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HISTORY 1776-1783] arbitrary power was declared to be absurd. Freedom of the press and of conscience was asserted, and no obstacles to fair and speedy jury trials were to be tolerated. Elections should be free and frequent, and a preference was expressed for short terms of office. The legislature was universally regarded as the most important department of government. Although the principle of the separation of powers was recognized, in eight states provision was made that the executives should be elected by the legislatures, eleven withheld from them the veto, and the states generally provided for a council to advise them. So manifold and important, however, were the restrictions on suffrage that the states were as yet far from being democracies. On the other hand, many wild and impractical ideas were cherished, and there were anarchic tendencies, which were revealed soon after the war and still later, under the influence of the French Revolution.

70. The first draft of the Articles of Confederation between the states was prepared by John Dickinson in the early summer

of 1776 and was reported. The report was debated for some weeks after the issue of the Declaration of Independence. Owing to the pressure of war it was then laid aside until the autumn of 1777. By that time the feeling in favour of state sovereignty had so increased that the impossibility of securing assent to the articles in any form had begun to be feared. But the document was completed and submitted to the states in November 1777, when all were encouraged by the news of Burgoyne's surrender. The system for which provision was made in this document was a “confederacy,” or “firm league of friendship” between the states, for their common defence, security and general welfare. The Congress was to be continued, and was to consist of delegates annually appointed by the legislature of each state and paid by their states. No attempt was made to create an executive for the confederacy, though authority was given to Congress to appoint a council of state which should manage general affairs, especially during recesses of Congress. To Congress various general powers were entrusted, as deciding on peace and war and superintending the conduct of the same, building a navy, controlling diplomatic relations, coining money and emitting bills of credit, establishing post offices, regulating Indian trade, adjusting boundary disputes between the states. The financial powers entrusted to Congress included those of borrowing money and determining necessary expenditures, but not the power to tax. For supplies the general government had to depend on requisitions from the states. The same system also had to suffice for the raising and equipment of troops. Congress could not make its laws or orders effective in any matter of importance. This was simply a continuation of the policy under which the revolution was being conducted. The Americans had thought that the military and financial concerns of the British Empire could be managed under a system of requisitions, and now they were bent upon trying it in their own imperial relations. The control of trade was also practically left with the states, the Americans in this matter failing to live up to the requirements of the British system. The predominance of the states was further ensured by the provision that no votes, except those for daily adjournment, could be carried without the assent of a majority of all the states, and no important measure without the consent of nine states. But a common citizenship was declared to exist, and Congress received authority to establish a court of appeal which might pass finally on all disputes between states. Taken as a whole, the Articles of Confederation would bear favourable comparison with other schemes of their kind, and they fairly represented the stage of development to which the American states had then attained. The defects which existed in them were reflections of the immaturity, political and social, which had always been apparent in the Americans as colonists and which was to characterize them as a nation for generations to come.

71. We have seen that, on the whole, the attitude of Great Britain, after the peace of 1763, was not favourable to the colonization of the Mississippi Valley. To the colonists the

Quebec Act gained in offensiveness by seeming to imply that it was intended to exclude them from the West. But all such plans were swept away by the outbreak of the War of

Independence. Already, before the beginning of hostilities, emigrants had begun to flock across the mountains. Plans were on foot for the establishment of a number of commonwealths, or proprietary provinces, as the case might be. Vandalia was planned in western Virginia, Watauga in western North Carolina. Daniel Boone and his associates pushed farther west into the Kentucky region, and there it was proposed to establish the commonwealth of Transylvania. Other similar projects were started, all repeating in one form or another the political methods which were used when the seaboard colonies were first settled. The backwoodsmen who managed these enterprises were extreme individualists, believed in the propriety of resistance to governments, and were in full sympathy with the War of Independence. They desired to escape to the free land and life of the West and be rid of the quit rents and other badges of dependence which still lingered in the East. The states which had claims in the West opposed the founding of independent settlements there and, if possible, induced the settlers to be content with the status of counties within some one of the eastern states. After the beginning of the War of Independence, the British from Detroit incited Indian raids for the purpose of destroying or driving out the settlers, especially in Kentucky. These provoked the expeditions of (q.v.), in 1778 and 1779. With a force of Virginians he seized Kaskaskia and later, after a long march, captured Vincennes and compelled General Henry Hamilton, who had come with a relief force from Detroit, to surrender. This secured to the Americans a permanent hold upon the North-West. But Spain, after she entered upon the war, was determined, if possible, to wrest the valley of the Mississippi from the British and to keep all, or the larger part of it, for herself. To that end, operating from New Orleans, her troops took possession of Natchez, and other posts on the lower Mississippi, and occupied Mobile and Pensacola. These events prevented the possibility of the expulsion of the Americans from the West, but devolved upon their representatives at Paris the necessity of engaging in a diplomatic contest against Spain for the purpose of securing the Mississippi as the western boundary of the United States. But meanwhile the occupation of the West by Americans had a notable influence upon the ratification of the Articles of Confederation.

72. Within the Confederacy a fundamental line of cleavage was that between the large and small states. It was jealousy

on the part of the latter, their fear lest they might be absorbed by their larger neighbours, which had necessitated the adoption of the plan that in the Congress the delegates should vote by states. When the articles were referred to the states for ratification, the difficulty reappeared. Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, with Virginia and the three states to the south of it, had large claims to territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, which were without hope of westward extension, hesitated to enter the Confederacy, if the large states were to be still further increased by additions to their areas of vast stretches of western country. They insisted that before ratification the states which had claims to western lands should surrender these for the common benefit of the United States. Maryland insisted upon this until, in the end, the cause of state equality and of nationality triumphed. Congress declared that the ceded lands should be formed into states, which should become members of the union with the same rights as other states. When, in 1781, this course of action had become possible, Maryland ratified the articles and they came into effect. The possibility of the expansion of the United States through the development of territories was thus ensured.

73. So far as the North American continent was concerned, the character of the last stage of the struggle with Great Britain