tion sys. tem. of Swiss Cantons, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and the German Confederation really represented the total advance which the modern world had made in the structure of federal governments. Such advance was embodied in the idea of a federal system made up of a union of states, cities, or districts, representatives from which composed a single federal assembly whose supreme power could be brought to bear not upon individual citizens, but only upon cities or all of which states as such. The fundamental principle upon which all rested upon the requisi- such fabrics rested was the requisition system, under which the federal head was simply endowed with the power to make requisitions for men and money upon the states or cities composing the league for federal purposes; while the states alone, in their corporate capacity, possessed the power to execute and enforce them. The first advance made by the English colonies in America in the path of federal union ended with the making of the first constitution of the United States, embodied in what is known as the Articles of Confederation. Up to that point nothing new had been achieved; the fruit of the first effort was simply a confederation upon the old plan with the federal power vested in a single assembly which could only deal through the requisition system with the states as states. Effects of on federa tion. The group of English provincial states, as they appear in geography America towards the close of the eighteenth century, were a substantial reproduction of that older group of English commonwealths, generally known as the heptarchic kingdoms, as they appear in Britain in the eighth. Their historical origin was the same, and their systems of political organization substantially the same. And yet in spite of these likenesses the younger group, in their earlier efforts at union, were unable to look to the political experience of the elder either for light or guidance, for the reason that the widely different geographical conditions by which they were respectively surrounded had prescribed for each a widely different destiny. Confined within the narrow and impassable limits of an island world, it became "the manifest destiny" of the English states in Britain, advancing in the path of political aggregation, to coalesce in the formation of a single consolidated kingdom. Situated upon the shores of an almost boundless continent, it became "the manifest destiny" of the English states in America, advancing in the path of political confederation, to unite in the flexible bonds of a federal system capable of unlimited expansion. "The circumstances of the tenth century led the English kingdoms in Britain naturally and necessarily to coalesce in the shape of a consolidated kingdom. The circumstances of the eighteenth century led the English commonwealths in America as naturally and necessarily to coalesce in the shape of a federal commonwealth." 2 federation. A remarkable fact in the history of the colonies was their Effects of rapid growth in population. During the century and a half the growth of populathat intervened between the founding of the first settlements tion upon and the close of the French and Indian War the population of the thirteen had swelled to full a million and a half 3. nearly one fourth of that of the mother country. This rapid increase in population forced upon the early settlements the necessity of continually widening their boundaries. In this way disputes arose not only among the colonists themselves, but with settlers of other nationalities grouped about them whose boundaries were defined in grants from their own sovereigns. The difficulties and dangers growing out of this condition of things brought about the formation of the first American confederacy. No sooner had the four New England colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth completed their existence than their disputes between themselves, and their hostilities with the Dutch in New Netherland, growing out of encroachments on their territory, with the French in Canada, arising out of conflicting grants, and with the Indians, impelled them, "encompassed by people of several nations and strange languages,' to enter "into a consociation for mutual help and strength." The federal constitution of this short-lived league, formed New Engupon the requisition plan, was embodied in formal articles land confed of confederation, eleven in number, which were agreed upon 1643. at Boston, in May, 1643. It was provided that the affairs 1 See American Political Ideas, Fiske, chapter iii., entitled "Manifest Destiny. Freeman, The English People in its Three Homes, p. 186. 8 "1,200,000 whites and a quarter of a million of negroes."-Green, Hist. of The articles were first printed in eration, New The strug gle for expansion. of the confederacy should be managed by a board of federal commissioners, and that the members of the league should be known henceforth as the United Colonies of New England.1 A hundred years and more then passed by before the whole colonial group was for the first time aroused to the necessity for union by the presence of a common danger which also grew out of the question of territorial expansion. The French, who early in the seventeenth century had possessed themselves of Canada and the St. Lawrence, possessed themselves early in the eighteenth of the Mississippi, founding in 1718 the city of New Orleans. Between the mouths of the two mighty rivers were placed at points of the greatest strategic value a line of forts which were designed to protect from English intrusion that vast domain called New France, which stretched on the west of the Alleghanies from New Orleans to Quebec. By such means as these the French hoped to retain for themselves the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio, and to confine the English colonies within that comparatively narrow strip of country lying between the Appalachian range and the Atlantic Ocean. But when the time for expansion came, when the necessities of the swelling English population impelled them to pass the tops of the Alleghanies in order to possess themselves of the great valleys beyond, upon which France had first laid hold, the fact was revealed that the young giant of the Atlantic had only been bound with the thongs of Lilliput.2 When the English colonial system came in collision with the French colonial system, when the new self-governing soldiery which had been reared in the southern counties and in the New England townships went out together under the lead of the mother country to do battle with a colonial power which had never been trained in self-reliance, it "was like a Titan overthrowing a cripple."3 France's dream of empire in the west was broken, she was forced to give up her priceless posses373; Memorial Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 299. 1 As to the history and structure of the New England confederation, see "Acts of the Federal Commissioners," which form the ninth and tenth volumes of the Plymouth Records; Doyle, English Colonies in America, Puritan, etc., vol. i. pp. 220-265; Nar. and Crit. History, vol. iii. pp. 315, 334, 338, 354, 2 See Nar. and Crit. Hist., vol. v. ch. viii., entitled "The Struggle for the great valleys of North America." 8 Fiske, Am. Political Ideas, p. 56 See the criticism of this statement in Nar. and Crit. Hist., vol. v. p. 533, note 1. French and cause of sions and to retire from North America. The results of the Effects of French and Indian War were momentous in their effects upon Indian War the cause of union. By the overthrow of the one enemy that upon the they feared, the only real cause for the dependence of the union. colonies upon the mother country was removed at a blow; by their joint endeavors was won that vast domain beyond the Alleghanies which was destined to become a national possession; in the thick of the fight the new nationality heretofore unconscious of its real character finally awoke to a sense of its oneness. The struggle for expansion thus became the training-school in which the colonists were for the first time made to realize their capacity for concert of action upon which they had mainly to rely in the greater fight that was soon to come. Within two years after the making of the Peace of Paris, by which the French and Indian War was formally terminated, the colonies were called upon to act in concert in resisting the Stamp Act which in February, 1765, had passed the Imperial parliament.1 When Massachusetts Stamp Act spoke the word for the first American congress, the nine of Oct. 7, 1765 the thirteen colonies that met in New York in response to the summons took the first step on the way to union. Nine years later, when Massachusetts at the suggestion of Virginia again gave the word, the First Continental Congress assem- First Conbled in Philadelphia in September, 1774, in which all the Congress. colonies were represented except Georgia. In this the first Sept., 1774American assembly which was really national, and in which Washington sat in his colonel's uniform, the new-born spirit of union was embodied in a resolution which made the cause of the people of Massachusetts the cause of all by the declaration that if force shall be used "all America ought to support them in their opposition." In the Second Conti- Second nental Congress which met in the same place in May of the Congress. following year all of the colonies appeared, and, in the summer of 1776, all took part in the two great acts 2 which gave 1 It "passed through both houses with less opposition than a turnpike bill." Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iv. p. 230. The Peace of Paris was the fruit of a treaty signed in Paris in February, 1763. For its history, see Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. ii. P. 383, etc. 2 On the 7th of June Richard Henry Lee moved a resolution, which was Congress. tinental Continenta May, 1775. of Inde July 4, 1776. life and character to the new nationality. By one concurrent act, performed through their representatives in congress assembled, the colonies severed their political relations with the English crown, and thus became independent states, save so far as that independence was limited by the federal relations Declaration into which they had entered prior to the making of the Declaration of Independence.1 What those federal relations were depends upon the nature and extent of the powers of the Second Continental Congress which was the cohesive force which held the states together, and managed their federal affairs from the time of its meeting down to the 1st of March, 1781,2 when the articles of confederation took effect as a constitution binding on all the states. Down to that time the congress was the national government such a government as it was de jure and de facto; and the general scope of its powers cannot be more clearly expressed than in the language of Justice Chase, who said that "The powers of congress originated from necessity, and arose out of and were only limited by events, or, in other words, they were revolutionary in their very nature. Their extent depended on the Congress the national government down to March 1, 1781. Articles of tion. exigencies and necessities of public affairs." 3 The move upon the part of congress to devise some form Confedera- of confederation under which the colonies could permanently unite preceded by three weeks the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence. But the task proved a difficult one. Not until after a year and a half had been consumed 1 "The transformation of the colonies into states' was, therefore, not the result of the independent action of the individual colonies. It was accomplished through the 'representatives of the United States;' that is, through the revolutionary congress, in the name of the whole people."- Von Holst, Const. Hist. of the U. S., vol. i. p. 5. To the same effect, see Fiske, The Critical Period, p. 91. This seems to be the more reasonable view, but the Supreme Court of the United States, in Ware v. Hylton, 3 Dallas, p. 224, expressed through Justice Chase a contrary opinion, as follows: "I consider this as a declaration, not that the United Colonies jointly, in a collective capacity, were independent states, etc., but that each of them was a sovereign and independent state." 2 On that day Maryland signed the articles and completed the constitution. 8 See Ware v. Hylton, 3 Dallas, p. 232. Von Holst incorrectly attributes this statement to Jay, C. J. 4 The committee appointed under the resolution of the 11th of June, 1776, to draft "articles of confederation and perpetual union," completed its work by the 12th of July, but the result was not finally adopted by Congress until November, 1777. "John Dickinson is supposed to have been the principal author of the articles of confederation; but as the work of the committee was done in secret, and has never been reported, the point cannot be de termined.". The Critical Period, etc p. 93. |