conduct of the legislature by an overruling constitution, was an improvement in the science and practice of government reserved to the American States; and at the foundation of this practice lies the right to change the constitution at pleasure,—a right which no positive institution can ever take from the people. When they have made a State constitution, they have bestowed on the government created by it a certain portion of their power; but the fee simple of their power remains in themselves.
Mr. Wilson was equally clear in accounting for the omission to insert a bill of rights in the Constitution of the United States. In a government, he observed, consisting of enumerated powers, such as was then proposed for the United States, a bill of rights, which is an enumeration of the powers reserved by the people, must either be a perfect or an imperfect statement of the powers and privileges reserved. To undertake a perfect enumeration of the civil rights of mankind, is to undertake a very difficult and hazardous, and perhaps an impossible task; yet if the enumeration is imperfect, all implied power seems to be thrown into the hands of the government, on subjects in reference to which the authority of government is not expressly restrained, and the rights of the people are rendered less secure than they are under the silent operation of the maxim that every power not expressly granted remains in the people. This, he stated, was the view taken by a large majority of the national Convention, in which no direct proposition was ever made, according to his recollection, for the insertion of a bill of rights.[412] There is, undoubtedly, a general truth in this argument, but, like many general truths in the construction of governments, it may be open to exceptions when applied to particular subjects or interests. It appears to have been, for the time, successful; probably because the opponents of the Constitution, with whom Mr. Wilson was contending, did not bring forward specific propositions for the declaration of those particular rights which were made the subjects of special action in other State conventions.
Besides a very thorough discussion of these great subjects, Mr. Wilson entered into an elaborate examination and defence of the whole system proposed in the Constitution. He was most ably seconded in his efforts by Thomas McKean, then Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and afterwards its Governor, the greater part of whose public life had been passed in the service of Delaware, his native State, and who had always been a strenuous advocate of the interests of the smaller States, but who found himself satisfied with the provision for them made by the Constitution for the construction of the Senate of the United States.[413] "I have gone," said he, "through the circle of office, in the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of government; and from all my study, observation, and experience, I must declare, that, from a full examination and due consideration of this system, it appears to me the best the world has yet seen. I congratulate you on the fair prospect of its being adopted, and am happy in the expectation of seeing accomplished what has long been my ardent wish, that you will hereafter have a salutary permanency in magistracy and stability in the laws."
The result of the discussion in the convention of Pennsylvania was the ratification of the Constitution. The official ratification sent to Congress was signed by a very large majority of the delegates, and contains no notice of any dissent.[414] But the representatives of that portion of the State which lay west of the Susquehanna generally refused their assent, and their district afterwards became the place in which the proposition was considered whether the government should be allowed to be organized.[415]
The convention of New Jersey was in session at the time of the ratification by Pennsylvania. Mr. Madison had passed through the State, in the autumn, on his way to the Congress, then sitting in the city of New York, and could discover no evidence of serious opposition to the Constitution. Lying between the States of New York and Pennsylvania, New Jersey was closely watched by the friends and the opponents of the Constitution in both of those States, and was likely to be much influenced by the predominating sentiment in the one that should first act.[416] But the people of New Jersey had, in truth, fairly considered the whole matter, and had found what their own interests required. They alone, of all the States, when the national Convention was instituted, had expressly declared that the regulation of commerce ought to be vested in the general government. They had learned that to submit longer to the diverse commercial and revenue systems in force in New York on the one side of them, and in Pennsylvania on the other side, would be like remaining between the upper and the nether millstone. Their delegates in the national Convention had, it is true, acted with those of New York, in the long contest concerning the representative system, resisting at every step each departure from the principle of the Confederation, until the compromise was made which admitted the States to an equal representation in the Senate. Content with the security which this arrangement afforded, the people of New Jersey had the sagacity to perceive that their interests were no longer likely to be promoted by following in the lead of the Anti-Federalists of New York. Their delegates unanimously ratified the Constitution on the 12th of December, five days after the ratification of Pennsylvania.
A few days later, there came from the far South news that the convention of Georgia had, with like unanimity, adopted the Constitution. Neither the people of the State, nor their delegates, could well have acted under the influence of what was taking place in the centre of the Union. Their situation was too remote for the reception, at that day, within the same fortnight, of the news of events that had occurred in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and they could scarcely have read the great discussions that were going on in various forms of controversy in the cities of New York and Philadelphia, and throughout the Middle and the Eastern States. Wasted excessively during the Revolution, by the nature of the warfare carried on within her limits; left at the peace to contend with a large, powerful, and cruel tribe of Indians, that pressed upon her western settlements; and having her southern frontier bordering upon the unfriendly territory of a Spanish colony,—the State of Georgia had strong motives to lead her to embrace the Constitution of the United States, and found little in that instrument calculated to draw her in the opposite direction. Her delegates had resisted the surrender of control over the slave-trade, but they had acquiesced in the compromise on that subject, and there was in truth nothing in the position in which it was left that was likely to give the State serious dissatisfaction or uneasiness. The people of Georgia had something more important to do than to quarrel with their representatives about the principles or details of the system to which they had consented in the national Convention. They felt the want of a general government able to resist, with a stronger hand than that of the Confederation, the evils which pressed upon them.[417] Their assent was unanimously given to the Constitution on the 2d of January, 1788.
The legislature of Connecticut had ordered a convention to be held on the 4th of January. When the elections were over, it was ascertained that there was a large majority in favor of the Constitution; but there was to be some opposition, proceeding principally from that portion of the people who resisted whatever tended to the vigor and stability of government,—a spirit that existed to some extent in all the New England States. When the convention of the State assembled, the principal duty of advocating the adoption of the Constitution devolved on Oliver Ellsworth, who had borne an active and distinguished part in its preparation. He found that the topic which formed the chief subject of all the arguments against the Constitution, was the general power of taxation which it would confer on the national government, and the particular power of laying imposts. Mr. Ellsworth was eminently qualified to explain and defend the proposed revenue system. While he contended for the necessity of giving to Congress a general power to levy direct taxes, in order that the government might be able to meet extraordinary emergencies, and thus be placed upon an equality with other governments, he demonstrated by public and well-known facts that an indirect revenue, to be derived from imposts, would be at once the easiest and most reliable mode of defraying the ordinary expenses of the government, because it would interfere less than any other form of taxation with the internal police of the States; and he argued, from sufficient data, that a very small rate of duty would be enough for this purpose.[418] Under his influence and that of Oliver Wolcott, Richard Law, and Governor Huntington, the Constitution was ratified by a large majority, on the 9th of January.[419]
The action of Connecticut completed the list of the States that ratified the Constitution without any formal record of objections, and without proposing or insisting upon amendments. The opposition in these five States had been overcome by reason and argument, and they were a majority of the whole number of States whose accession was necessary to the establishment of the government. But a new act in the drama was to open with the new year. The conventions of Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia were still to meet, and each of them was full of elements of opposition of the most formidable character, and of different kinds, which made the result in all of them extremely doubtful. If all the three were to adopt the Constitution, still one more must be gained from the States of New Hampshire, Maryland, and North and South Carolina. The influence of each accession to the Constitution on the remaining States might be expected to be considerable; but, unfortunately, the convention of New Hampshire was to meet five months before those of Virginia and New York, and a large number of its members had been instructed to reject the Constitution. If New Hampshire and Massachusetts were to refuse their assent in the course of the winter, the States that were to act in the spring could scarcely be expected to withstand the untoward influence of such an example, which would probably operate with a constantly accelerating force throughout the whole number of the remaining States.
The convention of Massachusetts commenced its session on the 9th of January, the same day on which that of Connecticut closed its proceedings. The State certainly held a very high rank in the Union. Her Revolutionary history was filled with glory; with sufferings cheerfully borne; with examples of patriotism that were to give her enduring fame. The blood of martyrs in that cause, which she had made from the first the cause of the whole country, had been poured profusely upon her soil, and in the earlier councils of the Union she had maintained a position of commanding influence. But there had been in her political conduct, since the freedom of the country was achieved, an unsteadiness and vacillation of which her former reputation gave no presage. In 1783, the legislature had refused to give the revenue powers asked for by the Congress, for the miserable reason that the Congress had granted half-pay for life to the officers of the Revolutionary army. In May, 1785, the legislature adopted a resolution for a convention of the States to consider the subject of enlarging the powers of the Federal Union, and in the following November they rescinded it. These, and other occurrences, when remembered, gave the friends of the Constitution elsewhere great anxiety, as they turned their eyes towards Massachusetts. They were fully aware, too, that the recent insurrection in that State, and the severe measures which had followed it, had created divisions in society which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to heal.
But it was not easy for the most intelligent men out of the State to appreciate fully all the causes that exposed the Constitution of the United States to a peculiar hazard in Massachusetts, and made it necessary to procure its ratification by a kind of compromise with the opposition for a scheme of amendments. In no State was the spirit of liberty more jealous and exacting. In the midst of the Revolution, and led by the men who had carried on the profound discussions which preceded it,—discussions in which the natural rights of mankind and the civil rights of British subjects were examined and displayed as they had never been before,—the people of Massachusetts had framed a State constitution, filled with the most impressive maxims and the most solemn securities with which public liberty has ever been invested. Not content to trust obvious truths to implication, they expressly declared that government is instituted for the happiness and welfare of the governed, and they fenced it round not only with the chief restrictions gained by their English ancestors, from Magna Charta down to the Revolution of 1688, but with many safeguards which had not descended to them from Runnymede or Westminster. It may be that an anxious student of politics, examining the early constitution of Massachusetts,—happily in its most important features yet unchanged,—would pronounce it unnecessarily careful of personal rights and too jealous for the interests of liberty. But no intelligent mind, thoughtful of the welfare of society, can now think that to have been an excess of wisdom which formed a constitution of republican government that has so well withstood the assaults of faction and the levelling tendencies of a levelling age, and has withstood them because, while it carefully guarded the liberties of the people, it secured those liberties by institutions which stand as bulwarks between the power of the many and the rights of the few.
It may hereafter become necessary for me to consider what degree of importance justly belongs to the amendments which the State of Massachusetts, and to those which other States, so impressively insisted ought to be made to the Constitution of the United States. Without at present turning farther aside from the narrative of events, I content myself here with observing, that, whether the alleged defects in the Constitution were important or unimportant, a people educated as the people of Massachusetts had been would naturally regard some provisions as essential which they did not find in the plan presented to them.
The general aspect of parties in Massachusetts, down to the time when the convention met, has been already considered. In the convention itself there was a majority originally opposed to the Constitution; and if a vote had been taken at any time before the proposition for amendments was brought forward, the Constitution would have been rejected. The opposition consisted of a full representation of the various parties and interests already described as existing among the people of the State who were unfriendly to it. One contemporary account gives as many as eighteen or twenty members, who had actually been out in what was called Shays's "army." Whether this enumeration was strictly correct or not, it is well known that the western counties of the State sent a large number of men whose sympathies were with that insurrection, who were friends of paper money and tender laws, and enemies of any system that would promote the security of debts. The members from the province of Maine had their own special objects to pursue. In addition to these were the honest and well-meaning doubters, who had examined the Constitution with care and objected to it from principle. The anticipated leader of this miscellaneous host was that celebrated and ardent patriot of the Revolution, Samuel Adams. With all his energy and his iron determination of character, however, he could be cautious when caution was expedient. He had read the Constitution, and all the principal publications respecting it which had then appeared, and down to the time of the meeting of the convention he had maintained a good deal of reserve. But it was known that he disapproved of it.
This remarkable man—often called the American Cato—was far better fitted to rouse and direct the storms of revolution, than to reconstruct the political fabric after revolution had done its work. He had the passionate love of liberty, fertility of resource, and indomitable will, which are most needed in a truly great leader of a popular struggle with arbitrary power. But that struggle over, his usefulness in an emergency like the one in which Massachusetts was now placed was limited to the actual necessity for the intervention of an extreme devotion to the maxims and principles of popular freedom. He believed that there was such a necessity, and he acted always as he believed. But his influence, at this time, was by no means commensurate with his power and reputation at a former day, and he appears to have wisely avoided a direct contest with the large body of very able men who supported the Constitution.
That body of men would certainly have been, in any assembly convened for such a purpose, an overmatch in debate for Samuel Adams; for they were the civilians Fisher Ames, Parsons, King, Sedgwick, Gorham, Dana, Gore, Bowdoin, and Sumner, the Revolutionary officers Heath, Lincoln, and Brooks, and several of the most distinguished clergymen in the State. The names of the members who acted on the same side with Mr. Adams, and were then regarded as leaders of the opposition, have reached posterity in no other connection.[420] But some of the elements of which that opposition was composed could not be controlled by any superiority in debate, and were, therefore, little in need of great powers of discussion or great wisdom in council. So far as their objections related to the powers to be conferred on the general government, or to the structure of the proposed system, they could be answered, and many of them could be, and were, convinced. But with respect to what they considered the defects of the Constitution, theoretical reasoning, however able, could have no influence over men whose minds were made up; and it became, as the reader will see, necessary to make an effort to gain a majority by some course of action which would involve the concession that the proposed system required amendment.
There were great hazards attending this course, in reference to its effect on other States, although it was not impossible to procure by it the ratification of this convention. Notwithstanding all that had detracted from the former high standing of the State,—notwithstanding the easy explanation that might be given of the influence of her late internal disturbances upon her subsequent political affairs,—she was still Massachusetts; still she was the eldest of all the States but one,—still she held in the sacred places of her soil the bones of the first martyrs to liberty,—still she was renowned, as she has ever been, for her intelligence,—still she wore a name of more than ordinary consideration among her sisters of the Confederacy. If it should go forth to New York, to Virginia, to the Carolinas, that Massachusetts had pronounced the Constitution unfit for the acceptance of a free people, or had declared that public liberty could not be preserved under it without the addition of provisions which its framers had not made, the effect might be disastrous beyond all previous calculation. The legislature of New York, in session at the same time with the convention of Massachusetts, was much divided on the question of submitting the Constitution to a convention, and it was the opinion of careful observers that the result in either way in the latter State would involve that in the former. In Virginia the elections for their convention were soon to take place. In Pennsylvania the minority were becoming restless under their defeat, and were agitating plans which looked to the obstruction of the government when an attempt should be made to organize it. The convention of South Carolina was not to meet until May, and North Carolina stood in an extremely doubtful position. A great weight of responsibility rested therefore upon the convention of Massachusetts.
Its proceedings commenced with a desultory debate upon the several parts of the instrument, which lasted until the 30th of January; the friends of the Constitution having carefully provided, by a vote at the outset, that no separate question should be taken. The discussion of the various objections having been exhausted, Parsons[421] moved that the instrument be assented to and ratified. One or two general speeches followed this motion, and then Hancock, the President of the convention, descended from the chair, and, with some conciliatory observations, laid before it a proposition for certain amendments. This step was not taken by him upon his own suggestion merely, although he was doubtless very willing to be the medium of a reconciliation between the contending parties. He was at that time Governor of the State, and had been placed in the chair of the convention, partly in deference to his official station and his personal eminence, and partly because he held a rather neutral position with respect to the Constitution. These circumstances, as well as his Revolutionary distinction, led the friends of the Constitution to seek his intervention; and his love of popularity and deference made the office of arbitrator exceedingly agreeable to him. The selection was a wise one, for Hancock had great influence with the classes of men composing the opposition, and he could not be suspected of any undue admiration of the system the adoption of which he was to recommend.
He proceeded with characteristic caution. It does not appear, from what is preserved of the remarks with which he presented his amendments, whether he intended they should become a condition precedent to the ratification, or should be adopted as a recommendation subsequent to the assent of the convention to the Constitution then before it. He brought them forward, he said, to quiet the apprehensions and remove the doubts of gentlemen, relying on their candor to bear him witness that his wishes for a good constitution were sincere. But the form of ratification which he proposed contained a distinct and separate acceptance of the Constitution, and the amendments followed it, with a recommendation that they "be introduced into the said Constitution." Samuel Adams, with much commendation of the Governor's proposition, immediately affected to understand it as recommending conditional amendments, and advocated it in that sense. Other members of the opposition understood it in the opposite sense, and, fearing its effect, insisted that the convention had no power to propose amendments, and that there could be no probability that, if recommended to the attention of the first Congress that might sit under the Constitution, they would ever be adopted. Upon both of these points, the arguments of the other side were sufficient to convince a few of the more candid members of the opposition, and the Constitution was ratified on the 7th of February, by a majority of nineteen votes,[422] the ratification being followed by a recommendation of certain amendments, and an injunction addressed to the representatives of the State in Congress to insist at all times on their being considered and acted upon in the mode provided by the fifth article of the Constitution.
The smallness of the majority in favor of the Constitution was in a great degree compensated by the immediate conduct of those who had opposed it. Many of them, before the final adjournment, expressed their determination, now that it had received the assent of a majority, to exert all their influence to induce the people to anticipate the blessings which its advocates expected from it. They acted in accordance with their professions; and those portions of the people whose sentiments they had represented exhibited generally the same candor and patriotism, and acquiesced at once in the result. This course of the opposition in Massachusetts was observed elsewhere, and largely contributed to give to the action of the State, in proposing amendments, a salutary influence in some quarters, which would otherwise have probably failed to attend it.
The amendments proposed by the convention of Massachusetts were, as was claimed by those who advocated them, of a general, and not a local character; but they were at the same time highly characteristic of the State. They may be divided into three classes. One of them embraced that general declaration which was afterwards incorporated with the amendments to the Constitution, and which expressly reserved to the States or the people the powers not delegated to the United States. Another class of them comprehended certain restraints upon the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution, with respect to elections, direct taxes, the commercial power, the jurisdiction of the courts, and the power to consent to the holding of titles or offices conferred by foreign sovereigns. The third class contemplated the two great provisions of a presentment by a grand jury, for crimes by which an infamous or a capital punishment might be incurred, and trial by jury in civil actions at the common law between citizens of different States.
The people of Boston, although in general strongly in favor of the Constitution, had carefully abstained from every attempt to influence the convention. But now that the ratification was carried, they determined to give to the event all the importance that belonged to it, by public ceremonies and festivities. On the 17th of February, there issued from the gates of Faneuil Hall an imposing procession of five thousand citizens, embracing all the trades of the town and its neighborhood, each with its appropriate decorations, emblems, and mottoes. In the centre of this long pageant, to mark the relation of everything around it to maritime commerce, and the relation of all to the new government, was borne the ship Federal Constitution, with full colors flying, and attended by the merchants, captains, and seamen of the port.[423] On the following day, the rejoicings were terminated by a public banquet, at which each of the States that had then adopted the Constitution was separately toasted, the minorities of Connecticut and Massachusetts were warmly praised for their frank and patriotic submission, and strong hopes were expressed of the State of New York.
In this manner the Federalists of Massachusetts wisely sought to kindle the enthusiasm of the country, and to conciliate the opinion of the States which were still to act, in favor of the new Constitution. The influence of their course did not fail in some quarters. In the convention of New Hampshire, which assembled immediately after that of Massachusetts was adjourned, although there was a majority who, either bound by instructions or led by their own opinions, would have rejected the Constitution if required to vote upon it immediately, yet that same majority was composed chiefly of men willing to hear discussion, willing to be convinced, and likely to feel the influence of what had occurred in the leading State of New England. There was a body of Federalists in New Hampshire acting in concert with the leading men of that party in Massachusetts. They caused the same form of ratification and the same amendments which had been adopted in the latter State, with some additional ones, to be presented to their own convention.[424] The discussions changed the opinions of many of the members, but it was not deemed expedient to incur the hazard of a vote. The friends of the Constitution found it necessary to consent to an adjournment, in order that the instructed delegates might have an opportunity to lay before their constituents the information which they had themselves received, and of which the people in the more remote parts of the State were greatly in need. Unfortunately, however, for the course of things in other States, the occurrence of a general election in New Hampshire made it necessary to adjourn the convention until the middle of June. We have seen what was the effect of this proceeding in Virginia, where it was both misunderstood and misrepresented. But it saved the Constitution in New Hampshire.
Six States only, therefore, had adopted the Constitution at the opening of the spring of 1788. The convention of Maryland assembled at Annapolis on the 21st of April. The convention of South Carolina was to follow in May, and the conventions of Virginia and New York were to meet in June. So critical was the period in which the people of Maryland were to act, that Washington considered that a postponement of their decision would cause the final defeat of the Constitution; for if, under the influence of such a postponement, following that of New Hampshire, South Carolina should reject it, its fate would turn on the determination of Virginia.
The people of Maryland appear to have been fully aware of the importance of their course. They not only elected a large majority of delegates known to be in favor of the Constitution, but a majority of the counties instructed their members to ratify it as speedily as possible, and to do no other act. This settled determination not to consider amendments, and not to have the action of the State misinterpreted, or its influence lost, gave great dissatisfaction to the minority. Their efforts to introduce amendments were disposed of quite summarily. The majority would entertain no proposition but the single question of ratification, which was carried by sixty-three votes against eleven, on the 28th of April.
On the first of May, there were public rejoicings and a procession of the trades, in Baltimore, followed by a banquet, a ball, and an illumination. In this procession, the miniature ship "Federalist," which was afterwards presented to General Washington, and long rode at anchor in the Potomac opposite Mount Vernon, was carried, as the type of commerce and the consummate production of American naval architecture.[425] The next day a packet sailed from the port of Baltimore for Charleston, carrying the news of the ratification by Maryland.[426] In how many days this "coaster" performed her voyage is not known; but it is a recorded, though now forgotten, fact among the events of this period, that on her return to Baltimore, where she arrived on Saturday the 31st of May, the same vessel brought back the welcome intelligence, that on the 23d of that month, "at five o'clock in the afternoon," the convention of South Carolina had ratified the Constitution of the United States. A salute of cannon on Federal Hill, in the neighborhood of Baltimore, spread the joyful news far down the waters of the Chesapeake to the shores of Virginia, and bold express riders placed it in Philadelphia before the following Monday evening.
Such was the anxiety with which the friends of the Constitution in the centre of the Union watched the course of events in the remaining States. The accession of South Carolina was naturally regarded as very important. Her delegates in the national Convention had assumed what might be thought, at home and elsewhere, to be a great responsibility. They had taken a prominent part in the settlement of the compromises which became necessary between the Northern and the Southern States. They had consented to a full commercial power, to be exercised by a majority in both houses of Congress; to a power to extinguish the slave-trade in twenty years; and to a power of direct and indirect taxation, exports alone excepted. Would the people of South Carolina consider the provisions made for their peculiar demands as equivalents for what had been surrendered? Would they acquiesce in a system founded in the necessities for local sacrifices, standing as they did at the extremity of the interests involved in the Southern side of the adjustment?
It is not probable that the people of South Carolina, at the time of their adoption of the Constitution, supposed that they had any solid reasons for dissatisfaction with such of its arrangements as in any way concerned the subject of slavery. A good deal was said, ad captandum, by the opponents of the Constitution, on these points, but it does not appear to have been said with much effect. No man who has ever been placed by the State of South Carolina in a public position, has been more true to her interests and rights than General Pinckney; and General Pinckney furnished to the people of the State—speaking from his place in the legislature on his return from the national Convention—what he considered, and they received, as a complete answer to all that was addressed to their local fears and prejudices, on these particular topics. When he had shown that, by the universal admission of the country, the Constitution had given to the general government no power to emancipate the slaves within the several States, and that it had secured a right which did not previously exist, of recovering those who might escape into other States; that the slave-trade would remain open for twenty years, a period that would suffice for the supply of all the labor of that kind which the State would require; and that the admission of the blacks into the basis of representation was a concession in favor of the State, of singular importance as well as novelty;—he had disposed of every ground of opposition relating to these points. And so the people of the State manifestly considered.
But there was one part of the arrangements included in the Constitution, on which they appear to have thought that they had more reason to pause; and it is quite important that we should understand both the grounds of their doubt, and the grounds on which they yielded their assent to this part of the system. South Carolina was then, and was ever likely to be, a great exporting State. Some of her people feared that, if a full power to regulate commerce by the votes of a majority in the two houses of Congress were to be exercised in the passage of a navigation act, the Eastern States, in whose behalf they were asked to grant such a power, would not be able to furnish shipping enough to export the products of the planting States. This apprehension arose entirely from a want of information; which some of the friends of the Constitution supplied, while it was under discussion. They showed that, if all the exported products of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were obliged to be carried in American bottoms, the Eastern States were then able to furnish more than shipping enough for the purpose; and that this shipping must also compete with that of the Middle States. Still it remained true, that the grant of the commercial power would enable a majority in Congress to exclude foreign vessels from the carrying trade of the United States, and so far to enhance the freights on the products of South Carolina. What then were the motives which appear to have led the convention of that State to agree to this concession of the commercial power?
It is evident from the discussions which took place in the legislature, and which had great influence in the subsequent convention, that the attention of the people of South Carolina was not confined to the particular terms and arrangements of the compromises which took place in the formation of the Constitution. They looked to the propriety, expediency, and justice of a general power to regulate commerce, apart from the compromise in which it was involved. They admitted the commercial distresses of the Northern States; they saw the policy of increasing the maritime strength of those States, in order to encourage the growth of a navy; and they considered it neither prudent, nor fit, to give the vessels of all foreign nations a right to enter American ports at pleasure, in peace and in war, and whatever might be the commercial legislation of those nations towards the United States. For these reasons, a large majority of the people of South Carolina were willing to make so much sacrifice, be it more or less, as was involved in the surrender to a majority in Congress of the power to regulate commerce.[427]
Still, the Constitution was not ratified without a good deal of opposition on the part of a considerable minority. As the convention drew towards the close of its proceedings, an effort was made to carry an adjournment to the following autumn, in order to gain time for the anticipated rejection of the Constitution by Virginia. This motion probably stimulated the convention to act more decisively than they might otherwise have done, for it touched the pride of the State in the wrong direction. After a spirited discussion it was rejected by a majority of forty-six votes, and the Constitution was thereupon ratified by a majority of seventy-six. Several amendments were then adopted, to be presented to Congress for consideration, three of which were substantially the same with three of those proposed by Massachusetts.[428]
On the 27th of May, there was a great procession of the trades, in Charleston, in honor of the accession of the State, in which the ship Federalist, drawn by eight white horses, was a conspicuous object, as it had been in the processions of other cities.