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 18^th and early 19^th 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 18^th 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.