Jesse Woodhull, Orange (C 6)

New Jersey.—New Jersey was among the states which pushed through the ratification of the Constitution without giving the agrarian party time to organize its forces; and, from the records, the vote in the state convention was unanimous. This unanimity is rather startling in view of the fact that the year before a paper money party had been able to force through an emission bill by a narrow margin. Either there was a violent reaction against inflation, or the Federalist campaign had been highly organized. What little opposition appears to have been raised in that state seems to have been by the debtor and paper money class.[[660]]

It must be admitted, however, that no detailed study of the ratification in New Jersey has ever been made. Libby passes it over briefly; and the older writers like Bancroft and Curtis dismiss it with their usual lightness of touch. Unfortunately for such a study, the records of the convention in that state are no more than bare minutes; and the materials in the Treasury Department from the New Jersey loan office are extremely fragmentary. Until extended search in local and state history is made on the points here raised, New Jersey must be dismissed cursorily.

There were thirteen counties in the state represented in the Convention, and each of nine counties had one or more representatives who had learned the elementary lessons in public finance through holding at least some small amounts of public securities—often certificates of only trivial value. The meagre character of the records of that state do not permit of a satisfactory statement. There were three delegates from Bergen county; of these John Fell appears on the Register of Land Office Certificates; there is no record of Peter Zabriskie either as a subscriber to original funds or as owner of securities; but a Jacob Zabriskie appears on a later Ledger. From Essex county, John Chetwood and David Crane appear among the holders; from Middlesex, John Beatty, John Neilson, and Benjamin Manning—the entire delegation; from Somerset, Fred. Frelinghuysen; from Gloucester, Andw. Hunter; from Salem, Edmund Wetherby; from Hunterdon, David Brearley and Joshua Corshon; from Morris, John Jacob Faesch; and from Sussex, Robert Ogden and Thomas Anderson, and even the Secretary, Saml. W. Stockton, was a considerable holder. Thus every county except Cumberland, Cape-of-May, Burlington, and Monmouth had its spokesmen for public creditors.[[661]]

Delaware.—Although there had been a strong paper money party in Delaware it does not seem to have manifested any considerable influence in the ratification of the Constitution, for that commonwealth was the first to set its seal on the new instrument, and it did so with apparent unanimity. No detailed scrutiny of the local contests over the election of delegates has ever been made; and the records of the loan office of that state preserved in the Treasury Department are defective. The records for taxation are also of little help. The absence of any contest of course contributes to obscuring the economic forces which may have been at work.[[662]]

Pennsylvania.—In strong contrast to the uniformity in Delaware is the sharp division which existed in Pennsylvania. There, says Libby, “the opposition to the Constitution came from those counties belonging to the great interior highland of the state, extending from the head waters of the Schuylkill to the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, with only Huntingdon county (one vote—Federal) interrupting the continuity from east to west.... The Federal area contained ... York, Lancaster, Chester, Montgomery, Philadelphia, Bucks, Luzerne, and Northampton, and the largest population, most of the men of wealth and influence and the commercial classes of the state. Pittsburg with 400 inhabitants was Federal in an Anti-Federal county.”[[663]]

Each of the eastern counties of Pennsylvania was represented in the state convention by one or more members who held public securities.[[664]] From Philadelphia city and county, five of the ten members, all of whom favored ratification, were interested in stocks, George Latimer, James Wilson, Thomas M’Kean, Samuel Ashmead, and Enoch Edwards. From Bucks came John Barclay, a large dealer, to whose credit $17,056.56 is set down in one entry. Two of the six members from Chester, John Hannum and Thomas Bull, were security holders. James Morris, of Montgomery county, John Black and David Grier, from York, Timothy Pickering, from Luzerne, Stephen Balliet, David Deshler, and Joseph Horsfield of Northampton (three of the four from that county) were interested. From Lancaster came Jasper Yeates, a large holder (one entry $11,986.65), Robert Coleman, Sebastian Graff, and John Hubley (four of the six delegates), who had a first-hand knowledge of the relation of a new and stable government to public paper.

In other words at least nineteen out of the forty-six men who voted for the Constitution in the Pennsylvania convention were interested in public paper at or about the time of the adoption of the Constitution. Their names follow with the references to each,[[665]] but it is not to be supposed that this list is complete, for the records of Pennsylvania are not full, and a great many of the transactions in that state were not with the local loan office, but directly with the Treasury, a part of whose early records were probably burned in one of the fires at the Treasury Building:

Samuel Ashmead (I)

Stephen Balliet (LT)