of commerce with Spain, the Northern and Central States assented to surrender the navigation of the Mississippi to that power, (1786.) In this they had no less an authority upon their side than Washington, who appears to have attached more importance to internal communication between the west and the east alone than to that wider intercourse which the west would possess by means of its mighty river. Jefferson, then the American minister at Paris, was farther sighted. "The act," he wrote, "which abandons the navigation of the Mississippi, is an act of separation between the eastern and western country," (1787.) Suppose the right to the Mississippi waived, even for a limited period, and the probability is, that a large number of the western settlers, conceiving themselves sacrificed, would have separated from their countrymen, and gained a passage through the stream either in war or in alliance with Spain. And Relations with Great Britain were still more disturbed than those with Spain. Nor were they less threatening to the west. The treaty of peace exacted the surrender of the western posts by Britain. But America was required at the same time to provide for the debts of great magnitude due to British merchants. This, however, was not done. Congress was unable, and the states were unwilling, to effect any thing; five states, indeed, continuing or commencing measures to prevent the collection of British debts. When, therefore, John Adams, the first minister to Great Britain, entered into a negotiation for the recovery of the posts which the British still held, he was met at once by the demand that the American part in the treaty should be fulfilled, (1786.) The subject of debts was not the only one on which the states were violating the treaty. But it was the chief infraction; and against it chiefly was directed a remonstrance which Congress addressed to the states, altogether in vain, (1787.) Dark times. "The consideration felt for America by Europe," 66 wrote Lafayette, is diminishing to a degree truly painful; and what has been gained by the revolution is in danger of being lost little by little, at least during an interval of trial to all the friends of the nation." "I am mortified beyond expression," wrote Washington, "when I view the clouds that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned upon any country." Old foun Amid this tottering of the national system, the dations. old foundations stood secure. The laws that had been laid deep in the past, the institutions, political and social, that had been reared above them, remained to support the present uncertainties. Every strong principle of the mother country, every broad reform of the colonies, contributed to the strength and the development of the struggling nation. super structures. Nor were recent superstructures wanting. The Recent states, in forming and reforming their constitutions, set up many a great principle, undeveloped, if not unknown, in earlier times. Nothing, for instance, could be more novel, as well as more admirable, than the indemnity* voted by Pennsylvania to the proprietary family of which she hal cast off the dominion. It was a recognition of rights belonging to rulers, that had never been made by subjects in a successful revolution. The law of inheritance was another point of new proportions. The claim of the eldest son to a double share of his father's property, if not to all the prerogatives of primogeniture, was gradually prohibited, Georgia taking the lead. Suffrage was extended in several states,† from holders of real * £130,000 sterling, in addition to all the private domains of the family. Maryland made no such indemnity; but the representative of her proprietor was an illegitimate son + New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, and, partially, North Carolina or personal property to all tax-paying freemen. Personal liberty obtained extension and protection. The class of indented servants diminished. That of slaves disappeared altogether in some of the states. Massachusetts, declaring men free and equal by her Bill of Rights, was pronounced by her Supreme Court to have put an end to slavery within her limits, (1780-83.) Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut forbade the importation of slaves, and the bondage of any persons thereafter born upon their soil. Other states declared against the transportation of slaves from state to state, others against the foreign slave trade; all, in fine, moving with greater or less energy in the same direction, save only South Carolina and Georgia. Societies were formed in many places to quicken the action of the authorities. In making exertions, and in maintaining principles like these, the nation was proving its title to independence. Religious Nothing, however, was more full of promise than privileges. the religious privileges to which the states consented. Rhode Island, who, as formerly mentioned, had no disposition to change her existing institutions, made one alteration by striking out the prohibitory statute against Roman Catholics, (1784.) But Rhode Island was no longer alone in her glory. The majority of the state constitutions allowed entire religious liberty. The only real restrictions upon it were those to which the Puritan states still clung in enforcing the payment of taxes, and the attendance upon services in some church or other; the old leaven not having entirely lost its power. Particular forms of faith were here and there required, if not from the citizens, at any rate from the magistrates; Roman Catholics being excluded from office in several states of the north, the centre, and the south. As there was no single fold into which the Christians of Ecclesiastical the United States would enter, it was of the highest importance that their separate folds should be organiza- marked out and governed upon definite principles. tions. Nothing else was likely to prevent collision among the more zealous, or straying away among the more lukewarm. The American branch of the church of England, deserted by the loyalists, and suspected, if not assailed, by the patriots, had but just survived the revolutionary struggle. It obtained its first bishop, Samuel Seabury, by ordination in Scotland, (1784,) his first associates, White and Provoost, being consecrated in England, (1787.) A convention of several states at New York declared their church the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States, (1784.) The Methodist Episcopal church, strongest in the centre and the south, obtained its first bishop, Thomas Coke, (1784.) Two years afterwards, the first Roman Catholic bishop, John Carroll, was appointed to the see of Baltimore, (1786.) The Presbyterians then formed their synods for the Central and the Southern States, (1788.) In the north, the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists, uniting to a certain. degree, continued their ancient institutions. All over the country, ecclesiastical systems were reducing themselves to form and law. Sugges a nation al Consti It was time for the nation to profit by the examtions of ples and the principles that have been enumerated, time for it to guard against the conflicts and the tution. perils that have been described. Alexander Hamilton, as mentioned in a former chapter, conceived the idea of a Convention for forming a national Constitution as early as 1780. Other individuals advocated the same measure, in private or in public. The legislature of New York supported it in 1782. The legislature of Massachusetts supported it in 1785. In the spring of the same year, (1785,) a number of Conven Alexan dria and commissioners from Maryland and Virginia assem tions at bled at Alexandria, for the purpose of regulating the navigation of the Chesapeake and the Potomac. Annapo- They also met at Mount Vernon. James Madison lis. was one of their number, and he suggested the appointment of commissioners with additional powers to act, with the assent of Congress, in organizing a tariff for the two states. This being recommended by the commission at Alexandria, the Virginia legislature enlarged the plan, by appointing commissioners to meet others, not only from Maryland, but from all the states, and "to take into consideration the trade of the United States." Five states were represented in a Convention at Annapolis in the autumn of the following year, (1786.) They were wise enough to see two things: one, that five states could not act for the whole; and the other, that the subject of trade was but a drop in the ocean of difficulties with which the nation was threatened. At the proposal of Alexander Hamilton, one of the commissioners, and the same who had urged the formation of a Constitution six years before, the Convention at Annapolis recommended a national convention at Philadelphia in the ensuing month of May, " to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear necessary to render the Constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union, and to report such an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled, as, when agreed to by them, and afterwards confirmed by the legislature of every state, will effectually provide for the same." Action of The first to act upon this proposal from AnnapoVirginia. lis was the state so often foremost in the cause of the country. Thus spoke Virginia: "The General Assembly of this commonwealth, taking into view the actual |