Chapter 6
In This Chapter
● Bringing order to the colonies
● Electing the first president
● Establishing an economy
● Increasing troubles at home and overseas
After winning its independence from Britain, America felt a little like a kid who has just moved out of his parents’ house and isn’t sure what step comes next in growing up. The country had no real government, no sound financing system, and no true foreign friends.
Fortunately, it did have a group of extraordinary individuals — some of whom had helped lead it through the Revolution — who were willing to try to find a form of government that would fit. Putting aside most of their personal differences and aspirations (at least at first), they came up with a system of governing the new country that has since become a true wonder of the world.
Making the Rules
America limped through the Revolutionary War guided by the Continental Congress, a group of men selected by colonial legislatures. The Congress, in turn, came up with something called the Articles of Confederation.
Drafted in 1777 but not ratified by all the states until 1781, the Articles were based on the idea that the individual states would be friendly with each other and cooperate when it was in their mutual interest. Each state had one vote in Congress, and it took nine of the 13 states to ratify any decision.
Congress ran matters of war and peace, operated the post office, coined money, and dealt with Native Americans when the states didn’t want to. It had no power to tax or to establish a federal judicial system, and it lacked any real power to make the individual states pay attention to its legal authority to make postal, coin, or war-and-peace decisions.
It wasn’t an awful system, but it almost guaranteed a continual stream of squabbles among the states. Making things worse were schemes by agents of Spain, France, and England. They tried to get Americans who lived in the western parts of the new country to break away and start their own empires. War hero Ethan Allen, for example, met with British agents to discuss making his beloved Vermont a British province, and narrowly escaped being tried for treason.
Still, at least two good bits of legislation came out of the loose-knit confederation. The first was the Land Ordinance of 1785, which set up the way land owned by the federal government — which basically was territory won from Britain that wasn’t claimed by one of the states — would be divided and sold. The ordinance called for the land to be surveyed into square townships, which were six miles on each side. Each township was then surveyed into 36 areas of one square mile each (640 acres). The parcels were then listed for sale at public auction and could, in turn, be subdivided by the owner into smaller parcels for sale. Part of the revenue went to the establishment of public schools.
The second piece of legislation was enacted in 1787. Called the Northwest Ordinance, it stated that as new states were admitted to the country, they would be equal in every way to the original 13. It also banned slavery in the new territories, although this was later changed. Both laws were good starts to stabilizing the new country. But ongoing troubles in trying to regulate commerce between the states and in trying to raise money for the federal government still plagued the nation, especially because every state had its own currency and assigned it its own value.
Going back to Philly
By 1787, it was apparent to many leaders that the Articles of Confederation needed an overhaul, or the union of states would eventually fall apart. So Congress agreed to call a convention of delegates from each state to try to fix things. The first of the delegates (selected by state legislatures) to arrive in Philadelphia in May 1787 was James Madison, a 36-year-old scholar and politician from Virginia who was so frail he couldn’t serve in the army during the Revolution. Madison had so many ideas on how to fix things he couldn’t wait to get started.
Not everyone else was in such a hurry. Although the convention was supposed to begin May 15, it wasn’t until May 25 that enough of the delegates chosen by the state legislatures showed up to have a quorum. Rhode Island never did send anyone.
Eventually, 55 delegates took part. Notable by their absence were some of the leading figures of the recent rebellion against England: Thomas Jefferson was in France, Thomas Paine was in England, Sam Adams and John Hancock weren’t selected to go, and Patrick Henry refused.
But those who did show up were hardly second-stringers. George Washington was there and was unanimously selected the convention’s president. Benjamin Franklin, at 81 the oldest delegate, was there. But Madison and a handsome 32-year-old, self-made success story from New York named Alexander Hamilton were the true stars of the group.
Half of the group’s members were lawyers and 29 were college-educated. Many were wealthy and thus had a bigger-than-most stake in straightening out the country’s financial mess. Their average age was 42.
They met in long and highly secret sessions, with armed guards at the doors. Their reasoning was that their task was so difficult that any leaks about what they were doing would only increase outside pressures. They studied other forms of government; they debated. And after 17 weeks, on September 17, 1787, they voted 39 to 3, with 13 absent, to approve a 10-page document that became the United States Constitution. Then most of them adjourned to a local tavern and hoisted a few.
The document the delegates created was a masterpiece of compromises. Big states gained more clout when it was decided that representation in the House of Representatives would be based on population, while small states got protection from being bullied when it was decided that each state would have the same number of members (two) in the Senate. The South won the right to count slaves as three-fifths of a person when determining population for representation in the House; the North got a promise that the slave trade would end for good in 1807. Actually, the South didn’t mind this compromise all that much, because it didn’t mean slavery itself would end — just the practice of importing more slaves from overseas. In fact, it ensured that the value of slaves already here would increase, thus making their owners richer.
The Constitution gave Congress the power to regulate commerce between states as well as with foreign nations and to pass laws with a simple majority of its members. It gave the presidency a powerful role. It created a federal judicial system, with the Supreme Court at the top. And it left the individual states with a fair amount of independence to make their own laws on most matters. No one thought it was perfect, but most of the delegates thought it was a pretty good blueprint from which to build.
Stand up and be heard . . .
"A standing army is like an erect penis — an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure."
— Elbridge Gerry, a convention delegate from Massachusetts, arguing against a provision that would allow for a full-time military organization.
While the last members of the convention were signing the document, Franklin pointed to a sun painted on the chair in which Washington was sitting. “I have often . . . looked at that behind the president, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting,” he said. “But now, at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising, and not a setting sun.”
But they still had to sell the blueprint to the rest of the country.
Setting the Constitution to the states
The convention submitted its work to the Congress that was still laboring under the old Articles of Confederation, and Congress accepted it after three days of sometimes-intense debate. But because of the enormity of the issue, Congress also didn’t want to be totally responsible if things went wrong (proving that some things never change).
So Congress sent the proposal to the states for ratification. Each state had to elect delegates who would consider the proposed Constitution, and when nine states had approved it, it would become the law of the land.
It was a gamble because if any of the big states — Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, or Pennsylvania — rejected it and went its own way, the whole deal might fall apart. In addition, a lot of people who hadn’t thought much about the need for a central government (which was probably the majority of Americans) weren’t sold on the idea at all. But the idea of letting “ordinary” people have a say (actually, only about one-fourth of the population was eligible to vote) did lead to a great deal of spirited debate on the subject, which allowed pro-Constitution forces a chance to make their case.
They did. In a brilliant series of 85 newspaper essays that became known as the Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay argued eloquently for adoption of the Constitution. Much more important was the public support of the two most popular men in America: Franklin and Washington. AntiConstitution forces also made powerful public arguments, but their efforts were not as well organized and lacked star appeal.
Giving weight to the Bill of Rights
The first 10 amendments to the Constitution were added mainly because a lot of Americans believed in the saying "get it in writing." The drafters of the original Constitution didn't spell out specific rights mainly because they didn't think it was necessary. The document defined the powers of Congress, and, thus, its creators assumed that everything left over belonged to individuals and the states.
But some states insisted the specific rights be spelled out as soon as possible after the Constitution was ratified. So James Madison, at the urging of Thomas Jefferson, came up with a list of 12 amendments, only 10 of which were ratified by 11 of the states in 1791. The two amendments left out had to do with the number of members of the House of Representatives and prohibiting Congress from setting its own salaries. For some reason, Connecticut and Georgia didn't get around to ratifying the remaining 10 until 1941. See Appendix A for the list of the 10 amendments that made it.
The first five states to ratify did so by January 1788. The following month, Massachusetts agreed — but only on the condition that a list of specific individual rights be added to the Constitution as soon as possible (see the sidebar “Giving weight to the Bill of Rights”). By July, all but North Carolina and Rhode Island had ratified it, and they fell in line by May 1790.
“Our constitution is in actual operation,” Franklin wrote, “and everything appears to promise that it will last. But in this world, nothing can be certain but death and taxes.”
Dishing Up Politics, American Style
Now that it had rules, America needed a president, and the choice was a no-brainer. George Washington was unanimously elected in April 1789 by the electoral college, which had been established by the Constitution and was composed of men elected either by popular vote or by state legislatures. Washington set out from his home in Virginia for the temporary capital at New York (which soon moved to Philadelphia, where it stayed until the federal district that is now Washington D.C. was completed in 1800). Everywhere he went, Washington was greeted by parades and cheering crowds.
Washington wasn’t a great politician, although he did know enough to buy 47 gallons of beer, 35 gallons of wine, and 3 barrels of rum for potential voters in his first campaign for the Virginia legislature. Still, he wasn’t a good public speaker and he wasn’t a great innovator.
But he was perfect for the new country. He was enormously popular with the public, even those who didn’t like his policies. Because of that, other political leaders were wise to defer to him. (At least publicly: Behind his back, John Adams referred to Washington as “Old Muttonhead,” and Alexander Hamilton called him “the Great Booby.”)
Washington was also good at assembling competent people around him and playing to their strengths while ignoring their faults. And he assembled a heck of a group: Adams was his vice president, Hamilton his treasurer, Thomas Jefferson his secretary of state, old Revolutionary War buddy Henry Knox his secretary of war, and sharp-tongued Edmund Randolph of Virginia his attorney general.
But it wasn’t exactly one big happy family. Hamilton and Adams disliked each other even though they shared many of the same political views — Adams once referred to Hamilton as “the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.” And Jefferson and Hamilton were different in a host of ways. Hamilton was short, but impeccable in his dress and manners. Jefferson was tall, and often looked like an unmade bed. Hamilton grew up poor in New York and was illegitimate; Jefferson grew up wealthy in a leading family in Virginia. Hamilton had a deeply abiding distrust of the common man and a deep affection for wealth. Jefferson disliked the upper classes and professed that the farmer was Nature’s greatest creation. And although Jefferson was a relatively pleasant guy to be around, Hamilton could be arrogant and snotty.
Given their differences, it shouldn’t be surprising that the two men were at opposite ends of the political spectrum. And given their abilities and stature, it shouldn’t be surprising that people who thought the same way began to form political parties around them. At the time, most politicians repudiated the idea of political parties — at least publicly. “If I could not go to heaven but with a [political] party,” Jefferson said, “I would not go at all.” But people being people, and politicians being politicians, the formation of parties revolving around a certain philosophy of governing was probably inevitable.
The Hamiltonians were called Federalists. In essence, they supported a strong central government, a powerful central bank, government support of business, a loose interpretation of the Constitution, and restrictions on public speech and the press. They opposed the expansion of democratic elections and were generally pro-British when it came to foreign affairs. “Those who own the country,” said Federalist John Jay, “ought to govern it.”
The Jeffersonians were first called Democratic Republicans, then just Republicans. They favored more power to individual states and state-chartered banks, no special favors for business, a strict reading of the Constitution, giving more people the vote and relatively free speech and a free press. They were generally pro-French. It’s too simplistic to say today’s Republicans are yesterday’s Federalists and today’s Democrats are descended from Jefferson’s party. Hamilton, for example, supported big federal government programs, which today would make him more of a Democrat, while Jefferson wanted to minimize government, which sounds like the modern Republican. But the dominance of just two parties, Federalists and Republicans, foreshadowed the two-party system that America has pretty much stuck with throughout its history.
By 1796, Washington had had enough of fathering a country. He declined a third term and went home to his plantation in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Hamilton, who was born in St. Croix and therefore under the Constitution couldn’t be president, hoped someone he could control would be elected, and he backed a guy named Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina, who was Washington’s minister to England. But his plans were thwarted and Vice President John Adams won.
Jefferson was the Republican candidate, and because he came in second, he became vice president, per the Constitution. (It soon became clear that this wasn’t a great idea. So in 1804, the states amended the Constitution to allow candidates to run for either president or vice president, but not both.)
Raising the Dough
Every country needs a sound financial plan (at least every successful country does) and it fell to Hamilton to devise one for America.
The first thing he had to do was establish the new nation’s credit. To do that, he had to clean up its existing debts, such as the $54 million the federal government owed foreign and domestic creditors. Hamilton proposed the debt be paid off in full, rather than at a discount as creditors had feared. Hamilton argued that if America didn’t make good on what it already owed, no one would want to lend it money in the future.
In addition, he proposed that the federal government also pay off about $21 million in debts the individual states had run up. The old debts would be paid off by issuing bonds. But states like Virginia, which had paid off much of its Revolutionary War debts, were peeved at the thought of the federal government picking up other states’ tabs and then sticking all U.S. residents with the bill. So they engaged in a little horse-trading. Virginia withdrew its objections to the plan, and in return, Hamilton and the Washington Administration agreed to locate the new federal district next door to Virginia on the Potomac. Whatever advantage Virginia thought that would give it has certainly evaporated by now.
Many members of Congress supported Hamilton’s plan to pay off the debts dollar for dollar, especially because many of them either held the old bonds or had snapped them up for next to nothing and stood to make enormous profits. Hamilton himself was accused of using his office to make money off the bonds, but if he was guilty, he didn’t do a very good job, because he died broke.
To raise money to help pay off the bonds, the federal government established taxes, called tariffs, on goods imported into the United States. It also slapped a tax of 7 cents a gallon on whiskey, which was pretty steep considering whiskey in many of the southern and western states sold for only 25 cents a gallon.
Finally, Hamilton proposed a nationally chartered bank that would print paper money backed by the federal government, and in which the government would be the minority stockholder and deposit its revenues. To be located in Philadelphia, the bank would be chartered for 21 years. Jefferson howled that the whole idea would cripple state banks and was unconstitutional, but Hamilton, with the backing of Washington, prevailed. The bank’s stock sold out within four hours after going on sale.
Hamilton’s plan worked, in large part because the American economy kicked into high gear in the 1790s. Another war between France and England helped increase America’s share of the world market; trade in the West Indies that had been stunted by the Revolutionary War was revived; and industry, particularly in the North, began to develop.
America, the new kid on the block, now had some change in its pockets.
Earning Respect
A government is only as good as the respect it commands from its citizens, and respect for the new U.S. government wasn’t universal. Whiskey makers, former soldiers, Native Americans, and people who thought some politicians were jerks — and said so publicly — were among the groups whose respect the new government had to earn.
Shaking things up: Shays's Rebellion
Daniel Shays needed $12 and couldn’t get it. Shays was a Massachusetts farmer and Revolutionary War veteran who, like many of his fellow veterans, found himself broke and in debt after the war. Moreover, the state constitution Massachusetts adopted in 1780 had been drafted mostly by businessmen who lived along the coast, and the state’s inland farmers got the short end of the stick when it came to things like having to pay taxes and not being able to vote.
When taxes couldn’t be paid, homes, farms, livestock, and personal possessions were seized and debtors sometimes thrown into prison. So in 1786, Shays found himself at the head of an “army” of about 1,000 men who were fed up. They marched on Springfield, forced the state Supreme Court to flee, and paraded around town. In January 1787, Shays’s group tried to take a military arsenal at Springfield. But the state militia routed them, and after a few weeks of skirmishing, they dispersed and abandoned the fight. Several of the group’s members were hanged. Shays fled to Vermont and was eventually pardoned, but he died the next year.
The whole thing wasn’t in vain, however. Some of the reforms they wanted — such as lower court costs, an exemption on workmen’s tools from debt seizures, and changes in the tax laws — were adopted. Jefferson noted “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing . . . the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Washington, however, despaired that the rebellion illustrated how too much democracy would lead to anarchy.
But the biggest impact of Shays’s Rebellion may have been that it helped convince some of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that the country needed a strong central government to handle such things.
Taking taxes seriously: The Whiskey Rebellion
This is how important whiskey was on the American frontier: Americans often used it in place of cash for commercial transactions. It was also the cheapest way to market some of the surplus corn crop. So it’s easy to understand why people got a little upset when the fledgling federal government announced it was slapping what amounted to a 25 percent tax on the drink.
Distillers in western Pennsylvania organized a revolt in 1794, roughing up tax collectors and threatening distilleries that tried to pay the tax. When the state’s governor refused to intervene for fear of losing votes, President Washington himself led a massive force of about 13,000 men — a larger army than he had during most of the Revolutionary War — and the rebels scattered.
The short-lived rebellion didn’t amount to much, but it provided an early test of the federal government’s willingness to enforce federal laws.
Going “mad” over the Native Americans
Despite their loss in the Revolution and subsequent peace treaty, the British still had a string of forts in the American Northwest, which was then defined as the area northwest of the Ohio River, east of the Mississippi, and south of the Great Lakes. The Brits said they were there to protect their interests in Canada, but many Americans suspected they were there to stir up the Native Americans. Because the Native Americans had been lied to, stolen from, pushed off their lands, and murdered in large numbers, they didn’t need a lot of stirring up.
In 1791, a U.S. army of about 2,000 troops under Gen. Arthur St. Clair marched into what is now Indiana to counter the British/Native American threat. But St. Clair was surprised and routed by a Native American force, and he suffered nearly 50 percent casualties.
In 1793, another force of 2,000 U.S. troops tried again, this time led by Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne. A Revolutionary War hero, Wayne got his nickname not from being nuts, but from being daring and a bit reckless in battle (which may be the same thing). Anyway, in August 1794, Wayne’s troops attacked a Native American force of about the same size at a site called Fallen Timbers in Indiana. Wayne’s army rolled over the Native Americans, burning their villages and destroying their crops. The victory ended the Native American threat, and restored much confidence in the U.S. Army.
Attempting to censor the press
American newspapers had been used as a political weapon almost as long as there had been American newspapers. But the rise of the two-party system in the 1790s greatly increased their use and their sting. Pro-Jefferson editors, such as Phillip Freneau and Benjamin Bache, squared off against pro-Hamilton scribes, such as John Fenno and William Cobbett.
These were nasty fellows with a quill in their hands. Bache once wrote “if ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington,” and Cobbett opined that America would be truly free only “when Jefferson’s head will be rotting cheek-to-jowl with that of some toil-killed Negro slave.”
By 1798, the Federalist-controlled Congress had had enough. It narrowly approved the Alien and Sedition Acts. The acts extended the naturalization period from 5 to 14 years, to keep out the foreign riff-raff. And they also made it a crime to publish “any false, scandalous and malicious writing” about the president, Congress, or the government in general.
Hundreds of individuals were indicted under the Sedition Act, but only ten — all of them Republicans — were convicted. Among them was Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont, who had already gained a reputation of sorts by spitting in the face of Federalist Congressman Roger Griswold on the floor of Congress (see Figure 6-1). Lyon was sentenced to four months in jail for writing about President Adams’s “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation and selfish avarice.” Lyon was reelected to Congress while in jail.
Partly because its application was so one-sided, the Sedition Act’s popularity quickly waned and in the end probably hurt the Federalist cause much more than it helped. The act expired on March 3, 1801, a day before Republican Jefferson assumed the presidency. It wasn’t renewed, and American politicians generally learned it was better to develop a thick hide when it came to the press than to try to slap a muzzle on the First Amendment.
Figure 6-1: Satirical cartoon of Matthew Lyon fighting Roger Griswold in Congress.
Finding Foreign Friction
Most Americans applauded when the French Revolution, which eventually overthrew the French monarchy and did away with a feudalistic system of government ruled by an aristocracy, began in 1789. Americans even continued to support it after the revolution was usurped by radical rebels, who turned it into the Reign of Terror. Thousands of French aristocrats, including King Louis XVI, had their heads lopped off by the guillotine. But many Americans shrugged off the excesses and focused on the French revolutionaries’ goals of “Liberte, egalite, fraternite” (French for liberty, equality, brotherhood).
But when the revolt spread to once again engulf Europe in war, more sober Americans started to worry. The Federalists, led by Hamilton, didn’t want to take the French side against the British. For one thing, they detested the excesses of the French “mobocracy,” or mob rule. For another, they realized that England was America’s best customer and most of the revenues from tariffs paid on imports came from English ships.
The Jefferson-led Republicans, on the other hand, didn’t want to side with the British. They reasoned that the French had backed them in their revolution, so they should do the same.
But America’s first two presidents, Washington and Adams, didn’t want to side with anyone. Both men saw that the longer America could stay out of the European mess, the stronger the country would become, and thus the more able it would be to control its own destiny rather than rely on the fortunes of an alliance.
Staying neutral wasn’t easy. British naval ships routinely stopped American merchant ships and forced American sailors into service aboard British ships, a practice called impressments. French ships also attacked American merchants with England-bound cargoes.
But luck and skillful negotiating kept America out of the Anglo-Franco fracas for a generation. In 1794, Washington sent diplomat John Jay to England. Jay eventually negotiated a treaty with the British in which the British agreed to give up their forts in the American Northwest and pay for damages caused by seizures of American ships. But the British didn’t agree to stop impressing American sailors, and Jay agreed the United States would repay pre-Revolutionary War debts it still owed. The Jay treaty was greeted with widespread howls of rage in America, but it cooled things down with the British for more than a decade.
The Jay treaty also angered the French, who stepped up their attacks on U.S. ships. In 1797, President Adams sent U.S. envoys to Paris to meet with the French foreign minister, Charles Talleyrand. But upon their arrival, the Americans were met by three go-betweens known publicly only as “X, Y, and Z,” who tried to get a $250,000 bribe from the Americans just for the chance to meet with Talleyrand. The U.S. envoys told X, Y, and Z to stick it and returned home.
So for about two years, France and the United States waged an undeclared war on the seas. The newly created U.S. Navy captured about 80 French ships, and the French continued to prey on American vessels. Then Adams did a remarkable thing. Ignoring the fact that war fever was raging and declaring war on France could help him win a second term as president, Adams sent another peace team back to Paris in 1800. This time, the two countries made a deal. Adams kept the United States out of war, but he also lost reelection to the presidency and sealed the doom of the Federalist Party in doing so.