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Benjamin Franklin
painted by Jean-Baptisste Greuze in 1777
King George III
A Tea Party in Boston
The British at Lexington, a reenactment
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World News |
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Between 1707 and 1775, 145,000 Scots are counted as having entered England's colonies along the Atlantic coast of the Americas. In this same period, around 100,000 Germans came, looking for economic opportunity, running from war and, to a lesser extent, from religious persecution. England had few people interested in migrating to the colonies, but England's courts sent around 50,000 convicts, who were employed as field hands, largely on tobacco plantations, and treated as slaves, including punishment by whipping. Some of the descendents of the English settlers from the 1600s looked upon the arrival of the Scots and Germans as a buffer against the Indians, the French or Spanish, or as labor for their farms. And some were worried about their English culture being diluted.
A population of roughly 275,000 whites in 1700 grew to around 1.5 million in 1755. New Englnders grew from 33,000 in 1660 to around 700,000 in 1780, more than ninety percent of them direct descendants of those who had come by 1660. The number of slaves grew from around 25,000 in 1700 to roughly 470,000 in 1755 and to 567,000 by 1775. The decades after 1700 were of the great slave importations and auctions. By mid-century, white convict labor was overwhelmed by slaves from Africa. The northern colonies were around two percent slave. At mid-century, the populations around Chesapeake Bay were about 40 percent slave, and slaves outnumbered whites in South Carolina by two to one. Slaves worked the plantations in field gangs, many of their masters leaving control of them to overseers and African slave-drivers. In South Carolina, owners stayed away from their rice fields, where the death rate from malaria was high. In Charlestown, an afro-white population developed, white men having fathered numerous children of African mothers. Slaves were more than half of Charlestown's population, working as house servants, dockworkers, boatmen and artisans. And a few of those of African heritage were free.
Where slaves were more numerous, they were more feared and control over them was more intense and brutal. In New England, where slaves were few and less feared, slaves could own, transfer and inherit property, and whites and blacks were considered equal before the law. The Puritans viewed slaves as part of the master's family and due what they thought of as the liberties granted by God -- which, of course, did not include freedom from slavery. In New England, most slaves were farmhands. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, some worked in ironworks.
Those slaves recently bought at auction blocks often tried to escape, frequently in groups, encouraged by their numbers and on a few occasions they killed a few of their oppressors in the process. In 1733, a decree by Spain gave slaves that had escaped from a British colony refuge in its colony of Florida, and by 1738 the Spanish were employing escaped slaves as militiamen.
Benjamin Franklin, a slave owner in Philadelphia, described the reaction of people to their enslavement. Some slaves, he wrote, are mild tempered and kind people. "But the majority," he added, "are of a plotting disposition, dark, sullen, malicious, revengeful and cruel in the highest degree." [note]
Colonists had brought with them from Europe that continent's concerns about the hereafter, salvation of the soul and brotherly love. But they did not see people from Africa as brothers, and many slave owners resisted conversion to Christianity by their slaves. The slave owners feared that baptism would encourage their slaves with a sense of equality and that the slaves would consider baptism a stepping-stone to freedom.
Some Quakers were slave owners, but in the 1730s a few Quakers had begun to challenge slavery. The Quakers were the third largest Protestant denomination, after the Congregationalists and Anglicans -- and before the Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans and Dutch Reformed. The Quakers were opposed to violence and for humility and hard work. Some believed that whites should do their own work rather than have slaves do it for them. And they believed that everyone was capable of receiving the "light" of God’s spirit and wisdom, including people from Africa. In 1758, the Quaker John Woolman traveled through the colonies spreading an anti-slavery message. In New York, New Jersey and New England, where it was easier to be against slavery, the Quakers enacted rules for themselves that forbade their trading in or holding slaves. Quakers also opposed the enslavement of Indians and expansion against Indians in Western Pennsylvania. The Quakers were most numerous in Eastern Pennsylvania and were opposed to disturbing the tradition of good relations with the Indians that had been created by William Penn.
The majority of free persons in the colonies read only the Bible. Other books available in the colonies were largely religious tracts and sermons, and an intellectual, Christian elite read some of the ancients, such as Cicero and Seneca, and authors of the Enlightenment. Different interpretations of scripture continued, as in Europe , and among the ranks of various denominations a split developed between those called rationalists and those called evangelicals. The rationalist approach to religion respected the critical and empirical inquiries of science that had produced revelations such as the nature of gravity. The rationalists believed more in intellectuality and had respect for the learned men in positions of authority within the churches. They tended to discard Calvinist notions about an arbitrary and punishing God, viewing God as more forgiving and more generous in rewarding good behavior. The Evangelicals favored emotion and complained about the loss of intensity in faith. The Evangelical tradition produced "born again" revivals, including the Great Awakening, which began in the 1720s in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In the 1730s the Great Awakening appeared again in the Massachusetts colony, where thousands gathered to see the evangelist George Whitefield, from England, deliver his dramatic performances and to receive "divine fire."
The evangelicals were holding their revivals in fields and barns and shattering the monopoly of the educated clergy on religious discourse. The revival meetings were viewed with discomfort by the more educated and more wealthy as a threat from common folk. Established clergy disliked the preaching by evangelical women, and they quoted the command "Let your women keep silence in the churches." They called evangelical preachers "haranguers" and "social incendiaries."
The Great Awakening inspired conversions to Christianity among slaves. In 1758, a slave congregation -- Baptist -- was allowed on the plantation of William Byrd in Mecklenburg, Virginia. Slaves adopting Christianity tended to look to Moses for his having led the Israelites from slavery.
The colonies were growing commercially, enough that in 1748 Benjamin Franklin, at the age of 42, removed himself from the daily operations of his printing business and aspired to genteel status -- although he disliked pomposity. The life of a gentleman was defined in part by freedom from manual labor, but Franklin's gentility had a practical side. He continued to respect work, and he believed tradesmen and merchants as worthy as landed gentry. Franklin had acquired wealth from sales of his book, Poor Richard's Almanac, which was second in sales after the Bible, his book selling around 10,000 copies every year, beginning in 1733. Franklin was interested in science. When a young man he had stopped attending church to have more time to read on his own.
Prosperity in the colonies arose with agriculture, the crafts and trade. There was the iron industry, commerce in whiskey, rum, shipbuilding, supplies for ships, trade in animal hides and timber, and fishing. Agriculture dominated the economy: the growing of tobacco, rice, wheat, corn and hemp. The north was largely small farms. South Carolina was the most wealthy of the thirteen colonies, derived largely from rice plantations. Virginia prospered from tobacco growing -- tobacco needing more care in its cultivation and therefore more supervision of plantation slave labor.
There was a shortage of investment capital in the colonies, but the colonialists were in a land of abundant natural resources, taxation was light, and the freedom of commerce that had risen among the Dutch and English was alive and well. By 1770, the median income for white colonists was as high if not higher than median incomes for people in European nations. Prosperity changed the appearance of towns and villages. Some merchants built three story homes -- in New England usually with brick, and in Pennsylvania usually with stone. Wooden homes for those of more modest wealth were often painted inside and out.
Northern cities had wealthy businessmen, lawyers and government officials. Below them in prestige and wealth were the shopkeepers and craftsmen. Roughly half of city populations were without property, many of them recent immigrants from Europe. Tax records show that in the cities the bottom 30 percent owned nothing and the wealthiest ten percent owned 60 percent of the wealth. People with property, and high-ranking members of the churches, felt threatened by what they thought of as the envy of those without property. And those without property were not allowed to participate in the political life of the community.
Those with property were proud of their refinement, of their furniture and their other accumulations. They attributed their success to hard work and favor from God. Plantation owners enjoyed entertaining their peers, avoiding the common folk awkward in the presence, who lacked self-confidence, ease, grace.
Some more modest white folk disliked the leisure that appeared with prosperity and wealth. Benjamin Franklin criticized the students at Harvard for their frivolity, luxury, stealing, lying, idleness and frequent use of strong drink. Quakers, clinging to respect for work, complained about frivolity among youths, including shooting matches, singing, dancing and other gatherings that they called disorders.
The Scottish and German men on the western frontier with the Indians also had a strong work ethic. They complained that Indians were not using their lands properly, that it was a violation of "the Laws of God & Nature that so much land should lie idle while so many Christians wanted it to labor on to raise their bread." [note]
On the frontier, small communities of Scott-Irish, living in small cabins, were interested in learning and in learned ministers joining their settlement. Plantation owners hired tutors for their children or they sent their children to England for schooling. In Philadelphia, languages, mathematics, and natural science were provided the citizenry in private schools with no religious affiliations. There were also the Quaker schools, providing an elementary education for their children, and there were Quakers schools that taught classical languages, history and literature. Among the Quakers, those who could pay tuition did, but schooling was free for the poor. Germans in Philadelphia either taught their children reading and writing at home or sent them to church schools. The daughters of wealthy merchants in Philadelphia were taught French, music, dancing, painting, singing and dance. Girls in Puritan New England learned household tasks at home, and a few were taught to read. As late as the 1770s, few women in New England could sign their name.
Education among adults was altering the explanation for mental disorders and altering its treatments. Insanity was increasingly seen as the work of natural causes rather than of the devil. Medical doctors were replacing religious ministers as leading authorities on insanity. Doctors, however, were still in the twilight regarding understanding illness. For all forms of mental derangement as well as for other illnesses they were treating patients with bleedings, bowel and emetic purges.
By the 1770s, the colonies had 37 newspapers, 7 colleges and something like 4,400 college graduates -- a little more than two for every thousand white persons.
Britain's king and parliament expected their colonists to obey their laws and to maintain an interest in the mother country's place in the world. The colonists were expected to provide England with raw materials and to buy finished goods from England, or goods that passed through England and to the colonists on English ships.
Also, for advantage to merchants in the mother country, a Woolens Act had been passed by parliament, banning colonials from selling woolen goods or hats. Another act forbade the felling of white pines on public lands, such pines to be reserved for use as masts by the British Navy. A law forbade the building of new iron forges and mills. A tariff was collected by the mother country on molasses imported into the colonies from the French West Indies, to the dislike of New Englanders who needed it to produce rum. But the colonists continued to do whatever business they could get away with -- not unlike Chinese merchants in the 1500s who violated prohibitions by their government on trade.
A spirit of self-government had arisen in the colonies. Between the years 1721 to 1742, Britain's Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, had encouraged this with a policy called "salutary neglect." Wishing to concentrate on European matters, Walpole relaxed colonial regulations and allowed the colonists to govern themselves. Each colony had an assembly of representatives elected by respected men -- men who owned at least a little property. These assemblies enforced the colony's laws, collected taxes, budgeted expenditures and pursued a few small public works programs.
Colonists saw their government as based on Britain's constitution, which they viewed as the most advanced constitution in the world -- a constitution known for balancing the interests of the monarchy, the nobility and the common people. Many colonists saw themselves as free, but many also saw their monarch as a father to his people, to whom they owed obedience. The Scots, Irish, Dutch and French in England's colonies were less attached to England's king, George II. The Germans were also less attached, although George II was a German monarch (from Hanover) who spoke little English.
The Seven Years' War in Europe (1755 -- 1763) had Britain and France on opposite sides -- a war called the "French and Indian War" in the colonies. The colonists were expected to do their part in helping the mother country fight those endangering them on the frontier. It was a war fought largely with British troops, with a small number of colonists participating -- among them a major, in his twenties, named George Washington.
In place of the colonists providing troops, they were expected to help the mother country's troops, called "regulars," with food and shelter. The colonists were also expected to obey the law against selling goods to the enemy: the French and Spanish. But Britain's colonists did, as the French and Spanish in the Caribbean area were willing to pay high prices for food for their slave populations.
The Seven Years' War impoverished England's treasury, encouraging the English to negotiate an end to the war. This was accomplished in 1763, to England's advantage. France lost its possessions in the Americas to England, except for a few small islands in the Caribbean and on the St. Lawrence River. England emerged from the war with its military still in the Americas. To reduce the burden on its troops, the British government in 1763 decided to keep white settlers and Indians apart by banning new settlements beyond the frontier mountains. The ban annoyed settlers, while the British looked forward to withdrawing its troops from the frontier.
England sought relief from what was now a large national debt, and it expected the colonists to help with taxes. Tax rates in the colonies had been low compared to rates in the mother country. And in the colonies, in place of taxes, user fees were prevalent. The new taxes, embodied parliament's Revenue Act and the Stamp Act, were followed by riots in the colonies and boycotts of British goods. The rioting and the strong-arm tactics of activists called the Sons of Liberty disturbed some well-to-do colonists. They preferred British taxation to mob rule. Britain's parliament responded to resistance to their taxation with appeasement and repealed the Stamp Act. Some taxes remained, and parliament also passed the Declaratory Act, stating that the colonies and plantations were "subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and Parliament of Great Britain." The act stated that parliament had the "full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever." Colonists remained disturbed by their lack of political power and what some called taxation without representation.
In the early 1770s the mother country tried to help its economically distressed East India Company. It gave the company the right to sell tea directly to the colonists, at a cheaper price, rather than to colonial importers. Importers were upset and began a boycott of the East India Company's tea along the Atlantic coast. In late 1773, in Boston, some angry businessmen disguised themselves as Indians and threw 342 chests of tea into the harbor waters -- to be known as the Boston Tea Party. The mother country chose to retaliate against the lawbreakers. King George III, in his thirteenth year of rule, viewed the matter in absolute terms. Either the lawbreakers were going to triumph, he proclaimed, or his authority would triumph. His agents closed Boston Harbor, and the powers of the mother country's governor in Massachusetts were expanded. Local elections in Massachusetts were curtailed. Town meetings were forbidden, and colonists were obliged to pay for the tea dumped into the bay.
Closing the harbor meant economic ruin for Boston. People in the twelve other colonies also felt threatened, believing that if the mother country was inclined to punish the Massachusetts colony in this manner they might also decide at sometime to do the same to them. And they sent food and money as relief to Boston.
Among leading men in the colonies much letter writing took place, which led to an agreement for a "Grand Congress" in Philadelphia. In the early summer of 1774, every colony except Georgia selected delegates to the congress. Delegates from Canada were also invited, but they did not attend.
The Congress met in September -- to be known as the First Continental Congress. Among the delegates were George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. The congress supported a boycott of trade with the mother country - a boycott to have member committees in communities in each of the colonies.
In a concluding document signed in October, entitled a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, they complained of parliament having claimed "the right of power to bind the people of America" with statues of all kinds and of having creating "commissioners with unconstitutional powers." They wrote of "grievous acts and measures" to which "Americans cannot submit," and they announced their intention to address "the people of Great Britain" and "his Majesty," in hope of resolutions.
Moving against the possibility of armed violence by the colonists, the mother country sent around 2,000 soldiers from Boston on the night of April 18-19, 1775, to confiscate munitions that the colonists were storing at Concord -- twenty-six miles northeast of Boston, as the crow flies. During the night, Paul Revere and fellow riders went from house to house, quietly giving warning to people who belonged to a group called Minutemen -- an organization that had been organized in response to the crisis with the mother country.
Ten miles short of Concord, at the village green of Lexington, the soldiers (called "redcoats" and "regulars" rather than "the British") came face to face with armed townspeople and around 130 armed Minutemen. The commander of the redcoats called on the colonists to disperse. Someone, from behind a stone wall, fired a shot at the redcoats. Firing broke out on both sides. Eight redcoats were killed and ten wounded.
The redcoats went on to Concord, where another skirmish broke out. At noon, the British forces began their return march to Boston. Along the way they were attacked by colonists firing from behind walls and trees. By the time the redcoats made it back to Boston they had suffered 72 dead, and 49 colonists had been killed.
The skirmish was news around the world. In response to the incident, many colonists were eager to retaliate. In May, eighty-three colonists crossed Lake Champlain from Vermont and took from the redcoats the forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. In June, the redcoats drove revolutionists off Breed's Hill (next to Bunker Hill) near Boston, in what was to become known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Meanwhile in May, in Philadelphia, another congress had met -- called the Second Continental Congress. The congress created its own army and navy, with George Washington, on July 3, assigned command of what was called the Continental Army. The congress assumed independent powers over relations with the Indians and sent diplomatic agents to Europe. In July, the Continental Congress attempted conciliation with King George III. Instead of conciliation, King George, on August 23, 1775, declared that a rebellion existed and that it would be crushed and the "traitors" brought to justice.
The colonists created a new flag, with thirteen strips but, as yet, no stars. Where there would be stars was the Union Jack, symbolizing a continuing union with Britain. Colonists began reading Tom Paine's book Common Sense, which called for independence. In January 1776, George Washington stopped his routine toasting of George III at the new Continental Army's officer dinners.
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared independence. Language in the Declaration of Independence was in the British liberal tradition and reflected a belief in the freedoms of Britain's constitution. A part of it was a concern that had been acquired by progressive Christians: happiness, the concern of Epicurus, Thomas Jefferson's favorite ancient philosopher. The declaration stated:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
"How is it," asked London's famous author, Samuel Johnson, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" Owning slaves was no deterrent to wanting freedom from arbitrary control by the mother country. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were slave owners. But there were also slave owners in the colonies who remained loyal to King George III. Most loyal to the king were those who were royal governors in the colonies and those who remained officials under those governors. Ranking ministers in the king's Anglican Church also remained loyal. The more wealthy businessmen tended to be loyal, but so did many humble farmers and shopkeepers. The revolutionists were stronger in the coastal regions, where trade had been more of an issue, than they were in the hills inland near the frontier. Loyalists were strongest where the king's military could protect them. This was so in New York, which the redcoats held through much of the war. Where the redcoats were least in control, in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Virginia, loyalists were few.
King George was losing the battle of hearts and minds among the colonists. One historian lists about 10 percent of the white population in the colonies as actively loyal, about 40 percent as actively revolutionist and about 50 percent as neutral. [note] Among the neutrals were the Quakers, Moravians and Mennonites.[note] The Quakers were opposed to participating in any bloodshed, and they believed that they were dependent on the king's clemency and that challenging his authority might result in a loss of religious liberty.
Some who were loyal to the king fought on the side of the redcoats, but they were few and the mother country had a manpower problem in the colonies. The redcoats offered freedom to slaves to lure them to their side. An estimated 30,000 slaves fled to the redcoats when that latter invaded Virginia in 1781, and during the war a quarter of the slaves in South Carolina and Georgia ran away. It has been said that around 10,000 blacks fought on the side of the redcoats.
The revolutionist side also had a manpower problem, which benefited blacks. It is said that around 5,000 blacks fought on the side of the revolution. There was a shortage of seamen, and, in the mid-Atlantic region, some blacks escaped slavery by working on merchant ships. And some blacks won freedom working at other jobs.
Loyalists spied and reported on those supporting revolution, and, when the redcoats left, loyalist civilians suffered vengeance from the revolutionists. The homes and crops of loyalists were burned. Properties of the loyalists were confiscated to help pay for the rebellion. Revolutionists vilified loyalists as immoral ignoramuses. With the arrival of the redcoats, loyalists sometimes hanged revolutionists, and with the departure of the redcoats, those supporting revolution sometimes hanged loyalists, including blacks who had joined the redcoats.
Early in the revolutionary war, England's old enemy, France, was officially neutral but secretly supplying the revolutionaries with guns and gunpowder. In 1777, French volunteers began joining the ranks of the revolutionaries. That was the year that the 20 year-old Marquis de Lafayette arrived in the colonies and joined Washington and his army. Lafayette was seeking revenge for the death of his father and for France's loss of territory in the Americas following the Seven Years' War.
England's other former enemy, Spain, asked for Gibraltar as a reward for joining the war on its side. In 1779, when England refused, Spain declared war. In 1780, France decided it was an opportune time to retaliate for losses incurred in the Seven Years' War, and that year it chose war against England. A third former enemy of England, the Dutch, joined the French and Spanish against England. The Dutch had favored the revolution in England's colonies from the beginning. When the patriot navy's John Paul Jones found refuge in the Netherlands, the Dutch cheered him wherever he went.
George Washington would have hanged had the redcoats prevailed. But perseverance by the Continental Army and George Washington, paid off. The mother country was hampered by distance. It took weeks and sometimes months for messages and sailing ships to cross the Atlantic. On October 19, 1781, Washington and his army, with military help from 6,000 French troops and the French navy, cornered and forced the surrender of a redcoat army commanded by Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown Virginia.
Negotiations to end the war took place in Paris in 1782. In February 1783, George III issued a "Proclamation of Cessation of Hostilities." And on September 3, 1783, in Paris, a treaty was signed. The treaty recognized the Unites States of America as an independent government, established the western boundary of the United States at the Mississippi River, and returned Florida to Spain. In December, Washington resigned his command and returned to his home in Virginia. On January 14, 1784, the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris.
Between 1775 and 1784, approximately 100,000 loyalists, 4 percent of the population, fled. Between 60,000 and 80,000 fled in 1783, and most of them were Anglicans - members of the Church of England. Most fled to Canada. Some fled to the Bahamas and took their slaves with them. Around a thousand black loyalists ended up in Britain's African colony of Sierra Leone.
During the war, approximately 7,200 colonists died from violence, around 10,000 from disease or exposure, and 8,500 died in British prisons. This is a total of 25,700 colonists. In percentage of the population, that is equivalent in the year 2000 to 2.86 million deaths -- the United States in the year 2000 having more than 110 times as many people than the thirteen colonies had in 1775.
The colony that created the first rebel constitution was Massachusetts, in 1775, and it was soon followed by constitutions in each of the other states. Such constitutions influenced the content of the Declaration of Independence. They were the groundwork for the first Articles of Confederation and later for the United States Constitution.
The Continental Congress drafted its Articles of Confederation in 1776 and 1777. These articles proposed a federation of states, each state to be independent with its own constitution and its own guarantees of liberty. The Articles of Confederation granted each state one vote in the Continental Congress, apportioned federal taxes, declared that the Continental Congress could wage war and could borrow and issue money. The Articles of Confederation was a proposal that needed ratification by each of the colonies, and all thirteen states had ratified the articles by the last year of the fighting -- in February 1781.
The peace treaty of 1783 inspired cheer and hope, but these were dashed by the economic hard times that followed. In these years, the Continental Congress often had too few delegates to make a quorum, and occasionally it moved -- in June 1783 to Princeton, in November 1783 to Annapolis, in early 1784 to Trenton, and in late 1784 to New York City. The Continental Congress was short of funds, and, for cash, the congress was happy to sell lands on the frontier to land speculators.
The economic hard times was accompanied by unrest. And seeing the benefit that would accrue from a greater unity and a rule of law, Alexander Hamilton and others, in 1785, launched an effort to restore property and political rights to former loyalists. They argued against vengeance. The skills of loyalist merchants were useful, and by 1787 the states were repealing their anti-loyalist legislation.
Lenders from the mother country and former colonial loyalists had been calling in their debts -- as happens in economic downturns. And in 1785 and 1786, debtors were demanding state laws for protection. Massachusetts had no laws to cushion debtors against lenders and people were frustrated with their state government's lack of action. At the end of 1776, frustration resulted in armed rebellion - Shays' Rebellion -- which spread to the whole of New England. Shays had at least a couple of thousand followers, most of them farmers. The governor of Massachusetts assembled militiamen to defend the courts and government property and to pursue the new rebels. The rebellion was crushed in six months. The rebels scattered and took advantage of a general amnesty. Two leaders of the rebellion, John Bly and Charles Rose, were hanged for treason.
In wake of Shays Rebellion, a Federal Constitutional Convention assembled, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Delegates were looking forward to ending the economic depression and social uncertainty. Some wanted a stronger central government that could assure social tranquility.
There was talk of the revolution having loosened the bonds of government, of a rise of disobedience, among children and apprentices, in schools and colleges. There were complaints that Indians slighted their guardians and that slaves were growing more insolent toward their masters.
Writes the conservative columnist George F. Will, in 2008:
America's Founders were empiricists and students of history who trusted "that best oracle of wisdom, experience," which is humanity's "least fallible guide."
George Washington headed the Virginia delegation to the Constitutional Convention, and he was unanimously elected the convention's presiding officer, which lent prestige to the proceedings. For four months the delegates debated, and debate spread across the states. Out of the arguing and compromising, on September 17, 1787, came the final draft of a new constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation.
The new constitution gave the federal government the power to regulate domestic and foreign trade, the right to levy taxes and the means of enforcing federal laws. The constitution gave the power to make laws to representatives from the states -- senators and congressmen -- and it created a president as the nation's chief executive: the United States was to be a republic (no king) similar to the Netherlands and Switzerland. What had been thought suitable only for small nations was now to be pursued by the United States.
A division of powers -- between executive, congress and the judiciary -was intended to keep any one person from acquiring too much power -- an idea as old as the republic of ancient Rome, and an idea in modern times that had been proposed by Baron Charles Montesquieu (1689-1755) of the French Enlightenment.
With the fear of rebellion much on the minds of the framers of the constitution, the constitution proposed that State militias would be placed under the control of the federal government, that the federal government could use military force against recalcitrant states or insurgencies, and that the federal government would have the power to suspend habeas corpus (in other words to lock people up without giving a reason).
The new constitution allowed the federal government to take a variety of actions without waiting for approval from the states. It took from the states the power to make wars or treaties. Only the federal government could dispose of territories on the frontier, and the federal judiciary was to be superior to state judiciary.
The proposed constitution took from the states and gave to the federal government powers regarding the economy, distribution of wealth, fiscal and monetary measures. States could no longer make laws that benefited debtors at the expense of creditors. The states could no longer coin money, make bills of credit or impair contract obligations. The proposed constitution gave the federal government the power to protect property essential to a commercial economy (contracts, bonds, and credit) and to promote the expansion and development of market relations.
Most framers of the constitution wanted to give the vote only to those who owned property -- as was tradition in England. They feared that poorer folk getting involved in politics would disturb public tranquility. People with property were thought sufficiently cautious and conservative and people without property to have nothing to lose and inclined toward foolish experiments. It was, however, left to the states to decide how much property would qualify one for participation in politics.
Election of the president was to be by an electoral college. Each state was to appoint electors equal in number to the number of representatives that it had in U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Senators were to be selected by state legislatures. Congressmen were to be elected to the House of Representatives as deemed by each state's property qualifications, but the House of Representatives was to have less power than the Senate and the Presidency. This was modeled after Britain's system, where the king and the House of Lords (aristocrats or large property owners) could suppress projects of the "lower" house -- in other words, the House of Commons.
White males without property, women and slaves would not be voting. The equality spoken of in the Declaration of Independence and still in the minds of the framers of the U.S. Constitution was not a belief that all men were equal in the sense of esteem of ability. The claim was that all men were equal was a claim that they were equal in the eyes of God and should be equal before the law. And some still believed that men were superior in the eyes of God to women and whites superior in the eyes of God to blacks.
The debate whether to ratify the constitution was widespread, in newspapers, in pamphlets, and at public meetings across the United States. Supporters of ratification were called federalists. Anti-federalists argued that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had exceeded the authority that had been placed in them by the Articles of Confederation. Anti-federalists complained that these delegates were from the more wealthy families and had created a document that served the special interests of the wealthy. Some anti-federalists argued that the proposed constitution gave too much power to the federal government at the expense of the states. Some claimed that a central government could not manage a republic as large as the United States. And anti-federalists complained that the Constitution contained no Bill of Rights.
Federalists, fought back, convinced that rejection of the constitution would result in anarchy. They complained that leaders at the state level were too narrow in their focus and too influenced by common folk. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote 85 essays for New York newspapers and later collected them into two volumes entitled The Federalist.
The Federalists were winning. Only nine states were needed to ratify the constitution, and the voting in Virginia, Massachusetts and New York was close. The ninth state to ratify was New Hampshire, on June 21, 1788. The tenth state to ratify was Virginia, on June 25, with 89 state legislators voting in favor and 79 against and the state recommending an inclusion of a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. On June 26, New York became the eleventh state to ratify, with 30 voting in favor and 27 against. The holdouts were North Carolina and Rhode Island.
State delegates met in the nation's capital, New York City. A quorum in both houses of Congress was accomplished, and on April 6, 1789 their votes for the presidency were counted -- a unanimous 69 votes for George Washington. On April 30, 1789, in New York City, in his inaugural address, Washington hinted that Congress should add a Bill of Rights to the Constitution -- to appease the anti-federalists.
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States proposed to state legislatures amendments to the Constitution that were to be the Bill of Rights, amendments that needed ratification by nine of the states. The amendments were:
I) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
II) A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
III) No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
IV) The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
V) No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
VI) In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
VII) In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
VIII) Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
IX) The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
X) The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
With the proposal of the Bill of Rights, North Carolina ratified the Constitution,
Ratification of the first ten amendments to the Constitution began on November 20, 1789, with New Jersey. The following day, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, and it ratified the amendments on December 22. Rhode Island, which had rejected the Constitution in March 1788 in a popular referendum, held a ratifying convention in 1790. By two votes, on May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the thirteenth state to ratify the Constitution, and on June 7 it became the ninth state to ratify the Bill of Rights. Virginia ratified the Bill of Rights in December 1791.
More amendments would be made in the years ahead in response to experience.
Additional Online Reading
PBS documentary: The War that Made America
http://www.pbs.org/thewarthatmadeamerica/
Recommended Books
A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution, by Carol Berkin, Harcourt, Inc , 2002.
A Companion to the American Revolution, edited by Jack P Green and J R Cole, 2000.
American Colonies, by Alan Taylor, 2002.
The Cousin's War: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo America, by Kevin Phillips, 1999.
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