Revolution! America – Chapter 8 – The Brick Chronicle

Despite King George III wishing to continue the struggle, Parliament voted against further war efforts in February 1782. In April, peace negotiations began in Paris with representatives present from Britain, France, the United States, Spain, and the Dutch Republic—the latter two having declared war on Britain in 1779 and 1780. No representatives from Native American tribes were invited. In the treaty signed on September 3, 1783, Britain granted all the tribal lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi to the United States.

The British evacuated the last of their troops in America on November 25, 1783, sailing out of New York harbor along with twenty-nine thousand loyalist citizens. Refusing to uphold their agreement in the Treaty of Paris to return emancipated slaves to their American masters, the British settled tens of thousands of former slaves in Canada, the West Indies, and other parts of the world. With the British gone, George Washington and his army made a triumphal re-entry into New York seven years after his ignominious retreat.

With victory, General Washington became a national fixation, a father figure and hero, fêted at every occasion and spoken about with rhapsodic praise. It was reported by his royal portrait painter that King George III once asked what Washington would do after the war. Would he become the head of the army or head of state? When he was told that Washington’s only desire was to retire from public life at his Mount Vernon estate, the king replied, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

Washington resigned his commission as commander in chief on December 23, 1783. The war had taken its toll on his health and had made the fifty-one-year-old look significantly more advanced in years. His eyesight had begun to weaken and he had glasses made. His teeth, which had caused him innumerable problems throughout his adult life, had now nearly all fallen out. Washington set about purchasing nine teeth from slaves with hopes of having a dentist create dentures for him.

Most of the army was disbanded and sent home in 1783 to return to their families and resume their lives. Many came home with permanent wounds, and of course many did not come home at all. More than twenty-five thousand people— 1 percent of the population—died in the war, making it the second most deadly American conflict per capita after the Civil War. A war that killed 1 percent of the US population today would leave more than three million people dead.

Many soldiers were not given timely payment for their service, only vouchers to be redeemed at some future point. Veterans often returned to their untended farms to find their families deep in debt and unable to pay taxes. When courts attempted to confiscate the lands and property of farmers in Western Massachusetts, former militiaman Daniel Shays led more than a thousand armed men in forcibly shutting down local courts and freeing their fellow countrymen from debtors’ prisons.

Once a rabble rouser against authority, Samuel Adams spearheaded the successful suppression of the revolt, composing a Riot Act in the Massachusetts senate that allowed the government to jail suspects without trial. He approved the governor’s deployment of four thousand militiamen to overpower the farmers. “The man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic,” said Adams “should suffer death.” Thomas Jefferson took a different view, writing that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. . . . The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

The first years of the new republic demonstrated to many the inadequacy of the weak government established by the Articles of Confederation. Congress, deeply in debt by war’s end, could not raise revenues nor regulate trade. In nearly all matters, it could make requests or recommendations to the states, but lacked powers of enforcement. In May 1787, state legislatures sent delegates to a convention in Philadelphia to draft a new national constitution. George Washington was coaxed out of retirement to head the convention, while Patrick Henry refused to participate, declaring he “smelt a rat in Philadelphia tending toward the monarchy.”

Indeed, just what form of national government would emerge from the convention was difficult to predict. Alexander Hamilton gave a long speech in favor of establishing an elective monarchy. Worried over putting too much power in the hands of a single man, others suggested an executive branch of government headed by a board of three. Eventually there was consensus for a strong, singular chief executive who would serve a single seven-year term. Later debate led to it being changed to a shorter four-year term, but allowed for unlimited reelection.

With Thomas Jefferson serving as a Minister to France, it would fall to another erudite Virginian deist, the short-statured thirty-six-year-old James Madison, to lay out an overall blueprint for a new government that the convention then modified. The establishment of separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches was rooted in English government and refined by study of the variety of ways the states had restructured their governments since casting off British authority a decade before.

The dysfunctions of the unicameral legislatures—like Pennsylvania’s and the Continental Congress itself—made a two-house legislature widely preferred. A directly elected lower house serving short terms of office would be balanced by an upper house based not on a hereditary aristocracy as in Britain, but on a trust in state legislatures to select their finest men to serve longer terms in the national senate (direct election of senators did not begin until 1913). Contentious debate broke out over how representation would be apportioned among the various states.

A compromise that appeased the smaller states was reached when the Connecticut delegation put forward a plan in which all states would be equally represented in the upper house, while the number of representatives in the lower house would be dependent on each state’s population. For this purpose (and this purpose only), Southern states wanted their slave population counted. Another compromise was reached when it was agreed that, for congressional representation, each slave would be counted as three-fifths of a person.

The absurd hypocrisy of slave owners gathering to protect the natural rights and liberties of mankind was not lost on all the delegates. And yet no steps were taken to end slavery or better the plight of slaves. Rather, clauses were inserted into the constitution expressly forbidding limiting of the slave trade before 1808 and requiring runaway slaves returned to their masters. The decades immediately following the Revolution would see the greatest expansion of slavery in American history.

The Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, and sent to the states for ratification. The first presidential election was held starting December 15, 1788. Only a small minority of the population was allowed to vote. Women, blacks, Native Americans, and most white males without property were barred from the polls. John Adams of Massachusetts was elected vice president, and the unanimous electoral choice for the first president of the United States of America was George Washington, who was inaugurated at Federal Hall in the new national capital, New York, on April 30, 1789.

In September, the First United States Congress put forward ten amendments to the Constitution, which set limits on the government’s power and ensured many personal freedoms not previously made explicit. Also penned by James Madison, they guaranteed the rights of free speech, a free press, the right to bear arms, to be informed of criminal charges, and to a fair and speedy trial; they also guaranteed against unwarranted searches and cruel and unusual punishments. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson announced the successful ratification of the amendments on March 1, 1792.

Washington served two terms as president, refusing to consider a third. John Adams was elected the second US president, serving only a single term, followed by Thomas Jefferson and then James Madison, each serving eight years. John Hancock became the first elected governor of Massachusetts and served until his health rapidly declined in 1793. At his death at age fifty-six, acting governor Samuel Adams declared the day of Hancock’s burial a state holiday, and his funeral was perhaps the most grandiose and extravagant given for any American up to that time.

Patrick Henry served multiple terms as governor of Virginia. He argued against ratification of the Constitution, fearing it put too much power in the federal government. Common Sense author Thomas Paine was awarded $3,000 in 1785 ($73,000 in today’s currency) by the US Congress in thanks for his service to the nation. In the 1790s, Paine would go on to write another pamphlet titled The Age of Reason, which advocated freethinking and reason over revelation and superstition. It became a bestseller in the United States, but earned Paine many enemies for his ridicule of Christianity. When he died in 1809, only six people attended his funeral.

Alexander Hamilton served as the first US Secretary of the Treasury, establishing the government-owned Bank of the United States and becoming head of America’s first political party, the Federalists. The presidential election of 1800 resulted in a tie in electoral votes between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson. It was decided in Jefferson’s favor in the House of Representatives in part by maneuverings by Hamilton. Relations between Burr and Hamilton further soured and, in 1804, Hamilton was shot dead in a duel by the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr.

Lafayette returned from France to the United States in 1784. In what would be their last meeting, Lafayette told George Washington of his purchase of lands in South America to serve as a home for freed slaves. Though he expressed interest and admiration for Lafayette’s project, Washington kept his 317 slaves until his death in 1799. He had willed that they were to be emancipated upon the death of his wife, Martha. Fearing they might take a part in hastening that process along, however, she freed them all one year after Washington’s death.

Traveling from state to state, Lafayette was cheered by crowds and celebrated as a national hero. “May this immense temple of freedom ever stand a lesson to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, a sanctuary for the rights of mankind!” stated the marquis in a farewell address to Congress. “And may these happy United States attain that complete splendor and prosperity that will illustrate the blessings of their government, and for ages to come rejoice the departed souls of its founders.”

Opening Quote

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Opening Quote