CHAPTER VII
THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1781-1798
The British colonists, who a.s.sumed independent legal existence with the adoption of Articles of Confederation in 1781, had managed to carry through a revolution and emerge into the light of peace. They were now required to learn, in the hard school of experience, those necessary facts of government which they had hitherto ignored, and which, even in the agonies of civil war, they had refused to recognize.
Probably with three-quarters of the American people, the prevailing political sentiment was that of aversion to any governmental control, coupled with a deep-rooted jealousy and distrust of all officials, even those chosen by and dependent upon themselves. Their political ideals contemplated {130} the government of each colony chiefly by the elected representatives of the voters, who should meet annually to legislate and tax, and then, having defined the duties of the few permanent officers in such a way as to leave them little or no discretion, should dissolve, leaving the community to run itself until the next annual session. Authority of any kind was to them an object of traditional dread, even when exercised by their own agents. The early State const.i.tutions concentrated all power in the legislature, leaving the executive and judicial officials little to do but execute the laws.
The only discretionary powers enjoyed by governors were in connection with military affairs.
In establishing the Articles of Confederation the statesmen of the Continental Congress had no intention of creating in any sense a governing body. All that the Congress could do was to decide upon war and peace, make treaties, decide upon a common military establishment, and determine the sums to be contributed to the common treasury. These matters, moreover, called for an affirmative vote of nine States in each case. There was no federal executive or judiciary, nor any provision for enforcing the votes of the Congress. To carry out any single thing committed by the Articles to the Congress, and duly voted, required the {131} positive co-operation of the State legislatures, who were under no other compulsion than their sense of what the situation called for and of what they could afford to do.
Things were, in short, just where the colonists would have been glad to have them before the Revolution--with the objectionable provincial executives removed, all coercive authority in the central government abolished, and the legislatures left to their own absolute discretion.
In other words, the average American farmer or trader of the day felt that the Revolution had been fought to get rid of all government but one directly under the control of the individual voters of the States.
Typical of such were men like Samuel Adams of Ma.s.sachusetts and Patrick Henry of Virginia. They had learned their politics in the period before the Revolution, and clung to the old colonial spirit, which regarded normal politics as essentially defensive and anti-governmental.
On the other hand, there were a good many individuals in the country who recognized that the triumph of the colonial ideal was responsible for undeniable disasters. Such men were found, especially, among the army officers and among those who had tried to aid the cause in diplomatic or civil office during the Revolution. Experience made them realize that the practical abolition of all {132} executive authority and the absence of any real central government had been responsible for chronic inefficiency. The financial collapse, the lack of any power on the part of Congress to enforce its laws or resolutions, the visible danger that State legislatures might consult their own convenience in supporting the common enterprises or obligations--all these shortcomings led men like Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Webster, a pamphleteer of New England, to urge even before 1781 that a genuine government should be set up to replace the mere league. Their supporters were, however, few, and confined mainly to those merchants or capitalists who realized the necessity of general laws and a general authority. It is scarcely conceivable that the inherited prejudices of most Americans in favour of local independence could have been overborne had not the Revolution been followed by a series of public distresses, which drove to the side of the strong-government advocates--temporarily, as it proved--a great number of American voters.
When hostilities ended, the people of the United States entered upon a period of economic confusion. In the first place, trade was disorganized, since the old West India markets were lost and the privileges formerly enjoyed under the Navigation Acts were terminated by the separation of the {133} countries. American shippers could not at once discover in French or other ports an equivalent for the former triangular trade. In the second place, British manufacturers and exporters rushed to recover their American market, and promptly put out of compet.i.tion the American industries which had begun to develop during the war. Specie, plentiful for a few months, now flowed rapidly out of the country, since American merchants were no longer able to buy British goods by drawing on West India credits. At the same time, with the arrival of peace, the State courts resumed their functions, and general liquidation began; while the State legislatures, in the effort to adjust war finances, imposed what were felt to be high taxes. The result was a general complaint of hard times, poverty, and insufficient money. Some States made efforts to retaliate against Great Britain by tariffs and navigation laws, but this only damaged their own ports by driving British Trade to their neighbours". Congress could afford no help, since it had no power of commercial regulation.
The effect upon the working of the Confederation showed that a majority of Americans had learned nothing from all their experiences, for the State legislatures declined to furnish to the central government any {134} more money than they felt to be convenient, regardless of the fact that without their regular support the United States was certain to become bankrupt. Robert Morris was appointed Financier in 1871, and took energetic steps to introduce order into the ma.s.s of loan certificates, foreign loans, certificates of indebtedness, and mountains of paper currency; but one unescapable fact stood in his way, that the States felt under no obligation to pay their quotas of expenses. In spite of his urgent appeals, backed by resolutions of Congress, the government revenues remained too scanty to pay even the interest on the debt. Morris resigned in disgust in 1784; and his successors, a committee of Congress, found themselves able to do nothing more than confess bankruptcy. The people of the States felt too poor to support their federal government, and, what was more, felt no responsibility for its fate.
Without revenue, it naturally followed that the Congress of the Confederation accomplished practically nothing. As will be shown later, it could secure no treaties of any importance, since its impotence to enforce them was patent. It managed to disband the remaining troops with great difficulty and only under the danger of mutiny, a danger so great that it took all of {135} Washington"s personal influence to prevent an uprising at Newburg in March, 1783.
For the rest, its leaders, men often of high ability--Hamilton, Madison, King of Ma.s.sachusetts, Sherman of Connecticut--found themselves helpless. Naturally they appealed to the States for additional powers and submitted no less than three amendments: first, in 1781, a proposal to permit Congress to levy and collect a five per cent. duty on imports; then, in 1783, a plan by which certain specific duties were to be collected by State officers and turned over to the government; and finally, in 1784, a request that Congress be given power to exclude vessels of nations which would not make commercial treaties. No one of these succeeded, although the first plan failed of unanimous acceptance by one State only. The legislatures recognized the need, but dreaded to give any outside power whatever authority within their respective boundaries. While those who advocated these amendments kept reiterating the positive necessity for some means to avert national disgrace and bankruptcy, their opponents, reverting to the language of 1775, declared it incompatible with "liberty" that any authority other than the State"s should be exercised in a State"s territory. By 1787, it was clear that any hope of specific amendments was vain. Unanimity from {136} thirteen legislatures was not to be looked for.
On the other hand, where the States chose to act they produced important results. The cessions of western lands, which had been exacted by Maryland as her price for ratifying the Articles, were carried out by New York, Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia until the t.i.tle to all territory west of Pennsylvania and north of the Ohio was with the Confederation. Then, although nothing in the Articles authorized such action, Congress, in 1787, adopted an Ordinance establishing a plan for settling the new lands. After a period of provincial government, substantially identical with that of the colonies, the region was to be divided into States and admitted into the union, under the terms of an annexed "compact" which prohibited slavery and guaranteed civil rights. But where the States did not co-operate, confusion reigned. Legislatures imposed such tariffs as they saw fit, which led to actual inter-State commercial discriminations between New York and its neighbours. Connecticut and Pennsylvania wrangled over land claims. The inhabitants of the territory west of New Hampshire set up a State government under the name of Vermont, and successfully maintained themselves against the State of New York, {137} which had a legal t.i.tle to the soil, while the frontier settlers in North Carolina were prevented only by inferior numbers from carrying through a similar secession.
Finally, in the years 1785-7, the number of those who found the unrestrained self-government of the separate States another name for anarchy was enormously increased by a sudden craze for paper money, "tender" laws, and "stay" laws which swept the country. The poorer cla.s.ses, especially the farmers, denounced the courts as agents of the rich, clamoured for more money to permit the easy payment of obligations, and succeeded in compelling more than half of the States to pa.s.s laws hindering the collection of debts and emitting bills of credit, which promptly depreciated. Worse remained. In New Hampshire, armed bands tried to intimidate the legislature; and in Ma.s.sachusetts the rejection of such laws brought on actual insurrection. Farmers a.s.sembled under arms, courts were broken up, and a sharp little civil war, known as Shays" Rebellion, was necessary before the State government could re-establish order.
In these circ.u.mstances, a sudden strong reaction against mob rule and untrammelled democracy ran through the country, swinging all men of property and law-abiding habits powerfully in favour of the demand {138} for a new, genuinely authoritative, national government, able to compel peace and good order. So the leaders of the reform party struck; and at a meeting of Annapolis in October, 1786, summoned originally to discuss the problem of navigating the Potomac River, they issued a call for a convention of delegates from all the States to meet at Philadelphia in May, 1787, for the purpose of recommending provisions "intended to render the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union." This movement, reversing the current of American history, gained impetus in the winter of 1787. Congress seconded the call; and, after Virginia had shown the way by nominating its foremost men as delegates, the other States fell into line and sent representatives--all but Rhode Island, which was the scene of an orgy of paper-money tyranny, and would take no part in any such meeting.
Of the fifty-five men present at the Philadelphia convention, not more than half-a-dozen were of the old colonial type, which clung to individual State independence as the palladium of liberty. All the others felt that the time had come to lay the most thoroughgoing limitations upon the States, with the express purpose of preventing any future repet.i.tion of the existing inter-State wrangles, and especially of the financial {139} abuses of the time; and they were ready to gain this end by entrusting large powers to the central government. They divided sharply, however, on one important point, namely, whether the increased powers were to be exercised by a government similar to the existing one, or by something wholly new and far more centralized; and over this question the convention ran grave danger of breaking up.
Discussion began in June, 1787, behind closed doors, with a draft plan agreed upon by the Virginia members as the working project. This was a bold scheme, calling for the creation of a single great State, relying on the people for its authority, superior to the existing States, and able, if necessary, to coerce them; in reality, a fusion of the United States into a single commonwealth. In opposition to this, the representatives of the smaller States--Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut--aided by the conservative members from New York, announced that they would never consent to any plan which did not safeguard the individuality and equality of their States; and, although the Virginia plan commanded a majority of those present, its supporters were obliged to permit a compromise in order to prevent an angry dissolution of the convention. In keeping with a suggestion of the {140} Connecticut members, it was agreed that one House of the proposed legislature should contain an equal representation of the States, while the other should be based on population.
The adoption of this compromise put an end to the danger of disruption, for all but a few irreconcilables were now ready to co-operate; and in the course of a laborious session a final draft was hammered out, with patchings, changes, and additional compromises to safeguard the interests of the plantation States in the inst.i.tution of slavery.
When the convention adjourned, it placed before the people of America a doc.u.ment which was a novelty in the field of government. In part, it aimed to establish a great State, on the model of the American States, which in turn derived their features from the colonial governments. It had a Congress of two Houses, an executive with independent powers, and a judiciary authorized to enforce the laws of the United States.
Congress was given full and exclusive power over commerce, currency, war and peace, and a long list of enumerated activities involving inter-State questions, and was authorized to pa.s.s all laws necessary and proper to the carrying out of any of the powers named in the const.i.tution. Further, the const.i.tution, the federal laws, and treaties were declared to be the supreme {141} law of the land, anything in a State law or const.i.tution notwithstanding. In addition, the States were expressly forbidden to enter the fields reserved to the federal government, and were prohibited from infringing the rights of property. On the other hand, the new government could not exist without the co-operation of the States in providing for the election of electors,--to choose a president--of senators, and of congressmen. It was a new creation, a federal State.
There now followed a sharp and decisive contest to gain the necessary ratification by nine commonwealths. At first, the advocates of strong government, by a rapid campaign, secured the favourable votes of half-a-dozen States in quick succession; but when it came the turn of New York, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Virginia, the conservative, localistic instincts of the farmers and older people were roused to make a strenuous resistance. The "Federalists," as the advocates of the new government termed themselves, had to meet charges that the proposed scheme would crush the liberties of the State, reduce them to ciphers, and set up an imitation of the British monarchy. But, by the eager urging of the foremost lawyers and most influential men of the day, the tide was turned and ratification carried, although with the utmost difficulty, and usually with {142} the recommendation of amendments to perfect the const.i.tution. In June, 1788, the contest ended; and, although Rhode Island and North Carolina remained unreconciled, the other eleven States proceeded to set up the new government.
In the winter of 1789, in accordance with a vote of the Congress of the Confederation, the States chose electors and senators, and the people voted for representatives. But one possible candidate existed for the presidency, namely, the hero of the Revolutionary War; and accordingly Washington received the unanimous vote of the whole electoral college.
With him, John Adams was chosen vice-president, by a much smaller majority. The Congress, which slowly a.s.sembled, was finally able to count and declare the votes, the two officers were inaugurated, and the new government was ready to a.s.sume its functions.
There followed a period of rapid and fundamental legislation. In the new Congress were a body of able men, by far the greater number of them zealous to establish a strong authoritative government, and to complete the victory of the Federalists. The defeated States" Rights men now stood aside, watching their conquerors carry their plan to its conclusion. Led for the most part by James Madison of the House, {143} Congress pa.s.sed Acts creating executive departments with federal officials; establishing a full independent federal judiciary, resident in every State, with a supreme court above all; imposing a tariff for revenue and for protection to American industries, and appropriating money to settle the debts of the late confederation. In addition, it framed and submitted to the States a series of const.i.tutional amendments whose object was to meet Anti-federalist criticisms by securing the individual against oppression from the federal government.
When Congress adjourned in September, 1789, after its first session, it had completed a thoroughgoing political revolution. In place of a loose league of entirely independent States, there now existed a genuine national government, able to enforce its will upon individuals and to perform all the functions of any State.
That the American people, with their political inheritance, should have consented even by a small majority to abandon their traditional lax government, remains one of the most remarkable political decisions in history. It depended upon the concurrence of circ.u.mstances which, for the moment, forced all persons of property and law-abiding instincts to join together in all the States to remedy an intolerable situation.
{144} The leaders, as might be expected, were a different race of statesmen, on the whole, from those who had directed events prior to 1776. Washington and Franklin favoured the change; but Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry were eager opponents, Samuel Adams was unfriendly, and Thomas Jefferson, in Paris, was unenthusiastic. The main work was done by Hamilton, Madison, John Marshall, Gouverneur Morris, Fisher Ames--men who were children in the days of the Stamp Act. The old agitators and revolutionists were superseded by a new type of politicians, whose interests lay in government, not opposition.
But the fundamental American instincts were not in reality changed; they had only ebbed for the moment. No sooner did Congress meet in its second session in January, 1790, and undertake the task of reorganizing the chaotic finances of the country, than political unanimity vanished, and new sectional and cla.s.s antagonisms came rapidly to the front in which could be traced the return of the old-time colonial habits. The central figure was no longer Madison, but Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, who aspired to be a second William Pitt, and submitted an elaborate scheme for refunding the entire American debt. In addition, he called for an excise tax, and {145} later recommended the chartering of a National Bank to serve the same function in America that the Bank of England performed in Great Britain.
Daring, far-sighted, based on the methods of English financiers, Hamilton"s plans bristled with points certain to arouse antagonism. He proposed to refund and pay the debt at its face value to actual holders, regardless of the fact that the nearly worthless federal stock and certificates of indebtedness had fallen into the hands of speculators; he recommended that the United States should a.s.sume, fund, and pay the war debt of the States, disregarding the fact that, while some States were heavily burdened, others had discharged their obligations. He urged an excise tax on liquors, although such an internal tax was an innovation in America and was certain to stir intense opposition; he suggested the chartering of a powerful bank, in spite of the absence of any clause in the const.i.tution authorizing such action. Hamilton was, in fact, a great admirer of the English const.i.tution and political system, and he definitely intended to strengthen the new government by making it the supreme financial power and enlisting in its support all the moneyed interests of the country.
Property, as in England, must be the basis of government.
{146}
Against his schemes, there immediately developed a rising opposition which made itself felt in Congress, in State legislatures, in the newspapers, and finally in Washington"s own Cabinet. All the farmer and debtor elements in the country disliked and dreaded the financial manipulations of the brilliant secretary; and the Virginian planters, universally borrowers, who had been the strongest single power in establishing the new const.i.tution, now swung into opposition to the administration. Madison led the fight in the House against Hamilton"s measures; and Jefferson, in the Cabinet, laid down, in a memorandum of protest against the proposed bank, the doctrine of "strict construction" of the const.i.tution according to which the powers granted to the federal government ought to be narrowly construed in order to preserve the State governments, the source of liberty, from encroachment. He denounced the bank, accordingly, as unwarranted by the const.i.tution, corrupt, and dangerous to the safety of the country.
In the congressional contest Hamilton was successful, for all his recommendations were adopted, but at the cost of creating a lasting antagonism in the southern States and in the western regions.
In 1791, Jefferson and Madison co-operated to establish a newspaper at Philadelphia whose sole occupation consisted in denouncing {147} the corrupt and monarchical Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton retorted by publishing letters charging Jefferson with responsibility for it; and Washington, who steadily approved Hamilton"s policies, found his Cabinet splitting into two factions. By the year 1792, when the second presidential election took place, the opposition, styling itself "Republican," was sufficiently well organized to run George Clinton, formerly the Anti-federalist leader of New York, for the Vice-Presidency against the "monarchical" Adams. Washington was not opposed, but no other one of the Hamiltonian supporters escaped attack.
There was, in short, the beginning of the definite formation of political parties on lines akin to those which existed in the period before 1787. Behind Jefferson and Madison were rallying all the colonial-minded voters, to whom government was at best an evil and to whom, under any circ.u.mstances, strong authority and elaborate finance were utterly abhorrent. Around Hamilton gathered the men whose interests lay in building up a genuine, powerful, national government--the merchants, shipowners, moneyed men and creditors generally in the northern States--and, of course, all Tories.
Up to 1793, the Federalist administration successfully maintained its ground; and, when {148} the Virginian group tried in the House to prove laxity and mismanagement against Hamilton, he was triumphantly vindicated. Had the United States been allowed to develop in tranquillity and prosperity for a generation, it is not unlikely that the Federalist party might have struck its roots so deeply as to be impervious to attacks. But it needed time, for in contrast to the Jeffersonian party, whose origin is manifestly in the old-time colonial political habits of democracy, local independence, and love of lax finance, the Federalist party was a new creation, with no traditions to fall back upon. Reflecting in some respects British views, notably in its distrust of the ma.s.ses and its respect for property and wealth, it far surpa.s.sed any English party of the period, except the small group led by William Pitt, in its demand for progressive and vigorous legislation. In 1793, when matters were in this situation, the state of European and British politics suddenly brought the United States into the current of world politics, and subjected the new administration to difficulties, which were ultimately to cause its downfall.
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CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1783-1795
While the United States had been undergoing the important changes of the period, 1783-1793, England had pa.s.sed through an almost equally significant political transformation, in course of which the two countries entered upon a long history of difficult and unfriendly diplomatic relations. The treaty of peace ended the political union of the two communities, but it left the nature of their commercial relations to be settled; and this, for the United States, was a problem second only in importance to that of federal government. If the prosperity of the thirteen States was to be restored, the old-time trade routes of the colonial days must be re-established. The West India market for fish, grain, and lumber, the British or European market for plantation products must be replaced on a profitable basis, and the United States must be prepared to purchase these privileges by whatever concessions lay in its power to grant. It rested chiefly with England to decide whether to permit the former colonies to resume their earlier commercial system or begin a new policy, for it was with Britain and the British colonies {150} that seven-eighths of American commerce naturally was carried on.
Unfortunately for the people of the United States, and unfortunately for the harmony of the two countries, the prevailing beliefs of English merchants, shipowners, naval authorities, and, in general, the official cla.s.ses were such as to render a complete resumption of the former trade relations almost impossible. According to the political and economic doctrines underlying the Acts of Trade, the moment that the two countries became separated their interests automatically became antagonistic. American shipping, formerly fostered when under the flag, now a.s.sumed the aspect of a formidable rival to the British merchant marine and, as such, ought to be prevented from taking any profit which by any device could be turned toward British ships.
The treaty of peace had scarcely been signed when there appeared a pamphlet by Lord Sheffield, early in 1783, which won instant success, pa.s.sing through several editions. This announced that henceforward it was the duty of the British government to discourage and crush American navigation to the extent of its power in order to check a dangerous rival, taking especial care to reserve the West Indies for exclusive British control. At the possibility of losing the {151} profitable American market through retaliatory measures, Sheffield laughed in scorn. "We might as reasonably dread the effect of combinations among the German as among the American States," he sneered, "and deprecate the resolves of the Diet as those of Congress." There were elements, of course, to whom these arguments of Sheffield were unwelcome, particularly the West India planters themselves, and to a degree the British manufacturers, who would gladly have resumed the trade of the years before 1776; but, so far as the great majority of Englishmen was concerned, it seems impossible to doubt that Lord Sheffield was a true spokesman of their convictions.
In addition to the economic theories of the time, the temper of the British people was sullen, hostile, and contemptuous toward the former colonies. The bulk of the nation had come to condemn the policy of the North Ministry which had led to the loss of the plantations, but they did not love the Americans any the more for that. The sharp social distinctions, which prior to 1776 had rendered the n.o.bility, the gentry, the clergy, and the professions contemptuous toward the colonists, still reigned unchecked; and the Tories and most of the ruling cla.s.ses, regarding the Americans as a set of ungrateful and spiteful people, whom it was well {152} to have lost as subjects, ceased to take any interest in their existence. The United States was dropped, as an unpleasant subject is banished from conversation; and the relations of the two countries became a matter of national concern only when the interests of shipowners, merchants, or naval authorities were sufficiently strong to compel attention from the governing cla.s.ses.
The Whig leaders should, of course, be excepted from this general statement, for they and their followers--both their parliamentary coterie and their middle-cla.s.s adherents outside--retained a friendly att.i.tude, and tried to treat the United States with a consideration which usually had no place in Tory manners. But Whigs as well as Tories held the prevailing conceptions of naval and economic necessities, and only scattered individuals, like William Pitt, were affected by the new doctrines of Adam Smith. Their commercial policy tended to differ only in degree from that of the more rigid Tories.
To make it certain that the United States should fail to secure favourable commercial rights, the ascendancy of the Whigs came to a sudden end within a year from its beginning. The Shelburne Ministry, which made the peace, had to meet the opposition not only of the Tories but of the group led by Fox. In the session of 1783, the Whig party {153} was thus openly split, and presently all England was scandalized to see Fox enter into a coalition with no less a person than Lord North for the purpose of obtaining office. Shelburne resigned on February 24, after the pa.s.sage of a resolution of censure on the Peace; and George III, after trying every expedient to avoid what he considered a personal disgrace, was forced, on April 2, to admit Fox and North as Ministers under the nominal headship of the Duke of Portland. So Tories were restored to a share in the government, since nearly half of the coalition majority depended upon Tory votes. In December, 1783, the King, by a direct exercise of his influence, caused the Lords to throw out a Ministerial bill for the government of India and, dismissing the coalition Ministers, he appealed to William Pitt. That youthful politician, who had first entered office as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Shelburne, succeeded, after a sharp parliamentary contest, in breaking down the opposition majority in the House, and in a general election in March, 1784, won a great victory. Then, at the head of a mixed Cabinet, supported by Tories and King"s Friends as well as by his own followers from among the Whigs, Pitt maintained himself, secure in the support of George III, but in no sense his agent or tool.
In the {154} next few years, he made his hold secure by his skill in parliamentary leadership and his success in carrying financial and administrative reforms. This was the first peace Ministry since that of Pelham, 1746-1754, which won prestige through efficient government.
It was, however, mainly Tory in temper, and as such distinctly cold and unfriendly toward America. Pitt himself was undoubtedly in favour of liberal commercial relations; but in that respect, as in the question of parliamentary reform, he followed the opinions of his supporters and of the nation.
The British policy toward the United States, under the circ.u.mstances, was dictated by a strict adherence to the principles set forth by Lord Sheffield. Pitt, while Chancellor of the Exchequer under Shelburne, introduced a very liberal Bill, which, if enacted, would have secured full commercial reciprocity, including the West India trade. This failed to pa.s.s, however, and was abandoned when Pitt left office in April, 1783. The Fox-North Ministry followed a different plan by causing Parliament to pa.s.s a Bill authorizing the Crown to regulate the trade with the West Indies. They then, by proclamation, allowed the islands to import certain articles from the United States, not including fish or lumber, and {155} only in British bottoms. It was hoped that Canada would take the place of the United States in supplying the West India colonies, and that British vessels would monopolize the carrying. In 1787 this action was ratified by Parliament, and the process of discouraging American shipping was adopted as a national policy. American vessels henceforward came under the terms of the Navigation Acts, and could take part only in the direct trade between their own country and England. When John Adams, in 1785, arrived at London as Minister, and tried to open the subject of a commercial treaty, he was unable to secure the slightest attention to the American requests and felt himself to be in an atmosphere of hostility and social contempt. The British policy proved in a few years fairly successful. It reduced American shipping trading with England, it drove American vessels from the British West Indies, and, owing to the impossibility of the States retaliating separately, it did not diminish the British market in America. Up to 1789, when the first Congress of the United States pa.s.sed a navigation act and adopted discriminating duties, America remained commercially helpless. The profit went to British shipowners and merchants.
The American government naturally {156} turned to the other powers having American possessions, France and Spain, hoping to secure from them compensating advantages. So far as France was concerned, the government of Louis XVI was friendly; but its finances were in such confusion and its administration so unsteady after 1783 that Jefferson, Minister to France, could secure no important concessions save one. In 1784, as though to step into the place left vacant by the English, the French crown, by royal order, permitted direct trade between the United States and the French West Indies in vessels of less than sixty tons burden. The result was striking. In a few years the American mola.s.ses trade, driven from the British islands, took refuge at San Domingo, building up a tremendous sugar export and more than filling the place of the British trade. In 1790 the commerce of San Domingo surpa.s.sed that of all the British Islands together. Here again, French friendship shone in contrast to English antagonism. Every American shipowner felt the difference, and remembered it.
With Spain the United States was less successful. Jay, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, undertook negotiations through Diego Gardoqui, a Spaniard who, during the Revolution, had furnished many cargoes of supplies. He {157} found that country sharply dissatisfied over the boundary a.s.signed to the United States. The British, in ceding Florida to Spain, had not turned over all of their province of 1763, but had handed that part of it north of thirty-two degrees to the United States, and, further, had granted the latter the free navigation of the Mississippi, through Spanish territory. Gardoqui offered in substance to make a commercial treaty provided the United States would surrender the claim to navigate the Mississippi for twenty years. Jay, to whose mind the interests of the seaboard shipowners and producers far outweighed the desires of the few settlers of the interior waters, was willing to make the agreement. But an angry protest went up from the southern States, whose land claims stretched to the Mississippi, and he could secure, in 1787, a vote of only seven States to five in Congress.
Since all treaties required the consent of nine States, this vote killed the negotiations. Spain remained unfriendly, and continued to intrigue with the Indian tribes in the south-western United States with a view to retaining their support.
Further north, the United States found itself mortified and helpless before British antagonism. After 1783 the country had Canada on its northern border as a small but actively hostile neighbour, for there {158} thousands of proscribed and ruined Tories had taken refuge. The governors of Canada, Carlton and Simcoe, as well as the men commanding the frontier posts, had served against the Americans and regarded them as rivals. To secure the western fur trade and to retain a hold over the western Indians was recognized as the correct and necessary policy for Canada; and the British government, in response to Canadian suggestions, decided to retain their military posts along the Great Lakes within the boundaries of the United States. To justify them in so doing, they pointed with unanswerable truth to the fact that the United States had not carried out the provisions of the Treaty of 1783 regarding British debts, and that Tories, contrary to the letter and spirit of that treaty, were still proscribed by law. The State courts felt in no way bound to enforce the treaty, nor did State legislatures choose to carry it out. British debts remained uncollectible, and the British therefore retained their western posts and through them plied a lucrative trade with the Indians to the south of the Great Lakes.
In the years after the war, a steady flow of settlers entered the Ohio valley, resuming the movement begun before the Revolution, and took up land in Kentucky and the Northwest territory. By 1792 Kentucky {159} was ready to be admitted as a State, and Tennessee and Ohio were organized as territories. These settlers naturally found the Indians opposing their advance, and the years 1783-1794 are a chronicle of smouldering border warfare, broken by intermittent truces. During all this time it was the firm belief of the frontiersmen that the Indian hostility was stimulated by the British posts, and hatred of England and the English grew into an article of faith on their part.
Ultimately, the new government under Washington undertook a decisive campaign. At first, in 1791, General St. Clair, invading Ohio with raw troops, was fearfully defeated, with butchery and mutilation of more than two-thirds of his force; but in 1794 General Wayne, with a more carefully drilled body, compelled the Indians to retreat. Yet with the British posts still there, a full control was impossible.