fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

y way of the lakes, and will throw themselves into the arms ofEngland.... The true motive of this vigorous oppo sition is to be foundin the great Preponderance of the northern states, eager to incline thebalance toward their side; the southern neglect no opportunity ofincreas ing the population and importance of the western territory,and of drawing thither by degrees the inhabitants of New England. .. . These new territories will gradually form themselves into separategovernments; they will have their representatives in congress, andwill augment greatly the mass of the southern states.Otto is abundantly confirmed by the debates of theVirginia ratifying convention, and still more by Monroe’scorrespondence of late 1786. On August 12, 1786, Monroewrote from Congress to Patrick Henry:P.S. The object in the occlusion of the Mississippi on the part of thesepeople so far as it is extended to the interest of their States (for thoseof a private kind gave barb to it): is to break up so far as this willdo it, the settlements on the western waters, prevent any in future,and thereby keep the States Southward as they now are -- or ifsettlements will take place, that they shall be on such principles as tomake it the interest of the people to separate from the Confederacy, soas effectually to exclude any new State from it. To throw the weightof population eastward and keep it there....Like many another Southerner in the next seventy-five years,Monroe ended by saying that, if it came to separation, it wasessential that Pennsylvania join the South. So forceful was theeffect of his letter on Henry, Madison wrote Washington inDecember, that Henry, who had hitherto advocated a strongerUnion, began to draw back. By 1788 he, like Lee, Grayson,and Monroe, would be an Antifederalist.The upshot of the Mississippi squabble was that the long effortsto vest Congress with power over commerce were threatenedwith failure at the very brink of success. As delegates madetheir way to the Annapolis Convention in the fall of 1786,Bloodworth of North Carolina wrote that because of theMississippi controversy “all other Business seems out of View atpresent.” “Should the measure proposed be pursued,” Graysontold the Congress, “the Southern States would never grantthose powers which were acknowledged to be essential to theexistence of the Union.” When Foreign Secretary Jay attemptedto have instructions, authorizing him to give up Americaninsistence on using the river, adopted by a simple Congressionalmajority of seven states, it stirred in many Southern breasts thefear of being outvoted. Even before the Mississippi questioncame before Congress Southerners like Monroe had insistedthat, if Congress were to regulate commerce, commercial lawsshould require the assent of nine or even eleven states. Jay’sattempt (as Southerners saw it) to use a simple majority topush through a measure fundamentally injurious to the Southgreatly intensified this apprehension. When the ConstitutionalConvention met, the so-called Pinckney Plan suggested a twothirdsCongressional majority for commercial laws, and boththe Virginia ratifying convention (which voted to ratify by asmall majority) and the North Carolina convention (whichrejected ratification) recommended the same amendment.In the midst of the Mississippi controversy, men hopeful forstronger government saw little prospect of success. Madisonwrote Jefferson in August 1786 that he almost despaired ofstrengthening Congress through the Annapolis Convention orany other; in September, Otto wrote to Vergennes: “It is to befeared that this discussion will cause a great coolness betweenthe two parties, and may be the germ of a future separation ofthe southern states.”IVWhy then did the South consent to the ConstitutionalConvention? If the South felt itself on the defensive in the1780’s, and particularly so in the summer and fall of 1786, whydid its delegates agree to strengthen Federal powers in 1787?If a two-thirds majority for commercial laws seemed essentialto Southerners in August of one year, why did they surrenderit in August of the next? Were Madison and Washington, asthey steadfastly worked to strengthen the national government,traitors to the interests of their section, or was there some viewof the future which nationalist Southerners then entertainedwhich enabled them to be good Southerners and goodFederalists at the same time?It is Madison, once more, who provides the clue. He saw thatif the South were to agree in strengthening Congress, the planwhich gave each state one vote would have to be changed infavor of the South. And in letters to Jefferson, to Randolph,and to Washington in the spring of 1787 he foretold in asentence the essential plot of the Convention drama. The basisof representation would be changed to allow representationby numbers as well as by states, because a change was “recommendedto the Eastern States by the actual superiority oftheir populousness, and to the Southern by their expectedsuperiority.”So it fell out. Over and over again members of the Conventionstated, as of something on which all agreed, that “as soon as theSouthern & Western population should predominate, whichmust happen in a few years, the South would be compensatedfor any advantages wrung from it by the North in the meantime.”When Northerners insisted on equality of votes in the Senate,it was partly because they feared what would happen when theSouth gained its inevitable (as they supposed) majority. “Hemust be short sighted indeed,” declared King on July 12,who does not foresee that whenever the Southern States shall bemore numerous than the Northern, they can & will hold a languagethat will awe the North ern States] into justice. If they threaten toseparate now in case injury shall be done them, will their threats beless urgent or effectual, when force shall back their demands?Gouverneur Morris echoed this gloomy prophecy the next day.“The consequence of such a transfer of power from the maritime186 fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007