The United States of America Part 9

The President showed his appreciation of the delicate adjustment between State and national authority by consulting the Governor of Pennsylvania at every step. If the State at this formative hour had possessed an executive confident in himself and in his ability to suppress the disorder, he might have done a lasting service to the preservation of the supremacy of the States and forestalled the prestige which the Central Government was bound to obtain from its leaders.h.i.+p in this crisis. But Governor Mifflin was content to support the national authority, claiming that the militia of his State was inadequate to the emergency.

In the summer of 1794, the disorder broke out afresh, extending to the spoliation of the United States mail. The National Government dared hesitate no longer. Hamilton, by private letters and public reports, urged the President incessantly to action. His unusual foresight saw the opportunity for strengthening the nation. Weakness in the written Const.i.tution might here be remedied by the precedent of strong action under it. At last a Federal judge of Pennsylvania notified the President that the laws could no longer be enforced in his district. Was.h.i.+ngton immediately issued the required proclamation of warning, which had been penned by Hamilton. Five weeks later, the Chief Executive called upon the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia for militia and issued a second proclamation commanding peace. He based this action on the const.i.tutional provision requiring the Executive to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

The seat of the National Government being at Philadelphia, near the rendezvous of the militia, enabled the President to place himself at the head of the militia. No later President has interpreted so literally his office as commander-in-chief of the army. As he reached Bedford, Fort c.u.mberland, and other scenes of his campaigns against the French a half-century before, he must have compared that errand with his present one. Then he was saving helpless colonists from a foreign foe; now he was preserving a government from its own const.i.tuents.

"No citizens of the United States," he wrote to Governor Lee, of Virginia, when leaving him at the head of the militia in order to return to Philadelphia for the opening of Congress, "can ever be engaged in a service more important to their country. It is nothing less than to consolidate and to preserve the blessings of that revolution, which, at much expense of blood and treasure, const.i.tuted us a free and independent nation."

It was also fortunate that Was.h.i.+ngton had pa.s.sed through some instructive experience in Revolutionary days on the disadvantages of an insufficient military force. To put down the small body of insurgents in the western borders of Pennsylvania he called for almost thirteen thousand militiamen. To a delegation of the insurgents who met him on the way to complain of such an armed force coming to conquer them, Was.h.i.+ngton replied that although we had made a republican form of government and enacted laws under it, yet we had given no testimony to the world of being able or willing to support our Government; that, this being the first instance of the kind since the commencement of the Government, he thought it his duty to bring out such a force as would not only be sufficient to subdue the insurgents if they made resistance, but to crush to atoms all opposition that might arise in any quarter.

Was.h.i.+ngton foresaw the effects of using the military power in behalf of the Union. "The most delicate and momentous duty the chief magistrate of a free people can have to perform," he called it. Early in the excise resistance he had declared that the Government must not use the regular troops if order could possibly be effected without this aid.

"Otherwise," said he, "there would be a cry at once, 'The cat is let out; we now see for what purpose an army was raised!'" But individualistic spirits who were alarmed at this new distortion of the Government toward centralisation feared the results of using even the militia. Jefferson, having resigned his secretarys.h.i.+p and seeing the unusually prominent part a.s.sumed by Hamilton in the expedition, protested from his retirement at Monticello against such "employment of military force for civil purposes." To his mind the disorder was simply a riot and not an insurrection. "Yet it answered the purpose,"

said he, "of strengthening the government and increasing public debt and therefore an insurrection was announced." To Madison he declared: "The excise law is an infernal one. The first error was to admit it to the Const.i.tution; the second, to act on that admission; the third and last will be to make it the instrument of dismembering the Union."

Madison, who had at first looked upon the suppression of the insurrection as an electioneering scheme, thought it fortunate for the lovers of liberty that the movement was so easily crushed, since otherwise the principle would have been established that a standing army was necessary to enforce the Federal laws. "I am extremely sorry to remark," he wrote to Monroe during the ensuing session of Congress, "a growing apathy to the evil and danger of standing armies." This remark was brought out by the failure of the minority, with which Madison had now fully allied himself, to restrict the use hereafter of any militia to its own State. A "Federal army," the bugaboo of the opposition, had been brought into existence by this unwarranted use of the militia. Seven acts placing the military power of the United States on a permanent basis and giving the Central Government efficient control were pa.s.sed at this session of 1795, the first fruits of the Western rebellion to be reaped by the Union. Madison accounted for this legislation by the influence of the Chief Executive and the confidence of the people that he would not abuse the power. What later Presidents might do could not be foreseen.

Outside the disaffected districts and with the exception of a few alarmed leaders like Jefferson and Madison, the people undoubtedly sustained Was.h.i.+ngton in his firm action against rebellion. An ode written for the birthday of the President in 1796 contains an allusion to his influence in suppressing the insurrection:

"When o'er the western mountain's brow, Sedition rear'd her impious head, And Tumult wild his legions led, Serenely great, the Patriot rose.-- Yet in his breast conflicting throes Of mercy check'd the impending blows.

"He view'd them with a father's eye, Dimmed by thy tear, Humanity!

Reluctant Justice half unsheathed the sword.

Scar'd at the awful Sight, Sedition shrunk in realms of night, And Order saw her peaceful reign restored."

Giving the Central Government sufficient military strength was not the only result of the first open attempt to oppose it. Individualism had received a telling blow. The State was no longer inviolate. Objection had been raised in the trivial matter of creating districts for collecting the revenue because they disregarded State boundaries. It was now seen that the National Government could and would march militia directly to a place of resistance regardless of State lines. The people of the States were no longer safe from invasion by the power which they had created. Not only a respect for the United States laws, taxes, courts, and officers was created by the incident, but the fidelity of the militia, residents of different States, to the central authority was a.s.sured. Jay was at this time on his celebrated mission to England to prevent war with that nation, if possible. To him Was.h.i.+ngton sent enthusiastic accounts of the people turning out to show their abhorrence of the insurrection. He said that some of the officers had disregarded rank and that others had gone as privates. He told of numbers of men, possessed of the first fortunes of the country, yet willing to stand in ranks, to carry knapsacks, and sleep on straw in soldiers' tents with a single blanket on frosty nights. Evidently the spirit of Valley Forge had not been lost. Five times the number could have been secured, he said, to preserve the peace of the country. He also hazarded a prediction that the failure of the insurrection would have a deterrent effect on the political clubs, which he blamed almost entirely for the inception of the insurgent spirit.

CHAPTER XI

NATIONAL PARTIES ON FOREIGN ISSUES

The Democratic clubs, which Was.h.i.+ngton scored so roundly, and so unjustly as Jefferson thought, were simply reflexes of one phase of the French Revolution. They serve to ill.u.s.trate not only how dependent America was upon Europe for political guidance and how strong was European influence in America, but also that early parties were factions along social lines of cleavage rather than divisions on national policies.

Caste is always a relative thing. The patriots who inaugurated and led to success the American Revolution had been, generally speaking, of an inferior social rank to the Tories. Was.h.i.+ngton is regarded as a striking exception. Yet his fame rested solely upon his early military record. He was never a part of the gay life at Williamsburg. The royal governor was at the head of the Court and set the social standard. The patriots, being opposed to him, were placed in an inferior social position. But when once the governors had been driven out and the Tories had been subjugated or exiled, the patriots became the ruling or superior cla.s.s. Immediately a new inferior cla.s.s arose, hostile to the Administration. Thus it came about that Was.h.i.+ngton, Hamilton, Adams, and Jay, the former democrats, were changed into aristocrats in the eyes of Jefferson, Madison, and the present democrats.

The new democrats were in full sympathy with the effort made in France to abolish the n.o.bility, and imitated the Democratic clubs which were established there on the basis of "liberty, equality, and fraternity."

Having no n.o.bility to abolish in America, they declared war upon such t.i.tles as "His Excellency the President," or "His Honour the Mayor,"

and even "Reverend" and "Esquire." These they would replace by a uniform "Citizen." Record is to be found of some twenty-four of these local Democratic societies, scattered from Maine to South Carolina and westward to Kentucky. Their object, as set forth by a Vermont society, was "the promotion of real and genuine Republicanism, unsullied and uncontaminated with the smallest spark of monarchical or aristocratic principles." They pledged themselves to the "utmost exertions to support the rational and equal rights of man."

Like all movements depending upon enthusiasm, the Democratic societies went to the bounds of extravagance. Taking offence at a tavern sign in Philadelphia, they were not content until the proprietor had painted a red streak about the neck of Marie Antoinette to denote the work of the guillotine. A waxworks in the same city drew large crowds to witness a representation of the execution of Louis XVI. According to the advertis.e.m.e.nt, "The knife falls, the head drops, and the lips turn blue. The whole is performed to the life by an invisible machine, without any perceivable a.s.sistance." Children were admitted at half price. A bust of George III., which had stood through the intense feeling engendered by the Revolution, was now mutilated. At Democratic banquets, a boar's head, representing the head of Louis XVI., was pa.s.sed about to be stabbed by the guests.

The resolutions adopted by the local societies frequently concerned local grievances. The Kentucky club protested against the Spanish claim to the exclusive control of the lower Mississippi, and a club in western Pennsylvania paid its respects to the collection of the excise tax.

Nevertheless, it should be said that many societies in other States deprecated the resistance to the National Government in that quarter.

In view of this fact, Jefferson thought Was.h.i.+ngton unjust in attributing the insurrection to the encouragement of the clubs.

There was a more practical aim in the a.s.sociations than the adoption of resolutions. They hoped to unite the local bodies in a national a.s.sociation which should bring the State and eventually the nation into sympathy with France and her struggle for liberty. "France caught the divine fire of liberty from us," said one society. "Shall we now withhold ourselves from her?" The varying responses to this question brought about eventually the rise of political parties in the United States.

Three well-defined periods have marked political parties in the Republic. The first epoch turned, as indicated above, entirely upon the choice of sides in the war between France and England, which followed the proclamation of the French Republic, September 21, 1792.

The second period, following the close of the War of 1812, the end of foreign dominance, was produced by differences of opinion upon the const.i.tutional powers of the National Government. It was foreshadowed by several const.i.tutional debates in the first period. The Civil War, by an appeal to the sword, decided the majority of these const.i.tutional doubts in favour of the Union. Since that time, a third phase of party government has been developed, purely on grounds of expediency in domestic and foreign control.

Political parties, therefore, are peculiarly dependent upon public opinion. They are creatures of sentiment. They possess no power save that of persuasion as to the proper lines of conducting the administration.

Choosing positions on great questions largely from previous policy, they must appeal to the people for justification and support. They live by opposition. No party can exist alone. In their modern aspect, political parties were unknown in Revolutionary days. Whig and Tory were simply reflections from the parties in England supporting or opposing the Administration. There were divisions among men, largely of a social nature; "court and country" parties, as John Adams called them in reminiscence. The royal governor, surrounded by his place-men and followers, residing in the city and opposed by the rural element, represented the monarch. The opposition became the patriotic party of the Revolution. After a decade, the patriots themselves divided into Federalists and Anti-Federalists upon the advisability of changing from the Articles of Confederation to the Const.i.tution. These divisions were not political parties in the modern sense. Neither developed any policy of administration or offered any candidate for office at the time.

When the Const.i.tution was finally adopted, the Anti-Federalists ceased their opposition. Since the impetus of adopting the new Government was sufficient to place its supporters in power, its enemies held off and awaited the day of failure when they should have the pleasure of saying, "I told you so." In a few instances they made a demonstration, as when Patrick Henry, according to Madison's belief, had Virginia redistricted in order to keep him out of the Senate. After the new venture had pa.s.sed beyond the experimental stage under the Federalist party, the name "Anti-Federalist" gradually pa.s.sed from use. As policies of administration were developed, an opposition was bound to be formed, and thus modern political parties were born. A preliminary line-up was caused by Hamilton's measure for a government bank; but the real cleavage was produced by opposing opinions concerning the side which the United States should take in the war between France and England.

If Great Britain, toward whom the animosity of the recent war was still strong, had not been a monarchy, or if the revolution which changed our Revolutionary benefactress, France, into a republic, had happened in England, or if the French Revolution had not so closely followed in form the change in the United States from monarchy to republicanism, party animosity in America would have been checked instead of advanced by the Old World contest. The same end might have been reached if John Adams had been sent as Minister to France and Thomas Jefferson to England. But Britain being the token of centralisation, the general tendency of the United States toward unionism seemed to Jefferson to be the certain road to monarchism. This he conceived to be the ultimate aim of Hamilton, born in the British West Indies, and Adams, who had returned from Britain with his obnoxious theory that the "well-born"

ought to rule the remainder of the people.

The attempt of France, on the contrary, to secure the rights of man, with which Jefferson had grown familiar during his residence in that country, appealed to him both from a national and a personal standpoint.

"I still hope," he said in one of those periods of French excess which bade fair to ruin the whole, "that the French Revolution will issue happily. I feel that the permanence of our own leans in some degree on that, and that a failure there would be a powerful argument to prove that there must be a failure here." "A struggle for liberty is in itself respectable and glorious," said Hamilton, in giving a Cabinet opinion that the treaty made with France in 1778 had been annulled by the abrogation of the monarchy and the execution of Louis XVI. "But if sullied by crimes and extravagance it loses respectability. It appears, thus far, too probable that the pending Revolution in France has sustained some serious blemishes." In another place he voiced the sentiments of the anti-French by saying that thus far no proof had come to light sufficient to establish a belief that the execution of the King was an act of national justice. But the French sympathisers thought otherwise. "If he was a traitor he ought to be punished as well as another man," wrote Madison to Jefferson, quoting the sentiment among the plain people of Virginia.

Public sentiment in the United States was thus crystallising into political parties on the policy to be pursued toward the new French Republic. One faction was of the opinion that the people of the United States were bound to aid the new sister not only by the sympathy of a common struggle for liberty, but by the still stronger bonds of grat.i.tude for a.s.sistance in gaining their own freedom. They considered the alliance of 1778, which France had signed at the expense of a war with England, as still binding upon the United States. It pledged the United States to guarantee France in the possession of her West Indies, to admit her s.h.i.+ps with prizes to American ports, to keep out those of the enemy, and to prohibit the enemy from using American ports to fit out privateers. From this last provision, some friends of France deduced the opinion that it tacitly gave her permission to fit out privateers by denying the right to her enemies.

Hamilton and others, who thought the French movement, begun for the sake of liberty, was deteriorating into a frenzied propaganda destructive of rights and property, insisted that the change of government in France had abrogated all claims which the alliance gave to monarchical France; that, even if this were not so, the United States was pledged to aid her only in a defensive war, and this war with England was entirely offensive on her part; that to give aid to the maddened revolutionists was to identify ourselves irrevocably with destructive fanatics, b.l.o.o.d.y regicides, and wild propagandists. These zealots, they said, had already pledged themselves to treat as enemies any people "who, refusing or renouncing liberty and equality, are desirous of preserving their prince or privileged castes, or of entering into an accommodation with them." Our forefathers had been satisfied with securing liberty for themselves without trying to impose it on all other nations. It was this proselyting spirit which caused their war against Britain. Hence, the anti-French element allied itself with England. That nation was rapidly being forced into a position where she alone would stand between French fanaticism and the disruption of all society. These pro-British were, in the eyes of the French sympathisers, base ingrates, as culpable as a nation would have been who sided with Great Britain during the Revolutionary War.

Divided into these hostile factions during this summer of 1792, the United States reached the first parting of the ways upon her foreign policy. Hitherto she had been of small moment to European nations, touching them only on boundary questions connected with the New World.

But in the mighty struggle between one people bursting the bands of centuries of repression and monarchical rule, and another nation in authority who saw prerogative, property, and person in danger from the deluge, the United States would become important as a place for fitting out and as a base of food-supply. Belligerents in the heat of war are not inclined to be over-regardful of the rights of non-combatants. To maintain a strict neutrality had been well-nigh impossible in the history of European nations. In nearly every war of the past, kingdom after kingdom had become involved. The "armed neutrality," headed by Russia during the American Revolutionary War, was formed by non-maritime nations ostensibly to protect their commerce from the belligerents; but in reality to gather up the fragments of trade as they were scattered by the warring sea powers.

The United States was fortunately located for announcing and maintaining a new idea of neutrality, a nationality based on individual development through peaceful methods. Time alone was needed in their isolated geographical condition to develop an industrial strength more efficient in Europe than an armed force at that time As Was.h.i.+ngton said, just before issuing a proclamation warning all citizens of the United States neither to aid nor to carry contraband goods to either belligerent: "I believe it is the sincere wish of America to have nothing to do with the political intrigues or the squabbles of European nations; but, on the contrary, to exchange commodities and live in peace and amity with all the inhabitants of the earth." To another he made the prediction that "if we are permitted to improve without interruption the great advantages which nature and circ.u.mstances have placed within our reach, many years will not revolve before we may be ranked, not only among the most respectable, but among the happiest people on this globe." Notwithstanding the demands of the French sympathisers that the United States should antic.i.p.ate the payments due on the French debt, should allow French privateers to be fitted out in American ports and prizes to be brought in and sold, and regardless of the insolent demands of the French Minister, Genet, and the haughty tone of the Republic he represented, President Was.h.i.+ngton issued the proclamation, April 22, 1793, warning the citizens of the United States to take no part in the war. He was aided in maintaining this neutrality by the continued trespa.s.s of each belligerent on American rights. If either had suddenly shown any regard for the neutral position of the young American Republic, sentiment would have demanded immediate war upon the other. But when England tried to cut off the supplies which France was receiving from America, France adopted similar tactics toward England. Each accused the other of inst.i.tuting these war measures.

Between the two millstones, American commerce bade fair to be ground to powder. Britain, in order to recruit her navy, revived her practice of retaking her seamen who had deserted, wherever they might be found.

She took a large number of men from American vessels, some of whom claimed to be American citizens instead of British deserters. This system of impressment she continued until it resulted in the War of 1812. Her refusal to yield possession of the forts on the American side of the boundary line remained as an additional grievance.

So strong was the hostile feeling toward England, that if the French revolutionists had not plunged into such excesses as to compel their most ardent admirers to pause, the firm hand of Was.h.i.+ngton could scarcely have prevented a declaration of war against Britain instead of the temporary embargo which was adopted. As it was, a non-intercourse measure was killed in the Senate only by the deciding vote of Vice-President Adams. A war at this time, when the new Government had scarcely gotten upon its feet, when it was still obliged to borrow money from Holland to meet its expenses, when its borders were hara.s.sed by hostile savages and its forts occupied by the enemy, would have been ruinous if not suicidal. A foreign war would have been fatal to the adopted policy of a disinterested neutrality, not dependent upon force, and to an uninterrupted home development which was to continue for over a century. Neither the clamour nor defamation of the Democratic clubs, nor the insinuations of the opposition press that the President was bia.s.sed toward a monarchy because he wished eventually to transform his office into a kings.h.i.+p, could drive the cool Was.h.i.+ngton from his stand of neutrality. It was such self-control which drew from England's Minister, Canning, many years after, the tribute: "If I wished for a guide in a system of neutrality, I should take that laid down by America in the days of the presidency of Was.h.i.+ngton and the secretarys.h.i.+p of Jefferson."

Jefferson was worn out by the onerous duties of his office during this period of dominant foreign politics. He was hara.s.sed by constant complaints of impressments and seizures. He was placed in an unfortunate position by the presumptions of Genet. Distressed by the license into which liberty in France was plunging he received small comfort in contemplating the British monarchical tendency in America. He was greatly disappointed because Was.h.i.+ngton, whom he had p.r.o.nounced at first "purely and zealously republican," had been so frequently influenced by Hamilton and Knox in the Cabinet, by John Adams in the Senate, and by John Jay in the Supreme Court. These were all Northern men and all in favour of effective government. Most statesmen cling more closely to the vessel during a time of party danger, but Jefferson chose to withdraw, believing his continuance in office useless, and trusting, as he said, that the people could not be permanently led away from the true principles of government. After his withdrawal, this monarchical tendency seemed to him to have no check. The President, instead of advising war upon Great Britain both to avenge her insults upon us and to aid the French Republic, sent John Jay to England as a special envoy to try to secure some concessions from her. Jay eventually sent home a treaty, which provided for the evacuation of the Western forts, for a commission to consider payment for the slaves carried away upon the evacuation of New York, and for the withdrawal of the discriminating tax on American s.h.i.+pping; but it purchased commercial entrance to the British West Indies at the expense of Southern commodities. Above all, it made no mention of impressment, of the search of American vessels, and the hindrance of their neutral trade.

"Further concessions," wrote Jay to his friends in America, "on the part of Great Britain cannot, in my opinion, be attained. If this treaty fails, I despair of another. I knew and know that no attainable settlement or treaty would give universal satisfaction. Men are more apt to think of what they wish to have than of what is in their power to obtain."

Hamilton, who had followed Jefferson's example and retired from Was.h.i.+ngton's Cabinet, yet virtually remained at the head of the party, advised the acceptance of the Jay treaty. "It closes," said he, "and upon the whole as reasonably as could have been expected, the controverted points between the two countries. The terms are in no way inconsistent with national honor."

Jefferson, Madison, and their followers believed, on the contrary, that the adoption of the treaty would violate all national honour in practically dissolving the French alliance of 1778 and would bind the United States to monarchical England warring on republican France. The proclamation of neutrality from Was.h.i.+ngton had not been so hard to bear, since it took sides with neither belligerent; but the Jay treaty, it was said, would array America against the cause of liberty. The French and British factions were resolved to put the matter to the test in the Senate. From this time may be dated the beginning of political parties in the United States. Feeling ran high. Jay was burned in effigy in many cities and the treaty ridiculed and villified in the Republican prints. Hamilton was mobbed in New York, and Vice-President John Adams armed himself against personal violence.

The ratification of the Jay treaty by exactly the required two-thirds vote in the Senate showed the relative strength of the two parties at the time, although the Senate changes more slowly than the House. The success of the treaty advocates allowed Was.h.i.+ngton to close his eight years in peace with England. Pinckney, whom he had sent to Madrid at the same time he sent Jay to London, succeeded in securing a treaty with Spain. Nearly twenty years had been spent in gaining this first acknowledgment from the Castilian. It provided for establis.h.i.+ng a permanent boundary-line between the United States and the Spanish Floridas, arranged a control over the troublesome Indians living near the line, and a.s.sured to American traders the privilege of using the port of New Orleans as a place of trans-s.h.i.+pment for their produce.

If the port of New Orleans should be closed, another port was to be opened to them. The Americans seemed to have succeeded, after more than ten years' effort, in getting the privilege of using the lower Mississippi.

This Treaty of 1795 with Spain, although overshadowed by the contemporaneous Jay Treaty, was extremely important in American diplomatic history. Not only did it quiet the discontent of the Western people and terminate foreign intrigue in that quarter, but it affected, strangely enough, the future history of the lower Mississippi. From the time of the Pinckney Treaty, France was unceasing in her efforts to persuade Spain to give over to her care the Louisiana province, which embraced New Orleans, insisting that she was the only power strong enough to check the advance of the United States and save the rest of the Spanish possessions in America. Three years later these arguments prevailed. Louisiana was transferred to France, and very soon fell into the hands of the Americans.

Was.h.i.+ngton had closed some of the most troublesome foreign questions which he had inherited from Confederation days. The new republic was beginning to make a place for itself among the nations. Treaties of amity and commerce had been made with all the maritime nations. American ministers were to be seen at the princ.i.p.al European Courts. Britain, France, Spain, and Holland had honoured the new power by sending representatives to Philadelphia. The entire diplomatic horizon was clear except in the French portion, where the Jay Treaty was bound to give offence. Under its tacit permission, as the French sympathisers claimed, more than three hundred American vessels were captured within the next twelvemonth, and over one thousand American seamen impressed by Britain. During the same period only three vessels and a few sailors were taken by France.

In its domestic relations, also, the United States, as the time of Was.h.i.+ngton's second term drew to a close, was exceedingly prosperous.

The new Government was in full operation. No one longer questioned its success or its fitness for the task before it. Fears for individual rights had been quieted by the adoption of ten amendments to the Const.i.tution, guaranteeing the continuance of such birthrights as freedom of conscience, trial by jury, free possession of property, and habeas corpus. The Union had come off victorious in its first case of discipline. It had made practical demonstration that its laws would be enforced and that it could use State militia regardless of State lines in enforcing them. Its system of judges and marshals extended over the entire domain. Its Supreme Court had sustained the claim of a citizen of South Carolina against the State of Georgia. State sovereignty had received a blow and national supremacy an impulse. The Superior Court had also declared that a treaty of the United States predominated over a State law, and that no State could confiscate a debt owed to a British subject. According to another decision, the United States District Courts were sustained in their admiralty jurisdiction over the State courts. The validity and authority of a presidential proclamation was established by the prosecution in the circuit court at Richmond of an offender against Was.h.i.+ngton's neutrality proclamation. But the decision during Was.h.i.+ngton's administration which especially made for the Union was in the case of Penhallow _v_. Doane's executors, which sustained all the actions of the old Congress both during the Revolutionary period and under the Articles, and made its decisions final in cases of appeal from State tribunals. Thus was the national sovereignty, by a single decision, extended backward over local government to the very beginnings of independency and, at the same time, established for the future so long as the National Government should exist.

Not only in the intangible shape of Supreme Court decisions, but in a thousand practical particulars, the central agency was making itself manifest to the people and gaining friends among them. The general condition of the country was prosperous. Over ten million dollars had been paid on the national debt. A dependable revenue was being collected in scores of United States custom-houses scattered through the different States. During Was.h.i.+ngton's last year in office, their receipts had amounted to twelve and a half million dollars. The National Government was expending a part of this money in rendering commerce safe. It was purchasing lighthouses from the maritime States and erecting new ones.

Sites for these buildings were being ceded by the various States along the sea-coast. Beacons, buoys, and public piers were being established by the revenue service. Sixteen harbours within the several States were being fortified at national expense. Plans for the improvement of certain rivers were being considered. The Congress under the Confederation had declared navigable waterways in the Northwest Territory leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence to be free highways, and the new Congress extended this inestimable guarantee to all waters of the public domain. Its extension to the States would come later from a Supreme Court decision. The improvement of these rivers at national expense would result in time from the westward expansion of the people.

The domain under the complete control of the Federal Government had been increased by a cession from South Carolina. The States of Kentucky and Tennessee had been carved out of the "territory south of the Ohio,"

and, with the State of Vermont, had been admitted to equal members.h.i.+p in the Union by the sole action of the Federal Government. The national post-routes had been extended in eight years from three thousand to sixteen thousand miles, and the number of post-offices had been increased to seven hundred. By severe penalties, the Government had taught the people to respect as well as to be grateful for this branch of its activities. It had also regulated trade with Indians not residing within the jurisdiction of a State, and, by scattering its troops along the border, was attempting to protect the savage from the encroachments and debauchment of the white man, as well as to s.h.i.+eld the white man from the barbarity of the savage.