CHAPTER TWO

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THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

“The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other.”  So ran Article III of the Confederation.  Yet if this friendship had been sufficient to hold an infant nation together during a war – and even to win this war – in peacetime it no longer seemed that friendship was a good enough reason.  The Confederation, resting entirely on the good faith of its members, had no power to collect taxes, to defend the country, or pay the public debt, not to mention the development of any effective trade and commerce.  On the very day, in fact, when a messenger brought news of the victory at Yorktown, there was not enough hard cash in the treasury to pay the man’s expenses; each member of the Congress contributed a dollar from his own pocket.

Congress, in desperate financial need, repeatedly sent out requisitions, but usually there was little or no response, with New York and New Jersey among the worst offenders.  The states which did pay were bitter against the states which did not, and they said so; a Virginian wrote in 1787 that “New Hampshire has not paid a shilling since peace and does not ever mean to pay one to all eternity.”

Some of the more perceptive Americans had recognized from the beginning that the Articles of Confederation were entirely inadequate and needed amending.  Successive presidents of Congress sent letters to the state legislatures, urging them not only to pay their requisitions, but to vote additional powers to Congress.  State executives asked their local legislators to recommend that Congressional powers be strengthened.  Yet nothing happened, every effort fell through.

The Articles had been in operation less than a month when James Madison of Virginia proposed that they be amended in order to give the United States government “full authority to employ force by sea as well as by land to compel any delinquent state to fulfill its federal obligations.”  Shortly after the peace with England, in June, 1783, George Washington had written in his famous Circular to the States, “ . . . That it is indispensable to the happiness of the individual states that there should be lodged somewhere a Supreme Power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederated Republic, without which the Union cannot be long of duration.”  Only a year later he wrote: “I predict the worst consequences for a half starved limping government, always moving on crutches, and tottering at every step.”

Alexander Hamilton, a Confederation critic from the start, wrote a series of articles in the newspapers.  Nothing could be more detrimental to domestic interests and prestige abroad, he concluded, than “a number of petty states, with the appearance only of Union, jarring, jealous, and perverse, without any determined direction . . .” A strong central government was the only solution.  George Washington could not agree more.  He well remembered the many emergency requests for funds and supplies he had to send to Congress during the fighting; his letters back then were often angry and indignant.  His troops lacked shoes, clothing, barracks, medicines, meat, even gunpowder.  “Our sick naked,” he wrote, “our well naked, our unfortunate men in captivity naked.”  Was Congress not moved in the face of the army’s plight?  Congress, powerless, unsupported by the state assemblies, could do little more than reply stubbornly: “Last war, soldiers supplied their own clothing.”  And when General Washington tried to persuade some New Jersey troops to swear allegiance to the United States, they refused.  “New Jersey is our country!” they said; and in Congress a New Jersey member denounced the General’s action as improper.

Alexander Hamilton during the war had acted as General Washington’s aide-de-camp.  It was an extraordinary friendship between the young lawyer, foreign-born, impatient, quick, and his commander in chief, infinitely steady, with a slow prescience of his own.  Concerning Congress and the states, the two saw eye to eye.  Moreover, Hamilton worked on Washington, urging him to a strong stand, frequently drafting the General’s public statements.  From headquarters at Liberty Pole – now Englewood – New Jersey, in September 1780, Hamilton wrote a famous letter to a friend – his first clear commentary on the need for a constitutional convention.  Covering 17 printed pages, the letter is an amazing document from anybody’s pen, let alone from a man in his early 20s, born outside the country.  It was impossible, wrote Hamilton, to govern through thirteen sovereign states.  A want of power in Congress made the government fit neither for war nor for peace.  “There is only one remedy – to call a convention of all the States.”  And the sooner the better, he added.  Moreover, the people should be prepared “by sensible and popular writings.”

For the ensuing seven years, Hamilton never stopped pushing for a convention.  He wrote letters private and public, made speeches, and published a series of newspaper articles entitled The Constitutionalist.  The crying need, he urged, was for a government suited, not to “the narrow colonial sphere in which we have been accustomed to move . . .” but rather for “that enlarged kind suited to the government of an independent nation.”  Although not a member of the New York State legislature, in 1782 he persuaded them to pass a resolution urging a convention.  Elected to Congress that same year, he drafted a similar proposal, but with no success.