A Disease in the Public Mind (9 page)

More recently, historians have begun to see that this viewpoint is as untenable as the idea that the founders did virtually everything but induce slavery's death throes. It dishonors men like John Laurens, who gave his life for his vision of a South without slaves. George Washington's decision to enlist black soldiers created a legacy that coalesced with the opening words of Jefferson's Declaration to persuade many northern states to begin eliminating slavery. Historian Christopher L. Brown may have put it best when he said, “The American Revolution presents the first example of slaveholders themselves not just questioning slavery's morality but considering doing something to end the system. It is a defining moment in the world history of slavery.”
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There were limits to how far the Revolutionary generation was able to go. As the war inched to a close in two precarious years of negotiation and sporadic violence after the victory at Yorktown, General Washington began warning people that the so-called United States of America was exhibiting grave tendencies to disunion. “I see one head turning into thirteen,” he told several correspondents. States bickered over borders and declined to pay foreign debts they had incurred independently of Congress. The Continental Congress's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was a formula for political paralysis.
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The bankrupt Congress had no power to tax, and unanimous agreement was required when something resembling a tax, such as a levy on imports, was proposed. A demoralizing inflation reduced the nation's paper money to a wry joke—the phrase “not worth a continental” (dollar) became synonymous with futility. Congress ignored General Washington's warning that they were causing him “perpetual embitterment” and welched on their promise to pay his officers a pension. They sent the Continental Army's enlisted men home without the sizeable amounts of back pay owed to every soldier.

By the time a final treaty of peace was ratified in 1783, Congress was so unpopular that many people were pleading with General Washington to take charge of running the country. Instead, in a solemn ceremony in Annapolis, Maryland, where Congress was sitting, the general handed the current president his commission as commander in chief and went home to Mount Vernon. When George III heard the news, the stunned monarch stuttered that Washington had become “the gr-greatest man in the world.”
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It was undoubtedly an important moment in American history. But it was only a prelude to making the United States a respectable nation. Congress remained powerless and bankrupt. The states continued to quarrel; some began charging import duties to nearby neighbors; and they refused to accept each other's paper money, which several printed with a recklessness they had learned from that model of how not to run a country, Congress. Former Colonel Alexander Hamilton advised Governor George Clinton of New York to invite Continental Army veterans to settle in the state, where they might be useful in the event of a civil war.
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The death of Thomas Jefferson's beloved wife, Martha, in 1782 drove him to the brink of suicide. Worried friends persuaded him to escape the gloom that shrouded Monticello and accept an appointment to Congress. The legislature was a pathetic ghost of its 1776 glory. Frequently there were not enough members present for a quorum. Jefferson soon became involved in one of Congress's few responsibilities, forging a policy for the territory between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains that the British had ceded in the treaty of peace.

In 1784, Congress named Jefferson head of a committee with orders to work out a plan of government for this swath of the continent. Jefferson proposed that the land be divided into new states that would have freely elected governments and would be accepted as equals by the thirteen states of the original union. Then came a proposal that was totally original. Slavery would be banned in all these lands after 1800. Virginia had ignored Jefferson's
pleas to begin a gradual emancipation program, but his detestation of the institution remained intense.

The proposal triggered a violent debate in Congress. All but one Southern delegate deserted Jefferson. Most New England and Middle States delegates responded with enthusiasm, creating a majority of the delegates present. But the creaky Articles of Confederation required a majority of the states. The final vote was a tie, with the New Jersey delegation unable to agree. One of their delegates, who favored the proposal, was too ill to attend the session.
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There were other problems with Jefferson's ordinance, notably the identical size of the states he proposed, with little attention to natural boundaries. Not until 1786 did Congress take up the problem again. This time, Jefferson's young friend, James Monroe, was head of the committee to work out a solution. But Monroe became distracted by a new threat: secession. Southern settlers in the future states of Kentucky and Tennessee were angry about Congress's inability to prevent Spain from interfering with American commerce on the Mississippi River. They threatened to turn to some other power for help. “Great Britain stands ready with open arms to receive and support us,” they warned.

The New England states, reacting to Spain's offer to open key ports to their ships if the Americans let the Spanish retain control of the Mississippi, scoffed at the western pioneers' agitation. A Boston newspaper declared, “The States of New England, closely confederated, can have nothing to fear.” Dismissing Congress as “a useless and expensive establishment,” the paper urged the withdrawal of their delegates and the creation of “a new nation . . . of New England.” They should leave the rest of the continent “to pursue their own imbecile and disjointed plans.”
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This was not the first, nor would it be the last glimpse of New England's assumption of moral and political superiority. Around the turn of the seventeenth century, the Reverend Cotton Mather had sent a book he had written on the perfection of New England's version of Protestantism to Mexico City. He was sure the ignorant Spanish Catholics would be converted by his arguments. Mather was unaware that Mexico City already had dozens
of bookstores and its citizens were publishing—and reading—thousands of books.
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By the time an agreement on the new western states was reached in 1787, James Monroe had left Congress. But Jefferson's idea of a ban on slavery in the new states was still alive. The delegates decided to drop the southwestern territories from the proposal. This persuaded many Southern delegates to approve a ban in new states north of the Ohio River. The Northwest Ordinance, as this descendant of Jefferson's brainchild was soon called, would have an important impact on the future of slavery in America. But it was only a poor imitation of Jefferson's original proposal, which aimed at banning slavery from
all
the new states that he foresaw that America's westward surging pioneers would create.

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Meanwhile, at Mount Vernon, George Washington was deeply involved in conversations with fellow Virginian James Madison about creating a stronger central government. As a congressman in the closing years of the Revolution, Madison had won General Washington's respect by backing a strong American union. But the Articles of Confederation repeatedly frustrated him (as well as Washington). It began to dawn on both men that a new constitution was necessary if America was going to survive as a truly united nation.
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The scholarly Madison, who had been studying the history of governments for a decade, soon contacted Alexander Hamilton and others discontented with the Articles of Confederation. In 1786, everyone was galvanized when a revolt against local taxes led by a bankrupt former Continental Army officer, Daniel Shays, roiled western Massachusetts and spilled into the western sections of other states. Congress, without an army or money to raise one, could only watch helplessly. Some people asked Washington to use his influence to calm the situation. “Influence is no government,” he scathingly replied.
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With Washington presiding, fifty-five delegates met in Philadelphia in the late spring of 1787. Only eight had signed the Declaration of Independence, but thirty had served in the Continental Army, which made them
especially aware of the flaws of the Articles of Confederation. For three months they debated and discussed and sometimes argued violently about a new constitution. Behind the scenes, at dinner meetings after the days' sessions, Washington pressed the case for a strong president with powers equal to Congress. He saw the lack of this office as the near-fatal flaw of the Articles of Confederation.

The presidency proved to be a very explosive issue. A great many people feared the office could become a dictatorship. Occasionally, when they met as a committee of the whole, where everyone spoke freely off the record, Washington was able to express his opinions. (As chairman, he could not participate in the floor debates.) There, he urged investing the president with the power to veto acts of Congress even if the lawmakers unanimously disagreed with him. Not a few delegates were troubled by this idea.
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There were ferocious conflicts on other issues. Small states were fearful that the large states would dominate the government. Eventually, the delegates reached compromises on the disputed points. They agreed to let Congress override a presidential veto if the lawmakers could muster a two-thirds vote. Small states and large states were reconciled by giving each state two spokesmen in the Senate, while the House of Representatives would be chosen on the basis of population.

At this point the South interposed a serious objection. Their large number of black slaves put them at a disadvantage, unless they too could be counted as part of their populations. More than a few northern delegates objected to this idea. Finally, the convention agreed to give Southern states the right to count three-fifths of their slaves in estimating the number of delegates they could send to the House of Representatives.

This compromise triggered acid remarks from some northern delegates. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts asked if northerners should have the right to count their horses and cattle as voters. New York's Gouverneur Morris demanded that “free” be inserted before the name of any citizen counted as a voter. He declared he was ready to pay taxes to liberate every Negro in America rather than countenance slavery in the Constitution. The motion was voted down ten to one.

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina warned that if the South did not receive some “security” for the right to own slaves, he would not support the new Constitution. The convention responded by proposing a clause that forbade Congress to ban or even to tax the importation of slaves. This stirred a negative response, even from some Southerners. George Mason of Virginia noted that the people settling the new lands in the Southwest were already calling for slaves. There was a real danger that they would “fill the country” with a surge of Africans. He sarcastically noted that not a few New Englanders were supporting this new demand because their ships made huge profits in the “evil traffic.”

The men of the Deep South rose to answer Mason's assault. Pinckney reminded the delegates that slaves were “property” and the South had a right to expect all its property to be “as sacredly preserved and protected to them as that of land or any other kind of property in the Eastern States.” John Rutledge spoke with even more precision. “Religion and humanity” had nothing to do with this issue, he declared. “The true question at present is whether the Southern states shall or shall not be parties to the Union.” North Carolina made it clear that her delegates felt the same way.
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There it was, the specter of disunion that Washington and Madison had feared and went to Philadelphia hoping to dispel. A hastily concocted committee came up with another compromise. The slave trade would be permitted until 1808—an additional twenty years. At that time Congress would have the authority to ban or continue it. Madison and Mason fought this extension. But Connecticut's Oliver Ellsworth rose to voice the opinion of most delegates. They were in Philadelphia to make political, not ethical decisions. The nation's paramount need was political union.
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Was this a catastrophic moral failure, as more than a few people in future generations would claim? That is an exercise in the most tempting of all historical fallacies, hindsight. A majority of the delegates had expressed their abhorrence of slavery. Even the intransigent spokesmen for the Deep South made no attempt to defend it on moral grounds. Everyone wished—or hoped—that slavery would somehow come to a peaceful end, even though the practical details of emancipation remained obscure.

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The chief creators of the Constitution were proud of the way they had defeated the primary threat that had brought them to Philadelphia—disunion. Few were more pleased with the outcome than George Washington. “No member of the convention” signed the final version of the Constitution “with more cordiality than he did,” Madison reported. “Nor [was] more anxious for its ratification . . . he never wavered in giving it his sanction and support.”
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It might be worth pausing at this point to ask why Washington and his contemporaries saw the union as so crucial to America's future. Their experience in the Revolution and the postwar years is the answer. They were all too aware of how often Britain had tried to lure various states and individuals to abandon the revolution with guarantees of extravagant rewards. The example of South Carolina's 1779 readiness to defect into neutrality to keep an invading British army at bay was a stark reminder of how easily a state could be seduced by a combination of fear and self-interest. It was all too obvious that the collapse of the union would turn America into another Europe, with states making and unmaking alliances and fighting ruinous wars with neighboring states in pursuit of more power and wealth.