USA > Virginia > The history of the Virginia federal convention of 1788, with some account of eminent Virginians of that era who were members of the body, Vol. I > Part 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
53 Journal of the House of Delegates, October session of 1785, pages 66-67.
49
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
prosperous Commonwealth had ever made, and which no large and prosperous Commonwealth could make without dishonor and shame.
By a people whose minds had been excited to a high pitch by fear and suspense, one aspect of the Convention, which ought not to be overlooked in the review of a great historic period, was regarded with absorbing interest. It was the peculiar rela- tion which the members held to the State and Federal politics of the day. No error is more common than to refer the origin of the party divisions of the Commonwealth to the present Federal Constitution, and to the measures adopted by Congress under that Constitution. Long before that time, parties had been formed, not only on State topics, but on those connected with the Federal Government. From the passage of the resolutions of the House of Burgesses against the Stamp Act to the time when, eleven years later, an independent State Government was formed, there had been a palpable line drawn between the parties of the country. In that interval some prominent names might occa- sionally be found on either side of the line; but the line was at all times distinctly visible.54 But, if it was visible in the Colony,
54 If the critical reader will run over the names of the members of the House of Burgesses of 1765, and the names of the members of the early Conventions, he will think, with me, that a majority of the men who opposed the resolutions of Henry against the Stamp Act, opposed the resolutions of the same gentleman of March, 1775, which proposed to put the Colony into military array, and the resolution, I am inclined to think, instructing the Virginia delegates in Congress to propose in- dependence. The same members who opposed independence, we are expressly told by Henry, in his letter to R. H. Lee, of December S. 1777, also opposed the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. And these members were, in the main, warm advocates for the adoption of the new Federal Constitution. On the other hand, Henry, R. H. Lee, George Mason, William Cabell, and others, who sustained the mea- sures above enumerated, were the fiercest opponents of that instru- ment. Heretofore the party, of which Henry was usually regarded the head, had held almost undisputed sway in the Assembly ; but, though it still included a large majority of the people, the skill and tact with which the friends of the new Constitution selected their candidates among the judges, and the military men, and the old tories, who, though they opposed all the great measures of the Revolution, including the Articles of Confederation, had become strangely enamored of the new scheme, had shaken the established majority. This was one of the 4
0
50
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
it was still more boldly defined in the Commonwealth. The great office of conforming our local legislation to the genius of a republican system, would have called the two parties into life, if they had not previously existed, and presented in the daily de - liberations of the Assembly innumerable themes of difference and even of discord. The abolition of the laws of primogeni- ture and entails ; the separation of the Church from the State, which was effected only after one of the longest and most ani- mated contests in our legislation ; the expediency of religious assessments ; the perpetually recurring subject of Federal requi- sitions for men and money ; the policy of ceding to the Union that magnificent principality extending from the Ohio to the northern lakes, which, divided into four States, now sends to the House of Representatives of the United States a delegation equal to nearly two-thirds of the whole number of that House at its first session under the Federal Constitution, and a delegation to the Senate which exceeds one third of the whole number of the Senate at its first organization ; the mode of conducting the war; the navigation of the Mississippi, which, even at the date of the present Convention, bounded our territory on the west ; the propriety of adopting the Articles of Confederation, and, at a later date, the expediency of amending them. These, and simi- lar topics, were of the gravest moment, and might well produce a clashing of opinions. On these questions the parties, which had taken their shape as early as 1765, usually maintained their relative positions toward each other. But, fierce as was the con- tention on State topics, it was mainly on questions bearing di- rectly or indirectly on Federal politics that the greatest warmth was elicited. It is known that, from the difficulties incident to a state of war, and especially a war with a great naval force, there could be but a slight interchange of commodities with foreign countries, and no introduction of specie from abroad. The only resort was the credit of the Commonwealth. While that resource was made for a season more or less available at home, some other means of meeting Federal requisitions were indispensable.
causes of the public alarm at the time. The Federalists well knew that when such men as Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, John Blair, and Paul Carrington, all of whom were on the bench, appeared at the hustings, nobody would vote against them.
:
C
L
51
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
To lay taxes, payable in gold and silver only, when there was neither gold nor silver in the State, was worse than useless. The taxes must then be laid, payable in kind, and their proceeds sold for what they would fetch in a market without outlet at home or abroad. Hence the difficulty of a prompt and full compliance with the requisitions of the Federal Government was almost insuperable. But as that Government, which was almost wholly dependent on the immediate action of the States, if not for its existence, at least for the effectual discharge of its appro- priate duties, suffered severely by the default, those who were charged with its administration urged the necessity of relief upon the members of the Assembly with a warmth which the occasion justified, but which became at times embarrassing and even offen- sive. Nor was this state of things, the result of causes which it seemed almost impossible entirely to remove, materially changed in the years immediately succeeding the peace. There was also a strong suspicion that the members of Congress, fascinated by the allurements of a life abroad, and engaged in the considera- tion of questions affecting all the States, were disposed to view their own State rather as one of a confederation than as an in- dependent sovereignty, and to regard the interests of the former as subservient to the interests of the latter. From these and other considerations equally cogent, some of the members of Congress, however honest and able, became unpopular with the majority at home, which was responsible for the conduct of the State, and were regarded with distrust. Indeed, jealousy and suspicion seem to have presided at the origin of our Federal relations, and were exhibited from the beginning partly toward the Federal Government itself, and partly toward the members of Congress, personally and collectively. The term of the ser- vice of a member of Congress originally was for one year, with the capacity of eligibility for an indefinite period. Two years later the Assembly determined, by a solemn act, to curtail the term of eligibility to the period of three successive years, when the incumbent must withdraw for a year, and, as it was alleged at the time, from party motives made the rule retroactive in its operation. 55 Richard Henry Lee, who was the first to feel the
55 Hening's Statutes at Large, IX, 299. Mr. Jefferson drew the act and affirmed that his object was to curtail the delegation on the ground of economy.
52
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
effect of the act, complained bitterly, in a letter to Henry, that it was aimed at himself,56 although one of the provisions of the same act fell immediately on Harrison and Braxton. It should seem that, whether from the jealousy entertained toward the Government itself, or hostility to certain members of Congress, from considerations not yet fully made public, Congress well-nigh became the slaughter-house of the popularity of the delegates who attended its sittings. Even in the days of the early Conven- tions the good name of Richard Bland was so blown upon that he demanded an inquisition into his conduct.57 The popularity of Richard Henry Lee suffered for a season a total eclipse in the Assembly. From that memorable day, when in the first joint convention of both Houses of Assembly he made his eloquent defense against the charges which had led to his retirement from Congress, to the twenty-first day of January, 1786, when the reso- lution convoking the meeting at Annapolis was adopted, some of the warmest contentions of the Assembly were upon Federal topics. Nor to the latest hour did that body ever regard, with full faith, those who had borne a conspicuous part in the delibe- rations of Congress. The distrust of those who had served in that body was shown on a remarkable occasion. Madison, as an individual, was not only without fault, and one of the purest men of his times, but, in intellectual accomplishments, excelled almost all his contemporaries ; yet, when, in the House of Dele- gates at the October session of 1785, he sought to secure the passage of a resolution investing Congress, for a term of years, with the power to regulate commerce, and made, in its defence, a speech which, if we judge from the outlines and copious notes that have come down to us, must have been one of the ablest ever made in the House, he met with as terrible a defeat as the annals of parliament afford.58 Heretofore, both in the Colony and in the Commonwealth, that party, which, for the want of a better name, we may style Democratic, though now and then
56 Letter of R. H. Lee in the "Red Hill " papers.
57 Journal Virginia Convention of July, 1775, page 15.
58 For the outlines of the speech and the notes from which Madison spoke, see Mr. Rives' History of the Life and Times of James Madi- son, II, 48-51, and for the preamble and resolution, see Journal of the House of Delegates, October session of 1785, pages 66, 67, where, after his great speech, he was one of eighteen ayes to seventy-nine noes.
.
מה
6
53
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
defeated by the ability and tact of its opponents, had been, in the main, triumphant, and had usually carried its measures by a decisive majority. And the probability was that, as the ratify- ing Convention was called on the basis of the House of Dele- gates, that party would still maintain its predominance in that body; and it was with a full reliance on this calculation that the resolutions convoking the General as well as the State Conven- tions, had received the assent of the Assembly. Nor can there be a doubt that such would have been the case in ordinary times ; but the large and unexpected infusion of new members had cre- ated alarm in the breasts of the majority of the Assembly and of the people at large; and one of the most exciting questions that engaged public attention was how far the new element would affect the balance of power. Thus, at so early a period did Fed- eral politics rage with a violence not inferior to that which marked the close of the century.59
Nothwithstanding the bickerings produced by Federal politics in our councils, we should do great injustice to the men who for nearly a quarter of a century wielded the will of the Assembly, if we impute to them a want of affection for the Union. The Union was the daughter of their loins. They nursed her into action. They were the men who called the little meeting in Williamsburg in the late summer of 1774, which we honor with the title of the first Convention of Virginia, and who sent dele- gates to Carpenter's Hall. They were the first to advise Con- gress to adopt "a more intimate plan of union," and to form the Articles of Confederation ; and when those Articles were re- ported for the consideration of Virginia, they approved them by
59 It cannot be disguised that personal and political animosities were as freely indulged in from 1776 to 1790 as from 1790 to the election of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency. Henry, Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee, were among the best abused. Charles Carter, of "Sabine Hall," was a gentleman, a scholar, and a patriot, and far advanced in life in 1776; but, in a letter of that year addressed to Washington, see what he says of Henry and Jefferson ( American Archives, fifth series, 1776, Vol. II, pages 1304-5); and see the letter of Theodoric Bland, Sr., to Theodoric Bland, Jr., dated "Cawson's," January 8, 1871 (Bland Papers, II, 50). It is necessary to know the personal friends of the men of that era in order to judge of the weight of testimony ; but I will not touch upon them unless it is indispensable to the truth of history, and espec- ially to the defence of private character.
7
51
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
$
a majority so overwhelming that the opponents of Union dared not to oppose them openly.60 When the Articles on the ninth day of July, 1778, were called up from the table of Congress to be signed by the States as such, while some States signed in part only, and some not at all, the delegates of this Commonwealth, who had been recently elected by the Assembly, came forward and signed them on the spot. Throughout the war the Assembly held up the hands of Congress, and complied with its requi- sitions, if not to the letter, to the utmost of its ability. Since the peace, the British debts, which the definitive treaty required to be paid, excited warm feelings and produced acrimonious de- bates; but this was a topic on which parties divided. At the date of the Revolution, the indebtedness of individuals to Eng- land was estimated at ten millions of dollars, and the minority was far more interested in the question than the majority.61 In fine, the cause of the Confederation was the cause of the majority. It was the work of their hands. At the May session of 1784, they assented to the amendment to the Articles of Confederation which required the whole number of free white inhabitants and three- fifths of all others to be substituted for the value of lands and their improvements as the rule of apportioning taxes, and were eager to provide Congress with such information as was needed to fix the valuation of lands and their improvements in the sev- eral States required by the existing rule of apportionment under the Articles of Confederation. At the same session they further provided that until one or the other mode of assessing taxes be ascertained, that any requisition made upon any basis by Con : gress on the States should be faithfully complied with. The Assembly went yet farther, and passed a resolution, said to have been drawn by Henry himself, providing that when " a fair and final settlement of the accounts subsisting between the United States and individual States " shall be made, the balance due by any State " ought to be enforced, if necessary, by such distress
60 Henry to R. H. Lee, December 18, 1777. Grigsby's Discourse on the Virginia Convention of 1776, 142, note.
61 To show how parties fluctuated on the subject of the payment of British debts, I refer to a note in Mr. Rives' History of the Life and Times of Madison, II. 538, which furnishes a remarkable instance in point, and presents with graphic spirit the effect of Henry's eloquence in a deliberative body.
L
1
55
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
on the property of the defaulting States, or of their citizens, as, by the United States, in Congress assembled, may be deemed adequate and most eligible." They also resolved, at the same session, to invest Congress, for the term of fifteen years, with authority to prohibit the vessels of any nation, with which no commercial treaty existed, from trading in any part of the United States ; and to prevent foreigners, unless belonging to a nation with which the States had formed a commercial treaty, from im- porting into the United States any merchandise not the produce or manufacture of the country of which they are citizens or sub- jects ; thus sanctioning a policy which would have materially impaired the prosperity of the Commonwealth.62 When Con- gress determined to apply to the States for authority to levy, for the term of twenty- five years, certain specific rates of duty on certain articles, and a duty of five per cent. on all others-an application which was made as early as April, 1783, when the finances of Virginia were in great confusion, and her main de- pendence was upon customs-she, with that wise jealousy of Federal action, bearing directly upon the people instead of the State, declined for a time to accede to it, but ultimately was dis- posed to acquiesce in the measure.63 But there was one thing the Assembly persistently refused to grant-the entire surrender of the right to regulate commerce. To regulate the trade of a country was, in their opinion, to regulate its entire industry, and control all its capital and labor, and that was a province, they honestly believed, not only without the pale of a Federal alli- ance, but incompatible with it. They had accordingly resisted heretofore, with all their might, every effort to extort such a con- cession from them ; and at the October session of 1785, when a proposition was offered to make that cession for a term of twenty- five years, and upheld by Madison and other able men, the ma- jority of the House of Delegates, impelled by their devotion to the Union, went so far as to yield that invaluable boon for the ·term of thirteen years; but when a motion was made to continue the grant beyond that limit, on certain conditions, it was rejected
62 For these acts, consult the Journals of the House of Delegates, May session of 1784, pages 11-12 ; and Rives' Life and Times of Madi- son, I, 563-4-5. Tucker's History of the United States, I, 335.
63 Hening's Statutes at Large, XI, 350.
นาแก้ว
56
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
by a decisive vote, and on the following day, believing that they had gone too far in conceding the right for thirteen years, recon sidered their vote and laid the bill upon the table, to be called up no more.64 Of that majority, Henry, when he happened to have a seat in the Assembly, was always the leader, and for near a twelvemonth later than the date of the passage of the resolu- tion convoking the meeting at Annapolis, was regarded as the Federal champion.65 But we have said enough to show that the majority in our councils, who were opposed to the adoption of the new Federal Constitution, had been the warm and consistent friends of a Federal alliance.
A recent act of that majority had roused the fears of the friends of the new institution. The general Federal Convention adjourned on the seventh of September, 1787, but before ad- journing had adopted a resolution expressing "the opinion that the new Constitution should be submitted to the Convention of Delegates, chosen in each State by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratifica- tion." The following month the General Assembly of Virginia held a session, and on the twenty-fifth of October passed a series of resolutions setting forth that the Constitution "ought to be submitted to a Convention of the people for their full and free investigation and discussion"; that "every citizen being a free- holder should be eligible to a seat in the Convention"; that ".it be recommended to each county to elect two delegates, and to each city, town, or corporation, entitled, or who may be entitled, by law to representation in the legislature, to elect one delegate to the said Convention"; that " the qualifications of the electors be the same with those now established by law"; that "the elec-
Journal House of Delegates, October session of 1785, pages 66, 67.
65 Madison, writing to Washington, December 7, 1786, says: "Mr. Henry, who has been hitherto the champion of the Federal party, has become a cold advocate, and, in the event of an actual sacrifice of the Mississippi by Congress, will unquestionably go over to the other side." Rives' Life and Times of Madison, II, 142. When we remember that the Mississippi was the western boundary of Virginia, it would be strange indeed that Mr. Henry could approve the conduct of Congress in closing that river for thirty years, and in clothing the body with new - powers to carry such a scheme into effect. The cession of that river to Spain by the Northern States has its prototype only in the partition of Poland.
7
57
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
tion of delegates be held at the usual place for holding elections of members of the General Assembly, and be conducted by the usual officers "; that " the election shall be held in the month of March next on the first day of the court to be held for each county, city, or corporation respectively, and that the persons so chosen shall assemble at the State House in Richmond on the fourth Monday of May next," which was afterwards changed for the first Monday in June. These resolutions should seem to have been specific enough for the purpose in view. But it was found out that they omitted an appropriation to defray the ex- penses of the proposed Convention ; and a bill was brought in for that object, and received the unanimous consent of both Houses. But this bill contained, likewise, a provision to defray the expenses of delegates to another general Federal Conven- tion, should such a body be convened. If this provision meant anything, it meant that a new General Convention was possible ; and, as the Assembly rarely looked to possibilities in its legis- lation, that it was probable. While the lovers of union saw in this provision a determination to secure a Federal alliance on the best terms and at every hazard, those who favored the new scheme placed upon it a different interpretation.66
66 Journal House of Delegates, October session of 1787, p. 77, and the Act in full in Hening's Statutes at Large, XII, 462. Bushrod Washington, then under thirty years of age, wrote to his uncle at the beginning of this session that he had met with in all his inquiries not one member opposed to the Federal Constitution except Mr. Henry, and that other members had heard of none either. When the provision for a new Convention mentioned in the bill was approved by the House of Delegates, his eyes were probably opened, for on the 7th of December, while the Assembly was still in session, he writes to his uncle as follows : " I am sorry to inform you that the Constitution has lost so considerably that it is doubted whether it has any longer a majority in its favor. From a vote that took place the other day, this would appear certain, though I cannot think it so decisive as its enemies consider it." Bushrod Wash- ington to George Washington, Dec. 7, 1787, copied from the Madison Files by Mr. Rives, II, 537. It thus appears that the Constitution, which had not an enemy at the opening of the session, had before its close a good many, and that the scales were nearly turned against it. It is probable that a very considerable number of the delegates had not seen the Constitution at the beginning of the session. Only four days had elapsed since any body had seen it; and when we know that intelligence at that time took sixty days to travel a distance which may
راسـ
58
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
be reached in six hours at the present day ; that some of the members had to travel from three to six hundred miles on horseback to reach Richmond ; that there were no mail facilities, and no newspapers save one or two small sheets in Richmond and Norfolk, which, from the un- certainty of delivery, were rarely taken in the county, the probability is that if the members had seen the Constitution, they had not read it deliberately. But when they did read it, we know that the result was a provision to defray the expenses of a Convention to revise, etc. This matter would hardly require the attention we have given it, if infer- ences in favor of the early popularity of the Constitution had not been drawn from the state of things at the meeting of the Assembly. For the letter of Bushrod Washington, written at the opening of the ses- sion, see Rives' Madison, II, 535.
CHAPTER II.
At ten o'clock on Monday, the second day of June, 1788, the members began to assemble in the hall of the Old Capitol. It was plain that different emotions were felt by the friends and by the opponents of the Constitution. The friends of that instru- ment congratulated each other on the omens which they drew from the year in which their meeting was to take place. The year '88, they said, had ever been favorable to the liberties of the Anglo-Saxon race. It was in 1588, two hundred years before, when the invincible Spanish Armada, destined to subvert the liberties of Protestant England, then ruled by that virgin queen, the glory of her sex and name and race, who was the patron of Raleigh and the patron of American colonization, and from whom Virginia derived her name, was assailed by the winds of Heaven, and scattered over the face of the deep.67 It was the recurrence of the year, the month, and almost the day, when, a century before, the cause of civil liberty and Protestant Chris- tianity won a signal victory in the acquittal of the seven bishops whose destruction had been decreed by a false and cruel king ; and when the celebrated letter inviting the Prince of Orange to make a descent on England, a letter which has been recently pronounced to be as significant a landmark in British history as Magna Charter itself, had been despatched to the Hague. Of all the kings who ever sate on the English throne, William Henry, Prince of Orange was most beloved by our fathers. Their attachment was shown in every form in which public gratitude seeks to exhibit its manifestations. The House of Burgesses called a county after the king, and called a county after the king
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.