XLIV. CHAPTER West of the line above mentioned; reserving, however, a right of retraction, unless the same guarantee were given to New York as to any other state making cessions. The same day, the delegates from Maryland, authorized to do so by an act of Assembly passed immediately after the Virginia cession, gave their signatures to the Articles of Confederation, which, being thus ratified by all the states, became henceforth the law of the Union. The question of the western lands remained, however, still unsettled, none of the proposed cessions having yet been accepted by Congress. During the long period while the Articles of Confederation had remained under debate, Congress, without any express authority, and relying on the tacit assent of the states, had continued to exercise the same extensive powers so promptly and so resolutely assumed at the commencement of the war. So long, indeed, as the unimpaired credit of the Continental paper gave free command of money, Congress had occupied a position of great power and dignity, supporting the Continental army out of its own resources, and granting aid, from time to time, to the suppliant states. The reserve in which all its proceedings were wrapped up added also a weight to its authority. Congress sat with closed doors; secrecy was enjoined; no reports of debates were allowed. The official journal was published, indeed, from month to month, but that formal record threw little light on the parties and factions, the personal motives, and local prejudices and interests by which every such assembly is always more or less agitated, and which never fail greatly to lower the character and dignity of every public body in the eyes of those best acquainted with the secret springs of its action. This reserve, which veiled from cotemporary eyes the weaknesses of Congress, has led, also, to exaggerated historical XLIV sstimates of the disinterestedness and public spirit of those CHAPTER times; estimates which detract not a little from the real magnitude of the American Revolution, by giving the idea of a spirit of union and self-sacrifice that did not exist, and which cut off one chief source of intelligent admiration of the actors in it by diminishing the apparent difficulties they had to overcome. Superhuman heroism being admitted, the accomplishment of any object becomes easy enough; the really difficult, the truly admirable thing, is to accomplish great objects by merely human means. The Congress of the Confederation had very little resemblance to our present Congress under the federal Constitution. It was seldom, after the first three or four years, that all the states were simultaneously represented. The number of members present did not often amount to thirty. There was a vast deal of business to be done, much of it of an executive character; in the absence of reporters and spectators, there was little stimulus to set speech-making, and the debates most generally assumed a conversational tone. The members were paid by the states they represented; but, during the occupation of Georgia and South Carolina by the British, the delegates from those states received an allowance from the federal treasury. A house was provided at the public charge for the president of Congress, and the expenses of his household were paid in the same way. Though without power or patronage, he was understood to be the personal representative of the sovereignty of the Union, and the ceremonial of his household was regulated on that idea. Filled successively by Randolph, Hancock, Laurens, and Huntington, that office next devolved on Thomas 1781. M'Kean, who sat in Congress as a delegate from Dela- July 10 ware, but who held also, at the same time, the office of III.-C c XLIV. CHAPTER chief justice of Pennsylvania. M'Kean's duties in that capacity soon obliged him to resign; and, at the organ1781. ization of Congress under the newly-ratified Articles of Nov. 5. Confederation, John Hanson, of Maryland, was elected president. Both in France and America a great deal had been expected, though without the least reason for it, from the formal ratification and adoption of the Articles of Union. What could they add to the influence of Congress or the strength of the Confederacy? Destitute of money, indispensable alike as the sinews of war and the support of civil authority, and, notwithstanding its recent repudiation of the old tenor, still overwhelmed with debts of which it could not pay even the interest, Congress had lost forever the mainspring of its power. Of the fifteen millions called for in specifics and specie since the abandonment of paper issues, only a very small amount had been paid. The total disbursements from the federal treasury for the year 1781, even including the sums raised by the sale of bills on France, amounted to less than two millions of dollars-plain proof of the state of exhaustion to which the Confederacy had been reduced. Instead of increasing the authority of Congress, the Articles of Confederation tended rather to limit it. Sessions for the future were to be annual, to commence in November; the delegates to be appointed for a year, but liable at any time to be recalled, and incapacitated to serve more than three years in six, or to hold any federal office of emolument. On all important points, the assent of nine states was required. What added to the embarrassment, and proved a serious impediment to the dispatch of business, no state was to be considered as vot ing unless represented by at least two delegates. In relation to peace, war, and foreign intercourse, Con XLIV. gress possessed, under the Articles of Confederation, most CHAPTES of the powers now exercised by the federal government, but without any means of raising a revenue independently of state action except by paper issues and loans. But who would trust a government without powers of taxation, the payment of whose debts was dependent on the voluntary action of the several states? Even independently of this objection, the resources of loans and paper money were already quite or almost exhausted. Congress might make requisitions on the states; but, as it had no means to enforce them, these calls upon communities already overwhelmed with debts and expenses of their own, the oftener they were made the less they were heeded. The only substantial addition made by the Articles of Confederation to the powers of Congress, consisted in the authority to pass ordinances on the subject matters within its control. The inefficiency of the central government had already been the subject of complaint in an able paper from the Legislature of New York; and no sooner were the Articles of Confederation ratified, than a proposition was brought forward in Congress to amend them by authorizing that body to employ the military force of the Union to compel the payment of requisitions. This dangerous and desperate proposition received the support of Madison and others, representatives of states suffering under invasion; but, apart from all other objections to it, how could it avail when all the states were alike delinquent? Taught by experience the necessity of some responsible head, Congress had gradually modified the system originally adopted of parceling out the executive administration among committees of members. Boards of war and finance had been composed, as we have seen, in part XLIV. CHAPTER of permanent commissioners not belonging to Congress, and in the same spirit, a resolution had recently passed for placing each of the four great departments under a single head, a change alike demanded by considerations of economy, responsibility, and dispatch. The appoint ment of Morris as minister of finance has been mentioned already. The marine department had been offered to McDougall, who had been a seaman in his youth; but, as he was unwilling to resign his commission in the 1781 army, the management of naval matters was presently transferred to the superintendent of finance. Sept. The navy, indeed, was now reduced to a small matter. Of the thirteen frigates ordered to be built by Congress, two had been destroyed in the Hudson and three in the Delaware, without getting to sea. The remaining eight, together with most of the purchased vessels, had fallen into the hands of the enemy, some at Charleston, some at Penobscot, and others on the high seas. America, ship of the line, the only one ever finished of 1782. those authorized by Congress, was presented to the King of France, to supply the place of a similar French ship lost by an unlucky accident in Boston harbor. The The duty of hearing appeals in prize cases from the state courts, performed for several years by a standing 1780. committee of Congress, had been finally transferred to May. an admiralty court of appeals, consisting of three judges. This authority was not exercised without some sharp conflicts with the state judicatories. In the famous case of Olmstead, the obstinate resistance of the state authorities of Pennsylvania for the time completely nullified the decree of the Federal Court of Appeals, which was not carried into effect till near thirty years after. 1781. After a good deal of electioneering delay, the depart. ment of foreign affairs was intrusted to Robert R. Liv. August. |