3
On April 18, 1775, General Thomas Gage, military commander of His Majesty’s army in North America and the governor of Massachusetts, launched a nighttime march of troops from Boston to Concord. He was following orders from the secretary of state for the colonies to crush the resistance to British policy in Massachusetts and arrest its leaders. Gage doubted that he could nab the key colonials, but he intended to confiscate whatever arms and munitions the militia had stockpiled. Colonial lookouts spread the word that Gage’s men were on the move and alerted the local militia, dubbed “minutemen” for their ability to assemble swiftly. The British first met armed resistance in Lexington, where the redcoats dispersed the colonials, killing eight, and then turned toward Concord. Hundreds of militiamen awaited their arrival, firing on the redcoats as they entered the town and forcing their withdrawal. News of the British attacks spread rapidly across the region, and several thousand militiamen hurried to the area. American muskets rained deadly fire on Gage’s soldiers as they retreated to Boston. Seventy-three redcoats were killed and hundreds wounded. With the “shot heard ’round the world,” blood had been spilled and lives had been taken, engulfing eastern New England in a deadly crisis.
As planned, the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May. Delegates were confronted with the news from Massachusetts, where thousands of militiamen had ringed Gage’s forces on Boston’s narrow neck. In June, Gage, now aided by Generals William Howe and Henry Clinton, stormed across the bay to drive off the defenders but suffered unacceptably high casualties in the Battle of Bunker Hill. The Continental Congress’s response to the “unprovoked assault” in Lexington and “butchered . . . countrymen” in Charleston was to organize military resistance to the British occupation. Delegates formed a continental army, approved bills of credit to fund it, and appointed George Washington its commander. In its July 1775 “Declaration of Causes of Taking up Arms,” Congress stated that “necessity” had caused Americans to repel Britain’s “unprovoked” attacks and undertake a “defense of the freedom that is our birthright.” In the next breath, Congress denied that the colonies desired to leave the empire.
As Washington arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take command of the provincial army, the Continental Congress advised the colonies to form temporary nonroyalist governments—a logical step, in view of colonial military preparations. With British rule crumbling in its American colonies during the waning months of 1775, Crown ministers circulated a petition in Massachusetts urging reconciliation. Abigail Adams advised her husband John, a member of Congress, to spurn the offer, writing, “Let us separate, they are unworthy to be our brethren.”1
THE DECISION FOR INDEPENDENCE
In the fall of 1775 King George III told Parliament that the colonies were in open revolt and denounced its leaders as traitors. If apprehended, they were likely to hang. Parliament supported the king’s determination to force the rebels to submit, and it acknowledged Britain’s complete authority over all its possessions. Meanwhile, the Americans were keeping Britain’s military machine at bay, and Washington’s New England army had penned up General Howe’s forces in Boston. In March 1776 a daring repositioning of cannon carted from Fort Ticonderoga in New York to Dorchester Heights, overlooking the center of Boston, caused the British to withdraw to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Washington knew they would be back; he guessed correctly that their destination would be New York City.2
As Washington moved his army to New York, Congress continued to organize a defense of the homeland, while maintaining hope for reconciliation with Britain. Events, however, undermined this optimism. Word reached Congress of a vast British armada crossing the Atlantic, along with news that the king had hired 17,000 German soldiers as part of an invasion force. These rumors were confirmed in late May when copies of British treaties concerning the mercenaries arrived in the colonies. Congress had already advised colonial assemblies and committees of safety to disarm British loyalists. In April, South Carolina adopted a constitution that established a state government. The next month, Congress warned the colonies that “the whole force” of Britain, “aided by foreign mercenaries,” was en route to America. The delegates advised colonists that “any government under the . . . Crown should be totally suppressed” and recommended that the colonies form their own governments.3
Still, the Continental Congress hung back from declaring independence. Hope for a peaceful resolution lingered, especially in the middle colonies, where loyalists abounded among seaport merchants, Anglican clergy, recent immigrants, and non-English ethnic groups. Worried loyalists published a flurry of statements arguing the folly of opposing the world’s strongest navy and abandoning its protection of seaborne commerce. William Franklin, son of Benjamin and governor of New Jersey, told his assembly, “You can never place yourselves in a happier situation than in your ancient constitutional dependency on Great Britain.” Many loyalists agreed that Britain offered the widest protection of rights anywhere in the world. Compromise, they counseled, was possible and preferred.4
In January 1776 Thomas Paine published a pamphlet entitled Common Sense, and it had a marked impact on colonial thinking. Paine summarized colonial allegations of a Crown conspiracy to subvert American liberties and went on to enumerate “constitutional errors,” such as the practice of allowing heredity to select monarchies. In urging Americans to establish an independent republic, he observed that there “is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.” Common Sense was a best seller in the colonies and, in the view of numerous historians, was instrumental in swaying people’s minds about the conflict. Although Paine did not stampede Congress into a decision for separation, the delegates did appoint a committee in June to write a declaration of independence. The committee asked Thomas Jefferson, known for his literary skills, to draft the document. Still, some delegates hung back, contending that sentiments were not yet sufficiently “ripe” throughout the colonies for a formal separation. Moderate delegates worried that a lack of uniformity could prove fatal to a fledgling state.5
Advocates of separation waited for an opportune moment to push for independence. They got it on June 29 when lookouts on the roof of Washington’s headquarters in New York spotted forty-five British ships anchored inside Sandy Hook in sight of New York Harbor. Riders galloped off toward New Jersey and Connecticut to spread the news. Word drifted in that more ships and troops would follow. The news reached Philadelphia on July 1, confirming that Britain had resolved to crush the rebellion in America. By July 32,000 British soldiers had encamped on Staten Island, and 400 Royal Navy vessels, many of them heavily armed ships of the line, were anchored nearby. It was the largest expeditionary force of the eighteenth century. Four days after the British armada had been spotted, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Hopes for reconciliation evaporated. Resistance had been transformed into revolution. War would decide the outcome of the Americans’ defense of their liberties.6
The Declaration of Independence was a strategic part of this effort. Its intent was to rally colonists behind a common cause and to give that cause political legitimacy, in part to entice foreign assistance. The document was a synthesis of the theory and charges that colonists had been airing since 1764. It cited the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as authority to form a government “to effect their safety and happiness,” a step made necessary by “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States.” As proof of the last charge, Jefferson listed twenty-seven indictments again the king of Great Britain, including offenses that struck at the heart of republican ideas about liberty: the king had “dissolved representative houses,” refused necessary laws, prevented immigration and obstructed naturalization, interfered with the courts, kept standing armies in peacetime, taxed “without our consent,” and waged war against the colonies. Parliament had been a party to most of these actions, but Congress blamed the king, to whom colonists and royal administrators had pledged their allegiance. The logical alternative to the royal suppression of liberty, according to Jefferson’s proclamation, was the creation of an independent state.7
RESISTANCE ON A SHOESTRING
The American rebels had taken on a formidable challenge. They faced a well-trained professional army backed by the most powerful navy in the world. British officers in New York were confident that they could quickly overwhelm Washington’s ragtag force of newly recruited continentals and inexperienced militiamen. The prediction proved accurate in the early going, as redcoats landed on Long Island and drove Washington’s men from Brooklyn Heights, then from New York City, and finally from White Plains, north of the city. Americans who were not killed or captured in the New York campaign were lucky to escape across the Hudson River and flee through New Jersey to Pennsylvania. As winter approached, the British suspended military activity, as was the custom in the eighteenth century.
From his encampment near Philadelphia, Washington reflected on his retreat from New York and the news of a failed American attack on Quebec, the British stronghold in Canada. He desperately needed a victory to boost deflated spirits, especially among disgruntled members of Congress who were questioning the general’s leadership ability. Washington saw his opportunity in Trenton, New Jersey, where a regiment of German mercenaries was garrisoned. On Christmas night Washington led 2,400 continental troops across the Delaware River during a sleet storm and surprised the 1,500 British troops, 900 of whom were captured. It was a critical success for a resistance campaign that had stumbled out of the gate. A much larger triumph occurred at Saratoga, New York, the following fall when Americans stopped a British foray from Canada that had hoped to isolate New England from the middle colonies. British general John Burgoyne surrendered an army of 5,000. Among the fruits of that victory was France’s agreement to a treaty that opened the way for overt aid to the American war effort.
Trenton and Saratoga were exceptions to a desultory American campaign in the middle colonies, where the war settled into a stalemate. The British were headquartered in New York and Newport, Rhode Island, and Washington was working desperately to keep an army intact in New Jersey, where he monitored his adversaries’ movements. In 1779 British strategists shifted focus to the southern colonies, where they anticipated substantial assistance from loyalists. The Royal Navy landed forces at Savannah and then in Charleston, which surrendered after a five-week siege. Under General Henry Clinton, British forces pushed northward to Virginia, where they nearly nabbed Thomas Jefferson, governor of the state, in 1781. Prodded by the French general who had joined forces with the Americans, Washington agreed to confront Clinton’s army at Yorktown, Virginia. Through a sequence of British mishaps and American good fortune—such as bad weather impeding Clinton’s attempt to retreat across the James River and the timely arrival of the French fleet, which forced a withdrawal of the Royal Navy—a combined continental and French army forced Clinton’s surrender on October 17, 1781. After seven years of a military campaign that saddled the kingdom with a large debt, British officials ended their efforts to suppress the American rebellion. Terms for a peace settlement were signed in November 1782; the Treaty of Paris, which formally recognized the independence of the United States, was announced September 3, 1783.
The Americans achieved their bid for sovereignty, but to say they won the Revolutionary War exaggerates the military reality. A more accurate characterization of the outcome is that the British failed to subdue the patriots. The colonists, in other words, survived the British military storm. The wonder is that the patriots were able to avoid defeat, as they had neither a professional army nor an effective central government. An army had to be formed from scratch and qualified officers had to be found, tasks that proved problematic throughout the war. Washington and his generals periodically called out state militias, but these inexperienced local units, serving short terms of service, were unreliable. Raising money to pay for military supplies was always difficult, largely because there was no central bank and Congress lacked taxing power. The Continental Congress functioned as the national political command post for the duration of the war. Late in 1777 it approved the Articles of Confederation, which gave the colonies’ collaboration some constitutional substance, but approval of the plan lingered until 1781. The Articles of Confederation allowed Congress to borrow money but not to levy taxes. Throughout the conflict, congressional committees handled the administrative aspects of war policy, such as securing supplies, issuing paper money, floating loans, and requisitioning financial assistance from state governments. When funds were not forthcoming or goods were priced out of reach, continental troops turned to confiscation.
Given these obstacles, how did the patriots prevail? The answer lies largely in the interplay of six factors, beginning with geography. The Atlantic Ocean played an immense role in the outcome. Britain had to ferry men, food, fodder, and munitions 3,000 miles from England to America, a journey of four to eight weeks by sailing vessel. The Americans were situated along the coast from Maine to Georgia, a distance of nearly 1,300 miles, with some settlements located well inland. The Royal Navy had occupied the major American seaports—New York, Savannah, Charleston, and Philadelphia—for periods during the war but lacked the capacity to blockade every coastal location while also countering the French navy. The American Revolution was principally a land war, but Britain lacked sufficient troops to occupy all strategic locations.8
A second factor was leadership, which began with George Washington. The Virginia planter proved to be the right choice at the right time. Washington was not a great strategist, earning criticism for some of his decisions. But he made up for this shortcoming with other attributes. Impressions are important. Washington looked and acted like a leader. Over six feet tall, robust, and always dignified, he naturally commanded respect. Moreover, he treated his officers and troops civilly. Despite Washington’s military limitations, David McCullough wrote, he “never forgot what was at stake and he never gave up.” He was able to make tough decisions but usually asked his staff for advice. On the battlefield he was fearless. And he was a true republican, committed to the American cause, deferring to the civil authority of Congress, and forswearing an interest in transforming his command into a military dictatorship. But his greatest military contribution was his ability to design and execute a defensive strategy that enabled him to keep his army intact so it could fight another day. American units became adept at small-scale hit-and-run tactics. As long as Washington kept viable military forces in the field, ready to confront the redcoats, Americans had a chance.9
Third, American leaders understood the necessity for international assistance, especially from France. The French were eager to strike back at their longtime enemy, and the colonials’ victory over Burgoyne at Saratoga spurred the French to commit overtly to the American cause. French soldiers and warships from two fleets were critical in the American entrapment of Clinton at Yorktown in 1781. Spain and the Netherlands also declared war against Britain; Dutch loans were the most important benefit from the victory at Yorktown. Britain had no allies in its American war, as the kingdom watched the actions of Russia, Prussia, and Sweden with a jaundiced eye. George Washington benefited considerably from Europeans who joined his crusade; his favorite foreign officer, the Marquis de Lafayette, helped obtain the French-American alliance of 1778.10
Fourth, British strategy was flawed. The London ministers believed that American resistance was unsustainable; they discounted the size and potential contributions of colonial militia and underestimated the difficulties of supplying an overseas army. They expected far more support from colonialists (i.e., loyalists) than materialized. Following a vacillating strategy, British officers came up short in the opinion of numerous historians. Failure to pursue the enemy after an initial triumph was one criticism. The style of eighteenth-century warfare explains much of British hesitancy. Battlefield contests in Europe were fought for limited objectives, not total annihilation of enemy forces. Generals were cautious in committing troops to battle because the customary tactics for soldiers using smoothbore muskets, with an effective range of no more than one hundred yards, meant that sustained head-on charges could produce unacceptably high casualties. Replacing troops was difficult and costly. Moreover, most officers were aristocrats who had purchased their commissions; they were just as concerned with upholding a code of honor as with demonstrating tactical skill in the field. “Gentleman” Johnny Burgoyne was an example of the class. The general brought along his mistress and a personal baggage train of thirty carts containing fine china and wine on his foiled trek from Canada to Saratoga.11 Communication among military leaders and with the ministry was weakened by distance and personal rancor; these factors and poor judgment prevented the British navy from rescuing Cornwallis at Yorktown.12
A fifth factor, admittedly partially speculative, was the socioeconomic makeup of American society. The colonists produced sufficient food during the war, had a substantial iron-making capacity, and manufactured much of their own weaponry and ammunition. Congress and the states took advantage of colonists’ experience at sea, commissioning hundreds of privateering vessels (legalized pirates) that preyed on British shipping, a partial compensation for the lack of an American navy. Despite Britain’s attempted blockade, Americans continued to trade overseas, including the importation of French weapons. Closer to home, small ships plied coastal waters, some of which were too shallow for Britain’s heavy gunships. Given their adequate diet and rural lifestyle, Americans were a healthy people, which arguably helped patriot armies endure long marches and sustained campaigns. Moreover, Americans were farm folk familiar with firearms, including rifles, which were more accurate than muskets.13
Last, ideology likely helped the revolutionary cause, although the influence of beliefs and ideas on the behavior of large numbers of people is hard to determine. Still, the historical evidence makes a persuasive case that many colonists saw the fight in terms of preserving their rights—initially as British subjects and then, after 1775, as citizens under their own state constitutions. Certainly they understood that their homes and their lives, as well as the lives of their fellow Americans, would be imperiled by a British victory. The dual motivation of self-preservation and ideological commitment probably stiffened the militias’ resolve to muster when called and to stand their ground in the face of trained British regulars. Historian John Shy has argued that the militia “became the infrastructure of revolutionary government,” weeding out Tories (loyalists) from their communities and ensuring loyalty to the cause among various locales.14
THE IMPACT OF THE REVOLUTION
Success in resisting the British invasion had lasting ramifications for American statebuilding. First and foremost, the peace treaty with Great Britain recognized American sovereignty and secured a huge territorial concession. During the war colonists transformed their colonial governments to semisovereign states based on written constitutions. This process of statemaking set a precedent for defining political authority based on explicit texts. For his role in creating the conditions that allowed these developments to succeed, George Washington was heralded a hero, giving the country its first national figurehead.
The Treaty of Paris (1783), which recognized American sovereignty, emerged from machinations in international politics. The Americans who negotiated the settlement—Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams—had taken up residence in Paris. Britain’s failure to end the American rebellion, a costly undertaking, had prompted a transition in the ministries in London. Anglo-French enmity continued, which induced the British to make the best of a difficult situation. The treaty ceded to the United States the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains extending to the Mississippi River, running from the Great Lakes in the north to Georgia in the south. Americans were free to navigate the great river “from its source to the ocean.” British leaders saw these grants as a way of containing French ambitions in North America. For diplomatic reasons, France turned a blind eye to the American-British settlement, which, according to the American-French Treaty of 1778, required French consent. This territorial transfer was an extraordinary windfall for the United States. The concession allowed the new nation to begin its independence with a geographic expanse larger than western Europe. In so doing, the treaty set in motion the predictions of Benjamin Franklin and others that Americans were destined to occupy western lands as well.15
Americans who remained loyal to the English monarch complicated the conduct of the war and the postwar settlement. Somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 civilians left America during the Revolution, heading primarily for Canada and England. Larger numbers of Tories remained in America, notably in the vicinity of New York and other port cities. Following the recommendations of the Continental Congress, committees of safety, and other organizations, patriots had disarmed loyalists and seized and auctioned off their property, using the proceeds to fund the Revolution. Now, the treaty obligated Congress to “recommend” that the states restore the property of loyalists confiscated during the Revolution and to cease persecution of the opponents of independence. Every state enacted laws establishing loyalty oaths and declarations, forcing residents to confirm their allegiance to the United States. Disloyalty was treason. In reality, state governments provided little restitution or compensation for loyalist property seized or destroyed; the issue lingered in the courts into the nineteenth century. Slave owners did not recover all their human property that fled during the Revolution. A British raiding party helped seventeen of George Washington’s slaves escape Mount Vernon. Washington recovered eight of the runaways, four of whom sailed to Nova Scotia with the British when they evacuated New York. The Revolution and the peace settlement, in short, thrust to the forefront the issues of identity and citizenship, matters that principally lay in the hands of the new state governments.16
The conflict between the colonies and Great Britain resulted in the dissolution of royal governments and their replacement with temporary provincial assemblies. Acting on the May 1776 recommendation of the Continental Congress, colonists transformed their temporary governments into states by approving written constitutions. Eight states adopted constitutions in 1776; New York and Georgia followed in 1777. Massachusetts voters rejected a proposed constitution in 1778, largely because it had been neither written by a specially elected convention nor submitted for popular approval. Delegates for a new convention were elected in 1779, and Massachusetts voters accepted the revised constitution in 1780. Connecticut and Rhode Island retained their colonial charters, having excised references to the Crown.
These documents have enormous importance in the history of American statebuilding. Unlike the British, who did not base their government on a single written constitution, Americans anchored their governments on explicit rules, which included the enumeration of individual liberties in bills of rights. Equally significant, these new states were semisovereign entities that possessed broad powers that remained largely immune from central interference until the acceptance of a national constitution. This quasi-independent status of the states explains why the name of the new country—the United States of America—is expressed in the plural. The transition to statehood and to a union of independent states was primarily the consequence of the crisis of the Revolution. In effect, the years of debate over the powers of Parliament concerning the colonies and their practical governing experience prior to 1776 constituted an incubation period for refining ideas about American constitutionalism, to which the Revolution enabled explicit expression.17
The original state constitutions contained several identifying characteristics. First, constitution writers based the authority to form a government on a voluntary association of the people. The Virginia Constitution stated that “all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amendable to them.” The preamble to the Massachusetts Constitution (1780) expressed the principle this way: “The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: it is a social compact.” Section 4 of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights proclaimed, “The people of this commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves, as a free, sovereign and independent State.” This principle derived from the philosophy of John Locke, whose influence is visible in the American Declaration of Independence and in the historical development of colonial politics.
State constitutions explicitly listed the rights of citizens. Eight constitutions had separate declarations of rights (as in Virginia); a bill of rights served as the preamble to the Massachusetts compact. Other states embedded similar provisions in the bodies of their constitutions. These statements protected civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, the press, and religion, and prohibited unreasonable searches and seizures of people and property. Criminal procedure operated according to certain limitations on governmental authority, such as the right of the accused to be formally charged with a crime and to be tried by jury and the prohibition against excessive bail, provisions also written into the national Bill of Rights in 1789 (ratified in 1791). States, however, went beyond these well-known protections. Some forbade the granting of titles of nobility; others guaranteed the people’s right to form a militia, the right to a speedy trial by a jury of one’s peers, and the freedom to emigrate from the state. Americans’ understanding of “liberty” meant explicit limitations on the powers of public officials.
The new state constitutions centered the primary power to govern on elected legislators. These representative bodies had broad authority, although some powers were left implicit rather than explicitly enumerated. Taxation, for example, was assumed to be a prerogative of a sovereign government, needing no constitutional recognition. The structure and procedures of these governments, however, imposed limits on the ways power could be exercised. Most states created a bicameral legislature (two chambers), and all did so by 1790. State constitutions limited lawmakers to short terms (usually one year for assemblies), mandated frequent elections (annually for most lower houses), and required lawmakers to live in the districts they represented. The new compacts provided marginal expansions of suffrage, but voting privileges remained confined to adult white males who owned property or paid taxes. Some states mandated that lawmakers follow explicit procedures, such as printing bills prior to passage and recording roll-call votes. Suspicious of unlimited grants of power, Revolutionary-era Americans took pains to guard against capricious lawmaking.18
States recognized the need for a chief executive, but all imposed strict limitations on their powers. Nine states instructed legislators to elect their governors, usually for one-year terms without the prospect of reelection. Only Massachusetts granted the executive veto power; most states restricted governors’ appointment powers. Similar limitations applied to the highest courts, whose jurists were appointed by legislators in nine states. The principle of separation of power among legislators, executives, and judges did not fully blossom until several decades after the Revolution. Recognizing that changes could be warranted, some states provided mechanisms for rewriting their covenants.
The common features of the first state constitutions obscure the different ways the states actually governed. Constitutional actions during the Revolution empowered states to manage their own affairs, subject only to modest cooperation with national officials under the Articles of Confederation (1781–1789). Article II of that document stated, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” Beyond the ability to wage war, conduct foreign relations, and borrow money, Congress scarcely intruded on state governments, other than asking them to support the war with money and men. The semiautonomous condition of the original states has remained a salient characteristic of the American state.
Variations in state policy are visible in terms of their contributions to the war effort. States had the power to tax, but they raised funds in several ways. Some states levied taxes on property, both real estate and personal; some levied poll taxes on individual voters; others levied excise taxes. Virginia sold public lands, and all southern states gave warrants for land to soldiers upon their discharge. Virginia permitted the payment of certain taxes in commodities such as tobacco; tax arrearages in Massachusetts could be paid in cod oil, whalebone, and pearl ash. Maritime states, especially New York, enacted import duties and shipping fees. States auctioned off the confiscated properties of loyalists. Pressed for additional finances, states turned to paper money and borrowing to raise war funds. They also passed laws against profiteering, fixed wages and prices, and sponsored the manufacture of gunpower and firearms. Contemporary critics chastised state lawmakers for failing to comply fully with congressional “requisitions” of funds (more like requested donations) for war purposes. Collectively, the states provided some of Congress’s financial requests.19
The Revolution prodded colonists to form indigenous civic regimes, but it did not mold Americans into a single homogeneous nationality. Neither a common identity among inhabitants nor a single standard for citizenship had crystallized. The war did not elevate women to equal status with men, nor did it overturn slavery. Some residents continued to give their allegiance to Great Britain, at least in their hearts if not openly after 1776. Many backcountry farmers cared little about the outcome of the Revolution. Yet, as Gordon Wood has argued, Americans tended to think of themselves as distinct from Europeans. To the extent they embraced America’s republican values, the majority probably thought their political rights were superior to Old World standards. The Revolution was a politicizing event that imparted widespread pride in the struggle for republican liberty and the right of self-government among residents. The new political collaboration between a national Congress and the thirteen states was staffed by individuals who spoke English. Inadvertently and unplanned, the Revolution had nurtured the seeds of American nationalism.20
Independence also produced a national hero in George Washington. As commander in chief of the Continental Army, Washington was the stoic center of resistance to the British invasion, yet he remained deferential to the will of Congress. At the conclusion of the war he relinquished his command and returned to Mount Vernon, signifying his acceptance of civilian over military rule. He chose retirement, not a Napoleonic seizure of power. These achievements made Washington an international celebrity, standing a notch above Benjamin Franklin as the greatest American of his age. The cultivation of national identity requires the popular recognition of individuals who embody the virtues of a nation. Washington fulfilled the role admirably. He championed the cause of republican liberty during the war. He was a committed nationalist who worked for unity in a politically fragmented country whose governmental apparatus was locally oriented, insular, and rent by factional conflicts. “Unreasonable jealousies” among the states, he wrote in 1784, threatened “our downfall as a nation.” Conscious of his wide adulation, Washington avoided conspicuous efforts to exploit it, but behind the scenes he worked to forge a more robust central regime. A committed nationalist, his advocacy of a stronger central government was a critical factor in the writing of the Constitution of the United States.21
POSTWAR PROBLEMS
The adulation showered on Washington at the conclusion of the Revolution was a bright spot in a country facing formidable problems. The challenges were so extreme during the “critical period,” as John Quincy Adams and other contemporaries called the mid-1780s, that some wondered whether the new regime could survive. One difficulty oscillated around foreign relations, particularly the continuing presence of Britain and Spain in North America. The British failed to vacate forts on America’s northern perimeter, where they encouraged Native American attacks on settlers. Spain retained territory along the Gulf Mexico, including the port of New Orleans, which it closed to American commercial traffic in 1784. This closure threatened the livelihoods of frontier farmers who used the Mississippi River to transport goods to market. Britain’s orders in council banned American ships from the West Indies, where New Englanders had long cultivated a lucrative trade. France restricted access to its markets. “Barbary pirates” sponsored by states in North Africa captured and ransomed American merchant ships in the Mediterranean.22
The United States was virtually powerless to resolve these issues. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress did not possess the power to tax or to regulate commerce. The army had virtually disbanded after 1783, and the few ships in the navy were laid up. When John Adams, America’s ambassador to Britain, complained about that nation’s failure to send an ambassador to the States, the British queried: shall we send one envoy or thirteen? Equally frustrating was Congress’s inability to pay debts incurred during the Revolution. Lacking its own revenue, Congress sent six requisition requests to the states between October 1781 and August 1786, specifying payment in specie (hard currency), as required by creditors. The states filled a portion of the requests but, facing war debts of their own and other fiscal burdens, fell far short of the amounts billed. Not a single state complied with the 1785 assessment.
State lawmakers did raise revenue and retaliate against foreign trade restrictions. Nine states adopted tariffs designed to counter the British orders in council. Under pressure from private investors who had bought depreciated paper currencies (US continentals and state-issued paper), state legislators passed measures to retire war debts, expenditures that were added to normal funding obligations. Massachusetts levied poll taxes (on male voters), property taxes, and estate taxes; placed duties on exports; and adopted excise fees on the sale of liquor, tea, and luxury goods in 1785 in an effort to fund public debts. States allowed sheriffs and courts to seize and sell possessions, including farms and homes, for tax delinquency; some of the debtors were jailed. Many elites were unfazed by hardships imposed on average householders, arguing that citizens had a moral duty to satisfy their creditors and obey the tax laws. Failure to honor fiscal obligations, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson as Virginia wrestled to enforce its tax policy, would “stamp us with ignominy.”23
Alexander Hamilton, General Washington’s principal aide during the war and a rising politician, knew that tax laxity was not simply a moral defect but the result of an “extreme depression” in the mid-1780s. Hard times began in 1784, worsened in 1785, and hit bottom in 1786. That year Madison told Jefferson that “the present anarchy of our commerce” in Virginia had depleted the state’s treasury and swept the region clean of specie, creating a currency crunch that generated widespread demands for states to issue paper money and for a “postponement of taxes.” The economy had not recovered by January 1790, noted Hamilton in his “First Report on the Public Credit” (1790) as secretary of the treasury. The depreciated price for land, he wrote, “is a serious calamity. The value of cultivated lands, in most of the States, has fallen since the Revolution, from twenty-five to fifty percent. In those farther south, the decrease is still more considerable.” Hamilton warned that southern lands might soon be sold at fire-sale prices, a situation the secretary attributed to the “scarcity of money.”24
The depression exacerbated the decline in national wealth that occurred during the Revolutionary era. During the mid-1780s prices for agricultural goods dropped, especially for tobacco; shipbuilding nearly came to a halt; wages declined perhaps 40 percent for agricultural workers, and artisans went without work; imports at Philadelphia and other ports decreased by half. Foreign credit dried up. The economic downturn spread desperation in many communities. Nearly a third of the male inhabitants of several western Massachusetts counties, including Worcester, had judgments against them for debt, which threatened them with jail, the loss of property, and perhaps even sale into servitude. The chain of debt in the state put stress on eastern merchants, who had imported foreign goods on credit. Indebtedness was just as bad if not worse in New Hampshire, where the number of debtors increased sixfold between 1781 and 1785. As in all depressions in the long nineteenth century, conditions varied substantially by region, subregion, and economic pursuit. Virginia and Carolina experienced significant economic difficulty, but New York recorded less distress than states to the north and south.25
The severity and causes of the downturn remain sketchy, largely because of the absence of accurate economic data. But historians generally agree that British imports were the most likely trigger of the collapse; these goods flooded the country when peace returned, resulting in large outflows of specie to pay foreign sellers. Specie had been scarce during the Revolution, and the supply shrank even more as depreciated paper currency circulated in its place. Clinging to their mercantilist mentality, the British closed the West Indies to American traders, which cut off a lucrative market.
The weather probably magnified the severity of the commercial slump. The winters of 1783–1784 and 1784–1785 were among the coldest on record in the United States. Much of Chesapeake Bay froze in early 1784, closing busy ports such as Baltimore for several months and contributing to spring floods in the Tidewater region. Farther south, huge ice floes on the Mississippi passed New Orleans in 1784, a once-in-a-century event. The next year, 1785, brought a drought to Virginia, which stunted crops. George Washington, whose Mount Vernon plantation was located in upper Virginia, had no surplus corn to sell in 1785 or 1786; his crop was even worse in 1787, and rains ruined his corn crop in 1788. Many of his tenants on western lands did not pay their rent; some who did pay offered depreciated paper money, which, to Washington’s dismay, tax collectors refused to accept. His financial situation was so bleak that he had to borrow money to pay his taxes. Although he initially declined to accept a salary as president of the United States, he desperately needed the money and did not contest Congress’s insistence that he take the stipend.26
Exacerbating the economic malaise were the demands of creditors and conservatives to fund the national and state debts, legacies of financing the Revolution. Paying the interest and retiring the principal on these loans were only one aspect of the financial challenges facing many households. They also had to pay local taxes (to the county, parish, or town) and likely incurred private debts as well. Tax obligations placed a heavy burden on landowners during the depression, when most individuals lacked the specie that American governments demanded. The fiscal impasse caused a political crisis in most parts of the United States, leading to violent tax revolts in some places.27
Citizen backlash against tax and debt burdens in the 1780s produced demonstrations and local conventions that forwarded petitions to state governments for remedial legislation. All the states acquiesced in some fashion, especially in the most stressed regions, by enacting stay laws that delayed or deferred taxes (in at least nine states), tender acts (which allowed taxes to be paid in commodities, sometimes as land-bank loan arrangements), and bankruptcy laws. The most controversial measures provided for the issuance of paper money. Seven states authorized tax payments by paper currency; conservatives narrowly defeated paper currency proposals in fiercely contested legislative battles in Maryland and Virginia. Throughout most of the country a coalition of financial conservatives, elites, and creditors (e.g., merchants) battled debtors and commoners over public finance. The postwar depression had triggered class warfare in much of the country.
On occasion, civil protests and demonstrations erupted into violence and the destruction of public property, as mobs challenged debtor requirements and tax levies. In at least seven states “regulators” delayed or shut down the local courts, which were responsible for enforcing actions against tax delinquents. The most serious citizen outburst was Shays’s Rebellion, a drama that unfolded in central and western Massachusetts in the fall of 1786. A militia force of 4,400 raised in the eastern part of the state, funded by wealthy elites, sent the Shaysites scurrying before a full-fledged “insurrection” developed in January 1787.28
ADOPTION OF A NEW CONSTITUTION
The tax revolt dovetailed with the movement to build a stronger national government. Advocates of establishing a more capable central government—nationalists such as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington—had tried unsuccessfully to amend the Articles of Confederation so that Congress could levy taxes. Opponents of the proposal feared the creation of a “consolidated” government that would dominate the states. They were aided by the requirement that all states ratify any amendments to the articles, a very high threshold. The tax revolts offered the nationalists an opportune boost. Madison repeatedly wrote to Jefferson and Washington about misguided efforts in the Virginia legislature to delay tax levies, allow payment in goods rather than specie, and issue paper currency. “These mischiefs,” he said, “excite the disgust of all the respectable in America.”29 Largely through Madison’s efforts, the nationalists parlayed a conference in Annapolis, purportedly called to consider revising the Articles of Confederation related to trade, into a convention in Philadelphia to discuss broader matters. News of Shays’s Rebellion helped tip the scale among individuals who were initially reluctant to attend the conclave. The abortive insurrection in Massachusetts worried Washington, a staunch nationalist who saw the country “fast verging to anarchy and confusion” and bemoaned the “leveling” measures adopted in New England.30 With insurrection on the horizon, he agreed to participate in the Philadelphia convention, which elected him president in May 1787.31
On May 25, 1787, delegates from seven states opened the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Ostensibly gathering to repair the Articles of Confederation, the nationalists designed a whole new government instead. The consensus among the delegates, most of them members of the propertied elite, was that restrictions on the states were necessary and that the national government required greater power.32 After four months of extended debate and difficult negotiations, representatives from all the states except Rhode Island hammered out a new framework for a national government. Most attendees agreed that the existing Continental Congress was unacceptably weak and that a bicameral legislature was an appropriate way to balance democracy with state sovereignty. Most state constitutions, which served as working models for the architects of the US Constitution, provided for two-house legislatures. Delegates also clung to the eighteenth-century norm that political leadership should remain in the hands of influential citizens and that power should not be too broadly distributed among the common people. Still, putting together a new constitution was a contentious business. Several participants at the convention refused to sign the finished document.
The Virginia delegation, which included James Madison, arrived prior to the opening of the convention and used the time to prepare a set of resolutions to offer for consideration. Called the Virginia Plan, these points set the convention’s agenda, shaping much of the product that eventually emerged. During the next four months disagreement flared around four major issues. First, should representation in Congress be proportional to population or distributed equally among the states? Delegates from small states opposed proportional representation, which would allow the five largest states, with 61 percent of the population, to dominate the government. A compromise was struck by creating a legislature consisting of two bodies—a House of Representatives, whose membership would be based on population, and a Senate, whose membership would be apportioned equally among the states (senators would be elected by state legislatures). Selection of a bicameral legislature mirrored the arrangement in both the American states and the British Parliament.
A second sticking point centered on the method of selecting the president. Proposals ranged from popular election by the voters to selection by Congress. Once more, compromise split the difference: state legislatures would choose electors (based on the number of representatives and senators in the state), who in turn would cast ballots for president and vice president. A third controversy arose over the insistence of delegates from the six southern states that the Constitution protect slavery. The compromise struck on this issue prohibited the importation of slaves after 1808, authorized the return of fugitive slaves who fled to other states, and counted slaves (as three-fifths citizens) for purposes of apportioning legislative seats among the states.
The final major disagreement concerned the amount of power to vest in the central government and how many state prerogatives to curtail. Delegates worked out a solution that allotted specific (enumerated) powers to Congress, imposed certain restrictions on state actions, and implicitly designed a federal structure recognizing that both the national and the state governments would act in their respective spheres, with some overlapping (concurrent) powers, such as taxation.33
Given the defects of the Articles of Confederation, the chief powers granted to Congress were easily anticipated: authority to tax (including customs on imported goods and excise taxes), borrow money, coin money and “regulate the value thereof,” regulate foreign and interstate commerce, establish rules on bankruptcy and patents, punish piracy “on the high Seas,” and maintain an army and navy. Congress was also permitted to dispose of and regulate the territory of the United States and admit new states. Debts contracted before the adoption of the Constitution remained valid. The creation of a Supreme Court and of “inferior Courts,” as Congress saw fit, established national tribunals to adjudicate disputes relative to the Constitution.
The impact of the depression and tax revolts is clearly visible in the Constitution. In addition to establishing a revenue stream for the payment of national debts, Congress could call forth the militia to “suppress Insurrections.” The Constitution stipulated that the national government “shall guarantee to every State . . . a Republican Form of Government,” and it promised protection against “domestic violence.” States were prohibited from taxing exports and imports; regulating commerce between the states; issuing “Bills of Credit” (paper money); making anything “but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts,” a legacy of the fiscal crisis of the 1780s; or impairing the obligation of contracts. Virtually all of the nationalists’ critiques of state legislative excesses arising from the depression and the subsequent tax revolts were explicitly addressed in the Constitution.34
James Madison, called the “father” of the Constitution, expressed conservatives’ alarm about state tax relief laws in The Federalist Papers (1788), essays designed to persuade reluctant citizens to support the new plan of government. In the tenth of these famed commentaries, Madison argued that a large republic (one composed of all the states) offered a structure that could block “wicked” legislation, such as “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper . . . project.” His letters to Jefferson and Washington between 1784 and 1786 expressed his distaste for proposals in the Virginia legislature to delay tax levies and to permit their payment in kind (e.g., tobacco) rather than in specie. A small republic, he wrote, increased the influence of “factions,” such as “creditors . . . debtors . . . a moneyed interest,” to bend power for their own interests.35 Alexander Hamilton was the second principal author of The Federalist Papers, a project he organized to persuade New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution. He brilliantly argued the benefits of the proposed government while also stressing the limitations on its power. In Federalist, no. 6 Hamilton blamed the “extreme depression” for the crisis over the national credit and for causing “the rebellions in Massachusetts.” He referred to Shays’s Rebellion and other populist demonstrations in four other essays.36
Nationalists had forged a political revolution, at least in the eyes of their detractors. Opponents of the Constitution charged that “young visionary men and the consolidating aristocracy” were plotting to build an entirely new political edifice, despite their avowed intention only to remodel the existing structure.37 Early in the twentieth century historian Charles Beard amplified this conspiracy allegation by charging that a cabal of delegates at the Constitutional Convention had drawn up a document designed expressly to further their personal economic interests.38 Most delegates at the Philadelphia convention were affluent elites, and given the norms of colonial politics, such “betters” were expected to rule. The contest over the ratification of the Constitution in 1787 and 1788 turned in part along various economic axes. Nevertheless, the verdict of most historians is that the composition of the Constitution was not exclusively or even primarily driven by the delegates’ own financial interests.39
Regardless of the intentions of the framers and the motives of the ratifiers, even a casual reading of the Constitution reveals its economic content. The key powers bestowed on the national government with regard to substantive policy concern primarily money and credit, property, commerce, land, and slaves. This list can be broadened by recognizing that the authority to maintain an army and navy and to oversee relations with Indians would be used to protect property and promote commerce. The establishment of courts (which adjudicated disputes over economic matters and property), the restrictions imposed on the states, and the assertion that the Constitution and the laws made under its authority “shall be the supreme Law of the Land” reinforced the explicit grants of financial and commercial power to the central government.
RATIFICATION
Nationalists realized that concessions were necessary to achieve consent for a stronger central government that reduced state sovereignty. The key compromise on this critical issue was the creation of a federal system, which strengthened national authority yet retained most traditional prerogatives for the states. The concept was not novel. The relationship between the colonies and Parliament prior to the Revolution and between Congress and the states during the confederation period embodied elements of the principle.40 Madison ransacked histories and political philosophy for insight on confederacies past and present. Others who were active in the debate over the proposed constitution, such as Hamilton, were also well read in the classics and history.41 Limiting the power of government by dividing it was natural to a society steeped in republican political assumptions that viewed the usurpation of power as a tendency of human nature. The key question in 1787 centered on the specific powers to award the central government. On this issue, Madison and pro-constitutionalists fudged a bit, remaining vague on just how much sovereignty would shift to the center. Madison described the new arrangement in Federalist 39 as “partly federal and partly national.” At the time, “federal” was understood to mean a “confederacy.” The new arrangement, he wrote, was a “compound republic.” Conscious of the importance of symbols, the nationalists called themselves Federalists in the campaign to ratify the Constitution. Their opponents thus became Anti-Federalists.
From the vantage point of the Anti-Federalists, the Constitution created a “consolidated” government of frightening power. The new Congress could tax, raise an army, conduct foreign relations, control its territories, and assign significant tasks to an elected executive. The Federalists argued that these powers were necessary for the survival of the nation, which was buffeted by foreign threats and tyrannous majorities in the state legislatures. The Anti-Federalists responded that the Federalists were exaggerating the problems of the 1780s as a strategy to win acceptance of their handiwork. They charged that the movement for a stronger government was an “aristocratic junto” designed to sweep power into its vortex, which would undermine republican government.42 George Mason, a Virginian planter who attended the Constitutional Convention, thought the plan created a “consolidated government” that would likely “terminate in the annihilation of the state governments.”43
Federalists countered that the states retained considerable power, including control over the selection of many national officers, such as choosing US senators and presidential electors and setting qualifications for voters in House elections. They argued that the “unruly men” in the state legislatures were a threat to republican institutions and that restricting their powers would protect liberty and guarantee the survival of the union—arguments with which some Anti-Federalists agreed. Pro-constitutionalists also contended that a stronger central government would improve the economy and generate revenue by taxing imports. Improvement of the country’s financial credit held out the prospect that the federal government could pay the national debt and perhaps assume the debts of the states as well, which would reduce the need for direct state taxes.
The Federalists’ campaign had several advantages over that of their rivals. The pro-constitutionalists were blessed with the extraordinary literary talents of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, authors of The Federalist Papers, which became a monument in American political science. The Federalists brought a distinct model to the debate, while the Anti-Federalists had no common program. The Federalists created a personal network to aid approval in key states, while the Anti-Federalists lacked a similarly coordinated organization. And the Federalists possessed George Washington, the hero of the new republic and likely to become its first president. Yet the campaign for ratification generated intense political tension, especially in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, where the issue was closely contested. The outcome in all the major states hung on bargains and political cajoling. Virginia’s narrow approval, critical to ratification of the Constitution, influenced the vote in New York several days later. Yet with victory uncertain, Hamilton threatened the secession of New York City if New York’s Anti-Federalists rejected ratification. Helping to overcome opposition was the Federalists’ promise to insert a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.44
New York’s ratification of the Constitution on July 26, 1788, authorized the election of a president and the gathering of national lawmakers in 1789. Fifteen years had passed between Britain’s promulgation of the Intolerable Acts in 1774 and the convening of the First Congress in 1789. The twists and turns in the transition from colonies to a sovereign state, anchored by a new national constitution, surely lay beyond most observers’ wildest imagination prior to the deadly confrontations at Lexington and Concord. Blazing this pathway were unpredictable events with far-reaching consequences. A short list of these influential developments would include the Intolerable Acts, the arrival of the massive British invasion fleet, the American military victories at Saratoga and Yorktown, the popular rebellions of 1786, and the emergence of James Madison as an energetic mastermind of a stronger central government during the troubles of the mid-1780s. The crises generated by various anomalous developments required decisions in the moment and stimulated the reconsideration of existing assumptions, establishing new reference points for future actions. Older verities were not wholly abandoned but modified and reshaped as the political context evolved. Out of this re-mixture of long-term beliefs and short-term crises emerged the initial form of the American national state.
Many historians have concluded that the United States did not look or act like a full-fledged state in 1789. But as the anonymous individual who called himself “Brutus” protested during the ratification debate, Congress possessed the authority to tax and gained a potent grant of power in the “necessary and proper clause” of the Constitution. “He that has the purse will have the sword, and they [the supporters of the Constitution] have both.” He predicted that granting these powers to the central authorities would “destroy” the capacity of the states.45 Though skeptical of the wisdom of the new allocation of powers, the Anti-Federalists acknowledged that the Constitution contained the rudiments for building a powerful state. The Federalists agreed, although they muted this conclusion in their public commentaries.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris and the Constitution established the foundation of the American national state. Compared with other states, nearly all of which possessed centralized authority, America’s civic arrangement was fragmented and, on the surface, appeared feeble. During its initial decades of operation, Congress rejected the construction of a large national bureaucracy. Herein lies the paradox. The quotient of power commanded by the new state was deceiving because it rested on two legal platforms—the national Constitution and the constitutions of the states. Both levels of government had the power to tax and to use coercive force. Each had the constitutional authority to regulate a range of behaviors, although much of the federal government’s power remained latent—theoretically possible but used sparingly for several generations. Each government possessed wide but not universal popular support. These features embody the criteria of a modern national state.
The irony of this redesign of government was that it was an unintended consequence of crisis. The Americans did not revolt against Britain with the goal of creating a new state. Revolutionary leaders did not follow a clearly outlined plan that delineated a new political structure. Rather, they reacted defensively to provocations that threatened perceived liberties. When crises forced practical decisions between 1774 and 1788, leaders drew on familiar referents for guidance. One was their sociopolitical surroundings, both in their own communities and in the powerful states of Europe. History was another. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Washington, and others of the Revolutionary generation were familiar with political history and understood the importance of national wealth, taxation, and military capacity to sustain a government. This eighteenth-century inheritance constituted a handbook for creating a new state.