ABBREVIATIONS
Titles
AP Robert J. Taylor et al., eds., The Papers of John Adams, 12 vols. to date (Cambridge, Mass., 1983–)
DA Lyman H. Butterfield et al., eds., The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1966)
DHRC Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, and Gaspar J. Saladino, eds., Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, 26 vols. to date (Madison, Wis., 1976–)
FP Barbara Oberg et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 27 vols. to date (New Haven, Conn., 1959–)
GP Richard K. Showman, ed., The Papers of General Nathaniel Greene, 7 vols. to date (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976–)
HP Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 26 vols. (New York, 1961–79)
JCC W. C. Ford et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 24 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1904–37)
JER Journal of the Early Republic
JP Elizabeth M. Nuxoll et al., eds. The Selected Papers of John Jay, 3 vols. to date (Charlottesville, Va., 2010–)
LDC Paul H. Smith et al., eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, 29 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1976–2000)
MP William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison, 20 vols. to date (Chicago and Charlottesville, Va., 1962–)
PMHB The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
PRM E. James Ferguson et al., eds., The Papers of Robert Morris, 9 vols. (Pittsburgh, 1973–99)
PWCS W. W. Abbott and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series (Charlottesville, Va., 1992–97)
PWR W. W. Abbott, Dorothy Twohig, and Philander D. Chase, eds., The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series, 20 vols. to date (Charlottesville, Va., 1985–)
RL James Morton Smith, ed., The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776–1826, 3 vols. (New York, 1995)
TJP Julian Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 30 vols. to date (Princeton, N.J., 1950–)
VMHB Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
WMQ William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series
Works Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, 1950–60)
WW James C. Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of George Washington, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1931–39)
Persons
AA Abigail Adams
AH Alexander Hamilton
GW George Washington
JA John Adams
JJ John Jay
JM James Madison
RM Robert Morris
TJ Thomas Jefferson
PREFACE: PLURIBUS TO UNUM
1. David C. Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (Lawrence, Kan., 2003).
2. Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763–89 (Chicago, 1956), is the seminal statement of the constitutional issues at stake in the 1760s. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), is the standard work on the subject.
3. James D. Drake, The Nation’s Nature: How Continental Assumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America (Charlottesville, Va., 2011), is a splendid meditation on the role of space and distance in the founding era.
4. Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), is the seminal study of the conspiratorial and on occasion irrational mentality that shaped the American response to British policy during the decade before the outbreak of war in 1775.
5. The evidence for this argument is offered in some detail in Chapters 1–3 below. Not all historians agree. Richard Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789 (New York, 1987), purports to detect an incipient national ethos in 1776 and beyond. Jack Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (Baltimore, 1979), despite the title, makes a more careful case for the survival of a national mentality after the heady days of 1775–76. For the argument that the Constitution created a national framework for an American population that lacked a national identity, see John M. Murrin, “ ‘A Roof Without Walls’: The Dilemma of American National Identity,” in Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter, eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and National Identity (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1987), 333–48.
6. Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution (New York, 1940); Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: The History of the United States During the Confederation (New York, 1950). For a sophisticated analysis of the Progressive School, see Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians (New York, 1968). The Progressive School still has dedicated disciples. See, for example, Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York, 2007).
7. For an argument along somewhat the same lines, see Max M. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: The U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (Oxford, 2003).
8. Full citations of the multivolume editions of the founders’ papers are listed in the key to abbreviations beginning on this page.
9. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), makes the strongest case for the egalitarian impact of the revolution, which eroded the hierarchical assumptions prevalent in the colonial era and thereby created the democratic culture that Tocqueville described in the 1830s. My intention here is not to refute Wood’s argument so much as amend it. The democratizing process that Wood describes had only begun its work in the 1780s, so the mentality of the most prominent founders was still embedded in a network of predemocratic assumptions that remained skeptical about the wisdom of the common man and the embrace of majority rule. The Constitution that they crafted, then, accurately reflects their desire to tap the energies of democracy while also controlling its inevitable excesses.
10. Two of the most recent studies of slavery and the Constitution offer good examples of both interpretive options. George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics and the Constitution in the Early Republic (Chicago, 2010), leans toward the inevitability of it all. David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (New York, 2009), is a blistering indictment of the founders for failing to make the moral choice.
CHAPTER 1: THE ARTICLES AND THE VISION
1. Thomas Rodney, diary, 1 March 1781, LDC 17:3.
2. Josiah Tucker, Cai Bono (London, 1781), 11–12. See also David C. Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (Lawrence, Kan., 2003), 11–12.
3. My interpretation here is much influenced by Hendrickson, Peace Pact. See Appendix A, this page.
4. Ibid. Two of the most important books on the government under the Articles of Confederation announce in their titles the exact opposite of what the Articles created. Jack Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (Baltimore, 1979), and Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: The History of the United States During the Confederation (New York, 1950), are both major works that contain invaluable information not to be found elsewhere. But both insist on the existence of a national ethos beyond the heady years of 1775–76—Jensen rather brazenly, Rakove more obliquely—that strikes me as misguided. State and local priorities were in the saddle by the fall of 1776, and they dictated the state-based structure of the Articles. Rakove seems to grasp this, despite his title. Jensen does not.
5. The Adams prescription for state governments is in AP 4:65–73. My earlier effort to explain the influence of Thoughts on Government is in American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic (New York, 2007), 46–49. The point here is that there was a commonly accepted formula for a viable and balanced republican government in place that most of the states followed. The failure of the Articles to embody that formula suggested that they were never intended to function as a government because a truly nati
onal government remained unimaginable.
6. Appendix A, this page.
7. Rakove, Beginnings of National Politics, 63–86, is at his best here, in the earliest stages of the war, when the revolutionary fires still burned brightly. For the Rush quotation, see DA 2:247.
8. LDC 4:233–50, for the Dickinson Draft. Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation (Madison, Wis., 1941), 126–39, tends to emphasize the nationalistic features of the document. Hendrickson, Peace Pact, 127–37, emphasizes the confederationist elements.
9. DA 2:245–46; JP 1:320–23.
10. LDC 4:338–39.
11. JCC 5:425–31, 546–56; FP 22:536–38, for the editorial note on Franklin’s role in the debate.
12. LDC 4:242; DA 2:245; FP 22:538.
13. DA 2:249; JP 1:323–27.
14. DA 2:241–43, 249–50; JP 1:462–65.
15. JA to Hezekiah Niles, 13 February 1818, Works 10:283.
16. JA to Joseph Hawley, 25 August 1776, LDC 5:60–62.
17. Burke’s “Remarks” are in LDC 3:419–21, 433–77. There is a spirited scholarly debate over the significance and influence of Burke’s amendment; it is nicely synthesized in Hendrickson, Peace Pact, 343–44. Historians who detect a lurking nationalistic dimension in the Dickinson Draft regard Burke’s role in demanding a clear statement of state sovereignty as crucial. But Hendrickson does not think the Dickinson Draft was that nationalistic to begin with and therefore sees Burke’s amendment as a mere clarification of the broad consensus on the confederation model. I tend to agree with Hendrickson.
18. See the expressions of wartime urgency in LDC 7:251–58, 98, 254, 348.
19. On the essential but threatening role of the Continental Army, see Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and the American Character (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979), and Robert K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, D.C., 1983).
20. Editorial Note, GP 1:307, for the recommendation of the committee to raise eighty-eight battalions; JCC 5:810–11, 842–44, for the congressional vote approving the recommendations; John Hancock to GW, 9 October 1776, PWR 6:515–16, for the manpower potential of the American population.
21. For a sample of Washington’s steady stream of complaints about lack of support for the Continental Army, see the following: GW to Board of War, 11 November 1778, WW 13:244–46; GW to Benjamin Harrison, 18–30 December 1778, WW 13:463–68; GW to Committee of Conference, 13 January 1779, WW 14:3–12.
22. GW to Joseph Jones, 31 May 1780, WW 18:453; GW to Fielding Lewis, 6 July 1780, WW 19:131. On the same theme see WW 17:425–28; 18:207–11; 21:213–16, 318–21.
23. Circular Letter to the States, 26 August 1779, WW 16:173–74, for the initial effort to appeal to state governments.
24. This character sketch is primarily based on the research done for my biography His Excellency: George Washington (New York, 2004). The scholarship on Washington defies any neat synthesis, but four books strike me as seminal: Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York, 2010); Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (Boston, 1958); Peter Henriques, Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington (Charlottesville, Va., 2006); and Don Higgenbotham, ed., George Washington Reconsidered (Charlottesville, Va., 2001).
25. Ellis, His Excellency, 73–74, for the instructions to his manager at Mount Vernon.
26. GW to Burwell Bassett, 19 June 1775, PWR 1:19–20.
27. On the potency of Washington as a unifying symbol, see Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of a Symbol (New York, 1987).
28. GW to John Armstrong, 10 January 1783, WW 26:26–27.
29. GW to Benjamin Harrison, 4 March 1783, WW 26:184–85.
30. Circular Letter to the States, 8 June 1783, WW 26:483–88.
31. WW 26:492–96.
32. Ellis, His Excellency, 151–57.
33. My thinking on this theme was first prompted by W. W. Abbot’s essay, “George Washington, the West, and the Union,” in Higgenbotham, George Washington Reconsidered, 198–211.
CHAPTER 2: THE FINANCIER AND THE PRODIGY
1. John Witherspoon to Richard Henry Lee, 19 May 1781, LDC 17:250, for the quorum problem. See also Roger Sherman to Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., 15 September 1781, LDC 18:48.
2. Charles Thomson’s Notes of Delegates, 8 August 1782, LDC 19:41–42, for Lee’s role as obstructionist. A nice character sketch of Lee is in Thomas Fleming, The Perils of Peace: America’s Struggle for Survival After Yorktown (New York, 2007), 50–54.
3. Samuel Huntington to The States, 1 June 1781, LDC 17:283–85; see also LDC 17:319–21 and 18:72–79.
4. James Madison’s Observations, 1 May 1782, LDC 18:481–82.
5. Charles Thomson’s Notes of Debates, 27 August 1782, LDC 19:98.
6. JM to TJ, 15 November 1781, LDC 18:205–6. The land claims debate dominated the records of Congress. See JCC 19:99–100, 208–13, 253–64; 20:502, 526, 534; 21:781–84, 1032. See also JCC 21:124–25, for the claims of the Virginia delegation.
7. LDC 18:462–63, for the Butler quotation. See also JCC 22:191–94, for the Vermont debate.
8. E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 109–20, for the currency inflation. The Congress set the rate of dollars to specie at 40 to 1, but the rate kept escalating until it reached 500 to 1.
9. Charles Thomson to RM, 29 June 1781, LDC 17:362; Samuel Osgood to Samuel Holton, 14 May 1782, LDC 18:511–12.
10. JCC 19:311, 421–27.
11. Samuel Huntington to Certain States, 14 May 1781, LDC 17:235. The correspondence among delegates in the spring and summer of 1781 is littered with lamentations about the ballooning debt and depreciating currency.
12. Morris has waited too long for a modern biographer who can recover his stature in the 1780s. He has found him in Charles Rappleye, Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution (New York, 2010). In his introduction, Rappleye mentions my previous work on the founders, noting its failure to give Morris his due. While there are mitigating factors, I plead guilty. Clarence L. VerSteeg, Robert Morris: Revolutionary Financier (New York, 1972), is still useful.
13. Diary, 8 February 1781, PRM 1:8. See the early chapters of Rappleye, Morris, for the controversy over Morris’s purported privateering.
14. Benjamin Franklin to RM, 26 July 1781, PRM 1:5.
15. RM to Philip Schuyler, 29 May 1781, PRM 1:92–93.
16. This character sketch is based on Rappleye, Morris, and my reading in MP.
17. On the concept of credit in a capitalistic economy, see James Grant, Money of the Mind (New York, 1992). See also Thomas K. McCraw, The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin and Other Immigrants Forged a New Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), 56–73.
18. RM to Benjamin Harrison, 15 January 1782, PRM 4:32.
19. JCC 22:1186–87; PRM 1:83.
20. RM to Benjamin Franklin, 13 July 1781, PRM 1:283.
21. RM to Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., 31 July 1782, PRM 6:133; RM to Governors, 19 October 1781, PRM 3:83.
22. RM to Governors, 27 July 1781, PRM 1:396.
23. RM and Richard Peters to GW, 13 August 1781, PRM 2:50–55; Diary, 21 August 1781, PRM 2:73–81; GW to RM, 6 September 1781, PRM 2:205. On the fortuitous circumstances that made victory at Yorktown possible, see Richard M. Ketchum, Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution (New York, 2004), 1–28.
24. Report on the Public Credit, 29 July 1781, PRM 6:36–84; JCC 22:429–47; RM to Gouverneur Morris, 3 April 1782, PRM 4:510.
25. Arthur Lee to Samuel Adams, 6 August 1782, LDC 19:25–26.
26. Lee’s essay, under the pseudonym Lucius, appeared in the Freeman’s Journal in March 1783, available in PRM 7:502–6, 559, 595, 685–89.
27. Rappleye, Morris, 319–26; David Howell to William Greene, 30 July 1782, LDC 18:678–84; David Howell to RM, 31 July–2 August 1782, LDC 18:691–92.
28. RM to Daniel Jennifer, 11 June 1782, PRM 5:379;
Rappleye, Morris, 300.
29. RM to Matthew Ridley, 9 September 1782, PRM 6:552.
30. JM to Edmund Pendleton, 7 February 1782, LDC 18:327.
31. This generalization is based on my reading of MP from August 1782 to March 1783, when he served as a Virginia delegate to the Confederation Congress. Much more will be forthcoming on Madison as his role in the story grows. The best brief character sketch of Madison is in Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early Republic, 1788–1800 (New York, 1993), 79–92.
32. AH to RM, 30 April 1781, HP 2:604–35.
33. RM to AH, 26 May 1781, HP 2:645–46; RM to AH, 28 August 1782, HP 3:152–56; RM to AH, HP 3:166.
34. The character sketch is based on the early chapters of Ron Chernow’s magisterial Alexander Hamilton (New York, 2004) and the first three volumes of HP.
35. The quotation is from AH to Edward Stevens, 11 November 1769, HP 1:4.
36. HP 2:649–52.
37. HP 2:669–74.
38. HP 3:103.
39. Resolution Calling for a Convention of the States to Revise and Amend the Articles of Confederation, 20 July 1782, HP 3:110–13. See JCC 23:476; 24:285; 25:523, for the fate of Hamilton’s resolution.
40. GW to James McHenry, 12 September 1782, WW 25:151.
41. HP 3:243–45; PRM 7:248–50, for an editorial note on the meeting with McDougall; JCC 24:291–93.
42. The standard account is Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Beginning of a Military Establishment in America (New York, 1975), 17–39. See also the scholarly article by Kohn, “The Inside History of the Newburgh Conspiracy: America and the Coup d’État,” WMQ 27 (1970): 187–220. Rappleye, Morris, 331–38, makes a persuasive case that Robert Morris was not the chief instigator, Gouverneur Morris was.
43. AH to GW, 13 February 1783, HP 3:254.
44. Remarks on the Revenue and the Situation of the Army, 20 February 1783, HP 3:264.
45. GW to AH, 11 March 1783, HP 3:286–87; GW to AH, 4 April 1783, HP 3:315–16.
The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 Page 26