The United States of America, Part 1: 1783-1830

PART I. 1783-1830

1783-1830

BY EDWIN ERLE SPARKS, PH. D.

PREFACE

The story of the United States has frequently been told. It has been told in the spirit of boasting, as a marvel of local accomplishment. It has been told in the spirit of reverence, as the work of a chosen people under a special dispensation of Providence. Its glory has been ascribed now to one political party and now to another. Its success has been attributed to various statesmen and to different sections.

The Union has been viewed from one point as originally the creature of the States, whose powers it afterward ungratefully usurped and whose intent it wilfully perverted to its own aggrandisement. It has been regarded from another viewpoint as something inherent in the soil of a new world, manifest in various colonial functions, and brought fully to life and supremacy at the time of separation from England. An effort is made in this narrative to find truth in a medium ground; to trace the gradual evolution of a confederated republic under the laws of necessity; to acknowledge that radical departures have been made from first ideals as a result of progress; to take into constant consideration the underlying forces of heredity and environment. It will be necessary to omit many of the details commonly found in a history of the United States for the sake of considering only those centralising or decentralising factors which have aided or hindered the unification of the States. In brief, an attempt is made in these two volumes to tell the story of the United States; to show how the phrase "The United States is" has been slowly and unconsciously evolved in the process of time from the early practice of saying "The United States are."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. A UNION IN FORM ONLY

II. THE PROBLEMS OF THE BACK LANDS

III. THE CARE OF THE PUBLIC LANDS

IV. FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERACY

V. REFORMING THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

VI. ADOPTING A NATIONAL CONSTITUTION

VII. BEGINNING AN EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT

VIII. SUMMONING THE GENII OF THE IMPLIED POWERS

IX. NATIONAL CENTRALISATION

X. FIRST LESSONS IN NATIONAL OBEDIENCE

XI. NATIONAL PARTIES ON FOREIGN ISSUES

XII. SUPPRESSING THE FRENCH SYMPATHISERS

XIII. THE FIRST STATE PROTESTS

XIV. THE ADVENT OF DEMOCRACY

XV. STRICT CONSTRUCTION AN IMPOSSIBILITY

XVI. AMERICAN NEUTRALITY LOST IN WAR

XVII. TRANSFER OF PARTY POLICIES

XVIII. SECTIONAL DISCORD OVER TERRITORY

XIX. ANNOUNCEMENT OF NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY

XX. FULL FRUITS OF AMERICANISM

ILLUSTRATIONS

SIGNATURES TO THE DEFINITE TREATY OF 1783 Original in the Department of State.

TITLE-PAGE OF A COPY OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION This copy was printed in 1777.

THE OLD BLOCKHOUSE AT MACKINAC, 1780

MAP SHOWING WESTERN LAND

MAP SHOWING THE PROPOSED WESTERN STATES From Morse's American Gazetteer.

NATHAN DANE'S DRAFT OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CLAUSE IN THE ORDINANCE OF 1787

DR. CUTLER'S CHURCH AND PARSONAGE AT IPSWICH HAMLET, 1787 The place from which the first company started for the Ohio, December 3, 1787.

A PETITION FROM CONGRESS TO THE STATES

SIGNATURES TO AN ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Now in the archives of the Department of State.

SIGNATURES OF DELEGATES TO ANNAPOLIS CONVENTION

MANASSEH CUTLER

COPY OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION AND THE CONSTITUTION IN PARALLEL COLUMNS The foot-notes show that it is an Anti-Federal print.

FIRST DRAFT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

LAST PAGE OF THE MINUTES OF THE OLD CONGRESS Preserved in the archives of the Department of State.

HEADING OF THE FIRST LAW PASSED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION

FEDERAL HALL, NEW YORK CITY

THE PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, FRANKLIN SQUARE, NEW YORK CITY, 1789

CERTIFICATE OF DEBT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES From the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.

A HALF-PAGE OF THE X Y Z DISPATCHES From the original in the Department of State.

THE CITY OF WASHINGTON From a drawing made about 1800, before the site was graded.

WESTERN ARKS AT NEW ORLEANS From Hall's "Etchings in America."

TAKING POSSESSION OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE

WRITTEN LAW OF THE NORTH-WEST TERRITORY A law passed at Vincennes, now Indiana, against gambling..

PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS

BLANK COMMISSION FOR PRIVATEER IN WAR OF 1812

DISLOYALTY OF NEW ENGLAND DURING THE WAR

THE PRESIDENT'S TEMPORARY RESIDENCE, 1815

MAP SHOWING ADVANCE OF POPULATION

THE CAPITOL BURNED BY THE BRITISH ARMY From Torrey's "American Slave Trader."

WASHINGTON IRVING From the etching by Jacques Reich.

JOHN MARSHALL Chief Justice of the United States, 1801-1836.

WESTERN END OF THE GREAT ERIE CANAL Drawn with the Camera Lucida for Hairs "Etchings of the West."

CHAPTER I. A Union in Form Only

A UNION IN FORM ONLY

When did the sovereign nation of the United States begin? From one point of view, it was called into existence by the motion for Independence passed by the Continental Congress on the second day of July, 1776, when the people of the rebelling British colonies in America, by action of their representatives, assumed a free and independent position. But a motion is intangible. It is an act, of which the announcement is the visible result. "A decent respect to the opinions of mankind" prompted the Congress on July 4, 1776, to "declare the causes" which impelled it to separation. This date is accepted in the popular mind, as well as by official action, as the beginning of national existence. If recognition by other powers be assumed as the criterion, the sovereignty began in 1778, when treaties of alliance and commerce were signed with France. But if the actions indicated above were incidental steps to the commencement of sovereignty, if a general recognition by nations be necessary, together with the consent of the former owner, and a restoration of peace and order, then the real story of the United States begins on September 3, 1783. This conclusion is reached by considering fact as well as form.

A few days after that date, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay wrote from Paris to the president of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia:

"On the 3d instant, definite treaties were concluded between all the late belligerent powers except the Dutch, who the day before settled and signed preliminary articles of peace with Britain. We most sincerely and cordially congratulate Congress and our country in general on this happy event; and we hope that the same kind Providence which has led us through a vigorous war to an honourable peace will enable us to make a wise and moderate use of that inestimable blessing."

Thus happily ended more than eight years of warfare and almost two years of negotiation. The disturbed conditions of war gave way rapidly to the normal condition of peace. The four European powers, which had been drawn into war by the American cause, adjusted their disturbed relations. The King of England, at the next opening of Parliament, acknowledged the loss of a portion of his American possessions. John Adams with his family crossed from France to England to represent the new nation. The archives of the republic showed treaties with France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Sweden, soon to be followed by similar acknowledgments from Prussia and Morocco. A national frame of government had been adopted by the new power. Peace prevailed throughout the land. Local government was established in every State. In external appearance as well as internal form the career of the independent republic of the United States had most auspiciously begun.

But the course of events was soon to dispel the illusion; to show that it was a union in form only and not in affection. Conversion from provincial colonists into liberal-minded unionists was not to be so easily effected. A feeling of true nationality must await years of growth. Confidence in each other had not yet replaced fear and suspicion. That the first attempt to come into a union could have been a success, that a sacrifice to the god Provincialism could have been avoided, seems in retrospect impossible.

This period of fear of centralisation, which began even before the close of the Revolutionary War, a time of mutual distrust, of paramount individualism, is little known and rarely dwelt upon at present. Perhaps the omission is due to a happy nature, which recalls only the pleasant events of the past. The school-texts dismiss it with a few paragraphs; statesmen rarely turn to its valuable lessons of experience; and to the larger number of the American people, the statement that we have lived since our independence under a national frame of government other than the Constitution is a matter of surprise. A writer of fiction somewhere describes two maiden sisters, one of whom had a happy and the other a melancholy disposition. In recalling the family history, one could remember all the marriages and the other all the deaths. To recall only national successes is undoubtedly most pleasant; but posterity sitting ever at the feet of History gains a more valuable lesson by including the failures of the past.

Criticism of the Confederation which our fathers framed to take the place of British rule must be tempered by the reflection that the action was taken while the land was in the chaos of war. Praise is due their genius for organisation, inherited from the mother country they were warring against, which enabled them to contemplate a new form of government while engaged in dissolving the old. The Government is dead; long live the Government. According to the intention, there was to be no interregnum in which Anarchy might rear his ugly head, and destroy existing forms and instincts of government. Unfortunately a genius for undertaking a beneficent enterprise may lack opportunity of carrying it out. The war to secure the permanence of the Government they were trying to establish produced a delay in completing the frame, and allowed the individual States to assume a headway and win the people to an allegiance, which the Union has not yet fully overcome.

Continue reading The United States of America, Part 1: 1783-1830 free in the Wunder reader →