CHAPTER IV.
Admission of New States.—Guaranty of Republican Government.—Power of Amendment.—Oath to Support the New System.—Ratification.
Having settled a general plan for the organization of the three great departments of government, the committee next proceeded to provide for certain other objects of primary importance, the necessity for which had been demonstrated by the past history of the Confederacy. The first of these was the admission of new States into the Union.
It had long been apparent, that the time would sooner or later arrive when the limits of the United States must be extended, and the number of the States increased. Circumstances had made it impossible that the benefits and privileges of the Union should be confined to the original thirteen communities by whom it had been established. Population had begun to press westward from the Atlantic States with the energy and enterprise that have marked the Anglo-American character since the first occupation of the country. Wherever the hardy pioneers of civilization penetrated into the wilderness of the Northwest, they settled upon lands embraced by those shadowy boundaries which carried the territorial claims of some of the older States into the region beyond the Ohio. Circumstances, already detailed in a former part of this work, had compelled a surrender of these territorial claims to the United States; and in the efforts made by Congress, both before and after the cessions had been completed, to provide for the establishment of new States, and for their admission into the Union, we have already traced one of the great defects of the Confederation, which rendered it incapable of meeting the exigencies created by this inevitable expansion of the country.[43]
In the year 1784, when Mr. Jefferson brought into Congress a measure for the organization and admission of new States, to be formed upon the territories that had been or might thereafter be ceded to the United States, he seems to have considered that the Articles of Confederation authorized the admission of new States formed out of territory that had belonged to a State already in the Union, by a vote of nine States in Congress. But a majority of the States in Congress evidently regarded the power of admission as doubtful; and although they passed the resolves for the admission of new States,—principally because it was extremely important to invite cessions of Western territory,—they left the provision as to the mode of admission so indefinite, that the whole question of power would have to be opened and decided on the first application that might be made by a State to be admitted into the Union.[44]
When the Ordinance of 1787 was formed, it made provision for the establishment of new States in the territory, and declared that, when any of them should have sixty thousand free inhabitants, it should be admitted into Congress on an equal footing with the original States. But the mode of admission was not prescribed. The power to admit was assumed, and no rule of voting on the question of admission was referred to. The probability is, that Congress anticipated at this time that a definite constitutional power would be provided by the Convention that had been summoned to revise the federal system. This power was embraced in the plan adopted in the committee of the whole of that body, by a resolve which declared "that provision ought to be made for the admission of States lawfully arising within the limits of the United States, whether from a voluntary junction of government and territory, or otherwise, with the consent of a number of voices in the national legislature less than the whole." In what mode this provision was made will be seen hereafter, when we come to examine the framework of the Constitution.
Another of the new powers now proposed to be given to the Union was that of protecting and upholding the governments of the States. I have already had occasion to explain the relations of the Confederation to its members in a time of internal disturbance and peril; and have given to the incapacity of that government to afford any aid in such emergencies great prominence among the causes which led to the revision of the federal system.[45] Under that system the States had been so completely sovereign, and so independent of each other in all that related to their internal concerns, that the government of any one of them might have been subverted without the possibility of an authorized and regulated interference by the rest. The constitutional and republican liberty that had been established in these States after the Revolution had freed them from the dominion of England, was at that period a new and untried experiment; and in order that we of this generation may be able to appreciate the importance of the guaranty proposed to be introduced into the Constitution of the United States, it is necessary for us to look somewhat farther than the particular circumstances of the commotions in New England that marked the year 1787 as an era of especial danger to these republican governments. It is, in fact, necessary for us to remember the contemporaneous history of Europe, and to observe how the events that were taking place in the Old World necessarily acted upon our condition, prospects, and welfare.
The French Revolution, consummated in 1791 by the execution of the King, was already begun when the Constitution of the United States went into operation. No one who has examined the history of the first years of our present national government, can fail to have been impressed with the dangers which the administration of our domestic affairs incurred of becoming complicated with the politics of Europe. As in all other countries, so in America, the events and progress of the Revolution in France found sympathy or reprobation, according to the natural tendencies, the previous associations, and the political sentiments of individuals. But in the United States there was a peculiar and predisposing cause for the liveliest interest in the success of the principles that were believed, by large masses of the people, to be involved in the French Revolution. Our own struggles for liberty, our bold and successful assertion of the rights of man, and our achievement of the means and opportunity of self-government, had evidently and strikingly acted upon France. The people of the United States were fully sensible of this; and transferring to the French nation the debt of gratitude for the aid which had flowed to us in the first instance from their government without any special influence of their own, large numbers of our people became warmly enlisted in the cause of that Revolution, of which the early promise seemed so encouraging to the best hopes of mankind, and the full development of which first ruined the interests of liberty, in the wanton excesses of anarchy and national ambition, and finally crushed them beneath the usurpations and necessities of military despotism. On the other hand, the more cautious—who, if they had not from the first looked with distrust upon the whole movement of the Revolutionary party in France, very soon believed that it could result in no real benefit to France or to the world—tended strongly and naturally to the side of those governments with which the leaders of the Revolution had to contend. In consequence of this state of feeling among different portions of the people of the United States, with reference to French affairs, and of the conduct of France and England towards ourselves, the administration of Washington had great difficulty both in preserving the neutrality of the country, and in excluding foreign influence and interference in our domestic affairs.
Had this state of things, which followed immediately after the inauguration of our new government, found us still under the Confederation, there can be no doubt that our condition would have afforded to the Revolutionary party in France the means not only of disseminating their principles among us, but also of overturning any of the institutions of the weaker States which might have stood in the way of their acquiring an influence in America. Yet what form or principle of government is there in the world, that more imperatively requires all foreign or external influence to be repelled, than our own republican system, of which it is a cardinal doctrine that every institution and every law must express the uncontrolled and spontaneous will of a majority of the people who constitute the political society? Other governments may be upheld by the interference of their neighbors; other systems may require, and perhaps rightfully admit, foreign influence. Ours demand an absolute immunity from foreign control, and can exist only when the authority of the people is made absolutely free. That their authority should be made and kept free to act upon the principles that enable it to operate with certainty and safety, it requires the guaranty of a system that rests upon the same principles, is committed to the same destiny, is itself constituted by American power, and is created for the express purpose of preserving the republican form, the theory and the right of self-government.
Such was the purpose of the framers of the Constitution, when, in this early stage of their deliberations, they determined that a republican constitution should be guaranteed by the United States to each of the States.[46] The object of this provision was, to secure to the people of each State the power of governing their own community, through the action of a majority, according to the fundamental rules which they might prescribe for ascertaining the public will. The insurrection in Massachusetts, then just suppressed, had made the dangers that surround this theory of government painfully apparent. It had demonstrated the possibility that a minority might become in reality the ruling power. Fortunately, no foreign interference had then intervened; but a very few years only elapsed, before a crisis occurred, in which the institutions of the States would have been quite unable to withstand the shocks proceeding from the French Revolution, if the government of the Union had not been armed with the power of protecting and upholding them.
The committee also added another new feature to their plan of government, which was a capacity of being amended. The Articles of Confederation admitted of changes only when they had been agreed upon in Congress, and had afterwards been confirmed by the legislatures of all the States. Indeed, it resulted necessarily from the nature of that government, that it could only be altered by the consent of all the parties to it. It was now proposed and declared, that provision ought to be made for the amendment of the Articles of Union, whenever it should seem necessary. This declaration looked to the establishment of some new method of originating improvements in the system of government, and a new rule for their adoption.
It was also determined that the members of the State governments should be bound by oath to support the Articles of Union. The purpose of this provision was to secure the supremacy of the national government, in cases of collision between its authority and the authority of the States. It was a new feature in the national system, and received at first the support of only a bare majority of the States.[47]
Finally, it was provided that the new system, after its approbation by Congress, should be submitted to representative assemblies recommended by the State legislatures, to be expressly chosen by the people to consider and decide thereon. The question has often been discussed, whether this mode of ratification marks in any way the character of the government established by the Constitution. At present it is only necessary to observe, that the design of the committee was to substitute the authority of the people of the States in the place of that of the State legislatures, for a threefold purpose. First, it was deemed desirable to resort to the supreme authority of the people, in order to give the new system a higher sanction than could be given to it by the State governments. Secondly, it was thought expedient to get rid of the doctrine often asserted under the Confederation, that the Union was a mere compact or treaty between independent States, and that therefore a breach of its articles by any one State absolved the rest from its obligations. In the third place, it was intended, by this mode of ratification, to enable the people of a less number of the States than the whole to form a new Union, if all should not be willing to adopt the new system.[48] The votes of the States in committee, upon this new mode of ratification, show that on one side were ranged the States that were aiming to change the principle of the government, and on the other the States that sought to preserve the principle of the Confederation.[49]
These, together with a provision that the authority of the old Congress should be continued to a given day after the changes should have been adopted, and that their engagements should be completed by the new government, were the great features of the system prepared by the committee of the whole, and reported to the Convention, on the thirteenth of June.[50]