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  THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF

  AMERICAN HISTORY

  1783-1789

  BY

  JOHN FISKE

  "I am uneasy and apprehensive, more so than during the war."
  JAY TO WASHINGTON, _June_ 27, 1786.

  [Illustration]

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
  The Riverside Press, Cambridge




  Copyright, 1888,

  BY JOHN FISKE.

  _All rights reserved._

  _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._ Electrotyped and Printed
  by H.O. Houghton & Co.




  To

  MY DEAR CLASSMATES,

  FRANCIS LEE HIGGINSON

  AND

  CHARLES CABOT JACKSON,

  _I DEDICATE THIS BOOK._




PREFACE.


This book contains the substance of the course of lectures given in the
Old South Meeting-House in Boston in December, 1884, at the Washington
University in St. Louis in May, 1885, and in the theatre of the
University Club in New York in March, 1886. In its present shape it may
serve as a sketch of the political history of the United States from the
end of the Revolutionary War to the adoption of the Federal
Constitution. It makes no pretensions to completeness, either as a
summary of the events of that period or as a discussion of the political
questions involved in them. I have aimed especially at grouping facts in
such a way as to bring out and emphasize their causal sequence, and it
is accordingly hoped that the book may prove useful to the student of
American history.

My title was suggested by the fact of Thomas Paine's stopping the
publication of the "Crisis," on hearing the news of the treaty of 1783,
with the remark, "The times that tried men's souls are over." Commenting
upon this, on page 55 of the present work, I observed that so far from
the crisis being over in 1783, the next five years were to be the most
critical time of all. I had not then seen Mr. Trescot's "Diplomatic
History of the Administrations of Washington and Adams," on page 9 of
which he uses almost the same words: "It must not be supposed that the
treaty of peace secured the national life. Indeed, it would be more
correct to say that the most critical period of the country's history
embraced the time between 1783 and the adoption of the Constitution in
1788."

That period was preeminently the turning-point in the development of
political society in the western hemisphere. Though small in their mere
dimensions, the events here summarized were in a remarkable degree
germinal events, fraught with more tremendous alternatives of future
welfare or misery for mankind than it is easy for the imagination to
grasp. As we now stand upon the threshold of that mighty future, in the
light of which all events of the past are clearly destined to seem
dwindled in dimensions and significant only in the ratio of their
potency as causes; as we discern how large a part of that future must be
the outcome of the creative work, for good or ill, of men of English
speech; we are put into the proper mood for estimating the significance
of the causes which determined a century ago that the continent of North
America should be dominated by a single powerful and pacific federal
nation instead of being parcelled out among forty or fifty small
communities, wasting their strength and lowering their moral tone by
perpetual warfare, like the states of ancient Greece, or by perpetual
preparation for warfare, like the nations of modern Europe. In my book
entitled "American Political Ideas, viewed from the Standpoint of
Universal History," I have tried to indicate the pacific influence
likely to be exerted upon the world by the creation and maintenance of
such a political structure as our Federal Union. The present narrative
may serve as a commentary upon what I had in mind on page 133 of that
book, in speaking of the work of our Federal Convention as "the finest
specimen of constructive statesmanship that the world has ever seen." On
such a point it is pleasant to find one's self in accord with a
statesman so wise and noble as Mr. Gladstone, whose opinion is here
quoted on page 223.

To some persons it may seem as if the years 1861-65 were of more
cardinal importance than the years 1783-89. Our civil war was indeed an
event of prodigious magnitude, as measured by any standard that history
affords; and there can be little doubt as to its decisiveness. The
measure of that decisiveness is to be found in the completeness of the
reconciliation that has already, despite the feeble wails of
unscrupulous place-hunters and unteachable bigots, cemented the Federal
Union so powerfully that all likelihood of its disruption may be said to
have disappeared forever. When we consider this wonderful harmony which
so soon has followed the deadly struggle, we may well believe it to be
the index of such a stride toward the ultimate pacification of mankind
as was never made before. But it was the work done in the years 1783-89
that created a federal nation capable of enduring the storm and stress
of the years 1861-65. It was in the earlier crisis that the pliant twig
was bent; and as it was bent, so has it grown; until it has become
indeed a goodly and a sturdy tree.

CAMBRIDGE, October 10, 1888.




CONTENTS.


 CHAPTER I.

 RESULTS OF YORKTOWN.                                                  PAGE


 Fall of Lord North's ministry                                            1

 Sympathy between British Whigs and the revolutionary
 party in America                                                         2

 It weakened the Whig party in England                                    3

 Character of Lord Shelburne                                              4

 Political instability of the Rockingham ministry                      5, 6

 Obstacles in the way of a treaty of peace                             7, 8

 Oswald talks with Franklin                                            9-11

 Grenville has an interview with Vergennes                               12

 Effects of Rodney's victory                                             13

 Misunderstanding between Fox and Shelburne                              14

 Fall of the Rockingham ministry                                         15

 Shelburne becomes prime minister                                        16

 Defeat of the Spaniards and French at Gibraltar                         17

 French policy opposed to American interests                             18

 The valley of the Mississippi; Aranda's prophecy                        19

 The Newfoundland fisheries                                              20

 Jay detects the schemes of Vergennes                                    21

 And sends Dr Vaughan to visit Shelburne                                 22

 John Adams arrives in Paris and joins with Jay in insisting
 upon a separate negotiation with England                            23, 24

 The separate American treaty, as agreed upon:

   1.   Boundaries                                                       25

   2.   Fisheries; commercial intercourse                                26

   3.   Private debts                                                    27

   4.   Compensation of loyalists                                     28-32

 Secret article relating to the Yazoo boundary                           33

 Vergennes does not like the way in which it has been done               33

 On the part of the Americans it was a great diplomatic
   victory      34

 Which the commissioners won by disregarding the instructions
 of Congress and acting on their own responsibility                      35

 The Spanish treaty                                                      36

 The French treaty                                                       37

 Coalition of Fox with North                                          38-42

 They attack the American treaty in Parliament                           43

 And compel Shelburne to resign                                          44

 Which leaves England without a government, while for
   several weeks the king is too angry to appoint ministers              44

 Until at length he succumbs to the coalition, which presently
   adopts and ratifies the American treaty                               45

 The coalition ministry is wrecked upon Fox's India Bill                 46

 Constitutional crisis ends in the overwhelming victory of
 Pitt in the elections of May, 1784                                      47

 And this, although apparently a triumph for the king, was
 really a death-blow to his system of personal government            48, 49


 CHAPTER II.

 THE THIRTEEN COMMONWEALTHS.

 Cessation of hostilities in America                                     50

 Departure of the British troops                                         51

 Washington resigns his command                                          52

 And goes home to Mount Vernon                                           53

 His "legacy" to the American people                                     54

 The next five years were the most critical years in American
 history                                                                 55

 Absence of a sentiment of union, and consequent danger of
 anarchy                                                             56, 57

 European statesmen, whether hostile or friendly, had little
 faith in the stability of the Union                                     58

 False historic analogies                                                59

 Influence of railroad and telegraph upon the perpetuity of
 the Union                                                               60

 Difficulty of travelling a hundred years ago                            61

 Local jealousies and antipathies, an inheritance from primeval
 savagery                                                            62, 63

 Conservative character of the American Revolution                       64

 State governments remodelled; assemblies continued from
 colonial times                                                          65

 Origin of the senates in the governor's council of assistants           66

 Governors viewed with suspicion                                         67

 Analogies with British institutions                                     68

 The judiciary                                                           69

 Restrictions upon suffrage                                              70

 Abolition of primogeniture, entails, and manorial privileges            71

 Steps toward the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade            72-75

 Progress toward religious freedom                                   76, 77

 Church and state in Virginia                                        78, 79

 Persecution of dissenters                                               80

 Madison and the Religions Freedom Act                                   81

 Temporary overthrow of the church                                       82

 Difficulties in regard to ordination; the case of Mason Weems           83

 Ordination of Samuel Seabury by non-jurors at Aberdeen                  84

 Francis Asbury and the Methodists                                       85

 Presbyterians and Congregationalists                                    86

 Roman Catholics                                                         87

 Except in the instance of slavery, all the changes described
   in this chapter were favourable to the union of the states            88

 But while the state governments, in all these changes, are
   seen working smoothly, we have next to observe, by
   contrast, the clumsiness and inefficiency of the federal government   89


 CHAPTER III.

 THE LEAGUE OF FRIENDSHIP.

 The several states have never enjoyed complete sovereignty              90

 But in the very act of severing their connection with Great
   Britain, they entered into some sort of union                         91

 Anomalous character of the Continental Congress                         92

 The articles of confederation; they sought to establish a
   "league of friendship" between the states                          93-97

 But failed to create a federal government endowed with real
   sovereignty                                                       98-100

 Military weakness of the government                                101-103

 Extreme difficulty of obtaining a revenue                        