several days in August.* The powers conceded to the confederation, narrow as they were, aroused distrust and fear. The plan, assuming population to be the index of wealth, proposed to obtain supplies by requisitions upon each state in proportion to the number of its inhabitants, excepting none but Indians not paying taxes. Chase moved to count only the "white inhabitants;" for "negroes were property, and no more members of the state than cattle." "Call the laboring poor freemen or slaves," said John Adams, "they increase the wealth and exports of the state as much in the one case as in the other, and should therefore add equally to the quota of its tax." Harrison of Virginia proposed as a compromise that two slaves should be counted as one freeman. "To exempt slaves from taxation," said Wilson, "will be the greatest encouragement to slavekeeping and the importation of slaves, on which it is our duty to lay every discouragement. Slaves increase profits, which the southern states take to themselves; they increase the burden of defence, which must fall so much the more heavily on the northern. Slaves prevent freemen from cultivating a country. Dismiss your slaves, and freemen will take their places." "Freemen," said young Lynch of South Carolina, "have neither the ability nor the inclination to do the work that the negroes do. Our slaves are our property; if that is debated, there is an end of confederation. Being our property, why should they be taxed more than sheep?" "There is a difference," said Franklin; "sheep will never make insurrections." Witherspoon thought the value of lands and houses was the true barometer of the wealth of a people, and the criterion for taxation. Edward Rutledge objected to the rule of numbers because it included slaves, and because it exempted the wealth to be acquired by the eastern states as carriers for the southern. Hooper of North Carolina cited his own state as a striking exception to the rule that the riches of a country are in proportion to its numbers; and, commenting on the unprofitableness of slave labor, he expressed the wish to see slavery pass away. The amendment of Chase was rejected by a vote of all the states north of Mason and Dixon's line against all those

* Secret Journals of Congress, i., 290-315; John Adams's works, ii., 492-502; Jefferson's works, i., 26–35.

south of it, except that Georgia was divided. The confederation could not of itself levy taxes, and no rule for apportioning requisitions promised harmony.

A second article which divided the states related to the distribution of power in the general congress. Delaware, from the beginning, bound her delegates to insist that, "in declaring questions, each colony should have one vote;" and this was the rule adopted by Dickinson. Chase saw the extreme danger of a hopeless conflict, and proposed as a compromise that in votes relating to money the voice of each state should be proportioned to the number of its inhabitants. Franklin insisted that they should be so proportioned in all cases; that it was unreasonable to set out with an unequal representation; that a confederation on the iniquitous principle of allowing to the smaller states an equal vote without their bearing equal burdens could not last long. "All agree," replied Witherspoon, "that there must and shall be a confederation for this war; in the enlightened state of men's minds, I hope for a lasting one. Our greatest danger is of disunion among ourselves. Nothing will come before congress but what respects colonies and not individuals. Every colony is a distinct person; and, if an equal vote be refused, the smaller states will be vassals to the larger." "We must confederate," said Clark of New Jersey, "or apply for pardons." "We should settle some plan of representation," said Wilson. John Adams agreed with Franklin: "We represent the people; and in some states they are many, in others they are few; the vote should be proportioned to numbers. The confederacy is to form us, like separate parcels of metal, into one common mass. We shall no longer retain our separate individuality, but become a single individual as to all questions submitted to the confederacy; therefore all those reasons which prove the justice and expediency of a proportional representation in other assemblies hold good here. An equal vote will endanger the larger states, while they, from their difference of products, of interest, and of manners, can never combine for the oppression of the smaller." Rush spoke on the same side: "We are a nation; to vote by states will keep up colonial distinctions; and we shall be loath to admit new colonies into the

confederation. The voting by the number of free inhabitants will have the excellent effect of inducing the colonies to discourage slavery. The larger colonies are so providentially divided in situation as to render every fear of their combining visionary. The more a man aims at serving America, the more he serves his colony; I am not pleading the cause of Pennsylvania; I consider myself a citizen of America." Hopkins of Rhode Island pleaded for the smaller colonies: "The German body votes by states; so does the Helvetic; so does the Belgic. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maryland contain more than half the people; it can not be expected that nine colonies will give way to four. The safety of the whole depends on the distinction of the colonies." "The vote," said Sherman of Connecticut, "should be taken two ways: call the colonies, and call the individuals, and have a majority of both." Jefferson enforced, as the means to save the union, that "any proposition might be negatived by the representatives of a majority of the people, or of a majority of the colonies." Here is the thought out of which the great compromise of our constitution was evolved.*

Aside from the permanent question of taxation and representation, what most stood in the way of an early act of union was the conflict of claims to the ungranted lands, which during the connection with Great Britain had belonged to the king. It was not questioned that each member of the confederacy had acquired the sole right to the public domain within its acknowledged limits; but on the second of August it was proposed to vindicate for the United States the great territory north-west of the Ohio by investing congress "with the exclusive power of limiting the bounds of those colonies which were said to extend to the South Sea, and ascertaining the bounds of any other that appeared to be indeterminate." Jefferson spoke against the proposed power as too great and vague, and protested against the competency of congress to decide upon the right of Virginia; but he confidently expressed the hope "that the colonies would limit themselves." Unless they would do so, Wilson claimed for Pennsylvania the right to say she would not confederate.

*John Adams, ii., 499, and ix., 465, 467.

The scheme of confederation was in its form so complicate! and in its type so low that, at the outset, the misshapen organism struck with paralysis the zeal for creating a government.. Had it been at once adopted, the war could not have been carried on; but congress soon grew weary of considering it, and the revolution during its years of crisis continued to be conducted by the more efficient existing union, which had grown out of the instructions of the several colonies to their delegates, was held together by the necessities of war, and acknowledged the right of the majority to decide a question.

The states had, therefore, to fight the battles of independence under the simple organization by which it had been declared; the fear of a standing army as a deadly foe to the liberties of the people had thus far limited the enlistment of citizens to short terms; so that the national defence was committed to the ebb and flow of the militia of the separate states, and good discipline was made impossible.

In July, Crown Point was abandoned by the northern army, on the concurrent advice of the general officers, against the protest of Stark and twenty field-officers. Gates, though holding a subordinate command, neglected to make reports to his superior; and when Washington, after consulting his council, "expressed sorrow at the retreat from Crown Point," Gates resented the interference as "unprecedented," insisted that he and his council were in "nothing inferior" to "their brethren and compeers," and referred the matter to congress. While he so hastily set himself up as the rival of the commander-inchief, he was intriguing with New England members of congress to supersede Schuyler.

On the first day of August, Washington declared in a general order: "Divisions among ourselves most effectually assist our enemies; the provinces are all united to oppose the common enemy, and all distinctions are sunk in the name of an American."

On the next day the members of congress, having no army but a transient one, no confederation, no treasury, no supplies of materials of war, signed the declaration of independence, which had been engrossed on parchment. The first, after John Hancock the president, to write his name was Samuel Adams, to whom the men of that day ascribed "the greatest part in

the greatest revolution of the world." The body was somewhat changed from that which voted on the fourth of July. Chase was now present, and by his side Charles Carroll, a new member, in whose election the long disfranchised Catholics of Maryland saw an evidence of their disinthralment. Wythe and Richard Henry Lee had returned from Richmond; Dickinson and two of his colleagues had made way for Clymer, Rush, and others; Robert Morris, who had been continued as a representative of Pennsylvania, now acted heartily with John Adams and Jefferson and Franklin. Mackean was with the army, and did not set his name to the roll before 1781. For New York, Philip Livingston and Lewis Morris joined with Francis Lewis and William Floyd.

American independence was ratified not by congress only, but by the nation. The unselfish enthusiasm of the people was its support; the boundlessness of the country formed its natural defence; and the self-asserting individuality of every state and of every citizen, though it delayed the organization of an efficient government with executive unity, imposed on Britain the impossible task of conquering them one by one.

Since America must wage a war for existence as a nation without an efficient government, there was the more need of foreign alliances. The maritime powers, which saw in England their natural foe, did not wait to be entreated. On the seventh of July, when there was danger of a rupture between Spain and Portugal on a question of the boundaries of Brazil, Vergennes read to the king in council his advice:

"The king of Spain must not act precipitately, for a war by land would divert us from the great object of weakening the only enemy whom France can and ought to distrust. The spirit and the letter of the alliance with Austria promise her influence to hold back Russia from listening to English overtures. In Holland it will be proper to reanimate the ashes of the republican party, and propitiate favor for neutrality as a source of profit. The Americans must be notified of the consequences which the actual state of things presages, if they will but await its development. As the English are armed in North America, we cannot leave our colonies destitute of all means of resistance. The isles of France and Bourbon demand