The princely fortune of Robert Morris was, at this crisis, exhausted in the vain effort to uphold the credit of the country. He himself was brought to poverty and ruin, and finally abandoned to his fate by the very power which he had contributed so much to uphold. For three years, after the treaty of peace the public affairs of the new nation were in a condition bordering on chaos. The imperiled state of the republic was viewed with alarm by the sagacious patriots who had brought the Revolution to a successful issue. It was seen in a very short time that unless the Articles of Confederation could be replaced with a better system, the nation would be dissolved into its original ele

ments.

We shall not in this connection recount the immediate circumstances which led to the abandonment of the Articles of Confederation and the substitution therefor of a new Constitution. Suffice it to say that from 1783 to 1787 the civil powers of the United States tended strongly to disintegration and ruin. Washington spoke the truth when he said in infinite sorrow that after all the sacrifices of the war for independence the government of his country had become a thing of contempt in the eyes of all nations. It was really a government of shreds and patches, and the conviction forced itself upon the minds of the more thoughtful that a new political system would have to be devised or else the fruits be lost of the heroic struggle in which the patriots of 1776 had achieved the possibility of national existence.

Before concluding the present chapter, we may note with interest two of the important works accomplished by that go-between system of government known as the Confederation. More properly we should say two of the important works accomplished by some of the great men who, hampered by the confederative system, still wrought at the

problem of nationality. The first of these was the organi zation of the territory northwest of the River Ohio. It will be remembered that the campaigns of George Rogers Clarke, in the years 1778-79, had wrested from the British the vast domain between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. This region was held by the united colonies at the time of the treaty of 1783. The rule of uti possidetis, therefore, prevailed; the parties to the compact should "hold as much as they possessed."

Thus the territory of the new United States was extended westward to the Father of Waters. But how should this great domain be brought under organization and put in process of development? As a preliminary measure, the vast region in question was ceded to the United States by Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut. For the government of the territory an ordinance was drawn up originally by Thomas Jefferson, and finally adopted by Congress on the 13th of July, 1787. By the terms of the ordinance it was stipulated that not fewer than three nor more than five States should be formed out of the great territory thus brought within the possibilities of civilization; that the States when organized should be admitted on terms of equality with the Old Thirteen; that a liberal system of education should be assured to the inhabitants of the new commonwealths; and that slavery or involuntary servitude, except for the punishment of crime, should be forever prohibited therein.

Over the new territory General Arthur St. Claire, then President of Congress, was appointed military governor; and in the summer of the following year he established his headquarters at Marietta and entered upon the duties of his office. Out of the noble domain over which the authority of the English-speaking race was thus extended the five great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan

and Wisconsin were destined in course of time to be organized and admitted into the Union,

A second measure of this epoch is worthy of particular notice, as it insured to the people of the United States the not unimportant advantages of an easy and scientific system of money and account. Up to the last quarter of the eighteenth century the monetary systems of the different nations had been-as they still are in many instancesinconvenient in the last degree. In the Old Thirteen Colonies the monetary count had been by guineas, pounds, shillings and pence, after the manner of the mother country. With the achievement of independence some of the American statesmen became dissatisfied with the monetary system that had hitherto prevailed and proposed a newer and better. The leader of this movement, as in the case of the organization of the Northwest Territory, was Thomas Jefferson. As early as January of 1782 he had turned his attention to the moneys current in the several States, and had urged Robert Morris, the Secretary of Finance, to report a uniform system to Congress. The work of preparing the report was intrusted by the Secretary to Gouverneur Morris, who prepared a system based on that of existing foreign coins, chiefly those of Great Britain.

Against this report Jefferson objected. He himself prepared what he calls in his Memoirs a new "system of money-arithmetic." "I propose," he said, "to adopt the DOLLAR as our unit of account payment, and that its divisions and subdivisions shall be in the decimal ratio." Hereupon a controversy sprang up between Jefferson and the officers of the treasury; but the former carried his measure to Congress and prevailed. His system was adopted, and the benefits, we might almost say the blessings, of decimal coinage and accounting were forever secured to the people of the United States

It was thus that the independence of the Thirteen United Colonies of North America was achieved. The work had been undertaken with scarcely a prospect of success. In the light of the retrospect it were difficult to conceive by what agency or agencies the colonies could succeed in a war with the mother country. The disproportion in resources between Great Britain and America was very great. The British monarchy was already one of the oldest and most substantial political structures in the world. On our side there was no structure at all. Everything as yet in America remained not only local, but peculiar and individual. A general government had to be formed in the very front and teeth of the emergency. The sentiment of union could not be immediately evoked in the midst of such a people and under such conditions. The colonies were as weak for war as they were poor in those resources with which every warlike enterprise must be supplied. On the other hand, Great Britain was in these particulars as strong as the strongest. Nevertheless, the battle went against the strong and in favor of the weak. It was an issue settled by righteousness, and fortune, and truth rather than by the might of superior armies.

EPOCH OF NATIONALITY.

CHAPTER XIX.

GREAT was the distress of the new United States under their so-called Articles of Confederation. The Revolutionary tumult had not died away until the more thoughtful patriots discovered the esential weakness of their frame of government. The confederation was indeed neither the one thing nor the other. It was neither distinctly national nor clearly local in its character. It partook more of the nature of what the Germans call the Stattenbund, or Stateleague, than of the nature of the Bundesstaat, or true union. It was clear to the statesmen of the period that no effectual consolidation of the States had been accomplished by the confederation, and that another movement of a different and more radical character would be necessary to secure a real union of the United States of America.

It is not needed in this connection to recount the many and diverse projects which the wisdom of the time suggested in the direction of establishing a better government for the new American nation. The real impulse towards the remodeling of the existing system appears to have originated at Mount Vernon and in the thought and heart of Washington. It will perhaps never be known precisely to what extent the Father of his Country accepted and adopted