Friday, November 25, 2016

An Address to the People of the State of New-York, on the subject of the Federal Constitution, Part V: an Imperfect Union

            Lest anyone out there in Internet Land get the idea that John Jay was wholly and unequivocally a manipulative, fearmongering demagogue, let's now shift the focus of this series towards the many and various wise, prudent, and highly cogent arguments he put forward in his 1788 Address. After all, though Jay was a human being – and thus capable of allowing his less-charitable impulses to overpower his sense of integrity – he was also exceptionally intelligent, and insightful, and, at heart, a dedicated public servant. Consequently, while he was sometimes willing to address his fellow countrymen in less-than-entirely-truthful terms, he also just as often offered them questions and arguments which constructively contributed to the ongoing political discourse of the American Founding. Some of these instances almost exclusively address the particular context of the late 18th century – by allowing contemporary Americans to see their situation more clearly – while others arguably transcend the circumstances in which they were presented and speak to ideas or concepts that are as relevant at the dawn of the 21st century as they were in 1788. Examples of each of these two categories of insight will be examined herein, beginning with the former.

            In attempting to convince his fellow countrymen to adopt a wholly new species of national government, Jay doubtless realized that one of the first obstacles to be addressed was how and why the existing national government under the Articles of Confederation was no longer sufficient. Indeed, when one considers how many critics of the proposed constitution made a point during the ratification debate of arguing that the contemporary national administration needed only to be reformed rather than replaced, and that the stated purpose of the Philadelphia Convention was to do just that, failing to address the deficiencies in the Articles would surely have worked against the efforts of Jay and his Federalist cohorts. Jay’s 1788 Address accordingly attempted to tackle that very issue as early as its seventh paragraph.

The great flaw in the Articles, Jay asserted, lay in the context from which it emerged. In the throes of a bloody war with Great Britain, the American people discovered a unity of purpose in the late 1770s which they had not formerly known. This unity, however, was not necessarily the product of reason and deliberation as much as it was a reaction to equal parts fear and hope. Consequently, the national administration which took shape during the war – Congress under the Articles of Confederation – was built upon a somewhat tenuous and ill-conceived foundation. Jay portrayed this flaw premise as a misconception on the part of the men who first drafted the Articles in 1777. “Accustomed to see and admire [,]” he wrote,

The glorious spirit which moved all ranks of people in the most gloomy moments of the war, observing their steadfast attachment to Union, and the wisdom they so often manifested both in choosing and confiding in their rulers, those gentlemen were led to flatter themselves that the people of America only required to know what ought to be done, to do it.

This fallacy manifested itself, Jay continued, in the weakness of the national government under the Articles as compared to the objectives it set for itself. Congress may have claimed a right to legislate for the various states, but it had no power to enforce the regulations its members approved. At “the most gloomy moments of the war,” as he put it, the power of enforcement may not have been necessary – united by shared struggles and shared loss, the American people happily obeyed Congress, their collective source of strength and solidarity – but the war could not, and did not, continue indefinitely. Without the external inducement to cooperation provided by the presence of marauding British armies, Congress under the Articles had neither reason to expect nor means to induce obedience to its dictates.  This, Jay wisely observed, was a problem.

            Men, he reminded his readers, were perfectly capable of hearing and considering well-intentioned advice, but historically they were more likely to ignore it than conform to it. Absent any punitive rationale to acquiesce to decisions made on their behalf, there consequently seemed to him little reason to expect that his fellow Americans would be any different. The aforementioned architects of the Articles, Jay accordingly surmised, “Seem not to have been sensible that mere advice is a sad substitute for laws; nor to have recollected that the advice even of the allwise and best of Beings, has been always disregarded by a great majority of all the men that ever lived.” Working amidst the heightened emotional context of the Revolutionary War, with its trials and its triumphs, this fact may not have been clear. As the post-war years had demonstrated, however, Congress under the Articles was ill-suited to corral states whose independence was secured – i.e. no longer under threat of invasion – and whose economic priorities often clashed. This was true domestically, in terms of regulating trade between the various states, as well as internationally, as it related to the foreign relations of the nascent United States of America. Indeed, as he expanded upon in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh paragraphs of his 1788 Address, the inability of Congress under the Articles to carry on a robust foreign policy seemed of particular concern to Jay, career diplomat that he was.

            “Prior to the revolution [,]” he began in paragraph nine, “we had little occasion to inquire or know much about national affairs, for although they existed and were managed, yet they were managed for us, but not by us.” Americans, he continued, had accordingly grown accustomed to focus their intentions solely on their particular domestic concerns – “our internal legislative business, our agriculture, and our buying and selling,” he explained. The governments formed by the states after independence was declared in July, 1776 were strongly indicative of this tendency, being carefully and deliberately designed to meet every domestic need and concern of their citizens. By comparison, owing to the inexperience of his fellow countrymen with international affairs, Jay found the national government under the Articles tasked with seeing to the foreign relations of the United States to be poorly formed, weak, and unequal to its responsibilities. This, too, presented a significant problem. He explained why in the tenth paragraph by running down a series of contradictions which he perceived between the duties of Congress and the powers it actually possessed. “They may make war,” he said,  

But are not empowered to raise men or money to carry it on. They may make peace, but without power to see the terms of it observed–They may form alliances, but without the ability to comply with the stipulations on their part–They may enter into treaties or commerce, but without power to enforce them at home or abroad–They may borrow money, but without the means of having repayment–They may partly regulate commerce, but without authority to execute their ordinances […]

Perhaps without meaning to, and perhaps in response to fears of replicating the centralized British model of government in America, the authors of the Articles of Confederation had created a national administration that was very good at respecting the sovereignty of the individual states and almost completely deficient at everything else. The result was what Jay perceived as an increasingly severe financial crisis, the likes of which neither the individual states nor Congress under the Articles could hope to avert.

            This crisis, Jay explained in the eleventh paragraph of his 1788 Address, was of a kind Americans had never been forced to confront until the outcome of the Revolution thrust the reins of foreign affairs into their untrained hands. Being now simultaneously responsible for and unable to assert themselves on the world stage against the priorities of more skilled and experienced nations, the United States was steadily losing ground. “Our fur trade is gone to Canada,” he thus observed,

And British garrisons keep the keys of it. Our shipyards have almost ceased to disturb the repose of the neighborhood by the noise of the axe and hammer; and while foreign flags fly triumphantly above our highest houses, the American Stars seldom do more than shed a few feeble rays about the humble masts of river sloops and coasting schooners.

Lacking a means to enforce whatever commercial agreements its agents managed to negotiate, the United States under the Articles of Confederation suffered from a lack of diplomatic respect and a paucity of commercial access. Britain, through its long-established trading companies, had monopolized the North American fur trade, while restriction on shipping to and from its colonies had atrophied American shipbuilding. France and Spain were likewise guilty of disregarding American priorities in pursuit of their own mercantilist commercial objectives. “Although we permit all nations to fill our country with their merchandise,” Jay accordingly observed,

Yet their best markets are shut against us. Is there an English, or a French, or a Spanish island or port in the West-Indies, to which an American vessel can carry a cargo of flour for sale? Not one.

Such treatment, by larger nations against a smaller one, was unjust, and far from what Americans deserved in the aftermath of their hard-fought struggle for independence.

            Jay was, for the most part, correct in his assessment of the weakness of the Articles of Confederation. Whatever the reason – ignorance of what was required, or a purposeful denial of powers deemed dangerous – Congress under its aegis lacked the ability to carry out the foreign policy objectives that comprised the majority of its remit. The American economy had suffered as a result, and would doubtless have continued suffering unless the United States adopted a far more centralized and authoritative foreign policy regime. When one also considers the global conflicts that were soon to erupt – the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1803) and the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) – this would seem doubly the case. French and British commercial policies during this extended series of conflicts – including boycotts, blockades, and the seizure of suspicious shipping – would prove particularly troubling for the burgeoning United States, and it is hard to imagine the nation as it existed under the Articles fielding anything like an effective response.

            That being said, Jay’s characterization of the misleading ease with which the national government functioned during the Revolutionary War is perhaps a little misleading itself. While it is true that Congress was able to provide the necessary cohesion and administrative oversight to see the American states through their struggle with Britain, in spite of setbacks, food shortages, and periods of low morale, Americans were not always prepared to happily obey every request that was made of them. As discussed in previous entries to this series, the relationship between Congress and the state governments during the war was often combative. Indeed, it was thanks in large part to the strong leadership of Continental Army Commander-in-Chief George Washington and the administrative acumen of his aide-de-camp Alexander Hamilton that supplies, munitions, and men were consistently provided. Thus, while granting to Jay that disagreements between the national government and the state government notably increased in the 1780s once the British threat had been dealt with, it nonetheless bears noting that Congress under the Articles was never quite as loved as he portrayed.

Friday, November 18, 2016

An Address to the People of the State of New-York, on the subject of the Federal Constitution, Part IV: the Glorious Past

In addition to stoking the fears and anxieties of his fellow Americans in order to persuade them to adopt a stronger central government, a tactic ostensibly lacking in nobility, John Jay seemed simultaneously willing to cut through the uncertainty of the post-Revolutionary era by appealing to the pride his countrymen felt in their hard-won independence. The Revolution was but a few years distant as of 1788, and the memory of what had been achieved on the battlefield and in the meeting hall continued to reverberate throughout the embryonic political and social culture of the United States. Names like Washington and Franklin were well on their way to becoming household words, and the events of the Revolution itself were quickly developing an almost mythic quality. Jay’s frequent invocation of the Philadelphia Convention and the men who attended in his 1788 Address is very much emblematic of this rapidly developing trend – many of the Convention delegates having served in the Continental Army, in Congress, or in state government during the trying years of 1775-1781, their dedication and selflessness was considered by many to be beyond reproach.

The specific tack that Jay adopted, far from unfamiliar in 21st century American political culture, involved calling to mind the sacrifices of the Revolutionary War, the talents and efforts of members of Congress and the Continental Army, and the general success of the federal union during the earliest period of its existence, all with the intention of drawing favorable connections to the subject being discussed. Given the nearness of the Revolution, and the fact that Jay and many of his colleagues (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, etc.) were among its prime movers, this might seem an unusual avenue of argument. The “cult of the Founders” as it now exists has had over two centuries to develop, during which time the men who created the United States have become something akin to mythological figures. But surely, during their lifetimes, this kind of public deification had not yet taken hold?

Well, not exactly. The Founders of the United States, as I have taken pains to assert in the past, were not always the demigods they have been made out to be. In addition to acting in the capacity of philosophers, statesmen, and war heroes, many of them were also career politicians who went on the attack, and were attacked, as often and as viciously as just about any of their 19th, 20th, and 21st century counterparts. Thomas Jefferson, among the most widely and passionately venerated of his colleagues by subsequent generations, was during his life as much hated as he was loved by the American public. The same could be said, to a greater or lesser degree, of just about any of the major figures in the Revolutionary pantheon. Washington, it is true, was rarely the object of popular scorn, but even he was occasionally seen as the flawed, limited, and imperfect human being he truly was. That being said, the Revolution really was a transformative moment for an entire generation of people. Against steep odds, a collection of backwater colonies had united to wrest their independence from one of the most powerful and sophisticated empires in the world. That their insurrection was a success which led to the creation of the world’s first modern republic imbued the events thereof with a significance and a spirit that Americans who had lived through it, both infamous and obscure, widely celebrated as one of the great achievements in world history. Moreover, because the Revolution was a collective accomplishment – a triumph in which all Americans could claim to share – invoking its memory was a broadly applicable and useful tactic, even as early as the late 1780s.

With this in mind, consider Jay’s abridged recounting of the events of the Revolution, found in the fourth paragraph of his 1788 Address. When faced with Parliament’s stubborn determination to levy and collect taxes in the American colonies, he declared,

They sent Delegates to Congress, and soldiers to the field. Confiding in the probity and wisdom of Congress, they received their recommendations as if they had been laws; and that ready acquiescence in their advice enabled those patriots to save their country.

While admirably succinct, this narration radically oversimplifies the process by which a campaign of civil disobedience and peaceful protest evolved into an armed rebellion. It took time for Congress to gain the trust of the American people, and for its advice and recommendations to achieve their full effect. Matters like war and independence were debated at length, and the decisions that resulted were not always unanimous. Indeed, a sizeable percentage of the colonial population remained loyal to the British Crown, refused to recognize the authority of Congress, and came to regard its edicts as tantamount to treason. As Jay would have it, however, Congress and the American people worked at all times in perfect harmony during the struggle for independence. While this may have been a useful characterization of recent American history in 1788 – a reminder to a people in deep disagreement with one another that they had once achieved great things together – it was not a terribly accurate one.  

This narrative overview also glossed over the often contentious relationship that existed between Congress and the various states during the height of the war years in the 1770s. Far from receiving the recommendations of Congress “as if they had been laws,” the state government often wrangled with the national government over limited war resources like provisions, ammunition, and manpower. The results of these struggles often hit the Continental Army the hardest, leaving them ill-fed and outmanned at critical periods during the conflict with Britain. Men like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton experienced this unfortunate outcome of intergovernmental conflict firsthand during their military service, and become early supporters of strengthening the national government as a preventative measure. Jay, their ally in this endeavor, was almost certainly aware of this dimension of his fellow Federalist’s position. Nevertheless, acknowledging the flaws in the American union’s earliest incarnation would not have helped Jay make his case. Greater unity among the states was what the economic and political turmoil of the 1780s demanded, he argued – unity like that which the states had forged in opposition to British tyranny, and which had carried America to victory and independence. That fact that this unity – pristine and unassailable – hadn’t really existed was perhaps beside the point. Jay, savvy conciliator that he was, doubtless understood that he could prevail upon the nostalgia-infused memories of his audience – their rose-tinted impression of what America had been at the time of its bloody, magnificent birth – to far greater effect than if he attempted to remind them of how problematic maintaining the federal union had really been.

This exhortation for his fellow Americans to recapture their former brilliance continued into the fifth paragraph of Jay’s 1788 Address, now melded with a degree of shame-inducing mawkishness. First, however, came the rather blunt introductory sentence, “That glorious war was succeeded by an advantageous peace.” While, again, many people who had lived through the Revolution and then cast their eyes to Jay’s pro-constitutional pamphlet would likely have agree with this portrayal of its character and outcome, it nonetheless grossly oversimplified an often bloody conflict and the settlement that ended it. To describe the war as “glorious,” for one, glosses over the suffering and indignity borne by any number of those involved. There was little glory to be had, for instance, at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in the winter of 1777/78, when men in service to the Continental Army were forced to eat their horses and the leather of their boots, and died in scores anyway. Nor was there much to celebrate in the fighting retreat Washington’s forces fought from Long Island, New York to Eastern Pennsylvania (August-November, 1776), or in the massacre of surrendering Continental soldiers committed by British and Loyalist forces at the Battle of Waxhaws (May, 1780). Nevertheless, because the war ultimately ended in success for the colonists, and because that success made it possible for the United States of America to sustain its independence, they were likely inclined to either overlook its darker chapters or reframe them as necessary – one might almost say character-building – sacrifices. The truth, though, is that the Revolutionary War was often a near thing and a dear thing – close and costly, it succeeded thanks to foreign aid and good diplomacy as much as the grit, determination, and martial ability of its American participants.   

            Referring to the Treaty of Paris (1783) as an “advantageous peace” represents a similarly selective perception of the post-Revolutionary War settlement, particular in the context of the late 1780s. Under the terms of the treaty, negotiated in part by then-diplomats John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, the United States was required to acknowledge the rightful owners of all properties captured or confiscated from Loyalists during the war and provide for the restitution of the aggrieved parties. Additional provisions also compelled the American federal and state governments to recognize and honor any debts owed (including to British citizens) and refrain from further confiscating any Loyalist properties subsequent to the treaty coming into force. While the American peace commissioners were able to secure a very generous territorial settlement in exchange for these stipulations, certain state governments nevertheless took to ignoring them over the course of the 1780s. Governor of New York George Clinton, for example, rooted his abiding popularity in an ardent dislike of the state’s sizable Loyalist population. By confiscating the estates of Crown-allied landlords he was able to form the basis of an entire post-war social class of small-scale tenant farmers that quickly became his most loyal supporters. Obeying the terms of the Treaty of Paris would have made such measures impossible. Besides New York, many other states refused to return property seized during the war, compensate former owners, or pay off debts to British subjects. Likely this obstinacy was the result of lingering bitterness over causalities suffered during the war, combined with the reality of having to part with property or capital during a period of economic downturn. Often suffering for a lack of hard currency and poor trade prospects, many states were understandably disinclined to give away what little they had to people who had so recently been their enemies.

Britain, meanwhile, seemed to take a similarly dim view of certain provisions of the treaty. Eager to continue trading with its former colonies in America but disinclined to compete for access to markets or customers for their shipping trade, the British Navy continued to prevent American vessels from transporting produce directly to British colonies in the Caribbean. While an economically rational decision, this desire to continuing enforcing some of the basic provisions of the Navigation Acts (1651, 1660, 1663, 1673, and 1696) called into question the sincerity of Britain’s declared recognition of American independence. In addition, though the Treaty of Paris mandated Britain’s loss of a large swath of territory in what is now the Mid-Western United States, British garrisons remained in place at military posts across the region (including at Fort Detroit, Fort Niagara, Fort Ontario, and Fork Makinac). Eager to protect what remained of their North American possessions in the Great Lakes region, Britain explained this clear contravention of the post-Revolutionary War settlement by claiming that the area was too chaotic to leave unattended (as the Americans surely would, in light of their financial difficulties), that they needed time to dispose of some of their assets before relinquishing control, and that their continued presence in the territory was punishment for Americans’ unwillingness to honor some of their own treaty obligations. In light of this seemingly calculated disregard, and the aforementioned American stubbornness, few observers in the 1780s would seem to have considered the Treaty of Paris a particularly “advantageous peace.”

Nonetheless, John Jay was doubtless inclined to characterize the Revolutionary War and the peace settlement that followed as “glorious” and “advantageous,” respectively, because those descriptors aided him in crafting a narrative of triumph, loss, and redemption. The United States, as he portrayed it, emerged from its baptism of fire a strongly united and blessed country. In spite of the forces arrayed against their success, Americans had forged an indelible bond with one another and successfully brought low the British lion. Thereafter, still infused with the spirit of unity and brotherhood, America had negotiated for itself a place in the world, recognized by Britain and ready to meet the other nations of the world as an equal partner. That this magnificent train of successes had given way in the 1780s to economic hardship, political tension, and interstate conflict was a tragedy to be deeply lamented. “The spirit of private gain expelled the spirit of public good,” Jay accordingly declared in the fifth paragraph of his 1788 Address, “And men became more intent on the means of enriching and aggrandizing themselves, than of enriching and aggrandizing their country.” The “men” and “private gain” he cast a jaundiced eye towards seemingly included the state politicians he believed were eager to keep the federal government weak in order to maintain the untrammelled authority of their own positions, as well as their merchant allies who benefited from the inability of Congress to regulate American trade. Jay evidently believed that their efforts had weakened and impoverished the nation, to the detriment of all those whom the Revolution had liberated, empowered, and given hope.

As a case in point, Jay next provided an example of the depths to which his country had sunk – an almost comically pathetic hard-luck story like something out of the Great Depression. “Hence the war-worn veteran,” he wrote,

Whose reward for toils and wounds existed in written promises, found Congress without the means, and too many of the States without the disposition, to do him justice. Hard necessity compelled him, and other under similar circumstances, to sell their honest claims on the public for a little bread.

While many men who served in the Continental Army did in fact suffer this exact fate once hostilities came to a close and they attempted to collect the salary they were owed, Jay’s depiction of the slighted veteran was likely intended to be allegorical as well as literal. As a symbolic representation of the United States, the Continental soldier had once been a hero, draped in glory and awash in the approbation of his countrymen. In short order, however, due to the indifference and selfishness of those he had served, he had been reduced to the status of derelict. If only his fellow Americans vested their faith in him again – if only they remembered the obligation they owed him, as they owed the federal union for their independence – he might reclaim the heroic mantle he so rightly deserved.

            Without naming any names – for indeed, to invoke something is to give it power – does not this narrative of greatness, loss, and restoration bear an eerie similarity to certain very common themes in contemporary American political discourse? Wasn’t Jay attempting, to some degree, to mythologize recent American history and perpetuate a sense of loss in an effort to spur change? In short, could it not be argued that he was effectively asking his countrymen to help make America great again?

As a shudder runs down your spine, I beg you please to hear me out.

Without necessarily concluding that any who utilize tactics of this kind are following in the hallowed footsteps of the Founders, of that Jay was no better than the populist, glad-handing politicians of the modern era, it once again bear remembering that many of the men who gave birth to the United States of America were, among others things, career politicians themselves. While the intelligence, prudence, and insightfulness of these men are not to be doubted or diminished, it must at once be clearly understood that they were as capable as anyone who takes it upon themselves to shape public opinion of occasionally embracing expediency over integrity. Alexander Hamilton, to cite a notable example, was brilliant man, and hardworking, and ambitious – in spite of some of his less popular ideas about the nature of government, overall a dedicated disciple of American republicanism. That being said, it may have been the case that during a threatened coup by discontented and underpaid members of the Continental Army in March, 1783, Hamilton simultaneously encouraged the leaders of the mutiny while counselling Congress to pressure the states for easier access to tax revenue. In that moment, in spite of the threat to America’s fledgling republican government ostensibly presented by a military insurrection, Hamilton determined that the greater threat lay in not taking advantage of the situation by strengthening the authority of Congress.

Jay’s rhetorical construction of the ratification debate as an opportunity to regain lost glory, while perhaps not as dire as Hamilton’s apparent willingness to undermine his government in order to strengthen it, likely sprung from the same basic impulse. Taking for granted that he understood how complicated the Revolution had actually been – how costly, and how un-glorious in its various aspects – Jay chose to tap into and promote the emerging popular mythology of the American Founding almost certainly because he believed doing so would give him the best chance of convincing his countrymen to support the proposed federal constitution. The United States was in a bad way, he knew better than most – the economy was in a slump, many states refused to cooperate with Congress, and the nation’s international reputation was virtually non-existent. Some manner of drastic solution was necessary, Jay and his cohorts believed, and in time to prevent the states from further degenerating into mutual antagonism and formal separation. Whether this position accurately reflected the facts of life in the United States remains a topic of lively debate; plain enough, however, was that men like John Jay, James Madison, and George Washington endorsed it and acted accordingly. They did not perhaps always act as valiantly as they might have wished, or as they might have pretended, but their intentions were hardly sinister. 

All the same – I don’t care how many times I repeat myself – it is extremely important to be able to recognize these less-valiant actions for what they were. By portraying the Revolution as the unassailable pinnacle of America’s glory, the years that followed as the demise of that glory, and the Constitution as a means of recapturing it, Jay was perpetuating a myth. Perhaps the great irony of this approach – Jay reacting to the strained circumstances of the post-Revolutionary era by perpetuating a false image of squandered glory – is that Jay was likely more aware than the majority of his fellow Americans that the Revolution itself was a relatively tenuous affair. Rather than having fallen from grace, the states had merely lost the common foe whose presence had proved just distracting enough to mask the anxieties that bubbled below the surface during those first shaky years of independence. In truth, the Revolutionary War was not glorious, the peace that followed was not particularly advantageous, and the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, though many had served their country with distinction, were not wholly above reproach. Those of the proposed constitution’s critics who had served in Congress, or the Army, or their state assembly during the Revolution doubtless knew this themselves, and would have eagerly castigated Jay for such emotionally manipulative tactics if given the chance. The question of whether or not to adopt a new form of government for the United States of America was about as important a decision as any American had ever, or perhaps would ever, take part in. Reason was called for, not rank sentimentality. Tweaking the pride of a people who had just succeeded in a tremendous struggle against an implacable foe betrayed no greater intellectual honesty that appealing to their fear or anxiety.

This may seem like a rather harsh judgement to place at Jay’s feet, but it is an apt one. An American politician in the 21st century who attempted to introduce and perpetuate a similar narrative for the purpose of stirring up the emotions of the voting public would be no more guilty than the author of An Address to the People of the State of New-York of misleading people while asking for their trust. The difference between them, in terms of popular perception, is that modern politicians are expected to lie while the Founders are expected to be perfect. This, I most strongly assert, is a false contrast. Sometimes the Founders lied. Sometimes the Founders misled the public. Sometimes the Founders made a situation seem worse than it was, or better than it was, in pursuit of their professional objectives. This revelation should not diminish their significance, pollute their wisdom, or hinder the ability of subsequent generations to find inspiration in their words and deeds. It should, however, promote a degree of caution in those who do seek to draw encouragement from the Founders to read their words carefully, think about the context in which they were written, and never, ever assume that they were anything more than human.

Friday, November 11, 2016

An Address to the People of the State of New-York, on the subject of the Federal Constitution, Part III: the Uncertain Future

His propensity for subtle phrasing aside, Jay was not averse to deploying more blatantly manipulative rhetoric while attempting to convince his fellow New Yorkers that the proposed constitution was worthy of their considered approval. Concerned, perhaps, that certain segments of the population could not be roused to support drastic change unless propelled by a sense of dire urgency, Jay’s 1788 Address accordingly contains not a few examples of plain and simple fearmongering. These instances, though a far cry from the kind of hysterical doomsaying that has characterized moments of peak tension in the history of the United States (the McCarthyism of the mid-1950s, for example), do seem rather obviously calculated to offer vague speculation rather than any substantial analysis of the dangers faced by the nascent American states. Whether that speculation took the shape of a potential dissolution of the federal union, a state of mutual antagonism between the various dis-united states, the threat of foreign intervention in American affairs, or the diplomatic and commercial marginalization of the American republic, Jay’s intent was clearly to rouse the latent anxieties of his countrymen, doubtless with the hope that their imaginations would then conjure phantoms far more horrible than any he could hope to describe.

Some of Jay’s attempts at emotional exploitation were, then as now, relatively easy to dismiss. In the twenty-seventh paragraph of his 1788 Address, for example, he conspicuously made note that,

There has lately sprung up a sect of politicians who teach and profess to believe that the extent of our nation is too great for the superintendence of one national Government, and on that principle argue that it ought to be divided into two or three.

Advocates of this position, he continued, would prove themselves particularly destructive if any were sent, knowingly or unknowingly, to a second national convention for the purpose of revising the existing draft constitution. Taking this into account, Jay believed it sensible to simply proceed with the document produced by the Philadelphia Convention rather than run the risk of inviting the dissolution of the United States of America. “Well knowing that the institution of any national Government,” he said of these supposed intriguers, “would blast their favourite system, no measures that lead to it can meet their aid or approbation.” Conscious that the federal union was regarded with affection by many Americans in the 1780s – in consequence both of its role in their political independence and its general inability to interfere in the domestic affairs of the various states – Jay no doubt believed that the threat of its destruction would go some way towards rallying support for its reform under the Constitution.

            As it happens, there was almost no evidence that any politicians in state or federal service actively supported the formal dissolution of the United States. Granted, some contemporary reports indicate that rumors to that end were in circulation in the 1780s, and no doubt the concept of the division of the United States into several smaller confederations was a matter of legitimate discussion in some circles. Contemporary political wisdom, particularly as imparted by French philosopher the Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), held that the republican form of government ceased to function adequately when applied to a sufficiently large swath of territory. Stable republics, Montesquieu and his adherents argued, provided citizens with easy access to their government; separate people from their magistrates by a great distance (the nearly eight hundred miles between Savannah, Georgia and the seat of Congress in New York City, for instance) and the inevitable result was corruption and inefficiency. The Articles of Confederation seemed to skirt this deficiency by being generally incapable of actually governing the expanse of territory represented by the various delegates to Congress. The states, under the auspices of the Articles, essentially function as independent republics, none of which were sufficiently large to warrant concern.

            That being said, it may well have occurred to some concerned observers of the national government under the Articles that a division of the union presented a reasonable way forward. If, indeed, the authority of Congress over the states was so lightly felt, why continue to perpetuate it? Furthermore, if certain groups of states – in merchant-dominated New England, say, or the slave-economy South – wished to pursue reforms of the Articles that were mutually incompatible, there would surely have appeared no little wisdom in simply allowing these cohorts to go their separate ways. The union had served its purpose well by binding together thirteen disparate colonies in pursuit of an objective no one of them could have achieved alone, and it fully warranted the affection of the American people as a result. That being said, a very pragmatic line of thought doubtless suggested to certain segments of the American population in the 1780s that the United States need no longer be united. It was, however, another matter entirely to suggest that this strain of opinion whose existence was largely a matter of speculation took the form of a specific party or “sect.” Though Jay contended that “Few are ignorant” of the existence of such a faction within contemporary American political culture, he offered no evidence to support this claim. Indeed, those who made similar arguments in support of adopting the proposed constitution never seemed to invoke anything more substantial than rumour or gossip. Under the circumstances it thus seems possible that Jay and his Federalist colleagues, forced to contend with ingrained attitudes which favored small republics and distrusted large ones, sought to conjure a sinister straw-man whose position, if not clear, was clearly conspiratorial. Whether or not this tactic was a success with its intended audience, critics of the proposed constitution have been recorded as expressing disbelief and disdain at the suggestion that any such conspiracy actually existed. To their credit, there remains no solid evidence in support of the fear that Jay willingly sought to call forth.

Other phantoms that Jay sought to summon in his 1788 Address were not so easy to dispel. In the twenty-eighth paragraph therein, following his reference to the supposed conspirators eager to break up the federal union, Jay wrote that it remained uncertain, “Whether or not any and what foreign influence would, on such an occasion, be indirectly asserted, nor for what purposes–delicacy forbids an ample discussion of this question.” Despite his resort to ambiguity – claiming that “delicacy forbids” further detail was doubtless intended to mask an absence of the same while promoting anxious speculation – Jay wasn’t wrong to suggest that foreign entities had an interest in the future of the United States. Geographic proximity and economic necessity made continued European involvement in American affairs all but inevitable. Though the Revolutionary War had culminated in Britain’s recognition of American independence, the nation’s diplomatic and security situation remained somewhat precarious. Britain remained in possession of a large portion of the continent along the eastern seaboard and in the vulnerable west. And while British authorities were desirous of maintaining a viable trade relationship with their former colonial brethren, they were in no way amendable to allowing America to dictate its terms. One practical symbol of this sense of diplomatic superiority was Britain’s hesitance in the 1780s to immediately vacate a series of military posts in the Great Lakes region in spite of being obliged to do so under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1783). While Britain argued that it needed time to liquidate its assets in the region before departing – a claim which may, in fact, have been entirely valid – military and political authorities in the United States were hardly lacking cause to perceive the situation as an ongoing threat.

When, in 1763, George III (1738-1820) issued a royal proclamation that forbade European settlement beyond a boundary extending south from Quebec to Georgia, land speculators and American colonists reacted with outrage. Angered that Britain had determined to limit their territorial expansion and economic prospects, they accordingly began to petition British authorities to have the limitation removed. While this campaign did ultimately result in a series of British/Native-American treaties being signed between 1768 and 1770 that opened up a large portion of the proscribed territory to continued settlement, colonial resentment over Britain’s apparent intentions continued to fester. This resentment notably manifested itself in the polemics rendered by a number of anti-British commentators writing during the 1770s, like Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and Ethan Allen (1738-1789). Their writings often made specific reference to what they perceived as Britain’s attempt to constrain its American citizens out of fear of being eventually eclipsed by the latter’s superior resources. Because free access to plentiful land was in many ways one of core tenets of the colonization of Britain no doubt appeared to these writers as having fundamentally invalidated its claim to sovereignty over the same. While the Revolutionary War effectively settled who was sovereign over what, a continued British military presence in the inland West after 1783, doubtless appeared to some in the United States as a renewed attempt to limit the growth and development of the American people. Suspicions to this end were doubtless aided by British authorities’ insistence on continuing to sell weapons and ammunition to the Native tribes that considered the Great Lakes region their ancestral homeland. Raids on American settler communities committed by these tribes were frequent in the latter half of the 1780s, and though Britain disclaimed any direct involvement it unsurprisingly seemed to American authorities that the Natives were acting as tools of British policy.

Though an ally of the United States during its aforementioned struggle for independence, Spain’s presence in the vast and largely unexplored territory of Louisiana – comprising over eight hundred thousand square miles – also provided ample cause for concern to those intent on securing America’s western frontier. In the years following the Revolution, Spanish New Orleans had proven itself essential to settler-farmers in the western United States who needed a viable port from which to ship their produce but were too far distant from East Coast cities like New York, Philadelphia, or Boston. When Spain decided to close New Orleans to American shipping in 1784, it naturally provoked disquiet among the effected communities. The western portions of states like Virginia and North Carolina (soon to become Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively) were among the fastest growing in the young republic, with burgeoning populations and ample farmland. And because the United States was a mainly agricultural nation during this period, with produce as its main export, the ability to ship yearly harvests to foreign climes was instrumental to the continued growth of the American economy. Without making any statements to the effect, or being so bold as to maintain a military presence in territory it had agreed was not under its authority, Spain’s decision in the mid-1780s to effectively restrict American commerce therefore denoted a fairly obvious hostile intent toward the nascent United States. This hostility was further substantiated once Congress tasked its former Minister to Spain, one John Jay, with seeking the reopening of the port. Finding his Spanish counterpart, Ambassador Don Diego de Gardoqui, either unwilling or unable to lift the restriction, Jay instead secured American access to Spain’s West Indian colonies in exchange for a twenty-five year Spanish monopoly on navigation of the Mississippi. The resulting Jay-Gardoqui Treaty (1786) was widely reviled, failed to receive the ratification of Congress, and left the “New Orleans question” an open one until the mid-1790s.

As well as using their possession to New Orleans to strangle the American economy, Spain was also engaged in more direct attempts to sabotage the American experiment in republican self-government. In 1786, former Continental Army officer James Wilkinson (1757-1825), then a resident of far western Virginia, secretly swore an oath of allegiance to the Spanish Crown and agreed to promote Spanish interests in the American West, up to and including the annexation of Kentucky by Spain. He was granted a sizable pension in exchange, provided his newfound Spanish masters with regular intelligence, and publically opposed the new federal constitution. Thanks to a combination of ineptitude and extreme good fortune Wilkinson was never able to succeed in carrying out his various intrigues, while also managing to avoid outright exposure and condemnation. Accused of treason on multiple occasions, and more than once passed up for prestigious commands as a result of his spotty record, multiple inquires nevertheless cleared him of any wrongdoing. Indeed, it was not until the 1850s that correspondence was unearthed which confirmed Wilkinson’s role as Spain’s so-called “Agent 13.” In the meantime he had served, in spite of the distrust he often inspired, in a number of high offices, including stints as Governor of the Louisiana Territory (1805-1807), Senior Officer of the United States Army (1796-1798, 1800-1812), and United States Envoy to Mexico (1816-1825).

It remains a matter of speculation how widely Wilkinson was suspected during his lifetime, or if indeed he was the only American citizen in the pay of the Spanish government during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. None of the accusations levelled at the turncoat officer managed to stick, and his treasonous reputation did not seem to become a matter of public record until at least the 1790s. Jay, owing to his position as Minister of Foreign Affairs, may have been aware of some manner of impropriety taking place on the nation’s western frontier, but it’s equally possible that he had no more concrete information on the subject than the members of his audience. Therefore, though Spain absolutely did harbor ill intentions towards the United States at the time his 1788 Address was published, Jay likely only have possessed the vaguest notion of what those intentions truly were. Granting that his experience attempting to negotiate the abortive Jay-Gardoqui Treaty doubtless provided a strong indication of Spanish antipathy, there remained little tangible evidence either he or anyone else could point to that one of America’s nearest European colonial neighbors actively sought the country’s dissolution. Then again, Jay made no claim to the contrary. In attempting to alert his countrymen to the potential dangers posed by foreign interference in American affairs, his 1788 Address tended more toward vague insinuation than outright alarm.

At the moment its citizens were making a careful consideration of an entirely new form of government, the United States indeed faced a number of foreign threats to its trade, economy, and internal cohesion. British soldiers remained stationed in the western reaches of the burgeoning republic, putting a brake on settlement and encouraging continued warfare between settler communities and local Native tribes. At the same time, former ally Spain was in the process of denying the United States an outlet for its commerce and seeking to separate some far-west portion of the federal union from its eastern core. The danger presented by these European intrigues was very real, and the American public would have done well to be informed of their specific circumstances and their probability to cause significant harm. This, however, Jay did not do. Instead, he determined only to vaguely hint at the possibility that foreign powers posed a threat to the United States and its future prospects. “Nor can we be certain,” he wrote, “whether or not any and what foreign influence would […] be exerted, nor for what purposes [.]” There is no conviction in this statement. It neither confirms nor denies the existence of a foreign threat to the United States, instead merely suggesting that one might, in some form and in some quarter, be looming. Lacking any further information, what conclusion were Jay’s readers most likely to draw? Whatever real threats the United States was facing at that moment in its history, the chimeras capable of being summoned by a people ill-informed and roused to fear doubtless exceeded them in their power to spur men to action.

Perhaps the closest Jay’s 1788 Address came to illustrating some of the specific dangers posed by maintaining the national government under the Articles of Confederation was in its thirtieth paragraph. Addressing those among his countrymen who wanted to call a second constitutional convention, Jay cautioned that further delay would only serve to expose the American people to greater risk. “Let them consider whether we ought,” he wrote,

By continuing much longer in our present humiliated condition, to give other nations further time to perfect their restrictive systems of commerce, to reconcile their own people to them, and to fence and guard and strengthen them by all those regulations and contrivances in which a jealous policy is ever fruitful.

While lacking in detail, the basic premise of this passage – that the United States under the Articles was at a disadvantage compared to its more centralized and well-established economic rivals – was sound. Great Power politics in the late 18th century remained dominated by mercantilist economic thought – a basic understanding of material wealth as finite and an ensuing need to monopolize as much of it as possible. To the mercantilist way of thinking, the purpose of colonies was to concentrate as much gold and silver in the hands of the mother country as possible while excluding of rival empires. Under British rule, the American colonies had both benefited and suffered as a result of mercantilist thinking – though they enjoyed a stable market for their produce, they were also forced to trade only with Britain, discouraged from developing indigenous manufacturing, and punished for attempting to trade with the colonies of other European powers.

Though the Revolution had severed any formal economic and political ties between the United States and Great Britain, the former remained at a competitive. Owing to the aforementioned history of British mercantilist regulations, America emerged onto the world stage in the 1780s with virtually no manufacturing capacity. Its chief commodities were agricultural – tobacco, wheat, rice, indigo, etc. – and its population had become accustomed to exchanging what they produced for the exotic comestibles – tea and sugar, chief among them – and manufactured goods that being a part of the British Empire had historically provided. Once independence, they were faced with the necessity of negotiating for access to the markets of European powers whose base economic priority was almost universally to maximize exports and minimize imports. Because the United States also lacked, under the Articles of Confederation, any means to enforce the trade treaties it actually managed to secure, the young republic was left particularly vulnerable to economic policies and regulations it had no power to shape and limited means to resist. Devoid of hard currency, indebted, and economically depressed, the U.S. nonetheless remained dependent on establishing mutually beneficial trade relationships with foreign powers in spite of the often ruthless economic priorities of its potential trading partners. 

In short, European powers like Britain, France, and Spain had every reason to want to trade with the United States in the years following the Revolution and almost no reason to be particularly charitable in the process. The United States in the 1780s possessed fertile land, productive farmers, virtually no means to provide for all the domestic needs of its people, and hardly any navy to speak of – to mercantilist thinking, a prize lamb awaiting the shears or the butcher. Unless or until it managed to strengthen its trade policy – chiefly by ensuring that the treaties it signed would be enforced upon all of its constituent states – Jay’s assessment in his 1788 Address of his nation’s economic prospects would likely have remained an accurate one. That being said, his evident disinclination to go into anything like the detail just here provided speaks once again to his calculated intentions. It would not, after all, have taken a great expanse of words for Jay to explain to his readers why he believed their economic prospects were so precarious. Nor would it have required an exhaustive effort to illustrate the ways in which the proposed constitution would have remedied their situation. There were valid points to be made on both counts, and Jay’s fellow New Yorkers would surely have been enriched for having heard them.

As the conclusion of the thirtieth paragraph of his 1788 Address clearly demonstrated, however, Jay was less interested in informing his readers than he was in motivating them to vote a certain way. “Are we certain,” he asked his countrymen,

That our foreign creditors will continue patient and ready to proportion their forbearance to our delays? Are we sure that out distresses, dissentions and weakness will neither invite hostility nor insult? If they should, how ill prepared shall we be in defence! without Union, without Government, without money, and without credit!”

Once again, the phrasing Jay deployed seems purposefully non-specific. “Hostility” could conceivably refer to anger or antagonism in any number of different contexts, from diplomacy, to trade, to conventional warfare. “Defence” made things no clearer – defence against spiteful economic policies, or diplomatic slander, or military invasion? Perhaps Jay intended his audience to read every possible meaning into his words, in spite of the varying likelihoods of the outcomes they portended. In 1788, the United States did indeed owe multiple millions of dollars to a number of foreign lenders. France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic alone owned something on the order of ten million dollars of American debt, and themselves owed hundreds of millions of livres, reales, and guilders, respectively. Accordingly, these European nations had a great deal to lose by not getting paid in a timely and consistent manner. France in particular had spent over one billion livres (roughly the equivalent of eleven billion U.S. dollars in 2015) on its share of the war with Britain. Lacking a sophisticated national financial framework equivalent to the Bank of England, the French could not service this debt very easily and doubtless looked upon the repayment of outstanding loans as a valuable source of revenue.

That being said, none of America’s major debt-holders as of the late 1780s were particularly well-poised to launch military expeditions to recover what they were owed. Though the United States, as Jay aptly pointed out in his 1788 Address, lacking a strong central government, a stable currency, or a viable line of credit, the European nations most likely to attempt to collect on its were little better off. France, as already discussed, owed an astronomical sum to its own creditors, attempting to deal with which ultimately triggered a bloody revolution in 1789. Spain, by comparison, had managed to pay off its debts fairly quickly, though the increase in military spending (from four hundred fifty-four million reales in 1778 to seven hundred million reales in 1779) created budget shortfalls that the government struggled with for a number of years. The Dutch Republic meanwhile sat somewhere between these two extremes – roundly bested by the British in the short Anglo-Dutch War of 1780-1784, their accustomed economic preeminence and military reputation was severely damaged. The traditional ruling class, centered on the House of Orange, absorbed the greatest share of the blame for this unenviable result, and a series of democratic revolts rocked the country until finally quashed by a Prussian military intervention in 1787.

In consequence of the circumstances outlined above, it would not have seemed all that probable for France, Spain, or the Dutch Republic – America’s largest debt-holders as of 1788 – to invade the United States in search of recompense. All three had recently concluded a costly war with Britain, incurred sizeable debts as a result, and spent the better part of the late 1780s grappling with the social and economic consequences. The warning that Jay dispensed in the thirtieth paragraph of his 1788 Address – that the nascent United States was vulnerable to invasion by foreign debt-holders – was therefore more than a little alarmist. The American republic did owe a great deal of money to a number of foreign powers by the time the Revolutionary War concluded in 1783. None of them, however, were in a position to expend the military resources required to invade the newly-liberated nation so soon after exchanging blows with their shared rival, Great Britain. Seeking, in some cases desperately, to pay off the costs they had incurred, it seems doubtful that any of them would have concluded that further military adventurism presented a viable solution. More likely, in the face of unpaid American debt, lenders like France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic would have resorted to raising interest rates on further loans, extracting concessions during trade negotiations, or using their respective control of certain colonial dependencies to put pressure on the United States to service its debts. These actions all would have represented legitimate threats to the future prospects of the American republic, and indeed they may have been some of the hostilities that Jay intended his audience to be mindful of. That being said, the simplicity of phrasing he employed left a great deal to the imagination. Based on the overall tone of the various warnings he had heretofore delivered, it seems likely Jay intended his readers to assume the worst, however unlikely.

Friday, November 4, 2016

An Address to the People of the State of New-York, on the subject of the Federal Constitution, Part II

Hoo-boy. Where to start?

As mentioned previously, a great deal of Jay’s Address relies on rhetoric rather than reason. Instead of arguing strictly in terms of fact and logic about the various ways that adopting the proposed constitution would benefit the citizens of New York, Jay peppered his pamphlet of April, 1788 with emotionally-weighted allusions and leading phrases. While each of them appear innocuous enough on their own, the cumulative effect would seem to be a portrayal of the Constitution’s opponents as either hysterical or corrupt, its supporters as selfless and logical, and its authors as wise, prudent, and trustworthy. The basis for these various interpretations was not observable fact so much as feeling. Rather than rely solely on what could be proven, Jay often resorted to appearance and implication – it wasn’t that his opponents absolutely had an ulterior motive so much as their intentions were not always entirely clear. Jay made use of this ambiguity, the high stakes of the ratification debate, and the reputations of the people involved to gird the fair number of legitimate insights he had to offer with a healthy dose of emotional manipulation. While the latter certainly doesn’t render the former invalid, it is important to be able to recognize when a man like Jay was making a reasonable point and when he was giving his countrymen “the hard sell.”

In the second paragraph, for example, Jay stated,

The people at large always mean well, and although they may on certain occasions be misled by the counsels, or injured by the efforts of the few who expect more advantage from the wreck, than from the preservation of national prosperity, yet the motives of these few, are by no means to be confounded with those of the community in general.

This, in essence, represents a variation on a classic rhetorical device – i.e. the attribution of support for an idea one does not like to a “vocal minority.” In private conversation and public discourse alike, this is a trope that has served well those who aim to weaken the case of someone they disagree with by crediting actual strength to mere perception. Soon after being elected President in 1969, Richard Nixon (1913-1994) deployed another variation on this same tactic when he described his base of support – the socially conservative masses who felt alienated by the liberalism of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations – as a “silent majority.” Jay and Nixon, though separated by over two hundred years, each attempted to alter the terms of the debate they were engaged in by subtly indicating that the apparent strength of their detractors was a matter of perception rather than reality. In Jay’s case, this rhetorical two-step was accomplished by attributing a lack of support for the proposed constitution to “the few who expect more advantage from the wreck, than from the preservation of national prosperity [.]” Being few, they could not claim to represent the majority of their fellow citizens; their motives were their own, and existed fundamentally apart from the hopes and intentions of the “community in general.”

            Another instance of Jay’s use of subtext as a rhetorical tool can be found in the twelfth paragraph of his Address. Speaking of the authors of the proposed Constitution, he admitted that, in spite of that group’s wisdom and collective record of public service, there were those among their critics who believed the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention were moved by, “Impure and improper motives.” Such a judgement, Jay declared, was unthinkable. “Zeal for public good,” he further explained,

Like zeal for religion, may sometimes carry men beyond the bounds of reason, but it is not conceivable, that on this occasion, it should find means so to inebriate any candid American, as to make him forget what he owed to truth and to decency, or induce him either to believe or to say, that the almost unanimous advice of the Convention, proceeded from a wicked combination and conspiracy against the liberties of their country.

While the overt intention of this rather lengthy sentence is fairly obvious – Jay refused to accept that any of his countrymen actually believed the Framers of the Constitution had conspired against their fellow Americans – an analysis of the specific phrasing points to a somewhat less generous sentiment. By first stating flatly that “zeal for public good […] may sometimes carry men beyond the bounds of reason,” Jay seemed to indicate what he felt was behind some of the criticisms levelled at the proposed constitution. It wasn’t reason or logic, both of which he earlier implored his readers to practice, but zeal – synonymous with ardor, passion, or fanaticism – that had moved certain individuals to decry the new federal charter.

By adding that it was “not conceivable” that any of his fellow Americans had become so inebriated by that selfsame zeal as to “forget what he owed to truth and decency [,]” Jay no doubt also intended to intimate that any who really did believe that the Framers had proceeded with nefarious intent had allowed their enthusiasm for the public good to overpower their sense or reason. Rhetorical constructions of this kind are far from uncommon in the realm of public political discourse, in the decorous 18th century as in the informal 21st. Declaring of one’s opponent, for example, “I know you don’t really believe that, because if you did it would demonstrate a shocking lack of patriotism” is generally preferable to simply stating outright, “You demonstrate a shocking lack of patriotism.” The former is insulting, but deniable – the speaker can effectively claim to have spoken well of their opponent. The latter, meanwhile, is direct, unambiguous, and thus quite damning. If Jay had declared that any who suspected the Framers of conspiracy were deceitful zealots, drunk on their own sense of self-righteousness, he may well have exposed himself to unwanted recriminations. The purpose of his Address, after all, was not to draw attention to the sharpness of his own tongue, but to make a strong case in favor of ratifying the proposed Constitution. Blatant insults would likely not have helped achieve this end. That being said, the occasional veiled slight was not uncalled for, if it managed to lessen the potency of an opponent’s argument.

Broad and unverifiable generalizations seemed to be another of Jay’s favored tactics in his 1788 Address. Involving claims so vague in their parameters as to be impossible either to confirm or deny, this manner of strategy was doubtless particularly effective in the absence of population statistics or opinion polling. Within such a context, someone like Jay could claim of the assembly that drafted the United States Constitution, “The Convention concurred with the people, that a national government, competent to every national object, was indispensably necessary [,]” without fear of being directly and decisively contradicted. Found at the beginning of the thirteenth paragraph of his Address, this phrase was no doubt intended by Jay to communicate a sense of casual authority. “The Philadelphia Convention did what the people wanted it to do,” it effectively claimed, doubtless aided by the special significance which seems ever to adhere to the phrase “the people” in American public discourse. Further examination, however, very quickly makes clear how problematic this sort of claim can be.

            It should first go almost without saying that John Jay had virtually no way to accurately gauge the opinion of the American people as of the late 1780s. There was no public polling and the various state governments were almost entirely dominated by landowners, making them at best a misleading measure of public opinion. In addition, it is worth recalling that the circumstances under which the Philadelphia Convention was summoned were somewhat at odds with the role it eventually took on. Though the assembly, once it was finally convened in May, 1787, very quickly turned its attention to drafting a new administrative framework for the United States of America, it was originally summoned for the purpose of reforming the existing government under the Articles of Confederation. The delegates sent to represent the twelve participating states were selected by their respective state legislatures with this specific object in mind, and the proceedings of the convention itself where kept secret from the public until it was adjourned. It would consequently have seemed rather odd for the Philadelphia Convention to have “concurred in opinion with the people” at a time when the general population of the United States had only the vaguest notion of what the delegates were engaged in. Granted, there were those in service of both the state and national governments who declared in the lead-up to the Philadelphia Convention that they were in favor of replacing the Articles. Nevertheless, it is next to impossible to say whether or not they were in the majority among their fellow Americans, Jay’s claim notwithstanding.

It is also worth considering that the phrase “a national government, competent to every national object” is somewhat open to interpretation. While someone like Jay, or Alexander Hamilton, or George Washington were of the stated opinion in the late 1780s that the United States government required a much more robust and centralized structure in order to achieve actual competence, many of their countrymen believed to the contrary that the existing government under the Articles could be made competent by little more than a series of modifications or reforms. Furthermore, there lay between these two extremes a whole spectrum of opinion as to what constituted competence in a national government, which policy areas fell under the rubric of “national objects,” and how the United States could best be placed on the path to stability and prosperity. In truth, public opinion in the United States at the end of the 1780s on the subject of the national government varied widely depending on where a person lived, the nature of their profession, or whether they had served in the Revolutionary War.

The state ratifying conventions amply bore this out, and were far more partisan and contentious as a result. Whereas the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention were chosen by the various state legislatures and were, as a group, well-educated and well-to-do – i.e. a fair representation of the American elite – the men who served in these state conventions were popularly elected and in large part members of the emerging middle class of small-scale farmers and artisans – that is to say, a reasonable cross-section of the general population. While both groups – the national convention on one hand and the state conventions on the other – were ultimately able to arrive at a workable consensus as to the viability of the proposed constitution, the latter often did so accompanied by a great deal more obvious tension. This effectively gave the lie to any hope held out by supporters of the Constitution that the document would be approved by the states with speed and unanimity, as well as to Jay’s claim that “The Convention concurred in opinion with the people [.]” If this was true at all, it was only in the sense that the majority of the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention and the majority of people in the United States probably agreed that some manner of reform was necessary if the national government was to serve a useful purpose. Phrased thusly, however, it comes as little surprise that Jay preferred to characterise the matter as vaguely as he could.

            Jay further attempted to characterize the Philadelphia Convention as having acted in perfect consort with the wishes of the American people in paragraph twenty-two of his 1788 Address. In attempting to paint an image of serene solidarity, he first declared that the delegates had been appointed, “At a time when the States had become very sensible of the derangement of our national affairs, and of the impossibility of retrieving them under the existing Confederation.” This was in spite of the fact that many delegates to the various ratifying conventions clearly stated that they believed the Articles of Confederation were capable and worthy of being salvaged. It is also worth recalling that certain of the states – New York and Pennsylvania chief among them – benefited from the inability of Congress under the Articles to exert its authority over interstate commerce, and so were less likely than others to support an alteration to the status quo. It would thus have been more accurate, though perhaps less persuasive, for Jay to have stated, “When some in the States had become very sensible,” rather than make it seem as though any or all of the state governments had determined that the federal union was in need of wholesale change.

It is also worth recalling that attendees to the Philadelphia Convention were not chosen by the people that Jay appeared to claim they represented. Unlike the delegates to the various state ratifying conventions, who were elected by the voting population of specific counties and towns, the men chosen to participate in the Constitutional Convention were selected by the state legislatures. As a result, while the former could realistically be expected to speak for the interests of the particular communities that chose them, the former were responsible only to the states – and more accurately the state governments – who had seen fit to sponsor their appointment. While recognizing this distinction does not necessarily speak ill of any of the parties involved or their intentions – Orange County, New York and Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania had valid interests to address, as did the governments of their respective states – conflating the two, as Jay appeared to in his Address, is undeniably problematic. By using the word “constituents,” he almost certainly intended to call to mind the voting population of a given state – that is to say, the same people who elected representatives to the various state assemblies. In point of fact, however, these people had no part in choosing who represented them at the Philadelphia Convention. If they had, the entire ratification process would have been unnecessary – having chosen the men who authored the constitution, what purpose would there have been in consulting the general population a second time? After all, laws devised by the people’s representatives don’t require popular approval before they take effect. In consequence, Jay’s assertion that the states, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, and the American people had worked in harmony all along represented a logical fallacy as well as a muddled and confusing characterization of how the Constitution actually came to be. 

            Jay’s 1788 Address notwithstanding, the general population of the United States was unaware during the life of the Constitutional Convention of what precisely its attendees where up to. If they had been – if, for instance, the people of Worcester County, Massachusetts, site of a major confrontation during the abortive Shays Rebellion of 1786, had known that delegates from their state were in the process of drafting a plan for a much stronger federal government – no small portion would more than likely have broken the “silent suspence” Jay attributed to them and raised a loud objection. As the ratification process made clear, the towns of Western Massachusetts, and the counties of Western Pennsylvania and Northern New York, were skeptical, if not openly hostile, towards the prospect of increasing the practical authority of the United States government. Though delegates had been sent to Philadelphia to theoretically represent their interests in the creation of a new charter for the federal union, the revelation of what those delegates had accomplished – the scope and scale of the government they created – came as an unpleasant surprise to many upon the unveiling of the Constitution in September, 1787. The reason for this is fairly obvious; rather than represent the interests of “the people” of the United States, the Philadelphia Convention had represented the interests of the states – i.e. the aggregate of the interests of the general population, filtered through franchise restrictions and political manoeuvring. Jay seemed to wilfully misrepresent this fact in his Address, doubtless in the hope of assuaging any fears that the proposed constitution was being foisted on a people who had no hand in its creation.