The business depression which very naturally followed the short revival of trade was so serious in its financial consequences that it has even been referred to as the “Panic of 1785.” The United States afforded a good market for imported articles in 1788 and 1784, all the better because of the supply of gold and silver which had been sent into the country by England and France to maintain their armies and fleets and which had remained in the United States. But this influx of imported goods was one of the chief factors in causing the depression of 1785, as it brought ruin to many of those domestic industries which had sprung up in the days of non-intercourse or which had been stimulated by the artificial protection of the war.

To make matters worse, the currency was in a confused condition. “In 1784 the entire coin of the land, except coppers, was the product of foreign mints. English guineas, crowns, shillings and pence were still paid over the counters of shops and taverns, and with them were mingled many French and Spanish and some German coins.… The value of the gold pieces expressed in dollars was pretty much the same the country over. But the dollar and the silver pieces regarded as fractions of a dollar had no less than five different values.” ¹ The importation of foreign goods was fast draining the hard money out of the country. In an effort to relieve the situation but with the result of making it much worse, several of the States began to issue paper money; and this was in addition to the enormous quantities of paper which had been printed during the Revolution and which was now worth but a small fraction of its face value.

The expanding currency and consequent depreciation in the value of money had immediately resulted in a corresponding rise of prices, which for a while the States attempted to control. But in 1778 Congress threw up its hands in despair and voted that “all limitations of prices of gold and silver be taken off,” although the States for some time longer continued to endeavor to regulate prices by legislation. ¹ The fluctuating value of the currency increased the opportunities for speculation which war conditions invariably offer, and “immense fortunes were suddenly accumulated.” A new financial group rose into prominence composed largely of those who were not accustomed to the use of money and who were consequently inclined to spend it recklessly and extravagantly.

Many contemporaries comment upon these things, of whom Brissot de Warville may be taken as an example, although he did not visit the United States until 1788:

The inhabitants … prefer the splendor of wealth and the show of enjoyment to the simplicity of manners and the pure pleasures which result from it. If there is a town on the American continent where the English luxury displays its follies, it is New York. You will find here the English fashions: in the dress of the women you will see the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair; equipages are rare, but they are elegant; the men have more simplicity in their dress; they disdain gewgaws, but they take their revenge in the luxury of the table; luxury forms already a class of men very dangerous to society; I mean bachelors; the expense of women causes matrimony to be dreaded by men. Tea forms, as in England, the basis of parties of pleasure; many things are dearer here than in France; a hairdresser asks twenty shilling a month; washing costs four shillings a dozen. ¹

An American writer of a later date, looking back upon his earlier years, was impressed by this same extravagance, and his testimony may well be used to strengthen the impression which it is the purpose of the present narrative to convey:

The French and British armies circulated immense sums of money in gold and silver coin, which had the effect of driving out of circulation the wretched paper currency which had till then prevailed. Immense quantities of British and French goods were soon imported: our people imbibed a taste for foreign fashions and luxury; and in the course of two or three years, from the close of the war, such an entire change had taken place in the habits and manners of our inhabitants, that it almost appeared as if we had suddenly become a different nation. The staid and sober habits of our ancestors, with their plain home-manufactured clothing, were suddenly laid aside, and European goods of fine quality adopted in their stead. Fine ruffles, powdered heads, silks and scarlets, decorated the men; while the most costly silks, satins, chintzes, calicoes, muslins, etc., etc., decorated our females. Nor was their diet less expensive; for superb plate, foreign spirits, wines, etc., etc., sparkled on the sideboards of many farmers. The natural result of this change of the habits and customs of the people—this aping of European manners and morals, was to suddenly drain our country of its circulating specie; and as a necessary consequence, the people ran in debt, times became difficult, and money hard to raise. ¹

The situation was serious, and yet it was not as dangerous or even as critical as it has generally been represented, because the fundamental bases of American prosperity were untouched. The way by which Americans could meet the emergency and recover from the hard times was fairly evident—first to economize, and then to find new outlets for their industrial energies. But the process of adjustment was slow and painful. There were not a few persons in the United States who were even disposed to regret that Americans were not safely under British protection and prospering with Great Britain, instead of suffering in political isolation.

CHAPTER III

THE CONFEDERATION

When peace came in 1783 there were in the United States approximately three million people, who were spread over the whole Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia and back into the interior as far as the Alleghany Mountains; and a relatively small number of settlers had crossed the mountain barrier. About twenty per cent of the population, or some six hundred thousand, were negro slaves. There was also a large alien element of foreign birth or descent, poor when they arrived in America, and, although they had been able to raise themselves to a position of comparative comfort, life among them was still crude and rough. Many of the people were poorly educated and lacking in cultivation and refinement and in a knowledge of the usages of good society. Not only were they looked down upon by other nations of the world; there was within the United States itself a relatively small upper class inclined to regard the mass of the people as of an inferior order.

Thus, while forces were at work favorable to democracy, the gentry remained in control of affairs after the Revolution, although their numbers were reduced by the emigration of the Loyalists and their power was lessened. The explanation of this aristocratic control may be found in the fact that the generation of the Revolution had been accustomed to monarchy and to an upper class and that the people were wont to take their ideas and to accept suggestions from their betters without question or murmur. This deferential attitude is attested by the indifference of citizens to the right of voting. In our own day, before the great extension of woman suffrage, the number of persons voting approximated twenty per cent of the population, but after the Revolution less than five per cent of the white population voted. There were many limitations upon the exercise of the suffrage, but the small number of voters was only partially due to these restrictions, for in later years, without any radical change in suffrage qualifications, the proportion of citizens who voted steadily increased.

The fact is that many of the people did not care to vote. Why should they, when they were only registering the will or the wishes of their superiors? But among the relatively small number who constituted the governing class there was a high standard of intelligence. Popular magazines were unheard of and newspapers were infrequent, so that men depended largely upon correspondence and personal intercourse for the interchange of ideas. There was time, however, for careful reading of the few available books; there was time for thought, for writing, for discussion, and for social intercourse. It hardly seems too much to say, therefore, that there was seldom, if ever, a people—certainly never a people scattered over so wide a territory—who knew so much about government as did this controlling element of the people of the United States.

The practical character, as well as the political genius, of the Americans was never shown to better advantage than at the outbreak of the Revolution, when the quarrel with the mother country was manifesting itself in the conflict between the Governors, and other appointed agents of the Crown, and the popularly elected houses of the colonial legislatures. When the Crown resorted to dissolving the legislatures, the revolting colonists kept up and observed the forms of government. When the legislature was prevented from meeting, the members would come together and call themselves a congress or a convention, and, instead of adopting laws or orders, would issue what were really nothing more than recommendations, but which they expected would be obeyed by their supporters. To enforce these recommendations extra-legal committees, generally backed by public opinion and sometimes concretely supported by an organized “mob,” would meet in towns and counties and would be often effectively centralized where the opponents of the British policy were in control.

In several of the colonies the want of orderly government became so serious that, in 1775, the Continental Congress advised them to form temporary governments until the trouble with Great Britain had been settled. When independence was declared Congress recommended to all the States that they should adopt governments of their own. In accordance with that recommendation, in the course of a very few years each State established an independent government and adopted a written constitution. It was a time when men believed in the social contract or the “compact theory of the state,” that states originated through agreement, as the case might be, between king and nobles, between king and people, or among the people themselves. In support of this doctrine no less an authority than the Bible was often quoted, such a passage for example as II Samuel v, 3: “So all the elders of Israel came to the King to Hebron; and King David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the Lord; and they anointed David King over Israel.” As a philosophical speculation to explain why people were governed or consented to be governed, this theory went back at least to the Greeks, and doubtless much earlier; and, though of some significance in medieval thought, it became of greater importance in British political philosophy, especially through the works of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. A very practical application of the compact theory was made in the English Revolution of 1688, when in order to avoid the embarrassment of deposing the king, the convention of the Parliament adopted the resolution: “That King James the Second, having endeavored to subvert the Constitution of the Kingdom, by breaking the original Contract between King and People, and having, by the advice of Jesuits, and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental Laws, and withdrawn himself out of this Kingdom, has abdicated the Government, and that the throne is hereby vacant.” These theories were developed by Jean Jacques Rousseau in his Contrat Social—a book so attractively written that it eclipsed all other works upon the subject and resulted in his being regarded as the author of the doctrine—and through him they spread all over Europe.

Conditions in America did more than lend color to pale speculation; they seemed to take this hypothesis out of the realm of theory and to give it practical application. What happened when men went into the wilderness to live? The Pilgrim Fathers on board the Mayflower entered into an agreement which was signed by the heads of families who took part in the enterprise: “We, whose names are underwritten … Do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick.”

Other colonies, especially in New England, with this example before them of a social contract entered into similar compacts or “plantation covenants,” as they were called. But the colonists were also accustomed to having written charters granted which continued for a time at least to mark the extent of governmental powers. Through this intermingling of theory and practice it was the most natural thing in the world, when Americans came to form their new State Governments, that they should provide written instruments framed by their own representatives, which not only bound them to be governed in this way but also placed limitations upon the governing bodies. As the first great series of written constitutions, these frames of government attracted wide attention. Congress printed a set for general distribution, and numerous editions were circulated both at home and abroad.

The constitutions were brief documents, varying from one thousand to twelve thousand words in length, which established the framework of the governmental machinery. Most of them, before proceeding to practical working details, enunciated a series of general principles upon the subject of government and political morality in what were called declarations or bills of rights. The character of these declarations may be gathered from the following excerpts:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, … the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services.

The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals; it is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen and each citizen with the whole people that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.

That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights, and ought not to be exercised.

That general warrants, … are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.

All penalties ought to be proportioned to the nature of the offence.

That sanguinary laws ought to be avoided, as far as is consistent with the safety of the State; and no law, to inflict cruel and unusual pains and penalties, ought to be made in any case, or at any time hereafter.

No magistrate or court of law shall demand excessive bail or sureties, impose excessive fines …

Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and reason; …

That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

It will be perceived at once that these are but variations of the English Declaration of Rights of 1689, which indeed was consciously followed as a model; and yet there is a world-wide difference between the English model and these American copies. The earlier document enunciated the rights of English subjects, the recent infringement of which made it desirable that they should be reasserted in convincing form. The American documents asserted rights which the colonists generally had enjoyed and which they declared to be “governing principles for all peoples in all future times.”

But the greater significance of these State Constitutions is to be found in their quality as working instruments of government. There was indeed little difference between the old colonial and the new State Governments. The inhabitants of each of the Thirteen States had been accustomed to a large measure of self-government, and when they took matters into their own hands they were not disposed to make any radical changes in the forms to which they had become accustomed. Accordingly the State Governments that were adopted simply continued a framework of government almost identical with that of colonial times. To be sure, the Governor and other appointed officials were now elected either by the people or the legislature, and so were ultimately responsible to the electors instead of to the Crown; and other changes were made which in the long run might prove of far-reaching and even of vital significance; and yet the machinery of government seemed the same as that to which the people were already accustomed. The average man was conscious of no difference at all in the working of the Government under the new order. In fact, in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the most democratic of all the colonies, where the people had been privileged to elect their own governors, as well as legislatures, no change whatever was necessary and the old charters were continued as State Constitutions down to 1818 and 1842, respectively.

To one who has been accustomed to believe that the separation from a monarchical government meant the establishment of democracy, a reading of these first State Constitutions is likely to cause a rude shock. A shrewd English observer, traveling a generation later in the United States, went to the root of the whole matter in remarking of the Americans that, “When their independence was achieved their mental condition was not instantly changed. Their deference for rank and for judicial and legislative authority continued nearly unimpaired.” ¹ They might declare that “all men are created equal,” and bills of rights might assert that government rested upon the consent of the governed; but these constitutions carefully provided that such consent should come from property owners, and, in many of the States, from religious believers and even followers of the Christian faith. “The man of small means might vote, but none save well-to-do Christians could legislate, and in many states none but a rich Christian could be a governor.” ² In South Carolina, for example, a freehold of £10,000 currency was required of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and members of the Council; £2,000 of the members of the Senate; and, while every elector was eligible to the House of Representatives, he had to acknowledge the being of a God and to believe in a future state of rewards and punishments, as well as to hold “a freehold at least of fifty acres of land, or a town lot.”

It was government by a property-owning class, but in comparison with other countries this class represented a fairly large and increasing proportion of the population. In America the opportunity of becoming a property-owner was open to every one, or, as that phrase would then have been understood, to most white men. This system of class control is illustrated by the fact that, with the exception of Massachusetts, the new State Constitutions were never submitted to the people for approval.

The democratic sympathizer of today is inclined to point to those first State Governments as a continuance of the old order. But to the conservative of that time it seemed as if radical and revolutionary changes were taking place. The bills of rights declared, “That no men, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services.” Property qualifications and other restrictions on office-holding and the exercise of the suffrage were lessened. Four States declared in their constitutions against the entailment of estates, and primogeniture was abolished in aristocratic Virginia. There was a fairly complete abolition of all vestiges of feudal tenure in the holding of land, so that it may be said that in this period full ownership of property was established. The further separation of church and state was also carried out.

Certainly leveling influences were at work, and the people as a whole had moved one step farther in the direction of equality and democracy, and it was well that the Revolution was not any more radical and revolutionary than it was. The change was gradual and therefore more lasting. One finds readily enough contemporary statements to the effect that, “Although there are no nobles in America, there is a class of men denominated ‘gentlemen,’ who, by reason of their wealth, their talents, their education, their families, or the offices they hold, aspire to a preëminence,” but, the same observer adds, this is something which “the people refuse to grant them.” Another contemporary contributes the observation that there was not so much respect paid to gentlemen of rank as there should be, and that the lower orders of people behave as if they were on a footing of equality with them.

Whether the State Constitutions are to be regarded as property-conserving, aristocratic instruments, or as progressive documents, depends upon the point of view. And so it is with the spirit of union or of nationality in the United States. One student emphasizes the fact of there being “thirteen independent republics differing … widely in climate, in soil, in occupation, in everything which makes up the social and economic life of the people”; while another sees “the United States a nation.” There is something to be said for both sides, and doubtless the truth lies between them, for there were forces making for disintegration as well as for unification. To the student of the present day, however, the latter seem to have been the stronger and more important, although the possibility was never absent that the thirteen States would go their separate ways.

There are few things so potent as a common danger to bring discordant elements into working harmony. Several times in the century and a half of their existence, when the colonies found themselves threatened by their enemies, they had united, or at least made an effort to unite, for mutual help. The New England Confederation of 1643 was organized primarily for protection against the Indians and incidentally against the Dutch and French. Whenever trouble threatened with any of the European powers or with the Indians—and that was frequently—a plan would be broached for getting the colonies to combine their efforts, sometimes for the immediate necessity and sometimes for a broader purpose. The best known of these plans was that presented to the Albany Congress of 1754, which had been called to make effective preparation for the inevitable struggle with the French and Indians. The beginning of the troubles which culminated in the final breach with Great Britain had quickly brought united action in the form of the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, in the Committees of Correspondence, and then in the Continental Congress.

It was not merely that the leaven of the Revolution was already working to bring about the freer interchange of ideas; instinct and experience led the colonies to united action. The very day that the Continental Congress appointed a committee to frame a declaration of independence, another committee was ordered to prepare articles of union. A month later, as soon as the Declaration of Independence had been adopted, this second committee, of which John Dickinson of Pennsylvania was chairman, presented to Congress a report in the form of Articles of Confederation. Although the outbreak of fighting made some sort of united action imperative, this plan of union was subjected to debate intermittently for over sixteen months and even after being adopted by Congress, toward the end of 1777, it was not ratified by the States until March, 1781, when the war was already drawing to a close. The exigencies of the hour forced Congress, without any authorization, to act as if it had been duly empowered and in general to proceed as if the Confederation had been formed.

Benjamin Franklin was an enthusiast for union. It was he who had submitted the plan of union to the Albany Congress in 1754, which with modifications was recommended by that congress for adoption. It provided for a Grand Council of representatives chosen by the legislature of each colony, the members to be proportioned to the contribution of that colony to the American military service. In matters concerning the colonies as a whole, especially in Indian affairs, the Grand Council was to be given extensive powers of legislation and taxation. The executive was to be a President or Governor-General, appointed and paid by the Crown, with the right of nominating all military officers, and with a veto upon all acts of the Grand Council. The project was far in advance of the times and ultimately failed of acceptance, but in 1775, with the beginning of the troubles with Great Britain, Franklin took his Albany plan and, after modifying it in accordance with the experience of twenty years, submitted it to the Continental Congress as a new plan of government under which the colonies might unite.

Franklin’s plan of 1775 seems to have attracted little attention in America, and possibly it was not generally known; but much was made of it abroad, where it soon became public, probably in the same way that other Franklin papers came out. It seems to have been his practice to make, with his own hand, several copies of such a document, which he would send to his friends with the statement that as the document in question was confidential they might not otherwise see a copy of it. Of course the inevitable happened, and such documents found their way into print to the apparent surprise and dismay of the author. Incidentally this practice caused confusion in later years, because each possessor of such a document would claim that he had the original. Whatever may have been the procedure in this particular case, it is fairly evident that Dickinson’s committee took Franklin’s plan of 1775 as the starting point of its work, and after revision submitted it to Congress as their report; for some of the most important features of the Articles of Confederation are to be found, sometimes word for word, in Franklin’s draft.

This explanation of the origin of the Articles of Confederation is helpful and perhaps essential in understanding the form of government established, because that government in its main features had been devised for an entirely different condition of affairs, when a strong, centralized government would not have been accepted even if it had been wanted. It provided for a “league of friendship,” with the primary purpose of considering preparation for action rather than of taking the initiative. Furthermore, the final stages of drafting the Articles of Confederation had occurred at the outbreak of the war, when the people of the various States were showing a disposition to follow readily suggestions that came from those whom they could trust and when they seemed to be willing to submit without compulsion to orders from the same source. These circumstances, quite as much as the inexperience of Congress and the jealousy of the States, account for the inefficient form of government which was devised; and inefficient the Confederation certainly was. The only organ of government was a Congress in which every State was entitled to one vote and was represented by a delegation whose members were appointed annually as the legislature of the State might direct, whose expenses were paid by the State, and who were subject to recall. In other words, it was a council of States whose representatives had little incentive to independence of action.

Extensive powers were granted to this Congress “of determining on peace and war, … of entering into treaties and alliances,” of maintaining an army and a navy, of establishing post offices, of coining money, and of making requisitions upon the States for their respective share of expenses “incurred for the common defence or general welfare.” But none of these powers could be exercised without the consent of nine States, which was equivalent to requiring a two-thirds vote, and even when such a vote had been obtained and a decision had been reached, there was nothing to compel the individual States to obey beyond the mere declaration in the Articles of Confederation that, “Every State shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled.”

No executive was provided for except that Congress was authorized “to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States under their direction.” In judicial matters, Congress was to serve as “the last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences” between States; and Congress might establish courts for the trial of piracy and felonies committed on the high seas and for determining appeals in cases of prize capture.

The plan of a government was there but it lacked any driving force. Congress might declare war but the States might decline to participate in it; Congress might enter into treaties but it could not make the States live up to them; Congress might borrow money but it could not be sure of repaying it; and Congress might decide disputes without being able to make the parties accept the decision. The pressure of necessity might keep the States together for a time, yet there is no disguising the fact that the Articles of Confederation formed nothing more than a gentlemen’s agreement.

CHAPTER IV

THE NORTHWEST ORDINANCE

The population of the United States was like a body of water that was being steadily enlarged by internal springs and external tributaries. It was augmented both from within and from without, from natural increase and from immigration. It had spread over the whole coast from Maine to Georgia and slowly back into the interior, at first along the lines of river communication and then gradually filling up the spaces between until the larger part of the available land east of the Alleghany Mountains was settled. There the stream was checked as if dammed by the mountain barrier, but the population was trickling through wherever it could find an opening, slowly wearing channels, until finally, when the obstacles were overcome, it broke through with a rush.

Twenty years before the Revolution the expanding population had reached the mountains and was ready to go beyond. The difficulty of crossing the mountains was not insuperable, but the French and Indian War, followed by Pontiac’s Conspiracy, made outlying frontier settlement dangerous if not impossible. The arbitrary restriction of western settlement by the Proclamation of 1763 did not stop the more adventurous but did hold back the mass of the population until near the time of the Revolution, when a few bands of settlers moved into Kentucky and Tennessee and rendered important but inconspicuous service in the fighting. But so long as the title to that territory was in doubt no considerable body of people would move into it, and it was not until the Treaty of Peace in 1783 determined that the western country as far as the Mississippi River was to belong to the United States that the dammed-up population broke over the mountains in a veritable flood.

The western country and its people presented no easy problem to the United States: how to hold those people when the pull was strong to draw them from the Union; how to govern citizens so widely separated from the older communities; and, of most immediate importance, how to hold the land itself. It was, indeed, the question of the ownership of the land beyond the mountains which delayed the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Some of the States, by right of their colonial charter grants “from sea to sea,” were claiming large parts of the western region. Other States, whose boundaries were fixed, could put forward no such claims; and, as they were therefore limited in their area of expansion, they were fearful lest in the future they should be overbalanced by those States which might obtain extensive property in the West. It was maintained that the Proclamation of 1763 had changed this western territory into “Crown lands,” and as, by the Treaty of Peace, the title had passed to the United States, the non-claimant States had demanded in self-defense that the western land should belong to the country as a whole and not to the individual States. Rhode Island, Maryland, and Delaware were most seriously affected, and they were insistent upon this point. Rhode Island and at length Delaware gave in, so that by February, 1779, Maryland alone held out. In May of that year the instructions of Maryland to her delegates were read in Congress, positively forbidding them to ratify the plan of union unless they should receive definite assurances that the western country would become the common property of the United States. As the consent of all of the Thirteen States was necessary to the establishment of the Confederation, this refusal of Maryland brought matters to a crisis. The question was eagerly discussed, and early in 1780 the deadlock was broken by the action of New York in authorizing her representatives to cede her entire claim in western lands to the United States.

It matters little that the claim of New York was not as good as that of some of the other States, especially that of Virginia. The whole situation was changed. It was no longer necessary for Maryland to defend her position; but the claimant States were compelled to justify themselves before the country for not following New York’s example. Congress wisely refrained from any assertion of jurisdiction, and only urgently recommended that States having claims to western lands should cede them in order that the one obstacle to the final ratification of the Articles of Confederation might be removed.

Without much question Virginia’s claim was the strongest; but the pressure was too great even for her, and she finally yielded, ceding to the United States, upon certain conditions, all her lands northwest of the Ohio River. Then the Maryland delegates were empowered to ratify the Articles of Confederation. This was early in 1781, and in a very short time the other States had followed the example of New York and Virginia. Certain of the conditions imposed by Virginia were not acceptable to Congress, and three years later, upon specific request, that State withdrew the objectionable conditions and made the cession absolute.

The territory thus ceded, north and west of the Ohio River, constituted the public domain. Its boundaries were somewhat indefinite, but subsequent surveys confirmed the rough estimate that it contained from one to two hundred millions of acres. It was supposed to be worth, on the average, about a dollar an acre, which would make this property an asset sufficient to meet the debts of the war and to leave a balance for the running expenses of the Government. It thereby became one of the strong bonds holding the Union together.

“Land!” was the first cry of the storm-tossed mariners of Columbus. For three centuries the leading fact of American history has been that soon after 1600 a body of Europeans, mostly Englishmen, settled on the edge of the greatest piece of unoccupied agricultural land in the temperate zone, and proceeded to subdue it to the uses of man. For three centuries the chief task of American mankind has been to go up westward against the land and to possess it. Our wars, our independence, our state building, our political democracy, our plasticity with respect to immigration, our mobility of thought, our ardor of initiative, our mildness and our prosperity, all are but incidents or products of this prime historical fact. ¹

One can readily imagine that America would be considered as El Dorado, where one of the rarest commodities as well as one of the most precious possessions was found in almost unlimited quantities and could be had for the asking. It is no wonder that family estates were sought in America and that to the lower classes it seemed as if a heaven were opening on earth. Even though available land appeared to be almost unlimited in quantity and easy to acquire, it was a possession that was generally increasing in value. Of course wasteful methods of farming wore out some lands, especially in the South; but, taking it by and large throughout the country, with time and increasing density of population the value of the land was increasing. The acquisition of land was a matter of investment or at least of speculation. In fact, the purchase of land was one of the favorite get-rich-quick schemes of the time. George Washington was not the only man who invested largely in western lands. A list of those who did would read like a political or social directory of the time. Patrick Henry, James Wilson, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, Chancellor Kent, Henry Knox, and James Monroe were among them. ¹

It is therefore easy to understand why so much importance attached to the claims of the several States and to the cession of that western land by them to the United States. But something more was necessary. If the land was to attain anything like its real value, settlers must be induced to occupy it. Of course it was possible to let the people go out as they pleased and take up land, and to let the Government collect from them as might be possible at a fixed rate. But experience during colonial days had shown the weakness of such a method, and Congress was apparently determined to keep under its own control the region which it now possessed, to provide for orderly sale, and to permit settlement only so far as it might not endanger the national interests. The method of land sales and the question of government for the western country were recognized as different aspects of the same problem. The Virginia offer of cession forced the necessity of a decision, and no sooner was the Virginia offer framed in an acceptable form, in 1783, than two committees were appointed by Congress to report upon these two questions of land sales and of government.

Thomas Jefferson was made chairman of both these committees. He was then forty years old and one of the most remarkable men in the country. Born on the frontier—his father from the upper middle class, his mother “a Randolph”—he had been trained to an outdoor life; but he was also a prodigy in his studies and entered William and Mary College with advanced standing at the age of eighteen. Many stories are told of his precocity and ability, all of which tend to forecast the later man of catholic tastes, omnivorous interest, and extensive but superficial knowledge; he was a strange combination of natural aristocrat and theoretical democrat, of philosopher and practical politician. After having been a student in the law office of George Wythe, and being a friend of Patrick Henry, Jefferson early espoused the cause of the Revolution, and it was his hand that drafted the Declaration of Independence. He then resigned from Congress to assist in the organization of government in his own State. For two years and a half he served in the Virginia Assembly and brought about the repeal of the law of entailment, the abolition of primogeniture, the recognition of freedom of conscience, and the encouragement of education. He was Governor of Virginia for two years and then, having declined reëlection, returned to Congress in 1783. There, among his other accomplishments, as chairman of the committee, he reported the Treaty of Peace and, as chairman of another committee, devised and persuaded Congress to adopt a national system of coinage which in its essentials is still in use.

It is easy to criticize Jefferson and to pick flaws in the things that he said as well as in the things that he did, but practically every one admits that he was closely in touch with the course of events and understood the temper of his contemporaries. In this period of transition from the old order to the new, he seems to have expressed the genius of American institutions better than almost any other man of his generation. He possessed a quality that enabled him, in the Declaration of Independence, to give voice to the hopes and aspirations of a rising nationality and that enabled him in his own State to bring about so many reforms.

Just how much actual influence Thomas Jefferson had in the framing of the American land policy is not clear. Although the draft of the committee report in 1784 is in Jefferson’s handwriting, it is altogether probable that more credit is to be given to Thomas Hutchins, the Geographer of the United States, and to William Grayson of Virginia, especially for the final form which the measure took; for Jefferson retired from the chairmanship and had already gone to Europe when the Land Ordinance was adopted by Congress in 1785. This ordinance has been superseded by later enactments, to which references are usually made; but the original ordinance is one of the great pieces of American legislation, for it contained the fundamentals of the American land system which, with the modifications experience has introduced, has proved to be permanently workable and which has been envied and in several instances copied by other countries. Like almost all successful institutions of that sort, the Land Ordinance of 1785 was not an immediate creation but was a development out of former practices and customs and was in the nature of a compromise. Its essential features were the method of survey and the process for the sale of land. New England, with its town system, had in the course of its expansion been accustomed to proceed in an orderly method but on a relatively small scale. The South, on the other hand, had granted lands on a larger scale and had permitted individual selection in a haphazard manner. The plan which Congress adopted was that of the New England survey with the Southern method of extensive holdings. The system is repellent in its rectangular orderliness, but it made the process of recording titles easy and complete, and it was capable of indefinite expansion. These were matters of cardinal importance, for in the course of one hundred and forty years the United States was to have under its control nearly two thousand million acres of land.

The primary feature of the land policy was the orderly survey in advance of sale. In the next place the township was taken as the unit, and its size was fixed at six miles square. Provision was then made for the sale of townships alternately entire and by sections of one mile square, or 640 acres each. In every township a section was reserved for educational purposes; that is, the land was to be disposed of and the proceeds used for the development of public schools in that region. And, finally, the United States reserved four sections in the center of each township to be disposed of at a later time. It was expected that a great increase in the value of the land would result, and it was proposed that the Government should reap a part of the profits.

It is evident that the primary purpose of the public land policy as first developed was to acquire revenue for the Government; but it was also evident that there was a distinct purpose of encouraging settlement. The two were not incompatible, but the greater interest of the Government was in obtaining a return for the property.

The other committee of which Jefferson was chairman made its report of a plan for the government of the western territory upon the very day that the Virginia cession was finally accepted, March 1, 1784; and with some important modifications Jefferson’s ordinance, or the Ordinance of 1784 as it was commonly called, was ultimately adopted. In this case Jefferson rendered a service similar to that of framing the Declaration of Independence. His plan was somewhat theoretical and visionary, but largely practical, and it was constructive work of a high order, displaying not so much originality as sympathetic appreciation of what had already been done and an instinctive forecast of future development. Jefferson seemed to be able to gather up ideas, some conscious and some latent in men’s minds, and to express them in a form that was generally acceptable.

It is interesting to find in the Articles of Confederation (Article XI) that, “Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.” The real importance of this article lay in the suggestion of an enlargement of the Confederation. The Confederation was never intended to be a union of only thirteen States. Before the cession of their western claims it seemed to be inevitable that some of the States should be broken up into several units. At the very time that the formation of the Confederation was under discussion Vermont issued a declaration of independence from New York and New Hampshire, with the expectation of being admitted into the Union. It was impolitic to recognize the appeal at that time, but it seems to have been generally understood that sooner or later Vermont would come in as a full-fledged State.

It might have been a revolutionary suggestion by Maryland, when the cession of western lands was under discussion, that Congress should have sole power to fix the western boundaries of the States, but her further proposal was not even regarded as radical, that Congress should “lay out the land beyond the boundaries so ascertained into separate and independent states.” It seems to have been taken as a matter of course in the procedure of Congress and was accepted by the States. But the idea was one thing; its carrying out was quite another. Here was a great extent of western territory which would be valuable only as it could be sold to prospective settlers. One of the first things these settlers would demand was protection—protection against the Indians, possibly also against the British and the Spanish, and protection in their ordinary civil life. The former was a detail of military organization and was in due time provided by the establishment of military forts and garrisons; the latter was the problem which Jefferson’s committee was attempting to solve.

The Ordinance of 1784 disregarded the natural physical features of the western country and, by degrees of latitude and meridians of longitude, arbitrarily divided the public domain into rectangular districts, to the first of which the following names were applied: Sylvania, Michigania, Cherronesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia, Pelisipia. The amusement which this absurd and thoroughly Jeffersonian nomenclature is bound to cause ought not to detract from the really important features of the Ordinance. In each of the districts into which the country was divided the settlers might be authorized by Congress, for the purpose of establishing a temporary government, to adopt the constitution and laws of any one of the original States. When any such area should have twenty thousand free inhabitants it might receive authority from Congress to establish a permanent constitution and government and should be entitled to a representative in Congress with the right of debating but not of voting. And finally, when the inhabitants of any one of these districts should equal in number those of the least populous of the thirteen original States, their delegates should be admitted into Congress on an equal footing.

Jefferson’s ordinance, though adopted, was never put into operation. Various explanations have been offered for this failure to give it a fair trial. It has been said that Jefferson himself was to blame. In the original draft of his ordinance Jefferson had provided for the abolition of slavery in the new States after the year 1800, and when Congress refused to accept this clause Jefferson, in a manner quite characteristic, seemed to lose all interest in the plan. There were, however, other objections, for there were those who felt that it was somewhat indefinite to promise admission into the Confederation of certain sections of the country as soon as their population should equal in number that of the least populous of the original States. If the original States should increase in population to any extent, the new States might never be admitted. But on the other hand, if from any cause the population of one of the smaller States should suddenly decrease, might not the resulting influx of new States prove dangerous?

But the real reason why the ordinance remained a dead letter was that, while it fixed the limits within which local governments might act, it left the creation of those governments wholly to the future. At Vincennes, for example, the ordinance made no change in the political habits of the people. “The local government bowled along merrily under this system. There was the greatest abundance of government, for the more the United States neglected them the more authority their officials assumed.” ¹ Nor could the ordinance operate until settlers became numerous. It was partly, indeed, to hasten settlement that the Ordinance of 1785 for the survey and sale of the public lands was passed. ²