Union and Democracy | Page 9

required
the presence of additional troops. As these forces would be raised
chiefly in New England, they could be employed first to protect
Springfield. Any open avowal of this plan was avoided, however, lest
the insurgents should take alarm and immediately attack the arsenal.
But these plans were wrecked on the reef of financial bankruptcy.
Congress could only supplicate the States for money and borrow what
it might on its expectations. Recruiting went on so slowly that the
rebellion was practically over when two companies of artillery,
numbering seventy-three men each, which had been raised in
Massachusetts, were finally marched to Springfield. All the other
recruits were dismissed. The inefficiency of Congress and its want of
moral influence were self-confessed.
In his famous circular letter of 1783, Washington had spoken of the
times as a period of "political probation." The moment had come for
the United States to determine, said he, "whether they will be
respectable and prosperous, or contemptible and miserable, as a
nation." Three years had now passed and the period of probation
seemed to have ended in the ruin of national hopes. The events of the
years 1786 made a profound impression upon the minds of all
responsible and conservative men. In undisguised alarm, Washington
wrote: "There are combustibles in every State which a spark might set
fire to.... I feel ... infinitely more than I can express to you, for the
disorders which have arisen in these States. Good God! Who, besides a
Tory, could have foreseen, or a Briton, predicted them?" Rightly or
wrongly, men of the upper classes believed that the foundations of
society were threatened and that the State Governments would fall a
prey to the radical and unpropertied elements, unless a stronger Federal
Government were created. "With this idea, they are thinking, very
seriously," wrote an interested observer at the seat of Federal
Government in New York, "in what manner to effect the most easy and
natural change of the present form of the Federal Government to one
more energetic, that will, at the same time, create respect, and secure
properly life, liberty, and property. It is, therefore, not uncommon to
hear the principles of government stated in common conversation.

Emperors, kings, stadtholders, governors-general, with a senate or
house of lords, and house of commons, are frequently the topics of
conversation." There were those who frankly advocated a monarchical
government as the only way of escape from the ills under which
American society was laboring. There is reason to believe that a project
was on foot to invite Prince Henry of Prussia to become the head of a
new consolidated government. The influence of the Order of the
Cincinnati was much feared by friends of republican institutions.
Individually members of the order did not hesitate to express their
impatience with popular government. What was to come out of this
political chaos, no man could tell.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The two most extensive histories dealing with the period of the
Confederation are George Bancroft's History of the Formation of the
Constitution of the United States of America (2 vols., 1882) and G. T.
Curtis's History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the
Constitution of the United States (2 vols., 1854). In the fourth volume
of Hildreth's History of the United States (6 vols., 1849-52), a concise
but rather dry account of the Confederation may be found. More
entertaining is John Fiske's The Critical Period of American History,
1783-1789 (1888). Valuable information bearing on the social as well
as the political history of the times is contained in the first volume of J.
B. McMaster's History of the People of the United States from the
Revolution to the Civil War (7 vols., 1883-1913). More recent histories
of the period are A. C. McLaughlin's The Confederation and the
Constitution, 1783-1789 (in The American Nation, vol. 10, 1905), and
Edward Channing's History of the United States, vol. III (3 vols.,
1905- ). A vigorous narrative of the exploits of the pioneers beyond the
Alleghanies has been written by Theodore Roosevelt, Winning of the
West (4 vols., 1889-96). A more restrained account of the beginnings of
Western settlement is B. A. Hinsdale's The Old Northwest, the
Beginnings of our Colonial System (1899).
CHAPTER II

THE MAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION
Notwithstanding the manifold differences between State and State in
the Confederation, there were everywhere groups of men who
confronted much the same economic conditions. Between the farmer
who tilled his sterile hillside acres in the interior of New England and
the cultivator of the richer soil of the Piedmont in Virginia and the
Carolinas, a greater identity of economic interests existed than the
casual observer would have suspected. The feeling of hostility which
circumstances bred in the followers of Daniel Shays toward the
merchants of Boston was akin to that