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its fate would turn on the determination of Virginia.

The people of Maryland appear to have been fully aware of the importance of their course. They not only elected a large majority of delegates known to be in favor of the Constitution, but a majority of the counties instructed their members to ratify it as speedily as possible, and to do no other act. This settled determination not to consider amendments, and not to have the action of the State misinterpreted, or its influence lost, gave great dissatisfaction to the minority. Their efforts to introduce amendments were disposed of quite summarily. The majority would entertain no proposition but the single question of ratification, which was carried by sixtythree votes against eleven, on the 28th of April.

On the first of May, there were public rejoicings and a procession of the trades, in Baltimore, followed by a banquet, a ball, and an illumination. In this procession, the miniature ship " Federalist," which was afterwards presented to General Washington, and long rode at anchor in the Potomac opposite Mount Vernon, was carried, as the type of commerce and the consummate production of American naval architecture. The next day a packet sailed from the port of Baltimore for Charleston, carrying the news of the ratification by Maryland.

1 This little vessel sailed from Baltimore on the 1st of June, and arrived at Mount Vernon, "completely rigged and highly ornamented," on the 8th. It was a

In how many

fine specimen of the then state of the mechanic arts. See an account of it in Washington's Works, IX. 375, 376.

2 There was then no land com

days this "coaster" performed her voyage is not known; but it is a recorded, though now forgotten, fact among the events of this period, that on her return to Baltimore, where she arrived on Saturday the 31st of May, the same vessel brought back the welcome intelligence, that on the 23d of that month, "at five o'clock in the afternoon," the convention of South Carolina had ratified the Constitution of the United States. A salute of cannon on Federal Hill, in the neighborhood of Baltimore, spread the joyful news far down the waters of the Chesapeake to the shores of Virginia, and bold express riders placed it in Philadelphia before the following Monday evening.

Such was the anxiety with which the friends of the Constitution in the centre of the Union watched the course of events in the remaining States. The accession of South Carolina was naturally regarded as very important. Her delegates in the national Convention had assumed what might be thought, at home and elsewhere, to be a great responsibility. They had taken a prominent part in the settlement of the compromises which became necessary between the Northern and the Southern States. They had consented to a full commercial power, to be exercised by a majority in both houses of Congress; to a power

munication between the two places, that could have carried intelligence in less than a month. A letter written by General Pinckney to General Washington on the 24th of May, announcing the result in South

Carolina, was more than four weeks on its way to Mount Vernon. (Washington's Works, IX. 389.) General Washington had received the same news by way of Baltimore soon after its arrival there.

to extinguish the slave-trade in twenty years; and to a power of direct and indirect taxation, exports alone excepted. Would the people of South Carolina consider the provisions made for their peculiar demands as equivalents for what had been surrendered? Would they acquiesce in a system founded in the necessities for local sacrifices, standing as they did at the extremity of the interests involved in the Southern side of the adjustment?

It is not probable that the people of South Carolina, at the time of their adoption of the Constitution, supposed that they had any solid reasons for dissatisfaction with such of its arrangements as in any way concerned the subject of slavery. A good deal was said, ad captandum, by the opponents of the Constitution, on these points, but it does not appear to have been said with much effect. No man who has ever been placed by the State of South Carolina in a public position, has been more true to her interests and rights than General Pinckney; and General Pinckney furnished to the people of the State-speaking from his place in the legislature on his return from the national Convention what he considered, and they received, as a complete answer to all that was addressed to their local fears and prejudices, on these particular topics. When he had shown that, by the universal admission of the country, the Constitution had given to the general government no power to emancipate the slaves within the several States, and that it had secured a right which did not previously exist, of recovering those

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who might escape into other States; that the slavetrade would remain open for twenty years, a period that would suffice for the supply of all the labor of that kind which the State would require; and that the admission of the blacks into the basis of representation was a concession in favor of the State, of singular importance as well as novelty; he had disposed of every ground of opposition relating to these points. And so the people of the State manifestly considered.

But there was one part of the arrangements included in the Constitution, on which they appear to have thought that they had more reason to pause; and it is quite important that we should understand both the grounds of their doubt, and the grounds on which they yielded their assent to this part of the system. South Carolina was then, and was ever likely to be, a great exporting State. Some of her people feared that, if a full power to regulate commerce by the votes of a majority in the two houses of Congress were to be exercised in the passage of a navigation act, the Eastern States, in whose behalf they were asked to grant such a power, would not be able to furnish shipping enough to export the products of the planting States. This apprehension arose entirely from a want of information; which some of the friends of the Constitution supplied, while it was under discussion. They showed that, if all the exported products of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were obliged to be carried in American bottoms, the Eastern States were then able to fur

nish more than shipping enough for the purpose; and that this shipping must also compete with that of the Middle States. Still it remained true, that the grant of the commercial power would enable a majority in Congress to exclude foreign vessels from the carrying trade of the United States, and so far to enhance the freights on the products of South Carolina. What then were the motives which appear to have led the convention of that State to agree to this concession of the commercial power?

It is evident from the discussions which took place in the legislature, and which had great influence in the subsequent convention, that the attention of the people of South Carolina was not confined to the particular terms and arrangements of the compromises which took place in the formation of the Constitution. They looked to the propriety, expediency, and justice of a general power to regulate commerce, apart from the compromise in which it was involved. They admitted the commercial distresses of the Northern States; they saw the policy of increasing the maritime strength of those States, in order to encourage the growth of a navy; and they considered it neither prudent, nor fit, to give the vessels of all foreign nations a right to enter American ports at pleasure, in peace and in war, and whatever might be the commercial legislation of those nations towards the United States. For these reasons, a large majority of the people of South Carolina were willing to make so much sacrifice, be it more or less, as was involved in the sur

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