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IV.

lor and the leading judges of the state; men chiefly CHAP. of English, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and Huguenot descent; a thorough representation of the best ele. 1788. ments and culture of South Carolina.

13.

21.

The convention organized itself on the thirteenth of May May,' with Thomas Pinckney, then Governor of South Carolina, as president. The ablest man in the opposition was Edanus Burke; but the leader in support of the Virginia malcontents was Sumter. A week's quiet consideration of the constitution by paragraphs showed the disposition of the convention, when on the twenty-first Sumter, as a last effort of those who wished to act with Virginia, made a motion for an adjournment for five months, to give time for the further consideration of the federal convention. A few gave way to the hope of conciliating by moderation; but after debate the motion received only eighty-nine votes against one hundred and thirty-five.' Three or four amendments were recommended; and then, at five o'clock in the evening of the twentythird, the constitution was ratified by one hundred and forty-nine votes against seventy-three-more than two to one. As the count was declared, the dense crowd in attendance, carried away by a wild transport of joy, shook the air with their cheers.

When order was restored, the aged Christopher Gadsden said: "I can have but little expectation of seeing the happy effects that will result to my country from the wise decisions of this day, but I shall say with good old Simeon: Lord, now lettest thou

1 Elliot, iv. 318.
2 Elliot, iv. 338.

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Elliot, iv. 338.
Elliot, iv. 338-340.

23.

CHAP. thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation of my country."'

IV.

1788.

May

23.

The delegates of South Carolina to the federal convention received a vote of thanks. Those in the opposition promised as good citizens to accept the result. In 1765 South Carolina was one of the nine states to meet in convention for resistance to the stamp act; and now she was the eighth state of the nine required for the adoption of the constitution.

When the astonishing tidings reached New Hampshire, her people grew restless to be the state yet needed to assure the new bond of union; but for that palm she must run a race with Virginia.

1 Penn. Packet, 14 June, 1788.

CHAPTER V.

THE CONSTITUTION IN VIRGINIA AND IN NEW HAMP

SHIRE.

V.

May.

FROM Virginia proceeded the southern opposition CHAP. to the consolidation of the union. A strife in congress, in which the North was too much in the wrong to succeed, united the five southernmost states together in a struggle which endangered the constitution. In May, 1785, Diego Gardoqui arrived, charged 1785. with the affairs of Spain, and seemingly empowered to fix the respective limits and adjust other points' between two countries which bordered on each other from the Atlantic to the headspring of the Mississippi. Negotiations began: but Jay was required by July congress to submit to them every proposition made or received, to sign no treaty without their previous approval, to maintain the territorial bounds of the United States as set forth in the treaty of peace with England, and to assert the right of the free naviga tion of the Mississippi from its source to the ocean.' Jay held the friendship of Spain most desirable as a

'Dip. Cor., vi. 81-97. Secret * Secret Journals, iii. 586. Journals, iii. 569, 570.

20.

July

20.

CHAP. neighbor; as a force that could protect the United V. States from the piracies of the Barbary powers and 1785. conciliate the good-will of Portugal and Italy; as a restraint on the influence of France and of Great Britain; and as the ruler of dominions of which the trade offered tempting advantages. He therefore proposed that the United States, as the price of a treaty of reciprocity in commerce, should forego the navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five or thirty years.

1786.

Aug.

3.

28.

29.

On the third of August, Jay appeared before congress and read an elaborate paper, in which he endeavored to prove that the experiment was worth trying.' The proposal sacrificed a vitally important right of one part of the union to a commercial interest of another; yet the instruction which made the right to the navigation of the Mississippi an ultimatum in any treaty with Spain was, after three weeks reflection, repealed by a vote of seven northern states against Maryland and all south of it.

The members of the southern states were profoundly alarmed. On the report of the committee to the house, Charles Pinckney, supported by Carring ton, sought to transfer the negotiation to Madrid; but in vain. The delegates of Virginia, Grayson at their head, strove to separate the commercial questions from those on boundaries and navigation. "The surrender or proposed forbearance of the navigation of the Mississippi," they said, "is inadmissible upon the principle of the right, and upon the highest principles of national expedience. In the present state of the powers of congress, every wise 1 Dip. Cor., vi. 177.

1

V.

Aug.

statesman should pursue a system of conduct to gain CHAP. the confidence of the several states in the federal council, and thereby an extension of its powers. This 1786. act is a dismemberment of the government. Can the United States then dismember the government by a treaty of commerce?" But the North persisted.'

29.

3.

10.

Monroe still loyally retained his desire that the Sept. regulation of commerce should be in the hands of the United States, and his opinion that without that power the union would infallibly tumble to pieces; but now he looked about him for means to strengthen the position of his own section of the country; and to Madison he wrote: "I earnestly wish the admission of a few additional states into the confederacy in the southern scale."" "There is danger," reported Otto to Vergennes, "that the discussion may become the germ of a separation of the southern states." Murmurs arose that plans were forming in New York for dismembering the confederacy and throwing New York and New England into one gov ernment, with the addition, if possible, of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. "Even should the measure triumph under the whole thirteen states," wrote Madison, "it is not expedient because it is not just." The next legislature of Virginia unanimously resolved "that nature had given the Mississippi to the United States, that the sacrifice of it would violate justice, contravene the end of the federal government, and destroy confidence in the federal councils necessary to a proper enlargement of their authority."

Otto to Vergennes, 10 Sept.,

1 Secret Journal, iv. 87-110. Monroe to Madison, 3 Sept., 1786.

1786.

Madison, i. 250.

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