USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume II > Part 21
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Jonathan Mitchell Sewall was born in Salem, Massachusetts. in 1748. He studied law with a kinsman, Jonathan Sewall of Boston, and Judge Pickering of Portsmouth. He was dis- tinguished for clearness of views, honor and integrity. His sympathies were with the accused, and of the many capital
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cases he tried he won every one. He refused to be state's attorney, since he preferred to defend men rather than to accuse them. The only office he ever held was that of a member of the constitutional convention. He loved poetry and music and pub- lished, in 1801, a volume of verse, in which occurs the oft quoted lines :
No pent-up Utica contracts your powers, But the whole boundless continent is yours.
He was a stranger to avarice, frugality and economy and possessed but little property. His nervous complaints led at last to excessive use of ardent spirits, and he died in great poverty, March 29, 1808. Though, as has been said, he derived much of his Bill of Rights from John Adams and the Bill of Rights of Massachusetts, he made modifications and condensations, that were distinct improvements, and the State has reason to honor the memory of Jonathan M. Sewall, educator in political morals.‘
To meet the expenses of the war there were emissions of paper money from time to time. Those of the Continental Con- gress amounted to two hundred millions of dollars. The States also issued paper money, and many thought this the easiest way of paying debts. The simple-minded have often and easily been persuaded to believe that government can create money at will. Its promises to pay are considered sufficient security, even if it has nothing to pay with. A promise derives all its value from the character and ability of the promiser. Good will and good intentions are not enough ; he must also have actual possessions or ability to earn. The promise on paper has no value in itself ; its value is in what it represents. It must somehow be exchange- able for that which has intrinsic value. If the government prints upon a piece of paper "This is a dollar," that fact does not make it a dollar any more than an artist's picture of a horse on canvas makes it a real horse. A material thing is worth, in the word's market, what it can be exchanged for. In the last analysis it is worth the labor expended in producing it or what it represents. Even pretentious statesmen in recent times have failed to grasp a few basal principles of public finance and have clamored for what has been called fiat money. The demand was still greater at the close of the Revolution, for people had
4 Cf. Hist. of Gilmanton, by Daniel Lancaster, p. 101.
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seen little else for several years, and they had seen a lot of it. They thought there was no limit to the State's power to issue it. If it was redeemable at all, it was at some distant dates, and that need not worry the present user. Some seem to think that a promise to pay is payment, but the seller of merchandise and produce is not so ready to believe this . So long as the faith of the people at large is unshaken in the fidelity and ability of the government, it can continue to issue promissory notes, that will be accepted at par value. But during the Revolution it was uncertain what would be the issue of the conflict and whether the States would ever be able to redeem their pledges. The more emissions of paper money they made, the less was its value. This went on till it took seventy-five paper dollars to buy what one dollar formerly purchased. A scale of depreciation was fixed by the House of Representatives July 3, 1781. They concluded that up to the end of 1776 all contracts should be considered as pay- able in silver and gold. After that the value of paper currency declined steadily month after month, till 7500 dollars in paper were reckoned equal to only one hundred dollars in silver. Later on the paper money became absolutely worthless except as souvenirs. In 1781 General Sullivan wrote to John Langdon that paper dollars were in value inferior to coppers, which, by the way, New Hampshire began to coin in 1776. William Moulton was authorized to make a hundred weight of them, and one hundred and eight of these coppers were equivalent to one Spanish milled dollar. The copper, of pure quality, was equal to an English half-penny. Sullivan states that a breakfast in Rhode Island, that formerly cost twelve coppers, cost him in 1781 twenty dollars, a dinner thirty dollars, and lodging ten dollars. Speculators were purchasing continental paper dollars at from three to six hundred for one dollar in silver and sending them forward in wagons to sell at one hundred and twenty for one of silver. In April, 1781, at Philadelphia, paper money was carried through the streets on poles and in wagons by a mob of sailors and burned by wagon loads. Thus its circulation ceased. Sullivan goes on to say, "To give the assembly an idea of the value of paper money in January, 1781, I beg leave to mention that when five of the members of Congress were sent to meet the Pennsylvania line, though we rode our own horses
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and were absent only five days, and three quarters of the time were entertained on free cost at Mr. Barclay's, yet our bill of expense amounted to twenty thousand dollars." In New Hamp- shire such bills were made a legal tender, but the law led to frauds, some seeking to pay old contracts with comparatively worthless paper, and thus its depreciation was hastened. Thus trade was ruined, business suspended, and silver was hoarded or sent out of the country, since paper would buy nothing abroad. Meetings were held, speeches made and petitions sent to Con- gress for relief, and specious arguments and printed circulars were the only reward. Counterfeiting hastened the ruin of paper currency, and it seems to have been easily and widely practised.
There were voluntary agreements and votes of townships in the attempt to maintain fixed prices, all to no purpose. The towns themselves had to change the prices more than once, and still people would not sell at the prices established. The law of supply and demand was stronger than any civil enactment. Even the Continental Congress tried to bolster up the confidence of the people in its paper money. A public address, which they ordered to be read in the congregations, declared that it was "the only kind of money which could not make to itself wings and fly away." This was in September 1771, Was this a de- liberate attempt to deceive the whole body politic, or were the legislators forced by pressing exigencies to deceive themselves? It is easy to believe anything that we intensely want to be true. Conventions asked Congress to prohibit the States from issuing more paper money, to open loan offices, and to raise money by direct taxation. Congress replied by advising the States to confiscate property of "such of their inhabitants and other persons as had forfeited the same," and to invest the money arising from the sales in continental loan certificates. New Hampshire confiscated a few estates, including that of Governor John Wentworth at Wolfeborough, whose books were ordered to be sent to Exeter and sold at auction, but the money secured in confiscations was a trifling amount. Moreover, the sale of confiscated estates was not fully legal till the independence of the colonies was established, and with uncertainty of validity of title it was difficult to sell, even at auction. Some of the confiscated estates proved to be insolvent, and that of the ex-
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governor was able to pay its creditors only because his father, Mark H. Wentworth, generously withdrew his claim for £13,680, till other creditors were satisfied.
One writer says that "in New Hampshire the whole pop- ulation was poor, was in distress and in debt," but how could that be? How could all be in debt and to whom? Were they trying to eat each other up, like the Kilkenny cats? War makes a few rich and many poor. The merchants, ship-builders and privateersmen of Portsmouth were not impoverished by the war. There were speculators in land and paper money who enriched themselves. Capitalists who had money to loan contrived to get high rates of interest. Manufacturers of war materials and clothing did not suffer. The farmers raised as much as before and the old way of barter was open to all. Since the issue of bonds and paper currency is only one way of borrowing of the future, it may be that the habit of borrowing, without any reasonable foresight of paying the debt, was fostered among the people. Suits at law for the recovery of money loaned or of the price of goods sold were too numerous. Some mortgagees are always ready to foreclose whenever there is a favor- able time to seize property. The taxes were high; a population of about eighty thousand were asked to raise a million dollars one year. Hard cash could not be obtained. A law was passed that other kinds of property might be offered in payment of taxes and debts. It is probable that there was abundance of property in New Hampshire, but war had distributed it more unequally than before, and the common, unlearned people felt the pressure. They alone cried out for relief. Such people, in all times of distress, feel that the government must be to blame, and there is some truth in their complaint. The blame in this case was that too much paper money had been issued, and the people thought that the only remedy was to issue more. The legislators were more to blame than the people. They had overcapitalized the available resources of the State; they had "watered stock" till it was worthless.
The situation is well stated by Belknap. "The scarcity of money was still a grievance which the laws had not remedied, but rather had a tendency to increase. To encourage its impor- tation into the country, the legislature exempted from all port
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duties, except light-money, every vessel which should bring gold and silver only; and from one-half of the duties, if a sum of money equal to one-half of the cargo should be imported. But it was to no purpose to import money, unless encouragement were given for its circulation, which could not be expected whilst the tender-act was in force; for every man who owned money thought it more secure in his own hands, than in the hands of others."
The clamor for paper money increased and, like a raging fever, approached toward a crisis. In every town there was a party in favor of it, and the public papers were continually filled with declamations on the subject. It was said that an emission of bills of credit would give a spring to commerce and encourage agriculture; that the poor would be able to pay their debts and taxes; that all the arguments against issuing paper were framed by speculators and were intended to serve the wealthy part of the community, who had monopolized the public securities, that they might raise their value and get all the good bargains into their own hands; that other States in the union had issued paper bills and were rejoicing in the happy effects of their currency, without any depreciation; that the people had a right to call upon their representatives to stamp a value on paper, or leather, or any other substance capable of receiving an impression; and that to prevent its depreciation a law should be enacted to punish with banishment and outlawry every person who should attempt by any means to lessen its value.
The same party who were so zealous in favor of paper cur- rency and against laws which obliged them to pay their debts proceeded to inveigh against courts and lawyers. The inferior courts were represented as sinecures for judges and clerks ; the defaulting, appealing, demurring, abatements, fees and bills of cost, without any decision, were complained of as burdens, and an abolition of these courts became a part of the popular cry. But the party did not content themselves with writing in the public papers. An attempt was made to call a convention, at Concord, whilst the assembly were sitting there, who should petition the legislature in favor of the plan ; and it was thought, that the presence of such a body of men, convened at the same time and place, would have great weight. The attempt was defeated in a manner singular and humorous.
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At the first sitting of the assembly, when five only of the members of the proposed convention were in town, some wags, among whom were several young lawyers, pretended to have been chosen by the towns in which they lived for the same purpose. In conference with the five they penetrated their views and pursuaded them to post an advertisement for all the mem- bers who were in town to assemble immediately, it being of the utmost importance to present their petition as early in the ses- sion as possible. By this means sixteen pretended members, with the five real ones, formed themselves into a convention, choosing one of the five their president and one of the sixteen their clerk." They carried on their debates and passed votes with much apparent solemnity. Having framed a petition, com- plaining in the most extravagant terms of their grievances, praying for a loan of three millions of dollars founded on real estate, for the abolition of inferior courts and a reduction of the number of lawyers to two only in a country, and for free trade with all the world, they went in procession to the assembly (some of whom had been previously let into the secret) and with great formality presented their petition, which was suf- fered to lie on the table and was afterwards withdrawn. The convention then dissolved, and when others who had been really chosen by the towns arrived, they were exceedingly mortified on finding their views for that time so completely frustrated."5
Belknap presents the demand of this pseudo convention as a sort of reductio ad absurdum, and he did not see that much truth and justice were in the demands made. That a State should, in times of distress, make in some form temporary loans to farmers has since been done with good results. That there are and have been too many lawyers, and that a proper mode of registering deeds might do away with much legal procedure, and that the whole method of trying cases in court, with cita- tions of precedents and appeal after appeal, is cumbersome and hard upon the poor, is now admitted by many of the wise. Reform in courts and legal procedure is the crying need of the present. And as for free trade with all the world, nothing would contribute more to equal justice for all and would sooner remove the causes of war among nominally civilized and Christian
5 Hist. of N. H. Farmer's Edition, pp. 398-9.
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nations. The young wags and lawyers of Concord builded bet- ter than they knew.
At Exeter there was an embryo riot, such as suggests the Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts. Men from the towns in the western portion of Rockingham county assembled at Kingston and thence marched to Exeter, where the General Court was in session. Some of their leaders had served in the Revolution. The mob numbered about two hundred, one half of whom marched on foot, armed with guns or swords, and the remainder followed on horseback, carrying clubs or whips. The General Court was sitting in the First Church, and the superior court in the town house on the opposite side of the street. The insurgents by mistake surrounded the latter building, where Judge Samuel Livermore was presiding. He ordered proceed- ings to go on and sternly forbade every one to look out of the windows. Then the mob attempted to stretch a cordon of men around the meeting house and intimidate the legislators. Spec- tators began to assemble, and the citizens of the town were in general opposed to such lawless proceedings. Their presence embarrassed and hindered the rioters. But they surrounded the building, stationed sentinels at the doors and windows, loaded their firearms, and announced their purpose to compel the General Court to enact a law for the emission of abundant paper money, which should be made a legal tender for the payment of debts and taxes, and their determination to hold the legislators in durance till the demand was complied with. One or two representatives attempted to make their escape and were driven back with insult. John Sullivan was then President of the State. He appeared at the entrance and listened to the demands of the assemblage. Quietly he told them that they need not expect to frighten him, for he had smelt gunpowder before. "You ask for justice," he said, "and justice you shall have." He did not order them to disperse, but let them wear out their own patience. Before the end of the afternoon the citizens of Exeter were come together and Colonel Nathaniel Gilman practised a ruse de guerre, to raise the siege. He caused a drum to be beaten briskly at a little distance, while a body of citizens approached with measured military step, and then cried out in stentorian voice, "Hurrah for government. Here comes
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Hackett's artillery." The cry was caught up and echoed by others, and the insurgents did not wait long. Near by they encamped for the night. Meanwhile the militia of neighboring towns had been sent for, and in the morning two thousand men had been assembled at Exeter. Sullivan took command, and a company of horsemen under Colonel Joseph Cilley went forward and arrested the ringleaders of the mob, after which the rest surrendered or fled. Thus ended the attempt of the advocates of fiat money to intimidate the law-makers of New Hampshire, the most formidable demonstration ever made against the gov- ernment of the State.6
Only eight of the rioters arrested were brought to trial, and no penalty was inflicted, except that some who held military offices were cashiered by a court martial, and some Presbyterians were censured ecclesiastically. The demand of the rioters for more paper money was referred to the votes of the people, who in their town meetings voted against a suggested issue of fifty thousand dollars. The assembly voted thereupon that no more paper money should be issued on any plan. All this was in 1786.
The same foolish demand for fiat money has more recently appeared in the "Greenback Party," and the same fallacies are involved in the proposal to make sixteen silver dollars equiva- lent to one of gold. The paper money of the United States is real money so long as it may be easily exchanged for something of intrinsic value, and only on that condition will people accept it in payment of debts. Otherwise they instinctively shrink from it without being able to formulate the reason why. So long as it takes just sixteen times as much labor to produce silver as it does to get gold, that ratio is satisfactory to all, but the relative standard can not be maintained in actual costs of production. Now gold can be obtained with half the labor that it could be mined twenty years ago, and consequently prices have doubled, and prices must continue to soar, in spite of the tirade against the high cost of living, till there is a limit fixed to the coinage of gold by a world-consensus of representative financiers. Most things are worth only what it would cost in labor now to produce them. Gold has lost half its former value; iron would
6 Condensed from Charles H. Bell's Hist. of Exeter, pp. 96-8.
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be just as good a medium of exchange, if it was as rare as gold and it cost as much to obtain it.
The following, from Professor Edwin D. Sanborn's History of New Hampshire, has an important bearing on the question of currency :
During the year 1790 "important measures were adopted by the con- gress of the United States to give stability and permanency to the govern- ment and place the public credit upon a firm foundation. Provision was made for funding the debt of the nation. Two hundred million dollars of the old continental currency had been redeemed for five millions, forty dol- lars of paper for one of silver. Many persons proposed that the certificates of indebtedness for fifty-four million dollars, now due, should be purchased at their present worth and not for their original value. But a more honor- able policy finally prevailed and the credit of the country was restored. After a long and heated discussion the state debts were assumed by the gen- eral government. This was not brought about without a discreditable com- promise between the friends and enemies of the measure. The influence and votes of certain southern members were secured by a promise of locating the seat of government on the Potomac. The sum of the foreign, domestic and state debts was about eighty millions of dollars. Alexander Hamilton was the author of this plan, which finally proved of immense advantage to all parties.
New Hampshire was dissatisfied with the amount granted to her by the general government, as her share of twenty-one millions five hundred thou- sand dollars of state debts assummed by the United States. She had con- tributed to the support of the war three hundred and seventy-five thousand and fifty-five dollars, and received in return only three hundred thousand dollars. Other states received more than they had expended. This distribu- tion was regarded as unjust, and called forth a spirited memorial to con- gress on the subject. The legislature set forth in forcible language their objections to the measure; and in conclusion solemnly "remonstrated against the said act, as far as it relates to the assumption of the state debts," and requested that "if the assumption must be carried into effect, New Hampshire might be placed on an equal footing with other states." Virginia and New Hampshire were at that early day found fighting shoulder to shoulder for state rights. (p. 214)
The question of human slavery entered into the discussions and plans for the reconstruction of the State. This institution had existed from the very beginning of New Hampshire. As early as 1649 William Hilton sold to George Carr an Indian slave named James, and the bill of sale is on record. The administration of the estate of William Drew of Oyster River, in 1669, makes mention of a male and a female "servant," the
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polite word for slave. The will of Nicholas Follett, 1700, men- tions "my Negro Man Caezer." African slaves had been brought to Virginia by the Dutch as early as 1619. At that time slavery was quite common in old England, and the American colonies followed the old custom. No law was necessary to legalize the traffic in slaves nor the custom of holding them. From time immemorial prisoners of war had been reduced to bondage. Hence Indians taken in war were held as slaves in many instances. The Rev. Hugh Adams of Durham brought with him from South Carolina, about 1707, an Indian female slave, who remained with him at Oyster River. Indians captured in the sham fight at Dover, in 1676, were sold into slavery in the West Indies. Deacon John Ambler of Oyster River had a slave that he flogged to death, and he was tried for the unintentional murder. Nearly all the men of wealth in New Hampshire, including General Sullivan, John Langdon, William Whipple and many of the ministers, owned slaves, and they seem to have been loth to part with them after the Revolution, or the fight for freedom. Some freed their slaves at that time. In 1779 twenty slaves of New Hampshire petitioned the Honorable Council and House of Representatives for their freedom. Among them was Peter Frost, slave of the Hon. George Frost of Durham, Representative to the Continental Congress. In the petition they expressed the desire "that the name of Slave may not more be heard in a Land gloriously contending for the Sweets of Freedom." No action was taken on this petition, "postponed to a more convenient opportunity." Nero Brewster headed the petition, called King Brewster, slave of Colonel William Brewster of Portsmouth. Tradition says that he had been a prince in his African tribe. The record of the House of Representatives says that "the House is not ripe for a determina- tion in this matter."7
In 1767 there were six hundred and thirty-three slaves in New Hampshire, and in 1775 there were six hundred and fifty- seven. When the question of the adoption of the Federal Con- stitution was before the convention at Exeter, in 1788, decided objection was made to one paragraph, viz., "The migration or inportation of such persons as any of the states now existing
7 N. H. State Papers, VIII., 862.
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shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year 1808; but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person." Thus was the way left open for stealing "black diamonds" in Africa. A notable protest was made by the Hon. Joshua Atherton of Amherst, which puts him among the earliest and ablest abolitionists of the country. It is said to be the only speech preserved in that convention, and is as follows :
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