had aided in saving it from confiscation by the power of England. Taxes were voted to be needless burdens, courts of justice to be intolerable grievances, and lawyers a common nuisance. These doctrines were embraced by at least twelve thousand men in the New England States, with correspondents in the South, prepared to enforce them by the ballot if that were practicable, otherwise by an appeal to arms. Such an appeal was made in Massachusetts in the fall of 1786, by the outbreak known as Shay's Rebellion. Fifteen hundred men under the leadership of Captain Daniel Shay met in the counties of Worcester and Hampshire. The courts of justice were the first objects of their attack, and their sessions were forcibly closed. When the first body of militia met them on the field, many of the militiamen changed sides and joined the insurgents. Congress had no power under the Articles of Confederation to afford relief.9 When the rebellion was threatened it refused even the loan of arms.10

6 See Madison's remarks in the Federal Convention. Madison Papers, Elliot's Debates, 2d ed., vol. v, p. 463. 7 Curtis' Constitutional History of the United States, vol. i, p. 181.

8 This was the estimate of General Knox. See a letter from Washington to Madison, Washington's Works, 1st ed., p. 207, cited by Curtis, ibid., vol. i, p. 184. At about the same time attempts similar to that of Shay were made in New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Maryland.

9"A power to interfere in the internal concerns of a State could only have been exercised by a broad construction of the third of the Articles of Confederation, which was in these words: The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare; binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other

When the civil war broke out

pretence whatever.' When this is compared with the clear and explicit provision in the Constitution, by which it is declared that the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government,' there can be no wonder that a doubt was felt in the Congress of 1786-87 as to their powers upon this subject. It is true that the Massachusetts delegation, when they laid before Congress the measures which had been taken by the State government to suppress the insurrection, expressed the confidence of the legis lature that the firmest support and most effectual aid would have been afforded by the United States, had it been necessary, and asserted that such support and aid were expressly and solemnly stipulated by the Articles of Confederation (Journals, xii, 20, March 9, 1787). But this was clearly not the case; and it was not generally supposed in Congress that the power existed by implication.” Ibid., p. 178, note 1.

10 When the insurrection was threat

and it seemed as if Shay's followers would win in Massachusetts, and similar attempts were made by debtors to close the courts in other States, a vote passed to raise troops, avowedly for another purpose, who might be used to suppress the insurrection; 11 but the success of Governor Bowdoin and the State militia caused the abandonment of the attempt.12

It was small wonder that Congress hesitated to overleap its powers to afford protection to a State when it had found that it was unable to protect itself. Three years before, a squad of eighty mutineers, justly indignant at not having received their pay, had made the Congress of the United States flee from Philadelphia to Trenton.13

Unable to command either the purse or the sword, Congress was abandoned by the ablest statesmen and politicians in the country. The State legislatures alone could raise by taxation the money which they appropriated, and in them and the offices which they created ambitious men preferred to seek employment. Congress was so much despised that it became almost impossible to collect a quorum, and more than twenty-five delegates were rarely found there.14 At no time before the Federal Constitution were all the States represented at once.15

The ill effects resulting from the inability of the United States to regulate commerce were, however, those which were most se

counts, which they supposed they had a better chance for at Philadelphia than at Lancaster. On the 21st they were drawn up in the street before the State House, where Congress were assembled. The Executive Council of the State, sitting under the same roof, was called on for the proper interposition. The president of the State (Dickinson) came in and explained the difficulty of bringing out the militia of the place for the suppression of the mutiny. He thought that, without some outrages on persons or property, the militia could not be relied on. General St. Clair, then in Philadelphia, was sent for, and desired to use his interposition, in order to prevail on the troops to return to the barracks. But his report gave no encouragement. In this posture of things it was proposed by Mr. Izard that Congress should adjourn. Colonel Hamilton proposed that General St. Clair, in concert with the Executive Council of the State, should take order for terminating the mutiny. Mr. Reed moved that the general should endeavor to withdraw the mutineers, by assuring them of the disposition of Congress to do them justice. Nothing, however, was done. The soldiers remained in their position, occasionally uttering offensive words and pointing

a

sufficient provocation. On the 24th, the efforts of the State authority being despaired of, Congress were summoned by the president to meet at Trenton." The mutiny was afterwards suppressed by marching troops into Pennsylvania under Major-General Howe. Journals, viii, 281. (Curtis' Constitutional History of the United States, vol. i, p. 149, note 1.) See also Madison Papers, Elliot's Debates, 2d ed., vol. v, pp. 92-94.

14 Curtis' History of the Constitution, vol. i, pp. 153, 228.

15 Report of a committee appointed to devise means for procuring a full representation in Congress, made Nov. 1, 1783. Journals, vol. viii, pp. 480-482, cited by Curtis, ibid., vol. i, p. 154, note.

verely felt. New York and Rhode Island, which contained the principal harbors, had refused, the latter absolutely, the former except on impracticable conditions, to consent to the amendment of the Articles of Confederation so as to permit Congress to tax imports.16 Attempts to negotiate advantageous treaties of commerce were met by the ministers of foreign countries with the objection that the United States had no power to compel compliance with those promises which they made as a consideration for the stipulations binding upon the other parties. The power to threaten as well as to promise was also out of their possession. Great Britain had excluded from her dependencies in the West Indies the fish and other principal exports of the United States; but Congress had no power to retaliate by discriminating duties upon the cargoes of British ships or an embargo. While Great Britain discriminated against the products of our commerce, Spain blocked the road by preventing the free navigation of the Mississippi. Congress, powerless to protect this, which was indispensable to the prosperity of the States west of the Alleghany Mountains, seemed on the point of conceding it in return for commercial advantages of minor importance.18 Even the power to regulate trade upon waters wholly within the United States was vested nowhere, unless in a bay or river entirely within a single State. The States which had no ports for foreign commerce were oppressed by tolls levied upon them at the places where their goods were shipped. "New Jersey, placed between Philadelphia and New York, was likened to a cask tapped at both ends; and North Carolina, between Virginia and bleeding at both arms.” 19

16 Curtis' Constitutional History, vol. i, pp. 116, 118, 167, 233, 243.

17 See the letter written by the Duke of Dorset, English ambassador at Paris, to the commissioners sent to Europe to negotiate commercial treaties, March 26, 1785; Diplomatic Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 297, quoted in Curtis' Constitutional History of the United States, vol. i, p. 194, note 8.

18 Infra, § 9, note 4.

South Carolina, to a patient

19 Madison's Introduction to the Debates in the Federal Convention. Elliot's Debates, 2d ed., vol. v, p. 112.

"The State systems are the accursed thing which will prevent our being a nation. The democracy might be managed, nay, it would remedy itself after being sufficiently fermented; but the vile State governments are sources of pollution which will contaminate the American name for ages, machines that must pro

To the disgrace and suffering of those five years we owe our subsequent prosperity. Nothing but the burden of the evils which then oppressed them would have induced the people to place those brakes upon the exercise of their own wills and that machinery in the hands of the central government which have maintained our public and private financial credit and put down rebellion as well as repelled invasion. Had the men of that time not experienced the mischief of unbridled popular license, and State statutes passed in the free exercise of local jealousies, they would have rejected the Constitution as an instrument savoring of tyranny. Congress would have been denied the power of taxation. The States would have been engaged in constant quarrels over retaliatory legislation. Travellers and goods would have been stopped by custom-houses at the border of each State. Peace in the South after the close of our Civil War could have never been restored without a decimation of the leaders of the revolt. The national and State legislatures would have the power of taking property without due process of law; and credit would have been ruined by the enactment of laws which impaired the obligation of contracts.

§ 4. Previous Attempts at Union.

The thirteen colonies had in law no connection with each other except through the ties binding each to the mother country. Great Britain assumed the duty of protecting them against foreign foes, and in return hampered their commerce so that it might be confined to the exclusive advantage of English merchants. The need of some arrangement through which they could plan together for their common defence was early felt. But mutual jealousy as well as royal discouragement made the attempts abort. It was not until they felt the oppression of the central power that they all combined. The refusal of the others to allow the largest, Massachusetts, more than an equal voice in their deliberations kept the New England colonies from a treaty of alliance against their surrounding enemies, until the

duce ill, but cannot produce good; smite them in the name of God and the people." Gen. Knox to Rufus

King, July 15, 1787. Rufus King's Life and Correspondence, vol. i, p. 228.