The end of the war did not end America's trials. The next few years were crowded with perplexities; men who could think were anxious and troubled. Before the people who had broken away frorn Britain and had announced their own political beliefs could take full advantage of the opportunities lying at their door, the wreckage left by the war had to be cleared away; they had to find suitable political organization, overcome the disastrous influence of civil commotion, look the toil of the future fairly in the face, and begin seriously to practise the principles of self-government, which many were apt to forget were not far different from the principles of self-control.
The Revolution, if correctly understood, was much more than a separation from Great Britain; it was more even than the establishment of so-called free institutions as over against monarchical institutions. To understand the task of political and social organization, we must remember that the Revolution had been a civil war. No notion could be more erroneous or lead us into greater difficulties in our endeavor to appreciate the trials that ensued after the war was over than the notion that the Revolution had been merely a contest between America and Great Britain, that it was a great popular uprising of a united people, indignant and righteously angered at the prospect of tyranny. As a matter of fact, while a majority of the Americans sympathized with the so-called patriot cause, only a small minority were actively interested and ready to really sacrifice their material comfort for an ideal. A large number, almost equal to the enthusiastic patriots, were stanch loyalists, willing to do service for George III., to fight, if need be, in his armies, to give up their property and go into exile rather than surrender the name of Englishmen or prove traitors to their king. A third large group, fond of the good things of this world and not anxious about the success of either side, had shown a readiness to drink British Madeira at Philadelphia or New York, or to sell their produce for bright British guineas, while the American army, hungry and cold, ill-clad — if clad at all — were starving and shivering at Valley Forge or dying of small-pox at Morristown.
An interesting glimpse of this Revolutionary struggle is obtained from Washington's letter to Congress, in which he speaks of Howe's success in Pennsylvania (1777). Washington had been moving through a country in which it was difficult for the Americans to gain intelligence because the people were "to a man disaffected," while forced marches and rapid movements of the troops were impossible because a great number of the soldiers were without shoes. Washington, not Howe, was in the enemy's country. It was, therefore, from the distressing influences of civil strife that America had to free herself in the days of readjustment after the peace, when the troops were withdrawn, the Continental army was disbanded, and the people were left to look in upon themselves and wonder what manner of folk they were.
The loyalists were many — perhaps nearly, if not quite, a third of the population. Many of them were, moreover, or had been when the war began, men of substance and of position. On the whole, they came from the conservative classes, who disliked rebellion for itself and because they had something to lose. Men who were looking for a chance to wipe out their old debts and had hopes of getting something ahead in the general overturning were not apt to be Tories. The people who were banished from Boston were members of the old families of the commonwealth. Greene reported to Washington that two-thirds of the property in New York City and its suburbs belonged to Tories, and one is constrained to feel that in the confiscation by which loyalists' property was taken during the war, there was a tinge of more than patriotic enthusiasm or even of partisan hostility; there was greed for the spoils of the enemy.
We must not understand from this that the Tories were all educated gentlemen and the Whigs miscreants and ruffians; but if we see aright the difficulty of the situation after the peace, we must at least appreciate the fact that in the war there had been a great social upheaval, that many of the wisest, ablest, and most substantial citizens had been driven into exile, and that no country could afford to lose the services of such men as moved away to England or passed over into Nova Scotia had settled in Canada to be the Pilgrim Fathers of the Dominion — no country, above all, that was forced to establish lasting political institutions and to undertake a great constructive task that might well have proved too heavy for the most efficient and the most creative nation in the world. This expulsion of tens of thousands of loyalists was well likened by a contemporary to the expatriation of the Huguenots on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. From that expatriation, France has not yet recovered. Could America easily get on without the one hundred thousand men, women, and children who were killed in the wars, died in prison, or suffered banishment because they had been faithful to the cause of King George? Could she prosper politically without the help of those disfranchised Tories that survived the trials of the war and remained to face the ill-will of their neighbors? To a country, then, which had known the agony of civil strife, which had been confiscating the property of its own citizens, which had seen thousands of its prosperous people impoverished or driven across the seas, came the duty of finding stable, trustworthy, and free institutions for a vast territory.
The political task that confronted the people when independence from Great Britain was declared was in its essence the same that had confronted the British ministry ten years before — the task of imperial organization. Britain had been able to find no principles that suited the colonists or that in the long run suited herself. The learned Mansfield or the faithful Grenville could do no more than assert the sovereignty of Parliament and declare that all power rested at Westminster. The Americans were hot content with this simple declaration of law; they insisted on other rights, on an imperial order in which not all legislative power was gathered at the centre. When at length independence came, when the colonies were states, and especially when the war was over, what was America to do? Could the Americans, who had scolded England so roundly and broken away from her control, find imperial organization themselves without giving up all they had contended for? Could they reconcile local liberty with central authority and real unity? The work was a momentous one, of great significance to mankind, and it must be done, if at all, by a distracted country emerging from civil war.
Though the Americans had been contending, as they claimed, for established English principles, the war had in part rested on theories of government and of society which, if carried to their logical conclusion, meant primeval confusion. The ultimate position of the Americans in their argument with England in the years preceding the war had been based on "natural rights," on the assertion that there are certain inalienable rights which no government could take away, rights which had been reserved as untransferable when the individual entered society and when the social compact was formed. The notion that liberty and right existed before government was easily changed into the notion that government, and indeed all the conventionalities of society, had grown at the expense of liberty and the right of the individual.
In Tom Paine's Common Sense, the most popular book of that generation, this Revolutionary philosophy was admirably set forth. In its pages, one could read that government is a necessary evil, and that palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. If men believed this, they naturally believed that a return to nature would be a return to happiness; and if, because of sinful man, government, an evil in itself, was necessary, it should be looked on with suspicion and guarded with jealous care. Such philosophy was of wide influence in that generation and the next. Even a man like Jefferson was ready to talk nonsense about fertilizing the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants, and about the advisability of occasional rebellions, which ought not to be too much discouraged. In the days when such thoughts were current, it was difficult to argue for efficient government and to point to the necessity of punishment and restraint. The men of those days could not quite see that if the Revolutionary principles were made complete, if the popular institutions were established, if the people were to be the real rulers, there could be no antithesis between government and people, inasmuch as the people were the government, the possessors of the final political authority; what was called government was merely the servant of a power superior to itself.
To limit this servant and to make it weak and ineffective was to limit the people. This fact was not comprehended; it took time for the full significance of the democratic idea to come home to men. And this was natural in the light of the long struggle for liberty; it was natural, if it is true that the Revolution was but one of the great movements in English history for a freer life and for a freer expression of the individual. How could men at once realize that, if the circle was now complete, if they were now the government, there was no need to struggle against government? "It takes time," said Jay, "to make sovereigns of subjects." But many there were besides who believed in individualism pure and simple, the right of the individual to do as he chooses. They did not care where government rested; they wished themselves and their neighbors let alone. All these influences were making, not for imperial organization, not for law and system, but for personal assertion, for confusion that might threaten the foundation of all reasonable order. If these influences were overcome, it must be because the wise and the strong succeeded in winning control.
During the war, it is true, the states had formed new state constitutions, and it will not do to underestimate the importance of the fact that these fundamental laws were made, and that the people discovered and began to make use of the constituent convention — this, after all, is the most significant fact of the American Revolution. But in a measure, the theories of the day were a real source of danger even to the states themselves, and the time might come when the men in the individual states would anxiously turn to national authority for relief. It was, moreover, much easier for the people to allow the state governments to wield power than to grant any to the nation. The local authority was near at hand, and in its new dignity was not very different from the old colonial administration. The war had been begun against a general government; why should implicit obedience be paid to the Congress of the United States, clamoring for power and for taxes as George III. and Lord North had never dared to do?
So far we have seen several different circumstances that must be taken into consideration in interpreting the task of the American people in the yeats of national readjustment: the harassing and demoralizing experiences of a war which was at once a civil war and a revolution; the banishment and voluntary emigration of thousands of its most intelligent and substantial citizens; the political thinking of the time, which the course of the war had intensified — thinking that, if allowed to ferment in shallow-pated citizens, might endanger the stability of society itself; and, lastly, the fact that the war had been waged to support local governments against a general government. Amid all of these difficulties, America was imperatively called upon to organize its empire, if we may use the word to convey the meaning of the vast territory stretching from the St. Croix to the St. Mary's and westward to the Mississippi — an empire inhabited by thirteen distinct groups of people in large measure ignorant of the lives and thoughts of one another.
In solving this problem, the United States was at once aided and hindered by its geographical makeup and its history. Geographically separated from Europe by thousands of miles of space and many weeks of time, the Americans felt isolated from the rest of the world, and must perforce have been impressed with the thought of a common destiny; but separated as the states were from one another, when the people were thinking of themselves and not of Europe, they must have felt their differences more keenly than their similarities. South Carolina was so remote from Virginia that we might almost think of her as belonging to the West-Indian group of colonies rather than to the continental. The Declaration of Independence was known in Paris almost as soon as in Charleston. The hardy Yankee seamen who buffeted the winds off stormy Hatteras must have felt far from home when they sailed into the harbor of Wilmington or Savannah. A Georgian knew little of New York or Massachusetts. Life on the plantations of Virginia was far different from life in the little settlements of New England. When John Adams, leaving his fireside in Braintree, went to Philadelphia as a delegate in Congress, the letters which he sent home were welcomed as tidings from a " far country." "Of affairs of Georg[i]a," wrote Madison to Jefferson in 1786, "I know as little as of those of Kamskatska." When we add to all this the fact that the colonies were established at different times and from different motives, and that climate, soil, and industrial life varied greatly from Maine to Georgia, we are so impressed by the diversity that union seems almost beyond the verge of possibility. And yet political unity was a necessity; any form of political order not expressing the fact of real interdependence and essential oneness of purpose was insufficient if America was to organize her empire. Without modern means of communication, without railroads or telegraphs, the states were also without good highways of any kind. The road between Boston and New York was not very bad, but in the most favorable weather, the traveller making the trip must spend four days in a clumsy, uncomfortable coach, giving up more time and much more comfort than he would now expend in passing across the continent.
The highways of Pennsylvania were often almost impassable, and travel on them was little less than misery. South of the Potomac, the roads were still worse; there, even bridges were a luxury. Even on the much-travelled route between the north and the south, the mails were infrequent. Three times a week throughout the summer, they passed between Portland, Maine, and Suffolk, Virginia, but from Suffolk southward only twice a week in the summer and once a week in winter. Inhabitants of towns out of the main course of travel were more isolated than are now secluded hamlets in the heart of the Rockies. Into the great west beyond the Appalachian range, a few courageous men had gone and established their homes, but this vast region was a wild and almost trackless forest. A man in the little village of Louisville was often ignorant for months at a time of what was going on at New York or Boston, knowing no more of the internal affairs of the sea-coast towns than "what our friends are about in the other world."
To such people, then, thus distracted and thus divided, came the problem of imperial organization. One fact aided them materially: the states were alike in structure; they had the same political inheritance; the fundamental ideas of English liberty and law, taking root in congenial soil, had grown strong in every section; men in all the states thought in the same terms and used the same phrases. Even their Revolutionary philosophy, with its notion of absolute rights, was a product of English history. Moreover, events, relentless facts, were showing the way to sound union; there could be no real peace and prosperity till political organization was in harmony with industrial and social needs. If the people were reluctant, union on a proper basis was to be established by "grinding necessity."
The important process of making state constitutions was pretty well completed four years after the Declaration of Independence, but the formation of a national system was not so simple. For some years after the Declaration, the affairs of the Union were conducted by a Congress of delegates on whose discretion or authority there were no constitutional restraints; hence Congress did, not what was needed to be done, but what it was able to do or thought it wise to attempt, at times showing energy and intelligence, again sinking into sloth and incompetence. During these years, America was acting under an unwritten constitution, and, in spite of the inability of Congress, establishing precedents of some weight and importance.
On March 1, 1781, Maryland, the last of the thirteen states, signed by its delegates the Articles of Confederation, and henceforward, the powers of Congress were clearly outlined. The first form of imperial organization was that of a "perpetual Union," a "league of friendship" between states. To care for the interests of the Confederation, a Congress was provided, to be made up of delegates annually chosen in the states. Each delegation was entitled to one vote; Rhode Island had as much influence in the affairs of America as Massachusetts or Virginia. Congress had authority to decide on peace and war, to carry on hostilities, to manage all diplomatic matters, to build and equip a navy, to borrow money and emit bills of credit, to make requisitions on the states for men and money, to appoint naval officers and superior military officers, to establish and regulate post-offices, to determine the alloy and value of coin, and to perform some other duties supposed to be of general interest. This was a generous allotment of authority, but its exercise was carefully guarded, since no vote, except to adjourn from day to day, could be carried except by a majority of all the states, while the consent of nine states was required to carry any measure of special importance. Unless nine states agreed. Congress could not engage in war or enter into treaties or alliances, or coin money or borrow money, or make appropriations, or appoint a commander-in-chief, or, indeed, even determine on the sums of money for which it would ask the states.
The better to secure mutual friendship and intercourse, it was especially provided that the free inhabitants of each state should be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. Sundry restraints were placed upon the states; they were not to enter into treaties, confederations, or alliances, interfere in foreign affairs, or engage in war without the consent of Congress, unless actually invaded. These and similar prohibitions marked with some clearness the line of demarcation between the reserved power of the states and the authority granted to Congress. Congress was the final resort on appeal in all disputes between the states, its authority to be exercised by the establishment of a special court or board of arbitration whose decision was decisive of the question at issue. The Articles were in many ways dissimilar to the state constitutions; in fact, there is no evidence that their framers intended to follow the examples of the states. There was no effort to establish a government with distinct branches; all the authority granted was in the hands of Congress, which was, however, authorized to appoint an executive committee to sit when Congress itself was not in session.
This simple arrangement, a confederation of sovereign states, performing certain functions through a body of delegates, proved in the course of a short time so inadequate that it is easy to pass these Articles by with an amused smile at their utter unfitness for the work at hand. As a matter of fact, they were in many respects models of what the Articles of Confederation ought to be, an advance on previous instruments of like kind in the world's history. Their inadequacy arose from the fact that a mere confederacy of sovereign states was not adapted to the social, political, and industrial needs of the time.
In one important particular, the Articles were of profound significance: with remarkable care, they separated the particular or local powers from those of general character; and let us notice that on the wisdom and the accuracy with which this division is made must depend the permanence of any plan of imperial organization. Under no conditions, of course, would the states surrender all political authority to any central government; but by the Articles of Confederation, they granted nearly every power that was really of a general or national character. Two powers that the central authority much needed were withheld: the power to raise money and the power to regulate commerce — the very ones about which there had been so much discussion before the war. "Let the king ask for money," the colonists had said to Parliament, "and we will pay it." This plan of imperial organization was to prove a very lame one when applied on this side of the Atlantic; Congress was to try this plan, to call for money, plead for it, implore attention, and remain penniless. But few years were needed to show the necessity for general control of commerce if the Confederation were to be more than a name, or if the states were not to change from rivals into open enemies. In spite of all this, as far as the mere division of powers was concerned, the Articles were not far from perfection, and in any plan for a broader and better system, this allotment of authority would be of the utmost service.
Of course, the Congress of the Confederation, made up of delegates from states, could not pass effective laws or enforce its orders. It could ask for money but not compel payment; it could enter into treaties but not enforce their stipulations; it could provide for raising of armies but not fill the ranks; it could borrow money but take no proper measures for repayment; it could advise and recommend but not command. In other words, with some of the outward seeming of a government, and with many of its responsibilities, it was not a government.
The Articles, as we have seen, provided for no executive department. They did provide for the appointment of a member of Congress to preside over its sessions, but in fear of kingly authority, it was stipulated that no one person should serve as president more than one year in any term of three years. They also provided for the appointment of civil officers for managing the general affairs of the United States under the direction of Congress. And yet the course of the war had already proved how unfit for general administrative duties were the whole body of delegates or committees of members, and as a result, a movement for the establishment of executive departments began even before the Articles went into effect.
The office of postmaster-general, an inheritance from the colonial days, existed from the beginning of the war. In the early part of 1781, the offices of secretary for foreign affairs, superintendent of finance, secretary at war, and secretary of marine were created. To the second position, Robert Morris, of Pennsylvania, whose knowledge of business and finance had already been of great service to the country, was appointed. After considerable delay, caused by the customary factional controversies between the cliques of Congress, General Benjamin Lincoln was made Secretary at War. He did not take the office until January 1782. Nothing of consequence was done with the department of marine, probably because of the old difficulty of selecting anybody that would suit the wrangling factions, and the whole department was turned over to the superintendent of finance, who already had more than anyone could do in managing the distracted finances of the Confederation. Robert R. Livingston, of New York, was made foreign secretary, but retained his position only till June 1783. He was succeeded the next year by John Jay, who showed skill in handling the intricate diplomatic questions of the time, and perhaps even more wisdom in impressing on Congress the importance of his position. By insisting on the dignity of his office and by making use of its privileges, he brought it into prominence and helped to give it a real value and significance. Inadequate as the Articles were, constitutional organs were gradually growing. Administrative failures and experiments were showing the way to a more effective and satisfactory system.