CHAPTER

"That Congress have also authority to prohibit for. eigners from fitting out vessels in any port of the United 1790. States for transporting persons from Africa to any for.

eign port."

Such was the termination of this remarkable and very characteristic debate, the first of a series recurring from time to time down to the present day, and constituting, of late years, one of the chief staples of congressional discussion. The report of the select committee had been evidently intended to avoid any occasion for excitement or controversy. Though a certain power over the Af rican slave trade had been claimed for Congress, the right of interfering with slavery as it existed in the states, or even of prohibiting the further importation of slaves prior to 1808, was expressly renounced. The fury, therefore, with which this report had been assailed, and the long and violent debate it had occasioned, were wholly unexpected. This attack, it is to be observed, came almost entirely from South Carolina and Georgia. "The South" spoken of in the debate must be understood as limited to those two states, with the addition, perhaps, of North Carolina, which still admitted the importation of slaves, burdened, however, with a considerable impost, upon the express ground, as stated in the act, that this traffic was of "evil consequence and highly impolitic." A majority of the representatives from Maryland and Virginia evidently leaned to anti-slavery views-a sentiment since greatly modified in those states by the immense domestic slave trade which has sprung up within the last thirty years.

The extreme violence of the Southern members, whose policy it was a policy ever since adhered to-to prevent Congress from taking any action of any sort hostile to slavery, did not fail of a certain effect. All the friends

II.

of the funding system were highly alarmed at this new CHAPTER influx of bitter sectional feeling while that great question still remained unsettled. Though the majority in 1790. favor of the doctrines of the select committee, as to the power of Congress over the slave trade, was very deci sive, yet they shrank from any attempt to give to that doctrine a practical effect. Indeed, the final disposition

made of the report professed to have for its object not so much the vindication of the power of Congress as the appeasing the alarms of the South. The Quakers, however, and other opponents of the slave trade, acting, as they did, under the impulse of a strong moral sentiment, were not to be silenced or quieted by those prudential considerations which operated with such force on Ames and others.

Some further discussion of this question of slavery took place a few days after, on the consideration of a March 26 bill for accepting the North Carolina cession and erecting a government for the ceded territory. One of the conditions of the cession was that Congress should make no regulation tending to the emancipation of slaves. It would be curious to know what was said upon that subject, but of that debate no report exists. The act, as passed, erected the ceded district into the TERRITORY SOUTH OF THE OHIO, to stand upon the same footing, in every respect, except the exclusion of slavery, with the Territory northwest of the Ohio. Of this new territory, coincident with the present State of Tennessee, and of which William Blount was presently appointed gov ernor, the greater part, at this time, was in possession of the Indians. To only two detached portions had the Indian title been extinguished; one of four or five thou sand square miles (the late State of Frankland), the northeast corner of the present State of Tennessee; the

CHAPTER other an oblong tract of some two thousand square miles IL around the town of Nashville, on both sides of the Cum1790. berland River.

March 29.

The funding resolutions coming up in the House, the first and second clauses, declaring that adequate provision ought to be made for the domestic as well as the foreign debt, passed without a division. The third clause, placing the over-due interest on the same level with the principal, was also agreed to by a considerable majority. When the fourth clause was reached—that relating to the assumption of the state debts-a recommitment being moved, it was carried by a majority of two, the position of parties on that question having been reversed by the arrival of the North Carolina delegation. The remaining clauses were also recommitted, and the debate was renewed with as much pertinacity as ever. Bland, the only Virginian who supported the assump tion and he died before the matter was finally settled -in giving his reasons for differing from his colleagues, made some interesting statements. The debt of Virginia amounted to $3,300,000, and the interest had hitherto been paid by the import duties, certificates of interest being receivable in payment. But that was now at an end, and the whole charge, such being the policy now pursued by the Virginia Legislature in matters of taxation, would fall upon the land and negroes. Since the commencement of the Revolutionary war, enor mous emigrations had taken place from Virginia, and were still going on. Nine tenths of the people of Kentucky had emigrated from that state, and more than half of Georgia had been peopled in the same way. The Territory south of the Ohio, the cession of which had just been accepted, had been chiefly peopled from Virginia. Large numbers had emigrated to other states.

Upon

II.

those left behind the payment of the whole debt would CHAPTER fall, though lands, from the great quantity thrown into the market by emigrants, had declined more than sixty 1790. per cent. in value. The tide-water counties, in which the debt was principally held, had suffered extremely during the war from the ravages of the enemy, having lost not less than seven thousand negroes. To these losses were to be added claims for British debts anterior to the war. Yet upon these same counties would the burden of taxation chiefly fall; for, though the weight of wealth lay toward the seaboard, the western counties preponderated in political power.

The

In favor of assumption, Burke dwelt at length on the sufferings, losses, and merits of South Carolina. arguments already urged in its favor were recapitulated by Lawrence, Goodhue, Smith of South Carolina, Hartley, Gerry, Wadsworth, Vining, Sherman, Clymer, and Fitzsimmons. The other side was supported by Jackson, Williamson, Page, White, and Moore, of whom the last assigned as a principal reason why Virginia was opposed to the assumption, that the certificates of the state. debt had passed at a great discount into the hands of the merchants, and that, under the circumstances, the planters thought it unreasonable to be taxed to pay the full amount. Sherman summed up for the assumptionists, to whom White replied, not without allusions to what he understood as threats thrown out during the debate, that if the state debts were not assumed, the Eastern States would secede from the Union. The question being taken, the assumption was lost, twenty-nine to April 12 thirty-one, a decision which drew out from Sedgwick very energetic remonstrances as to the political dangers thereby incurred-remonstrances to which Jackson replied in a tone just as lofty. Gerry moved to refer the

CHAPTER matter to a committee of one from each state, but this

II. motion finally failed. Instead of it, a bill was ordered to 1790. be brought in, founded on Madison's resolution already April 20. mentioned, for expediting and completing the settlement between the Union and the states.

Pending the discussion of the remaining resolutions as to the terms on which the debt should be funded, the question of the state debts was repeatedly reintroduced. Sherman suggested the assumption of certain specific sums for each state, amounting in the whole to nineteen millions three hundred thousand dollars, substantially the same plan adopted in the end. This proposition, and, indeed, the whole policy of assumption, was opposed in an elaborate speech by Madison, who had hitherto refrained from any very active part on this question. Provoked at the pretensions set up by Madison and others of extraordinary efforts on the part of Virginia during the war, Ames moved for a call upon the War Department for the number of men furnished by each state to the Revolutionary armies, a motion vehemently opposed, but carried by a small majority.

After an interval employed in other business, the May 24. Funding Bill being under consideration in Committee of the Whole, Gerry proposed an amendment, very similar to Sherman's, for the assumption of certain specified portions of the state debts. The advocates of assumption took this occasion to reply to the arguments urged by Madison at the end of the former debate, and also to show, from the answer to Ames's call for information, that the alleged superiority of revolutionary exertions on the part of Virginia was by no means a fact. It appeared, indeed, that Massachusetts had furnished more men to the Continental army than all the states together from Delaware southward. Any direct question on Ger