USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume II > Part 20
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Four towns on the Vermont side the river, Newbury, Brad- ford, Thetford, Norwich and Hartford, sought union with New Hampshire in the summer of 1782, and owing to the continued opposition of the State of New York to the independence of Vermont, and to the delay of Congress in recognizing such independence, certain preliminary steps were taken towards the annexation of the territory west of the river to the Green Moun- tains, but these were only preliminary. New Hampshire, weary of controversy, decided to secure what had now come within her grasp without engaging in further controversy. She would preserve what she had. Some of the leaders of the Dresden or College party emigrated. A considerable number from Hanover went to Randolph, Vermont, where they had purchased proprie- tary interests. Col. Morey moved across the river from Orford to Fairlee in 1782. Later some of the Cheshire County mal- contents entertained a scheme of colonization on the island of Cape Breton under the patronage of Governor John Wentworth, sent agants to investigate, obtained a grant of 100,000 acres, but the number who went to form this colony was inconsid-
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erable. One of the chief obstacles in the way of pacification was the drastic methods employed by New Hampshire to exact the payment of delinquent taxes, but these troubles were finally settled. The end of the war of the Revolution with the surrender of Cornwallis and the coming of peace after the long struggle for independence encouraged a spirit of magnanimity among all parties, and aided in a final settlement satisfactory to all. The College for its part in the controversy was not easily forgiven, and the attempt, a generation later which happily failed, to wrest its control from the corporation chart- ered by King George, was a survival of the bitterness against the institution which rankled in the breasts of the dominant party in the State. With few exceptions, however, the leaders of the College party on both sides the river accepted the situa- tion philosophically and addressed themselves to the task of reestablishing the authority of their respective states in the disaffected towns. The United Towns organization was dis- solved; Professor Woodward resumed his professorship, and later was reappointed to his former position as a justice of the Grafton County Court of Common Pleas. Col. Elisha Payne be- came a senator in 1786, and Jonathan Freeman was a little later elected to the same office. It is to the credit of these and other leaders of their party, that when they recognized that the contest was over, they strove to promote harmony and gave loyal allegiance to the State of New Hampshire.
Then began their contest for the recognition by the state of towns as units of government, and for town representation in the legislature. They had lost after a long and at times bitter contest. And yet their cause was not a "Lost Cause" for the ultimate plan of government agreed upon in New Hamp- shire embodied in its essential features the very plan of town representation they had so strenuously contended for, and em- bodied it so firmly that successive Constitutional Conventions have since found themselves powerless to secure its uprooting.
Chapter VIII RECONSTRUCTION
Chapter VIII
RECONSTRUCTION.
Need of a Permanent Form of Government-Convention of 1778-9-First Plan Proposed-Convention of 1781-The Bill of Rights-Objectionable Features of the Plan-The Plan Rejected by the People-Convention of 1782-This Plan also Rejected-Delegates Meet at Concord in 1783- Their Plan accepted in 1784-Some Features of the Constitution-Place where the Convention Was Held-Authors of the Constitution-John Pickering-Jonathan M. Sewall-Paper Currency-Fiat Money-Pro- posed Remedies for Depreciation-Were the People Poor ?- Situation Stated by Belknap-Truth Contained in Ridicule-Riot at Exeter- Worth of Money-Slavery in New Hampshire-Speech of Joshua Atherton.
T HE plan of government that was adhered to during the Revolution was only a temporary experiment. When it was adopted, it was the wish of perhaps the majority that a reconciliation with the mother country might be effected. As years went by, its inefficiency was seen. There was no proper executive, and during the interim between sessions of the legis- lature, or general court, the committee of safety had executive powers, and the president of that committee was virtually the chief executive officer of the State. The Council, that acted as the Upper House of the legislature, was at first chosen by the Lower House and did not fairly represent the people. There was no well marked division of government into legislative, judicial and executive. The same person sometimes held offices that made him law-maker, judge and ruler. This was earnestly opposed by many, and endeavor was made to enact law prohibit- ing the holding of more than one public office by the same person. But such was the confidence of the State in the wisdom and integrity of Meshech Weare, Matthew Thornton and a few others, that in the stormy times of the Revolution the peo- ple felt safer to allow such men to do about as they pleased and to gather to themselves large measures of political power.
As soon as the foregleams of peace began to appear the General Assembly realized that without some action on their
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part New Hampshire was likely to be soon without a govern- ment of any sort, for the plan previously adopted was to continue only during the war. Therefore on the twenty-seventh of February, 1783, it was voted that the then present government be continued in force till the tenth day of June 1784, even if a general pacification should take place, provided that a permanent plan of government for the State should not be established before that date. At the same time the inhabitants of the State were earnestly exhorted to give serious and immediate attention to this momentous and important matter, and the selectmen of the various towns were requested to lay the resolve of the general assembly before the people at the next annual town meetings, or at meetings specially called for consideration of the object. It seems to have been the wish of all that the people, the whole people, by means of their representatives should determine just what kind of a government they desired. All were thoroughly tired of being governed by the will of king, parliament, or a favored few.
This resolve of the general assembly, doubtless, was called forth by attempts already made to formulate a permanent government. A joint committee had submitted a somewhat similar report two years earlier, calling a convention of delegates from the several towns to form a plan of government, and even the towns of what is now Vermont, lying between the Connecti- cut river and the height of land, were to be invited to send delegates. Nothing resulted from this report.1
At a meeting held in Concord, January 26, 1778, Colonel Thomas Stickney, who was then representative in the General Assembly, was instructed "to use his influence in order that a full and free representation of the people be called as soon as conveniently may be, for the sole purpose of laying a permanent plan or system for the future government of the State." The meeting house was specially prepared to receive said convention, which assembled on the tenth of June 1778, and did not finish its work till the fifth of June in the following year. Among the distinguished delegates present were John Langdon, of Ports- mouth, who presided, Matthew Thornton and John Bell from Londonderry, Josiah Bartlett from Kingston, Joseph Badger
1 N. H. State Papers, VIII., 885, 897.
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from Gilmanton and Timothy Walker, Jr., from Concord. The constitution proposed at that time was printed on both sides of a large half sheet by Zachariah Fowle of Exeter, brother of the Robert L. Fowle who was proscribed. It was sent to all the towns of the State and was promptly rejected. Even Concord had only a majority of one in its favor. It contained a declara- tion of rights; that the people of New Hampshire were free and independent of the Crown of Great Britain; that they were entitled to life, liberty and property ; that the common laws of England and laws of the State not inconsistent with the Declara- tion of Independence should be in force, unless repealed or altered ; that government was vested in the people alone ; that no laws should be made infringing the rights of conscience or any other of the natural, inalienable rights of man, or contrary to the laws of God, or against the Protestant religion ; that the bound- aries of the State should be the same as they were under the government of the late Governor John Wentworth, reserving a claim to the New Hampshire Grants west of the Connecticut river; and that the right of trial should be preserved inviolate forever.
The main features of the plan of government proposed were as follows: A Council and a House of Representatives were to constitute the governing body, styled the General Court, a phrase caught probably from Massachusetts. These were to be chosen about as before, each town having one hundred families to send a representative and smaller towns to be classed together. The judges and other general officers of State were to be chosen by the General Court, and also the delegates to the Continental Congress were to be so chosen. Provision was made to exclude members of the General 'Court from holding other offices, civil or military, and no member of the House should hold any salary under the government. The proposed plan was to be the fundamental law of the State and no altera- tion should be made therein except by a majority vote of the people, that is, the male inhabitants of the State, paying taxes, of lawful age, professing the Protestant religion. There was a property qualification for those holding office. It was a scheme for making a limited aristocracy the representatives and rulers
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of the people, and the people saw it and voted the proposal down.2
Another convention met in Concord on the fifth of June 1781, for the purpose of forming a plan of government, or con- stitution. After a session of a few days a committee of seven were appointed to draft the new form, and the convention adjourned till the fourteenth of September, when they ordered seven hundred copies of the draft printed and sent throughout the State. Then they adjourned till the fourth Wednesday of the following January. The people were asked to state their reasons for the rejection of the whole or of any part of the plan proposed. This constitution also was rejected by the people. In the parish of Concord fifty-eight voted against it and nobody for it. What were the objectionable features? Certainly not the thirty-eight articles of the prefacing Bill of Rights, for these were adopted in 1783 with but very slight modification. The inalienable rights of man, grounded in intuitive reason and conscience, none cared to dispute. They formed the basis of the Constitution of the United States and of the States severally. All laws, as well as arguments, in order to endure, must be grounded in admitted truths, in what is generally recognized as true without effort to prove them. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to the possession of personal property, to freedom of worship according to the dictates of con- science and reason, these form the basis of free government, and any abridgement of such rights must be for the greater good of the whole, or tyranny arises. It is noticeable, however, that while the claims of conscience were sacredly guarded for Protestants, all other religionists were excluded from certain offices. There had been too much opposition between Protestants and Roman Catholics in the old world to yet allow full religious toleration and respect for varied religious opinions and convictions.
Emphasis was laid upon the truth for which the revolu- tionists had contended, that government should be by the people and for the people, "not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men." This contradicted the practice of almost all governments in the past. Even ancient
2 Bouton's Hist. of Concord, p. 276; Coll. of N. H. Hist. Society, IV., 154-161.
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A HISTORY
Athens, under the forms of a republic, had ten slaves for every freeman. So was it when Rome was a republic. Feudal Europe had sunk back into the condition of ancient monarchies and empires, when the will of the ruler was the highest law, and freedom for the masses was something unknown. In all such governments standing armies were needed to repress popular aspirations and clamors, more than to repel foreign foes. New Hampshire's Bill of Rights contains this safeguard, that "no soldier in time of peace shall be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner." Military forces were to be subject to civil authorities and not to domineer in time of peace. It was meant that all officers, civil or military, were to be servants, and not masters, of the people. This theory still prevails, though practice seems occasionally to contradict the theory. The school children of New Hampshire ought to be thoroughly indoctrin- ated in her ancient Bill of Rights.
That part of the plan of government which met with most opposition concerned the election of the House of Representa- tives. It was proposed to limit the number of representatives to fifty, to be chosen by county conventions, wherein every town having fifty families should have a delegate and towns of less population should be classed together. For every additional fifty families another delegate might be elected to sit in the county convention. Every delegate must be a Protestant, a resident in the town for at least two years, and have property of the value of two hundred pounds, half of which must be real estate in the town he represented. The counties were to be divided into districts and each district was to be represented in the House of Representatives. Rockinghan county was to have twenty representatives; Strafford, eight; Hillsborough, ten; Cheshire, eight; and Grafton, four. Thus political influence would be centered in the oldest towns of the State, and Portsmouth naturally wanted to be the capital city and have her old State House once more filled with legislators. This plan of represen- tation lacked simplicity and gave the individual voters no direct choice in the election of members of the House. It would be easier than now for manipulating politicians to determine who the representatives should be. The people could not easily understand the plan, and when it was explained to them, they promptly rejected it.
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An objectionable feature of the plan of 1781 was that every person qualified to vote for senator should have a freehold estate in his own right to the value of one hundred pounds. The adopted constitution declared that only the payment of a poll tax should be the legal qualification of electors, so far as prop- erty was concerned. Thus the people opposed any restriction of the franchise. All through the gradual formation of the Con- stitution there was the concealed desire of the few to rule the many and the victorious demand of the many for manhood rights.
The plan of 1781 proposed that the chief executive should be called Governor, and this word sounded too monarchical to free republicans, and so they substituted the word President. Perhaps the contrast between President Weare and Governor Wentworth was in their minds. The Governor must have an estate valued at one thousand pounds, and each senator must have an estate of four hundred pounds, according to the pro- posed constitution of 1781.
Concord voted, in considering this plan, to have a town representation, to have a governor, that he shall not have a privy council, and that the people at large shall appoint their militia officers.
This plan having been rejected by votes of the towns, the convention met in Concord again in August of 1782 and sub- mitted a modified plan to the people, and this also was rejected. Every one of the fifty-two voters of Concord voted against it. They voted to leave the Governor with his Privy Council out, that there be a President, a Legislative Council and a House of Representatives, and that the powers vested in a governor and council in the proposed plan be rather vested in the Legislative Council and the House of Representatives.
Not disheartened the convention met again in June 1783 and agreed upon a third form of Constitution, ordered it printed, and adjourned till October thirty-first, of the same year. On that day the convention reassembled and found that the towns had ratified the last proposed Constitution, and it was declared established, after a prolonged effort of two years, four months and twenty-six days. Peace had been proclaimed in the army on the nineteenth of the April preceding. Perhaps this had
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weight in putting an end to public discussion and hastening the adoption of a Constitution. The convention decreed that the new Constitution should begin to be in force on the first Wed- nesday of June, 1784.
The Constitution of 1784 was modeled after that adopted by Massachusetts four years earlier, which came from the pen of John Adams. That State had been a leader among all the colonies in its oppositions to tyrannical rule and in its assertions of the rights of the common people, and John Adams was the most influential statesman of his time. Minor modifications and a few additions have been made from time to time, but the Bill of Rights remains the same in all the constitutions adopted, and there has been little change in the fundamental law. The principles of government have been adhered to and the result has been prosperity and happiness to the people as a whole. It is said that some of the articles of New Hampshire's Bill of Rights are traceable, even as to their phraseology, to the Magna Charta wrung from king John at Runnymede and to the Petition of Rights which Charles the First was compelled to reaffirm. The first articles remind one of the words used in the Declara- tion of Independence.
Article seventh of the Bill of Rights affirms that New Hampshire is a "free, sovereign and independent State." Its sovereignty and its independence have not been allowed by all political writers. Some have claimed that the federation of States was sovereign and that no State, from the beginning, was independent. The doctrine of State Sovereignty and State Rights has been argued for a long time and was, we may hope, finally decided by force of arms. By adoption of the Federal Constitution certain rights of States were delegated to the United States of America, and whatever New Hampshire was at the beginning she is not now a sovereign and independent State, but one in a group of States that form a single sovereign nation.
The sixteenth article provides that no person after acquittal shall be again tried for the same crime or offense. This was the first time in history that such a law was enacted, and it was adopted in substance into the Constiution of the United States.
According to the Constitution of 1784 the chief executive
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was called President; he presided over the Senate; and he had no power of veto. In 1792 his title was changed to Governor and he was given power to veto bills passed by the legislature, while the Senate elected its own President, who became Governor in case of vacancy in the gubernatorial office by reason of death, absence or other cause.
The leading civil and military officers were required to subscribe to a solemn declaration, whose length was supposed to add weight and power to the obligation assumed and thus help to secure fidelity. A much simpler and abbreviated form of words made up the oath of office in the Constitution of 1792. The original form was as follows:
I, A. B., do truly and sincerely acknowledge, profess, testify and declare, that the State of New-Hampshire is, and of right, ought to be, a free, sov- ereign and independent State; and do swear that I will bear faith, and true allegiance to the same, and that I will endeavor to defend it against all treacherous conspiracies and hostile attempts whatsoever : And I do further testify and declare, that no man or body of men, hath or can have, a right to absolve me from the obligation of this oath, declaration or affirmation; and that I do make this acknowledgment, profession, testimony and declara- tion, honestly and truly, according to the common acceptation of the fore- going words, without any equivocation, mental evasion or secret reserva- tion whatsoever. So help me God.
This was in harmony with ancient forms of adjuration that have been handed down in some fraternities. Members of the Society of Friends and others having conscientious scruples were permitted to omit the word "swear" and the words "So help me God" and to substitute "This I do under the pains and penalties of perjury."
During the revolutionary war all sessions of the General Assembly were held in Exeter. The conventions for framing a Constitution were held in Concord, and the convenience of the location, nearer to the center of the State and more easily reached by the majority of the members, probably determined the vote of January 18, 1782, to hold the next session of the Assembly in Concord. Accordingly it met there first on the thirteenth of March 1782, the meeting house having been specially fitted for the occasion. But meeting houses then had no stoves or fire- places, and the inclemency of the weather drove the legislators to a hall over Judge Timothy Walker's store, which stood a few
HOUSE WHERE LEGISLATURE FIRST ASSEMBLED IN CONCORD
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rods south of the house built by the Rev. Timothy Walker in the year 1733-4. The house and the store remain to this day, though the latter has been removed across the street and a little further north. Appropriate markers indicate the original site and the building, a long, two-story, wooden structure, on the west side of Main street. The noble elms about the original site were planted by the Rev. Timothy Walker in 1764. The President of the State with his Council occupied the north par- lor of the Walker house, while the south parlor served as a committee room, and the room above it as the office of the treasurer of the State. It is probable that the meeting house was the place of meeting of the General Assembly whenever the weather permitted. This stood where the Walker School building has recently been erected, and after a new meeting house had been built further south, the old meeting house was sold to become the Concord Biblical Institute of the Methodist Episcopal Church, precursor of the School of Theology of Boston University. It was burned in 1870.
Concord did not become the capital of the State till 1816, although previous to that date forty-two sessions of the General Court were held there. But there were occasional sessions at Portsmouth and at Exeter. In 1790 Concord voted to raise one hundred pounds to build a house for the accommodation of the General Court, and citizens of the town subscribed five hundred and fifty-five dollars more for the same purpose. It was a one- story building, eighty feet long and forty wide. The land was given by William Stickney. The building was called the Town House and here the General Court held its sessions, whenever it convened in Concord, till the year 1819, when the State House was completed.
As to the immediate authorship of New Hampshire's first Constitution it is recorded that in the convention of 1781 a com- mittee of seven was appointed to draft it, consisting of General Nathaniel Peabody of Atkinson, Judge John Pickering of Ports- mouth, Jonathan M. Sewall of Portsmouth, Judge Timothy Farrar of New Ipswich, the Rev. Mr. Goddard of Swanzey and two others. Judge Pickering was appointed a sub- committee to draft the Form of Government, and Mr. Sewall to draft the Bill of Rights. The Constitution adopted
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in 1784 was only a modification of their drafts, with but little change in the latter. It will be of interest to know who these men were, to whom the State owes so much. The following sketches are condensed from the Plumer Manuscript Biogra- phies.
John Pickering was born in Newington in the year 1737, a descendant of John Pickering, one of the first settlers of Ports- mouth. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1761 and afterwards studied theology, having for a time the ministry in view. Indeed he was invited to become colleague of an Episco- pal clergyman in Boston, but preferred to employ his talents at the bar. He commenced legal practice in Greenland but soon removed to Portsmouth, where he spent his life and became eminent as a pleader. No lawyer in the state advocated so many causes as he, nor received so small compensation. His generosity was well known. His distinguishing characteristics were conscientiousness, charitableness, benevolence and sociabil- ity. He was reckoned among the patriots in the Revolution, yet acted with caution. Elected as a delegate to the convention which formed the Constitution of the United States he did not attend, but was very influential in the adoption of that Consti- tution by New Hampshire in 1788. Had he opposed the convention would not have ratified it. He was for many years a member of the House of Representatives and spoke, as some thought, too often, being passionately fond of public speaking. He also served in the Senate and in the executive Council. In 1790 he was appointed chief justice of the superior court, at a salary of five hundred dollars. In 1795 he was appointed judge of the district court of New Hampshire, in the discharge of whose duties he became sick and insane. To get rid of him he was impeached for crimes and misdemeanors and found technically guilty and removed from office. He died on the eleventh of April 1805, a man of noble mind and heart, worn out and im- paired by arduous labors.
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