undertook to expose the absurdity of their demands, he was interrupted with loud clamors for "paper money," "an equal distribution of property," "the annihilation of debts," and "a release of taxes." The insurrection was suppressed without difficulty, but it was significant of the tendency towards anarchy.

But it was the conduct of the debtor class in Massachusetts which more than everything else awoke the country to a realization of its condition.

The burden of debt was particularly heavy Shays' rebellion. in that state. At a time when business was

almost at a standstill, it is estimated that there was an aggregate equivalent of a tax of more than $50 on every man, woman and child in the state. Enraged at the lawyers and judges who were fattening on their distress, the debtor class, in 1786, surrounded the court house in seven different counties, and in a number of instances prevented the courts from sitting. In December of that year, under the leadership of Daniel Shays, they had an army of fifteen hundred men in the field, and had it not been that Bowdoin, an energetic, statesmanlike man, was governor of the state, the insurrection might have terminated disastrously.

But what gives it its special importance in history is that it made thoughtful men everywhere realize the absurdity of looking any longer to the Confederation for any of the functions of government. When Action of conthe news of the insurrection reached erence to Shays'

Congress in the fall of 1786, and when the

gress with ref

rebellion.

danger that the turbulent elements of society in New England might unite their forces and threaten the whole country, stared them in the face, they could do nothing but request the states to raise a body of troops. And as though this was not a sufficiently emphatic confession of their utter impotence, they did not even dare to say what the troops were to be used for, but pretended that they were wanted to protect western settlers against the Indians! That vote proclaimed the nothingness of Congress in terms that no one could misunderstand. With no power to execute laws, with no power to enforce the observance of treaties, with no power to collect taxes, with no means of paying its debts or providing for its current expenses, with no power to raise troops, with no power to use them when raised to protect a state from insurrection, it became clear that the experiment of the Confederation had failed; it became clear that if we expect a government to discharge the functions of government, we must give it power to govern. When this became clear, a party was organized to give the country a government. But the first thing to be done was to give it a constitution which would make a government possible.

QUESTIONS.*

1. William G. Sumner (in his Life of Alexander Hamilton) says: "The Union was, from the start, at war with the turbulent,

*Many of the questions on this and subsequent chapters are not answered in the book. The student is, however, strongly urged to seek the answers to them because of the light they throw on the subject of it.

anarchistic elements which the Revolution had set loose;" explain and illustrate.

2. He says also: "The growth from a point at which some states united, up to the point at which there was a United States, constitutes the history of the Union;" explain and illustrate.

3. The Connecticut act of 1776, in which the charter of that state was established as a constitution, contained the following statement: "This republic is, and shall forever remain, a free and independent state;" what does it show?

4. The constitution of Massachusetts, adopted in 1780, contains the following article: "The people of this commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign and independent state;" what does it show?

5. The constitution of South Carolina, adopted in 1778, contained the following article: "That the style of this country be hereafter the state of South Carolina;" what does it show?

6. A large number of the public men of the Revolutionary period, Washington among them, used the word "country," in speaking of their state; what does it show?

7. The text asserts that the Articles of Confederation were framed on the theory that the states were independent and sovereign; were they really sovereign? What constitutes the sovereignty of a people? Is Canada sovereign? Switzerland?

8. What work was the Federalist party organized to do? 9. Was the Congress of the confederation a government? 10. What was meant by "requisition?"

11. What is meant by "national self-consciousness?"

12. What changes were proposed in the Articles of Confederation, and why were they not adopted?

13. What did the debtor classes in the several states attempt to do and why?

14. What did Congress do when they heard of the rebellion in Massachusetts ?

CHAPTER II.

THE REVOLUTION OF 1787.

T WOULD be interesting, if it were possible, to trace

IT

from the start the steps that led to the calling of the Federal Convention. John Fiske thinks it grew out of a scheme of Washington's for connecting the east and the west by means of inland navigation.

Washington's

the east and west

together.

It is certain that no man in the country realized more clearly than Washington the importance of union. He knew that the war had been needlessly prolonged because there had been no central governplan for binding ment strong enough to call out the resources of the country; and when the war was over he was far from thinking that the dangers that had threatened the country from its impotent government were at an end. "It is clearly my opinion," he wrote to Hamilton in 1783, "unless Congress have powers competent to all general purposes, that the disasters we have encountered, the expense we have incurred, and the blood we have spilt, will avail us nothing." He knew that the great obstacle in the way of conferring competent powers on Congress was the feeling that it was a foreign government. It seemed to him, therefore, a matter of the first importance to bind the east and the west together by inland navigation. Make the varions parts

of the country manifestly one in interest was his thought; bind them together in an organic commercial whole, and they will soon seem to themselves one politically; the sentiment of union will soon be developed. At a time when the south and west were in a ferment about the free navigation of the Mississippi, he wrote: "I may be singular in my ideas, but they are these: That to open a door to, and make easy the way for those settlers to the westward, ** before we make any stir about the navigation of the Mississippi, and before our settlements are far advanced towards that river, would be our true line of policy." In consequence of his efforts, a company was organized in 1785 for extending the navigation of the Potomac and James rivers, and he was made president of it.

The steps that

But when John Fiske asserts that this led to the meeting of commissioners from Maryland and Virginia in 1785, he goes beyond the evidence. Washington's published correspondence makes no mention of the visit of the commissioners, nor has any evidence been brought forward to show a direct connection between his scheme for binding the east and the west in a commercial whole, and the meeting, which led to the Anwas the first link in the chain of events, that led directly to the constitution of the United States. Perhaps Lodge's assertion: "It (Washington's canal scheme) helped among other things to bring Maryland and Virginia together," is as far as we shall ever be able to go. But whatever brought them together, their meeting was

napolis convention.