The Critical Period of American History

by John Fiske

Theory of folkland upon which the ordinance was based.

"I doubt," says Daniel Webster, "whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787." Nothing could have been more emphatically an exercise of national sovereignty; yet, as Madison said, while warmly commending the act, Congress did it "without the least colour of constitutional authority." The ordinance was never submitted to the states for ratification. The articles of confederation had never contemplated an occasion for such a peculiar assertion of sovereignty. "A great and independent fund of revenue," said Madison, "is passing into the hands of a single body of men, who can raise troops to an indefinite number, and appropriate money to their support for an indefinite period of time.... Yet no blame has been whispered, no alarm has been sounded," even by men most zealous for state rights and most suspicious of Congress. Within a few months this argument was to be cited with telling effect against those who hesitated to accept the Federal Constitution because of the great powers which it conferred upon the general government. Unless you give a government specific powers, commensurate with its objects, it is liable on occasions of public necessity to exercise powers which have not been granted. Avoid the dreadful dilemma between dissolution and usurpation, urged Madison, by clothing the government with powers that are ample but clearly defined. In a certain sense, the action of Congress in 1787 was a usurpation of authority to meet an emergency which no one had foreseen, as in the cases of Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana and Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves. Each of these instances marked, in one way or another, a brilliant epoch in American history, and in each case the public interest was so unmistakable that the people consented and applauded. The theory upon which the Ordinance of 1787 was based was one which nobody could fail to understand, though perhaps no one would then have known just how to put it into words. It was simply the thirteen states, through their delegates in Congress, dealing with the unoccupied national domain as if it were the common land or folkland of a stupendous township.

Spain, hearing of the secret article in the treaty of 1783, loses her temper and threatens to shut up the Mississippi River.

The vast importance of the lands between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi was becoming more apparent every year, as the westward movement of population went on. But at this time their value was much more clearly seen by the southern than by the northern states. In the north the westward emigration was only just beginning to pass the Alleghanies; in the south, as we have seen, it had gone beyond them several years ago. The southern states, accordingly, took a much sounder view than the northern states of the importance to the Union of the free navigation of the Mississippi River. The difference was forcibly illustrated in the dispute with Spain, which came to a crisis in the summer of 1786. It will be remembered that by the treaties which closed the Revolutionary War the provinces of East and West Florida were ceded by England to Spain. West Florida was the region lying between the Appalachicola and the Mississippi rivers, including the southernmost portions of the present states of Alabama and Mississippi. By the treaty between Great Britain and the United States, the northern boundary of this province was described by the thirty-first parallel of latitude; but Spain denied the right of these powers to place the boundary so low. Her troops still held Natchez, and she maintained that the boundary must be placed a hundred miles farther north, starting from the Mississippi at the mouth of the Yazoo River, near the present site of Vicksburg. Now the treaty between Great Britain and the United States contained a secret article, wherein it was provided that if England could contrive to keep West Florida, instead of surrendering it to Spain, then the boundary should start at the Yazoo. This showed that both England and the United States were willing to yield the one to the other a strip of territory which both agreed in withholding from Spain. Presently the Spanish court got hold of the secret article, and there was great indignation. Here was England giving to the Americans a piece of land which she knew, and the Americans knew, was recently a part of West Florida, and therefore belonged to Spain! Castilian grandees went to bed and dreamed of invincible armadas. Congress was promptly informed that, until this affair should be set right, the Americans need not expect the Spanish government to make any treaty of commerce with them; and furthermore, let no American sloop or barge dare to show itself on the Mississippi below the Yazoo, under penalty of confiscation. When these threats were heard in America, there was great excitement everywhere, but it assumed opposite phases in the north and in the south. The merchants of New York and Boston cared little more about the Mississippi River than about Timbuctoo, but they were extremely anxious to see a commercial treaty concluded with Spain. On the other hand, the backwoodsmen of Kentucky and the state of Franklin cared nothing for the trade on the ocean, but they would not sit still while their corn and their pork were confiscated on the way to New Orleans. The people of Virginia sympathized with the backwoodsmen, but her great statesmen realized the importance of both interests and the danger of a conflict between them.

Gardoqui and Jay.

Threats of secession in Kentucky and in New England, 1786.

The Spanish envoy, Gardoqui, arrived in the summer of 1784, and had many interviews with Jay, who was then secretary for foreign affairs. Gardoqui set forth that his royal master was graciously pleased to deal leniently with the Americans, and would confer one favour upon them, but could not confer two. He was ready to enter into a treaty of commerce with us, but not until we should have renounced all claim to the navigation of the Mississippi River below the Yazoo. Here the Spaniard was inexorable. A year of weary argument passed by, and he had not budged an inch. At last, in despair, Jay advised Congress, for the sake of the commercial treaty, to consent to the closing of the Mississippi, but only for twenty-five years. As the rumour of this went abroad among the settlements south of the Ohio, there was an outburst of wrath, to which an incident that now occurred gave added virulence. A North Carolinian trader, named Amis, sailed down the Mississippi with a cargo of pots and kettles and barrels of flour. At Natchez his boat and his goods were seized by the Spanish officers, and he was left to make his way home afoot through several hundred miles of wilderness. The story of his wrongs flew from one log-cabin to another, until it reached the distant northwestern territory. In the neighbourhood of Vincennes there were Spanish traders, and one of them kept a shop in the town. The shop was sacked by a band of American soldiers, and an attempt was made to incite the Indians to attack the Spaniards. Indignation meetings were held in Kentucky. The people threatened to send a force of militia down the river and capture Natchez and New Orleans; and a more dangerous threat was made. Should the northeastern states desert them and adopt Jay's suggestion, they vowed they would secede, and throw themselves upon Great Britain for protection. On the other hand, there was great agitation in the seaboard towns of Massachusetts. They were disgusted with the backwoodsmen for making such a fuss about nothing, and with the people of the southern states for aiding and abetting them; and during this turbulent summer of 1786, many persons were heard to declare that, in case Jay's suggestion should not be adopted, it would be high time for the New England states to secede from the Union, and form a confederation by themselves. The situation was dangerous in the extreme. Had the question been forced to an issue, the southern states would never have seen their western territories go and offer themselves to Great Britain. Sooner than that, they would have broken away from the northern states. But New Jersey and Pennsylvania now came over to the southern side, and Rhode Island, moving in her eccentric orbit, presently joined them; and thus the treaty was postponed for the present, and the danger averted.

Washington's views on the importance of canals between east and west.

His far-sighted genius and self-devotion.

This lamentable dispute was watched by Washington with feelings of gravest concern. From an early age he had indulged in prophetic dreams of the grandeur of the coming civilization in America, and had looked to the country beyond the mountains as the field in which the next generation was to find room for expansion. Few had been more efficient than he in aiding the great scheme of Pitt for overthrowing the French power in America, and he understood better than most men of his time how much that scheme implied. In his early journeys in the wilderness he had given especial attention to the possibilities of water connection between the east and west, and he had bought for himself and surveyed many extensive tracts of land beyond the mountains. The subject was a favourite one with him, and he looked at it from both a commercial and a political point of view. What we most needed, he said in 1770, were easy transit lines between east and west, as "the channel of conveyance of the extensive and valuable trade of a rising empire." Just before resigning his commission in 1783 Washington had explored the route through the Mohawk Valley, afterward taken first by the Erie Canal, and then by the New York Central Railroad, and had prophesied its commercial importance in the present century. Soon after reaching his home at Mount Vernon, he turned his attention to the improvement of intercourse with the west through the valley of the Potomac. The east and west, he said, must be cemented together by interests in common; otherwise they will break asunder. Without commercial intercourse they will cease to understand each other, and will thus be ripe for disagreement. It is easy for mental habits, as well as merchandise, to glide down stream, and the connections of the settlers beyond the mountains all centre in New Orleans, which is in the hands of a foreign and hostile power. No one can tell what complications may arise from this, argued Washington; "let us bind these people to us by a chain that can never be broken;" and with characteristic energy he set to work at once to establish that line of communication that has since grown into the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and into the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. During the three years preceding the meeting of the Federal Convention he was largely occupied with this work. In 1785 he became president of a company for extending the navigation of the Potomac and James rivers, and the legislature of Virginia passed an act vesting him with one hundred and fifty shares in the stock of the company, in order to testify their "sense of his unexampled merits." But Washington refused the testimonial, and declined to take any pay for his services, because he wished to arouse the people to the political importance of the undertaking, and felt that his words would have more weight if he were known to have no selfish interest in it. His sole purpose, as he repeatedly said, was to strengthen the spirit of union by cementing the eastern and western regions together. At this time he could ill afford to give his services without pay, for his long absence in war-time had sadly impaired his estate. But such was Washington.