History

[“Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap” by George Caleb Bingham, 1852]

For their first few generations, English colonists continued to think of themselves in relation to the ocean, with all its connections to home and to the rest of the world. But with time and the spread of the areas of settlement, the settlers of western Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and North Carolina, increasingly looked not east, but west.

For decades, pioneering families moved from the Pennsylvania Dutch country down the long Shenandoah valley through Maryland and Virginia, and some of them wound up in North Carolina. (In this way, North Carolina, a state with few good natural harbors, was actually settled as much west to east as east to west.) They wanted to keep moving West rather than farther South, to stay in the latitudes they were used to. But to the West were the Appalachians. Before highways and the internal combustion engine; before railroads powered by steam; before unpaved roads traversed by horse and wagon, those mountains formed a solid barrier hemming in frontier families who were looking for a little elbow room.

In the mid-1700s, unpaved roads were dusty in dry weather, muddy in wet, and rutty and potholed always. And that was on flat land! Passages across broken land were difficult, often impossible, for carriages and wagons. Seaboard America didn’t put a lot of time or money into improving its roads, since travel by river and sea was so much cheaper and easier. But once the line of settlement moved beyond the rivers, travel and commerce depended on roads, and roads depended on terrain.

Nearly the entire length of that old mountain range was far too high and too rugged for the technology of the day to run roads through it. To run a road over the mountains, you’d need to find an interruption in the wall that would let you thread through the barrier to get to the promised land.

Surely there was such a way over the Appalachians. There had to be!

There was. It was (and is) located more or less where the modern-day states of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee come together. In the year 1750, a Virginia doctor named Thomas Walker pointed it out and named it, and in time the Cumberland Gap became the gateway to the West.

Walker found the gap, but the man who did more than anyone else to open the way to Kentucky was a man named Daniel Boone.

Daniel Boone was born in 1734, two years after George Washington, of Quaker parents, on the edge of the Pennsylvania frontier. The Pennsylvania Quakers had good relations with the Indians, and young Boone learned woodcraft as much from the Lenape Indians as from the local white settlers. (He was given his first rifle at the age of 12 to provide food for the family.) In 1750, when Daniel was 16, his father moved the family to western North Carolina.

Because he grew up on the frontier, Boone, like Abraham Lincoln two generations later, had little formal education, and like Lincoln he was literate and enjoyed reading. In later years, he would bring books with him on his long hunting expeditions, sometimes entertaining his companions by reading to them around the evening campfire. But unlike Lincoln, who was born 75 years later, Boone never had much to do with cities or even towns. He was acknowledged as an unexcelled master of the woods. (Late in life someone asked him if, in his extensive solitary travels,  he had ever gotten lost. He said, no, he wasn’t ever lost, “but I was bewildered once for three days.”)

Like the young George Washington, Daniel Boone served with the British military during the French and Indian War. In fact, in 1755, he was a wagon driver with the same expedition that young Washington narrowly saved from total disaster after the British general was killed. Oddly enough, one of the most important results of that failed expedition was that a wagon driver named Daniel Boone had his imagination caught by the tales he heard from another driver named John Finley, who had been across the mountains, trading with the Indians in a place they called Kentucky. Nothing happened just then: Boone went home and the following year married. But the seed had been planted.

For years, Boone supported his family as a commercial hunter, going alone or with a few others into the wilderness, hunting and trapping for weeks or months along what were called the Medicine Trails (buffalo migration trails), then returning to sell the hides and pelts. But by the mid-1760s, colonial immigration into the Yadkin valley area had made it harder for a hunter to find enough game to make ends meet. Time to move.

He thought about moving to the Pensacola, Florida area, and actually bought some land there, but his wife refused to move so far from everything she knew. Not Florida? Well, then, where? And then fate stepped in again, and here was John Finley visiting, still with his tales of Kentucky.

Boone first reached Kentucky in the fall of 1767 while on a long hunt with his brother. At some point he learned that the feared Iroquois Indians had signed the Fort Stanwix treaty, ceding Kentucky to the British. In May, 1769, Boone began a two-year hunting expedition in Kentucky, but in December, he was captured by Shawnees, who had not signed the Fort Stanwix treaty. They regarded Kentucky as their hunting ground. They confiscated all the skins and told Boone and his companion to leave and never return. But Boone continued hunting and exploring Kentucky, and in September, 1773, he led a group of about 50 would-be emigrants to establish a settlement in Kentucky. The attempt was abandoned after one of his sons, and another man, were captured by a band of Delaware, Shawnees, and Cherokee Indians, and tortured to death. That massacre led to what was called Dunmore’s War between Virginia and the Shawnees, which ended in the Shawnees relinquishing their claims to Kentucky. And in 1775, a North Carolina judge named Richard Henderson hired Boone to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap.

Boone led a party of 30 into central Kentucky, marking a path to the Kentucky River and founding Boonesborough. He brought his family there on September 8, 1775, when he was 49 years old. The road he marked, and the settlements he founded and protected, are the reason that Kentucky had enough inhabitants in 1792 to be admitted to the Union as the first state west of the Appalachians, eleven years prior to the admission of Ohio.

 

Daniel Boone had a lot more life to live, but the story is too long to tell here, and too interesting to make short work of. He served as an officer of militia in the Revolutionary War, fighting in the 1782 Battle of Blue Licks, which was one of the last battles of the war, fought after the surrender at Yorktown. He continued pioneering, and became a legend in his own lifetime, famous not only in America but in Europe. He died of natural causes on September 26, 1820, nearly 86 years old. By the time he died, the wilderness road had enabled an estimated 300,000 men, women and children to get past the mountain barrier.

 

A byword and a hissing

A memorial to Arnold on the Saratoga battlefield does not mention his name, but says, instead: “In memory of the most brilliant soldier of the Continental army, who was desperately wounded on this spot, winning for his countrymen the decisive battle of the American Revolution, and for himself the rank of Major General.”

His name became a slur, an insult. To call someone a Benedict Arnold is to call him a traitor. The name has no other meaning. Such a strange and tragic fate for a brilliant general. Not an undeserved fate – there can be no doubt of his guilt – but tragic nonetheless, because before he became a traitor he was a hero, and the country he betrayed he first suffered for and served well.

His career poses questions that can’t be answered, but should be asked. To attempt to understand is not the same thing as making excuses. The fact is, Arnold betrayed his trust and attempted to betray his country. But why did he do it? That’s a valid question.

Here is his record.

In 1775, he was responsible, with Ethan Allen, for capturing Fort Ticonderoga, which as we have seen, provided the guns that made it possible to force the British to leave Boston (and, nearly all of New England) forever. He successfully urged the Continental Congress to invade Quebec, was denied command, led a second expedition through the wilderness to attack Quebec City (having received permission from Washington himself), had his left leg shattered in the same attack that killed the commander of the other expedition; and nonetheless kept the city under siege for another four months until he was relieved in April, 1776.

When a British army forced the Americans out of the city of Montreal, Arnold directed the rear guard during the army’s retreat, got a fleet constructed on Lake Champlain, and fought a naval action that delayed the British long enough to make it impossible for them to advance farther in 1776.

By now a general, he was on good terms with Washington and with general Schuyler and Gates, but he had made powerful enemies within the Army and within Congress. In February 1777, when he learned that Congress had refused to promote him to major general, he resigned, but Washington refused to accept the resignation. He finally did get the promotion as a result of his crucial role in a battle at Ridgefield, Connecticut. but was dissatisfied because Congress didn’t give him seniority to others who had been promoted earlier. In July he resigned again. Again Washington refused to accept it, and ordered him north to help defend against the British, who had retaken Fort Ticonderoga.

Arnold was responsible for relieving the siege of Fort Stanwix, then distinguished himself – and got himself into trouble – in both battles of Saratoga. In the first, he got into a shouting match with General Gates and was relieved of field command. In the second, he fought against orders, and led attacks which led to his being wounded again in the left leg. (The wound suffered at Saratoga resulted in his left leg being two inches shorter than his right.) Had he died on that field, he would be remembered as a hero of the Revolution, which, to that point, he was. When he returned to the army at Valley Forge in May 1778, the men who had served under him at Saratoga applauded him.

Congress restored Arnold’s seniority when it learned of his actions at Saratoga. However, this was too late to satisfy him. Congress had repeatedly passed him over for promotion, partly because others claimed his credit or accused him of corruption. He seems to have been slow to forget grievances.

When the British withdrew from Philadelphia the month after Arnold rejoined the army, Washington appointed him military commander of the city. There he lived extravagantly and prominently, and met, and the following year married, the daughter of a Loyalist sympathizer.

At some point he decided to turn his coat. By July 1779, Arnold was providing the British with troop locations and strengths, as well as the locations of supply depots, and negotiating with them for compensation. Arnold resigned his military command of Philadelphia in late April, 1780.

As everybody knows, he was given command of West Point, offered to sell the position to the British, was detected, and narrowly escaped with his life. He was made a British brigadier general and served with them until after Yorktown. He died in England in 1801 at age 60.

The question remains. Why?

It’s always risky to generalize, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that Arnold would have been better off to have had Washington’s patience, integrity, and willingness to forget or overlook personal grievances for the sake of the common cause. But then, asking anyone to emulate Washington’s gifts of character is asking a lot.

Arnold’s actions are no one’s fault but his own, but people don’t act without reason. The men who repeatedly promoted lesser men over him – are they free of responsibility for his change of heart? Years of experience with an incompetent and ungrateful Confederation government; the fact that Congress rebuffed the Carlisle Peace Commission’s offer of self-rule for the colonies and Parliamentary representation; the alliance with long-hated France – did all this lead him to re-evaluate his position? Marriage to a rich wife from a Loyalist family – did this lead to a changed perspective?

For whatever reasons, when he opened secret negotiations with the British, he moved from a well-deserved fame to eternal infamy – no longer a hero, now a Benedict Arnold.

 

Peace

“The American Peace Commissioners,” by Benjamin West.

[Only the American commissioners are portrayed, because the disgruntled British refused to pose for it.]

In 1763, England, like America in 1945, stood unequalled, all its enemies prostrate at its feet, all its war goals achieved, apparently able to proceed to do anything it wished. The end of the French and Indian War, known to England as the Seven Years War, had swept the French from the North American continent (also from India, but that part of the story does not concern us here.)

Twenty years later, in 1783, England, like America in 1972, signed a humiliating peace in order to extricate itself from an endless mess caused in large part by its own combination of arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity. What had started out as a simple police action to discipline the colonials had developed into a global dogfight that left the English financially broke, diplomatically isolated, and militarily fighting a host of European enemies. Nothing had gone as expected, planned or hoped. It all came down to a bitter peace negotiated in Paris but not really accepted.

(Had the British only known it, the hard lessons learned in losing the Revolutionary War were going to serve them well. In ten years’ time they would be enmeshed in 21 years of warfare against first revolutionary France, and then Napoleonic France, the result of which would be, again, total victory, this time leading to 100 years of economic and diplomatic dominance over Europe and, indeed, most of the world. But that was in the unseen future, and is also not part of our story here.)

Peace talks began in April 1782, after the American-French victory at Yorktown toppled the Tory government and brought in the Whigs, who had never been strong on coercion in the first place.

Since the war had become a world war, involving France, Spain and the Netherlands as well as the 13 colonies, Britain was going to have to make peace with one and all. As is often the case among allies, whether in victory or defeat, various members of the winning coalition had to keep close eyes on one another. And indeed, as it turned out, England signed four treaties, a separate peace agreement with each belligerent power. (One for all, all for one, and every man for himself.)

America’s alliance with France specified that neither party would make a separate peace without the consent of the other, and the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, wanted, and expected, that the Americans would coordinate their diplomatic strategy with the French. But the American delegation knew that the French king had allied himself with the British colonials for his own reasons, and might easily change without notice. They declined to allow the French monarchy to use them and their cause as a make-weight to improve its own diplomatic position. Instead, they negotiated independently, and to good effect.

Benjamin Franklin and John Jay obtained remarkably generous boundaries that extended all the way to the Mississippi, and John Adams secured economically important fishing rights. The American negotiators secured not only peace but every goal that Congress had set forth in 1779. Franklin wanted Britain to cede Quebec to avoid future conflicts between the two powers, but this he couldn’t obtain. Adams, Franklin, Jay, and Henry Laurens were able to sign preliminary articles of peace for the United States on November 30, 1782.

It was a good deal for the United States. The Treaty of Paris recognized the thirteen former colonies as free, sovereign and independent states, with agreed-upon territorial boundaries. It confirmed their right to fish on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. Both parties agreed to impose no impediment to creditors attempting to recover valid debts. Congress was to “earnestly recommend” to state legislatures the restitution of estates, rights and property that belonged to British subjects, and would end prosecution of loyalists and confiscation of their property. All prisoners of war were to be set free, The Mississippi River would remain open both to British and American citizens, and any territories captured by either side after the treaty was signed would be restored without compensation.

It is true, America lost the privileges that it had automatically enjoyed as part of the British empire. This meant new restrictions on trade with British possessions, and, as we have seen, meant loss of protection from Muslim pirates in what are now Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. Also ahead was trouble over boundaries with the Spanish possessions, and difficulties getting the British to live up to their agreement to relinquish their posts on American territory. But these were problems that would be sorted out in time. The immediate American goals had been met, and the former colonies were free to try to turn themselves into a nation.

The final treaty was signed on September 3, 1783 by Adams, Franklin and Jay. On that day, Britain signed separate agreements with the other allies, as well, ceding East and West Florida to Spain, recovering captured Grenada, Montserrat and the Bahamas from the French and Spanish, exchanging captured territory with France, and returning Dutch possessions in the East Indies, captured in 1781, in exchange for trading privileges in the Dutch East Indies. The treaty was ratified by the American Congress of the Confederation on January 14, 1784 and by British Parliament on April 9, 1784.

The long war was officially over.

Newburgh

The most dangerous moment of the Revolutionary War had nothing to do with the British army. In fact, it came after the preliminary treaty of peace was signed.

The Army was stationed at Newburgh, New York, watching occupied New York City. Yorktown had ended the Revolutionary War, essentially, and everybody knew it. People started looking ahead toward life after the war.

Congress had promised Continental officers a lifetime half-pay pension. But Congress, in early 1782, had also stopped paying them, promising to make it up after the war was over. Congress talked about paying them, but nothing happened. Finally General Henry Knox drafted a memorial to Congress, signed by enough general officers that it had to be taken seriously, protesting that pay was months in arrears, and offering to accept a lump sum payment instead of the lifetime half pay pension. The officers also sent representatives to warn the politicians quietly that the army’s temper was uncertain.

But, as usual, the larder was empty, and Congress didn’t have the power to compel the states to pay a dollar more than they happened to want to pay. And there was a long-running battle in Congress between those who wanted to honor the pledge to the Army and those who (not quite saying so) thought it would be inconvenient to do as they had promised.

On February 13, rumors of a preliminary peace agreement heightened the sense of urgency among the nationalists. And one of two things happened, and it is impossible to know which. Either (a) the nationalists politicians in Philadelphia suggested to some officers that they turn up the heat on their Congressional colleagues by making it look like the army might mutiny or (b) the army was tempted to act on its own. Enough officers were angry, and were aware of Congress’ already long history of broken promises, and were aware of their own strength vis-à-vis the civilian government, and perhaps had General Horatio Gates as their leader, that they were ready to take control of the army from General Washington and put life in what was otherwise an empty threat.

Either way, what was planned might have had disastrous effects.

Whichever it was, on the morning of March 10 an unsigned letter called upon the army to send Congress an ultimatum. Published at the same time was an anonymous call for a meeting of all field officers for 11 a.m. the next day. Washington, in his general orders on the 11^th, announced that there would be a meeting of officers on the 15th instead, to be presided over by the senior officer present. He requested a report of the meeting, implying that he would not attend. But as soon as General Gates opened the meeting, Washington entered and asked to speak. What could Gates do? He stepped aside.

An excerpt from Washington’s little speech, silently paragraphed to make it easier for modern readers:

“If my conduct heretofore has not evinced to you that I have been a faithful friend to the army, my declaration of it at this time would be equally unavailing and improper. But as I was among the first who embarked in the cause of our common country; as I have never left your side one moment, but when called from you on public duty; as I have been the constant companion and witness of your distresses, and not among the last to feel and acknowledge your merits; as I have ever considered my own military reputation as inseparably connected with that of the army; as my heart has ever expanded with joy, when I have heard its praises, and my indignation has arisen when the mouth of detraction has been opened against it, it can scarcely be supposed, at this late stage of the war, that I am indifferent to its interests.

“But how are they to be promoted? The way is plain, says the anonymous addresser. `If war continues, remove into the unsettled country; there establish yourselves and leave an ungrateful country to defend itself.’—But who are they to defend? Our wives, our children, our farms and other property which we leave behind us? or, in this state of hostile separation, are we to take the two first (the latter cannot be removed) to perish in a wilderness with hunger, cold and nakedness? `If peace takes place, never sheath your swords,’ says he `until you have obtained full and ample justice.’

“This dreadful alternative of either deserting our country in the extremest hour of her distress, or turning our arms against it, which is the apparent object, unless Congress can be compelled into instant compliance, has something so shocking in it, that humanity revolts at the idea. My God! what can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures?. Can he be a friend to the army? Can he be a friend to this country?”

Washington said he wanted to read them a letter he had received. He took the letter from his pocket, then took out a pair of reading glasses, and said, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”

Theatrical, yes. But it was effective. Many of the officers were moved to tears, and their mood instantly changed. Every man in the hall knew that Washington had served since 1775, and there were few enough others who had served all those eight long years

After that, the resentments and just indignation that might have supported action against the government were gone.

(Washington knew how to put pressure on politicians, though. He made sure that Congress saw those anonymous addresses. Congress ultimately agreed to provide five years’ full pay in the form of government bonds, the bonds that Hamilton redeemed a few years later.)

More than 40 years later, a man who had been on Washington’s staff at the time wrote, “I have ever considered that the United States are indebted for their republican form of government solely to the firm and determined republicanism of George Washington at this time.” Washington had saved the officers from themselves, had saved them from wrecking all that they had fought and suffered to achieve.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787

The one achievement for which the Article of Confederation Congress is remembered is the Northwest Ordinance, which created the first organized territory of the newly independent United States, a territory bounded by the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Great Lakes, and the western boundary of Pennsylvania.

The Ohio (as part of the Mississippi river system) was the key to the heartland. But the state of Maryland refused to sign the articles unless assured that all the other states with claims to lands west of the existing states would cede them to the federal government. These claims were not trivial. Virginia’s claim included virtually the entire territory, but other states also had overlapping claims extending to the Mississippi, including Georgia, the Carolinas and even New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut. (An echo of these earlier claims is the part of northern Ohio still sometimes referred to as the Western Reserve.)

The states did cede their claims, which made the northwest territory the nation’s public domain. As passed and ratified by the 13 States, the original northwest ordinance was less an act of a central government than a treaty among sovereign states. In its language: “the following articles shall be considered as Articles of compact between the original States and the people and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent….”

Adopted under the new Constitution and signed into law in 1789 by President Washington, it became so fundamental in shaping the growth of the new nation that we require an effort of imagination, today, to see how things might have been in its absence. We take for granted that the nation’s eventual expansion across the continent would be by the process spelled out by the ordinance, but suppose the original 13 states had decided to hold any new territory perpetually in common, perhaps as a politically dependent area that would be, in effect, an internal colony? Suppose one or all of the original 13 states had attempted to expand into some or all of the new land? Surely any such attempts would have resulted in rebellion, sooner or later, but how nice that matters took a different course.

More to the point, though, are other specific provisions of the ordinance that shaped the territory in ways we take for granted. Among the provisions of the final (of three) ordinance:

• The territories were to be administered directly by Congress, rather than by any of the states. Unsettled lands became part of the federal government’s public domain, rather than part of any existing state’s territory.
• Navigable waters were designated as “common highways and forever free” for the original inhabitants, the citizens of present and future states.
• Once a given territory had acquired a population of 60,000 citizens, it would become eligible for statehood on equal status as existing states.
• Each territory would be divided into gridded townships, so that the land could be surveyed and then sold in an orderly manner, with section 16 of each township reserved to finance the creation of schools in the district.
• Slavery was prohibited within the territory.

All this had consequences. The Northwest Ordinance (and succeeding legislation) established legal rights, including habeas corpus, the right to a trial by jury, limitations on fines, and a prohibition of ex post facto laws and of cruel or unusual punishment. It established religious freedom, and encouraged education in the following words: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Much of what we came to think of as essentially American were fixed and then imitated by the ordinance.

In speaking of consequences, we must remember the consequences of the path not taken. One provision of the ordinance states, presumably with a straight face, and possibly with sincere intent: “The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.”

Had this provision been adopted in spirit as it was in legislation, perhaps the wars with Blue Jacket and Little Turtle might have been avoided. Just possibly the long-term coexistence that George Washington envisioned might have come into being. Probably not: Chances are the Indians still would have objected to the expropriation of land they considered theirs. But we’ll never know.

On the other hand, prohibiting slavery north of the Ohio set the stage for the competition between slave and free states that would be arbitrated by the Missouri Compromise, aggravated by the spoils of the Mexican War, broken open by Kansas-Nebraska, and finally settled in blood.

How the convention came about

It’s odd, looking back, how George Washington’s slightest move affected America’s destiny. From the time in 1756 when he was 21 and inadvertently fired the first shot of the seven-year-long French and Indian War that was fought in Europe, North America and India, to his Farewell Address that reverberated down the decades, momentous events often hung on even his small decisions. He wasn’t some Napoleon or Caesar, self-consciously trying to impose his will upon the world. He was more like a Churchill in the 20^th century, always finding himself at the center of things, making decisions with radically surprising consequences.

Take, for example, how the Constitutional convention that changed a confederation into a nation began in Washington’s interest in developing the West.

Washington was, among other things, a land surveyor, and, among other things, a speculator in western lands. Long before Kentucky split off from Virginia – long before Virginia became a state, for that matter – Washington had explored and purchased land on the far side of the Appalachian mountains. Like so many British colonials of his day, he believed in the West as the future, and that belief did not slacken when he and his state ceased to be British and became American.

So now here he was, back from the Revolution, thinking to resume his life as an active gentleman farmer. There was the West, seeking to be developed, and here was the East, a willing trading partner, if not for the geographical barrier posed by the mountains. Daniel Boone and James Harrod and their families, and others from inland North Carolina would settle Kentucky by crossing the Cumberland Gap, but trails and passes that were suitable for pack trains were not sufficient to accommodate trade.

To transport goods in bulk, the 18^th century relied upon water. Could the Potomac somehow be connected to the Ohio? Or, if not, could it be improved by canal to the point that only a short manageable portage would connect the two rivers? If it could be done, the river that flowed past Mount Vernon might become the key to opening up the vast Western land between the mountains and the Mississippi.

So, one thing leading to another, in the summer of 1784, James Madison proposed to the Virginia House of Delegates (of which he was again a member, after having served in the Confederation Congress) that the state select commissioners and have them meet representatives of neighboring Maryland to confer about navigation of the Potomac River. Washington hosted the meeting, which became known therefore as the Mount Vernon Conference. They met in March 1785, came to an agreement, passed it along to their respective state legislatures, and it became an interstate compact.

But Madison, who handled the compact in the Assembly, was interested in more than the Potomac. He recognized that trade, for instance, could be successfully regulated only by the general government, not state by state. He suggested that state governments appoint commissioners “to take into consideration the trade of the United States; to examine the relative situation and trade of said states; to consider how far a uniform system in their commercial regulations may be necessary to their common interests and permanent harmony,” and at his instance, the Assembly passed a resolution inviting all the states to meet for a commercial conference to be held in Annapolis in September, 1786.

That conference, in turn, was in itself nothing much. Delegates from only five states showed up, and they met for only three days. But one of the men who did arrive was Alexander Hamilton, and he drafted a call for all the states to appoint commissioners to revise the Confederation so as to make it more effective. The group approved his draft, and suggested that the representatives meet in Philadelphia in May.

By this time Shay’s Rebellion had made everyone aware of the weaknesses in their present government, and many had come to believe that the Confederation as it existed was not adequate to meet the challenges of the day. For one thing, the Articles of Confederation could only be amended by unanimous vote. Such a requirement always makes it hard – usually impossible – to tackle difficult problems, and there were plenty of difficult problems to be tackled. What was needed was more than a more effective way to impose taxes and execute a foreign policy. The times called for a redefinition of relationship between the states and the national government, and between both and the people.

When Virginia announced that it would send a delegation led by Washington (whom Madison had persuaded to accept), five other states quickly committed to attend. Then Congress, by passing a resolution, made it the prospective gathering official. After that, all the other states except Rhode Island committed to attend as well, and the stage was set for the miracle.

You can’t quite say it was because Washington was interested in the West – but you can say that it wouldn’t have happened, or at least wouldn’t have happened in the same way, if he hadn’t been.

Shay’s rebellion

As usual, the deck was stacked. The poor and dispossessed had no way to obtain justice save organized resistance to the institutions oppressing them. That resistance evoked the predictable counter-reaction among the rich and powerful decrying “mob rule.” Financial power financed physical might, which, as usual, prevailed. But, in the tangled way that history sometimes works, Shay’s Rebellion may have helped the American experiment in republican government to succeed by showing the weakness of the Confederation government.

It was 1785. The Revolutionary War was over – had been over for two years – but its economic consequences continued to accumulate. Massachusetts merchants were being squeezed by their European trading partners, who had been glad to extend credit to them while they were British, but now would sell only for hard money – that is, gold or silver: specie. The merchants, in turn, began demanding specie from their local business partners, who of course then made the same demand of their customers. But coins were in short supply.

That was bad enough in the coastal areas, which lived by trade with the other colonies, with the West Indies, with Europe. Even in bad times, cash was the norm. But towns in the state’s central and western regions saw little cash even in good times; they often bartered for goods or services, or obtained goods on credit and repaid when crops were in. When a subsistence economy suddenly is required to conform to the norms of a market economy – well, it can’t. People started losing their land to foreclosure for commercial debt, and for taxes. Adding insult to injury – or perhaps we should say, adding insult and injury to injury – many of these hard-pressed inhabitants were veterans of the war who were owed back pay and couldn’t get it.

Daniel Shays was one of these former soldiers. He and others began organizing protests such as had already occurred in 1782 and 1783. After those earlier protests, the people had requested that the state legislature issue paper money, but the legislature was dominated by the very merchants who were the lenders. The last thing they were going to do was risk currency inflation that would dilute the value of the money they were owed.

In 1785, merchant James Bowdoin was elected governor. He stepped up civil actions to collect back taxes, and the legislature made matters worse by levying an additional property tax to raise funds for the state’s portion of foreign debt. In the summer of 1786, the legislature adjourned without considering any of the petitions from the rural populace. Should it have been a surprise when people took to direct action?

In August, protestors prevented a county court from sitting, trying to halt the foreclosure process. Other states had faced similar protests, and had solved it, as usual, by calling out the militia. (It is worth noting that in Rhode Island, what was called the “country party” gained control of the legislature in 1786 and forced merchants to trade debt instruments for devalued currency, which resolved the problem. Not Massachusetts.) But when Governor Bowdoin did call out the county militia, after another court had been shut down by organized protest, he found that the men were in sympathy with the protestors, and refused to turn out.

In September and October, three more community protests shut down their courts, and courts in the larger towns and cities were able to meet only under militia protection. The legislature finally did make some concessions, allowing certain old taxes to be paid in goods rather than cash, but then it added measures prohibiting speech critical of the government. It offered pardons to protestors willing to take an oath of allegiance, but the protests continued.

In September, an armed confrontation between protestors led by Shays and Luke Day had been resolved without violence. In November, a posse arrested Job Shattuck and other protest leaders in the eastern part of the state. Protestors in western Massachusetts took note, and began to prepare not only to resist, but to overthrow the state government.

The Confederation government was broke as usual, and had no money for troops. So in January, 1787, the Massachusetts merchants created a privately funded militia of 3,000 men, which marched westward. The rebels established regional regimental organizations, and targeted the federal armory in Springfield. After a brief battle, the rebels were chased north and scattered, many escaping into New Hampshire and Vermont, which refused to yield them up to Massachusetts authorities.

The only measures the state legislature took were designed to deal with the act, not the causes, of rebellion. It passed bills authorizing martial law, and the recruitment of additional militia, and state payments to reimburse merchants for funding their private army. It passed the Disqualification Act, forbidding acknowledged rebels from holding certain elected and appointed offices. After government control was reestablished, most of the rebels were pardoned under a general amnesty. Of 18 leaders convicted and sentenced to death, all but two were freed. Two were hanged.

But Governor Bowdoin lost the gubernatorial election of April 1787. Governor John Hancock and the newly elected legislature cut taxes, placed a moratorium on debts, and Massachusetts securities fell by 30% as interest payments fell into arrears. (This was of course regarded by the merchant class as a far greater calamity than people losing their farms to foreclosure.)

But more to the point – perhaps the second-greatest good derived from the doomed rebellion, after the defeat of Bowdoin and his legislature – was the effect on statesmen throughout the 13 former colonies. The lesson they took away was not that economic oppression leads to desperation, but that the Confederation government was too weak to sustain itself. Ironically, Shay’s rebellion strengthened the Federalists in the convention that would shortly meet in Philadelphia.