2. Lafayette in the American Revolution: Old South Leaflets, Nos. 97, 98; FISKE, The American Revolution, Vol. II, pp. 43-46, 202–205, 231–233, 268-280 (Riverside Edition); SLOANE, pp. 264, 292, 324-344.

3. The Tories: TYLER, Vol. I, pp. 293-383; TREVELYAN, Vol. II, Part II, pp. 226-240; HART, Vol. II, Nos. 166-169; VAN TYNE, The Loyalists in the American Revolution, pp. 1-59; TYLER, The Party of the Loyalists (American Historical Review, Vol. I, pp. 24 ff.).

4. Daniel Boone, a Pioneer to the West: A. B. HURLBURT, Boone's Wilderness Road, pp. 1-47; H. A. BRUCE, The Romance of American Expansion, pp. 1-24; ROOSEVELT, Vol. I, pp. 134–136; J. R. SPEARS, The History of the Mississippi Valley, pp. 183–208; R. G. THWAITES, Life of Daniel Boone.

5. Washington's Trials with the Army and Congress: FISKE, The American Revolution, Vol. II, pp. 24-46, 62-72; The Critical Period of American History, pp. 101-119; HART, Vol. II, Nos. 174, 195, 198, 206; SLOANE, pp. 370-378; VAN TYNE, The American Revolution, pp. 236–247; Old South Leaflets, No. 47.

PART III. THE NEW REPUBLIC

CHAPTER VI

THE CONSTITUTION

THE CRITICAL PERIOD

159. The End of the Colonial Period. With the Revolutionary War the first great epoch of American history, the colonial period, came to an end. The English colonies became an independent nation, and the political connections with the great British Empire were severed. Royal governors, councilors, judges, customs officers, and agents disappeared, and their places were taken by men chosen by the people of the new states,-public servants instead of public masters. Fortunately the break with Great Britain had not come before the serious and aggressive French rivals of the English in the New World had been subdued, and the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi had been won for men of English speech, blood, tradition, and law. Two great facts, the separation of the colonies from England and the possession of a vast western territory to be settled and organized, determined the chief activities of the new republic. First of all, the United States, unless that name were to be a mere mockery, must devise a form of government to insure a national union; and, in the second place, the national government must be extended westward as the new domain beyond the mountains developed. We have studied the winning of American Independence. We turn now to a study of the American Union.

160. The Nature and Authority of Congress. Thirteen years elapsed between the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the inauguration of George Washington as first president of the United States (1789). During those years our country was governed by a Congress, a group of delegates comprising from two to seven members from each state. Until a few months before the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown this Congress was without legal authority, or any

written constitution defining its powers. Its members, acting on instructions from their states, or relying on the indorsement of their states, assumed very important functions of government. They raised and officered an army, assessed the states for its support, declared the colonies independent of England, borrowed money abroad on the credit of the new United States, rejected the British offer of reconciliation in 1778, and concluded treaties of commerce and alliance with France. But the Continental Congress could assume these vast powers of government without express authority only because the pressure of war united the colonies for the moment and made a central directing body an immediate necessity. For the Union to endure after the pressure of war was over, a regular national government had to be established.

161. The Articles of Confederation. About a year before the colonies declared their independence Benjamin Franklin, a lifelong advocate of colonial union, submitted to this Congress a draft of "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" (July 21, 1775). But too many of the members of Congress still hoped for a peaceful settlement with England to make this plan acceptable. When independence was declared, however, the necessity of forming a government became obvious. A committee of thirteen, with John Dickinson of Pennsylvania as chairman, prepared Articles of Confederation, which were approved by Congress in November, 1777. But more than three years elapsed before the last of the states, Maryland, assented to the Articles and so made them the law of the land (March 1, 1781).

162. The Cession of Western Lands by the States. The delay of Maryland in accepting the Articles of Confederation was due to an important cause and resulted in a great benefit to the nation. The states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia claimed land between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi by virtue of their old colonial charters, which gave them indefinite westward extension. Virginia's claim, which overlapped that of both Massachusetts and Connecticut, was strengthened by the fact that George Rogers Clark had actually conquered the vast territory north of the Ohio under commission from the governor of Virginia. New York also maintained a claim to part of the same disputed territory on account of a treaty with the

Iroquois Indians, which had put those tribes under her protection (1768). The states whose western boundaries were fixed by their charters, like Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, were at a disadvantage, since they had no Western lands with which to reward their veterans of the Revolution. Maryland, therefore, insisted, before accepting the Articles of Confederation, that the states with Western claims should surrender them to the United States, and that all the land between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi should be national domain. After some parleying, New York, in 1781, led the way in surrendering its claims. Virginia, with noble generosity, gave up her far better founded claims to the whole region north of the Ohio, in 1784. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Carolinas soon followed suit, although Georgia, partly on account of complications with Spain, maintained her claims as far west as the Mississippi until 1802. By these cessions the United States acquired an immense national domain (see map, p. 128), the sale of which could be applied to the payment of the Revolutionary War debt and from whose territory new states could be formed. It was the beginning of a truly national power, and honor is due to the state of Maryland for insisting on this fair and wise policy.

163. Criticism of the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation, though announcing a "perpetual union" and a "firm league of friendship" of the thirteen states, remained in force only eight years and failed utterly to bring strength or harmony into the Union. They had some merits, to be sure. They were the first definite formulation of a national government, in black on white, and the powers which they gave to Congress, had they only included the control of commerce and taxation, would have been ample to run the government. But the defects of the Articles may be summed up in a single clause: they failed to give the Congress of the United States enough authority to carry out the powers granted to it. At the very outset they declared that "each state retained its sovereignty, freedom, and independence," and all through them the unwillingness to force the states to part with any of their power is evident. For example, Congress pledged the faith of the United States to pay the war debt, yet it had neither the power to demand, nor the machinery to collect, a single penny from any citizen or state of the Union. It could only make "requisitions" on the

states, and its repeated requests for money met with meager response. Gouverneur Morris called it a "government by supplication." The budget for 1781-1782 was $9,000,000. Of this, Congress negotiated for $4,000,000 by a foreign loan and assessed the states for the other $5,000,000. After a year's delay some $450,000 of the $5,000,000 asked for was paid in, and not a dollar came from Georgia, South Carolina, or Delaware. So, from year to year, the "government by supplication" worried along, asking millions and getting a few hundred thousands, in imminent danger of going bankrupt by failing to pay the interest on its debt, with scarcely enough revenue, as one statesman said with pardonable exaggeration, "to buy stationery for its clerks or pay the salary of a doorkeeper." The impotence of Congress in financial matters was only one example of the general inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation. They put on the central government certain grave responsibilities, such as defending the land from its foes, maintaining its credit, preserving order at home, and securing friendships abroad; and yet they gave the central government no means of enforcing obedience to its will. Congress had no executive power, no national courts of justice in which to condemn offenders against its laws, no control of commerce, no machinery of taxation, no check on the indiscriminate issue by the states of money of differing values, no efficient army or navy.

164. Our Government despised by the European Powers. It is no wonder that so weak a government failed to inspire respect abroad or obedience at home. England, in defiance of the treaty of 1783, still held the fur-trading posts of the Northwest and, confident that the thirteen states would not unite in a policy of retaliation, shut us out from the lucrative trade with her West Indies. The French ministers told Jefferson plainly in Paris that it was impossible to recognize the Congress as a government. The Spanish governor at New Orleans offered the Western frontiersmen the use of the Mississippi if they would renounce their allegiance to the United States and come under the flag of Spain. The thrifty merchants of Amsterdam were on tenterhooks for fear that the interest on their loans to the new republic would not be paid. And finally even the Mohammedan pirates of the Barbary States in northern Africa levied blackmail on our vessels which ventured into the Mediterranean. The