American Experiment (11 page)

Still facing the possibility of defeat, the friends of the Constitution adopted the stratagem of accepting their opponents’ most convincing amendments—especially those relating to the absence of a bill of rights—and of urging that they be proposed not as the condition of ratifying the Constitution but as amendments recommended to the future Congress. Further, the Federalists induced John Hancock—on the promise, it was said, of supporting him for Vice-President of the new Union, or even for President, if Virginia stayed out—to offer this amendment procedure to the convention.

The dismayed anti-Federalists, now turning to the tactic of delay, moved that the convention adjourn so that the towns could discuss the proposed amendments. This effort failed by a lopsided vote. The convention then
ratified the Constitution with the recommended amendments, 187-168, a narrow vote that gave the Federalists pause. They had possessed the advantage of the ablest leadership, strong press support, backing from Congregationalist leaders, the symbolism of George Washington and of Union. The anti-Federalists, on the other hand, suffered from faltering leadership at the top and some bad luck. Yet the foes of the Constitution had almost won, testifying to the strength of their leadership corps at the grass roots. The country politicians and farmers and lawyers had risen to the challenge, sometimes to heights of oratory. The near-defeat also warned the Federalists that the American hinterland was still to be heard from.

And heard it was, all across New England. In New Hampshire during January, meeting after meeting in the hilly upland towns elected anti-Federalist delegates to that state’s convention. Viewing the proceedings, a man in Maine reported that “it is with them as it was with us the Country Members Mostely against the Traiding Towns for it.” The seaboard towns were not numerous enough to counteract the interior. The New Hampshire Federalists, seizing on a device they had denounced elsewhere, managed to stave off defeat by gaining a recess of the convention until June. In Rhode Island the country leaders in the legislature spurned a convention and called a popular referendum, which the Federalists boycotted; their adversaries won overwhelmingly. This was in late March, the nadir of hopes for the new charter.

Support for the Constitution was much warmer toward the south. In Maryland in April the Federalist near-oligarchy won overwhelming control of the convention in the delegate elections and arranged for a brief sitting, where they allowed their foes to talk, declined to debate against them, brushed aside recommendatory amendments, ratified the Constitution by a 63-11 vote, and adjourned—all in four working days. In South Carolina the delegate elections produced the usual split between the seacoast and the western counties, with Charleston almost solidly pro-Constitution. Just as effectively as their counterpart in Maryland, but with more elegance, the Federalist oligarchy arranged to hold the ratifying convention in Charleston, where in May they plied country delegates with sherry and Madeira, squelched an effort to postpone the session until October, accepted some recommendatory amendments, and won ratification by a 149-73 vote. In both cases the anti-Federalist leadership failed to measure up to its opponents.

On June 21,1788, the postponed New Hampshire convention approved the charter by a close vote, the ninth ratification. The new Constitution was now in effect. The Federalists did little celebrating, however, since two key
states had not acted: Virginia, the link between north and south and the home of Washington and other heroes; and New York, the hinge between the middle and northern states, and a vital commercial center, with its great port and long, slow-flowing river.

No state surpassed Virginia in its array of talent on both sides of the ratification struggle. Its celebrated leaders—Washington, Madison, Randolph, and Mason—were flanked by a leadership corps of hardly less esteem—John Marshall, Henry Lee, and Edmund Pendleton—for the Constitution. Poised against them were Richard Henry Lee, James Monroe, William Grayson, John Tyler, and Benjamin Harrison, but towering over the anti-Federalist group was Patrick Henry, impassioned orator, oracle of liberty, first governor of the state of Virginia.

At fifty-two Henry—bespectacled and slightly stooped, his thinning hair topped by a nomadic wig—had lost a little of his fire. But he still drew crowds when word flashed through the countryside that he was speaking in the local courthouse. As a recent settler in Prince Edward County, Henry had close connections with Kentuckians coming from southern Virginia who were convinced that Northerners would jeopardize settlement of the vast lands to the west. They feared men like John Jay, who had made supine agreements with Spain, holder of the southern Mississippi. Patrick Henry, a bowed figure in clothes made on his own loom, set off for Richmond at the end of May in a simple, topless gig.

He did not disappoint the spectators gathered in Richmond. As in other states, Federalist leaders, better prepared than their foes, quickly gained control of the organization and agenda of the convention. But nothing could control Henry. Stating flatly that he considered himself to be his fellow Virginians’ “sentinel over their rights, liberty, and happiness,” he sought to pre-empt the supreme issue of liberty for the anti-Federalists. “The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change,” he told the congregation. “Liberty, the greatest of earthly possessions—give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else! But I am fearful I have lived long enough to become an old-fashioned fellow. Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned; if so, I am contented to be so.…”

Some able Federalists were ready to answer Henry—Governor Randolph, who at last had come down on the side of the Constitution,
Pendleton, Henry Lee, and a rising young lawyer from Richmond, John Marshall. But the center of attention was James Madison. The congressman had remained in New York throughout the winter, writing a string of Federalist papers, tending to what little business Congress had, and indefatigably planning tactics and exchanging intelligence with friends throughout the states. He had supposed he might not need to attend the Virginia convention, until he was warned that Henry and his allies were inflaming the public against the Constitution.

Madison was even threatened at home. An anti-Federalist candidate had announced for convention in Madison’s county; “his unwared Labours Riding his Carquits [circuit] & the Instrements he makes use of to Obtain his Election,” a friend wrote Madison, “misrepresents things in such Horred carrecters that the weker clas of the people are much predegessed agains it.…amoungs his Friends appears, in a General way the Baptus’s, the Prechers of that Society are much alarm’d fearing Relegious liberty is not Sufficiently secur’d:…” Madison had returned home and beaten this opponent by a four-to-one vote.

Now he was facing the formidable Henry, without Henry’s oratorical power. In a low voice that sometimes failed to carry to the packed hall, he bluntly confronted Henry’s main argument. “He told us, that this constitution ought to be rejected, because it endangered the public liberty, in his opinion, in many instances.” He wished the honorable gentleman would give details rather than vague assertions, Madison went on. “He has suggested that licentiousness has seldom produced the loss of liberty; but that the tyranny of rulers has almost always effected it. Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent ancroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations: but, on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism.” Madison went on to specify the various means whereby nations had lost their liberties.

It took all the resources the Federalists could muster—not only Madison’s matchless knowledge of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, but Randolph’s new support for the charter, the bluntness of “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, advice from out-of-state eminences such as the two Morrises from Pennsylvania, and the pervading sense that the spirit of George Washington was present—to keep Henry and his stalwarts from cutting into the slight margin that the friends of the Constitution had gained in the election of the convention delegates. One anti-Federalist viewed the
convention as evenly divided, with “one half of her crew hoisting sail for the land of
energy
, and the other looking with a longing aspect on the shore of
liberty.
” Day after day the delegates debated every major aspect of the charter.

A timely concession by the Federalists swung the balance. Yielding to Henry’s impassioned calls for the protection of liberty, Madison and his allies accepted recommendations for a number of amendments that would constitute a bill of rights, including freedom of religion, speech, and assembly; no excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment; and retention of the jury system. It was the Massachusetts formula, and it convinced wavering delegates in Richmond as it had earlier in Boston.

Unappeased, Henry took the floor for a climactic assault. Amid darkening skies outside and the crackling of thunder, he warned of the “awful immensity of the dangers” in the Constitution, castigated Randolph, and clung to his role of sentinel of liberty.

The Federalist ranks held firm, but the convention was still closely divided between tidewater and northern counties for ratification, and southern Virginia and Kentucky opposed. The decision lay with the sixteen delegates from the Alleghenies, between the Shenandoah Valley and the upper Ohio. These frontiersmen appreciated the philosophical arguments for liberty—their leader, George Jackson of Clarksville, had taught himself to read by painstakingly working his way through Coke and Blackstone—but they made their choice on grounds of practical local interests: a strong federal government, they hoped, would clear their lands of Indians. The Allegheny men voted 15-1 in favor; the Constitution passed 88-80.

The Federalists did not celebrate with abandon; it had been too close-run a thing. And it would have been impossible without the presence of Washington at Mount Vernon. James Monroe wrote Jefferson: “Be assured his influence carried this government.”

The climax of the ratification struggle was now approaching in New York, where the ratifying convention was already in session. In many respects this struggle paralleled those in other states: the same rough split between the commercial-cosmopolitan leaders on the urban seacoast and the rural and small-town politicians in the interior; the same lively debate dominated by criticism of the absence of a bill of rights; the same division within, as well as between, cadres of leadership. But in New York State the Federalists were supported not only by the coastal interests but also by the great patroons and landlords in the Hudson Valley, and their opponents by laborers, tenants, artisans, and small tradespeople, led by their champion, Governor George Clinton. The convention would be another showdown—perhaps the final one—between Clinton and Hamilton.

A “self-made man,” the son of an Irish immigrant, George Clinton had served as a lieutenant of rangers in the French and Indian wars and as a brigadier general in the Revolution. Not yet fifty, he had already had a long career in political office, including ten years as governor of New York. As in other states, the two rivals were flanked by able leaders—Hamilton by John Jay, Chancellor Livingston, James Duane, Isaac Roosevelt; Clinton by John Lansing, General John Lamb, and, not least, Melancton Smith, a prominent merchant-lawyer.

Both sides had thrown themselves into the battle for convention delegates. The anti-Federalists in New York City organized the Federal Republican Committee, which distributed widely copies of Mercy Warren’s attack on the Constitution. They were accused of “daily going about to poison the Tenants” on the large estates. Each side hinted secession—the anti-Federalists of New York State from the Union, the Federalists of New York City from the state. Hamilton himself was not above ethnic politics. In a campaign broadside he was one of fifty-five New Yorkers who assured “Friends and Countrymen, that the
SCOTSMEN
of this City, with very few Exceptions, are friendly to the New Plan of Government.” Each side bombarded the other in the press. A Clintonian complained that the opposition “instead of arguments, spit out a dozen mouthful of names, epithets, and interjections in a breath, cry Tory! Rebel! Tyranny! Centinel! Sidney! Monarchy! Misery! George the Third! Destruction! Arnold! Shays! Confusion! & c. & c.”

The election results had mirrored the city-hinterland split; the Federalists won heavily in the four lower counties of the state, the anti-Federalists sweepingly elsewhere. Clinton, prudently running from both the city and Poughkeepsie, lost in the former and won in the latter. He had astutely arranged for the convention to be held in Poughkeepsie, away from the contaminating influence of Manhattan. But the voters seemed to be turning against the Federalists. The “elections have gone wrong,” Hamilton wrote Gouverneur Morris even before the final results were in.

By June 16, when two sloops left New York City for Poughkeepsie, one carrying Federalists and the other opposition delegates, Hamilton and his friends knew that only a heroic effort could salvage a convention victory. “How are the mighty fallen!” a Clintonian gloated; not since the Revolution had the “well
born
” seemed so lacking in influence. But this view did not allow for Federalist talent. In Poughkeepsie, Hamilton gave the virtuoso performance of his career. While Clinton stayed mainly in the background, letting Melancton Smith lead the anti-Federalists in debate, Hamilton dominated the floor and still found time to buttonhole and
proselytize delegates in Poughkeepsie s taverns and boardinghouses. He was waiting for the word from Virginia, and had arranged for riders to bring the tidings in relays of horses. After the express rider burst in on the convention with news of Virginia’s ratification, John Jay could write Washington, “I congratulate you my dear Sir!…That Event has disappointed the Expectations of Opposition here, which nevertheless continues pertinacious.”