History of United States

From: THE MUNICIPALIST, by Maurice A Richter 1859

"Preamble. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Preambles and prefaces are generally considered unprofitable reading, especially by ladies; but you must make an exception with this preface. It closes the epoch in the history of our country from 1643 to 1787, which may be termed the time of incubation of our present Union.

After the colonists had opened the path for European culture through the primitive American forests, erected towns where be fore stood wigwams, subdued powerful Indian tribes, and had in those struggles for life and independence acquired the skill of self- government, so easily lost in luxury and affluence, they felt the necessity of a government of their own, and a union of their colonial forces. Many attempts were made for this purpose, during the period I have indicated, as you know from the history of the United States. When the right time came to strike the blow, the right men were at the head of the public affairs to secure success. As the colonists always managed their municipal affairs them selves, under English governors, the question after the liberation was to give a proper form and place to that part of the public affairs which belong to a nation, and which were, with the usual haughty, lordly spirit of a monarch, withheld by the English crown.

If you throw a glance at the history of the world, you will dis cover that it is this kind of public business which has caused the great revolutions and struggles for freedom. The ancient Greeks managed their municipal affairs as well as we ours; but they never succeeded, although repeatedly trying it, in organizing the national business well. They deserved, on this account, hardly the name of a nation, and became therefore an easy prey to their monarchical adversaries. The success of the Romans, on the other hand, resulted from the strong consolidation of the national affairs in Rome, similar to that of France in Paris. To set this business right, the Germans revolted in 1848. The Italians are, it is said, at the eve of a revolution for the same purpose. When it required, in the North American colonies, almost two hundred years to realize a free, independent, stable government, among men who were comparatively free, at least in regard to the management of their municipal affairs, how doubtful must be such revolutions among people who, like the Spaniards or Italians, or even the Germans, have been for centuries subject to strong monarchical rulers!

The colonies had, as early as 1778, adopted the appellation, "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA." Still the present constitution, although framed by a convention composed of delegates chosen by the legislatures of the states, was ratified and adopted by the people: hence the words, "We, the people" that is, the aggregate of families, forming society and nations. It makes, indeed, but little difference whether this act of the free, independent people is called a sovereign act or not. A nation, as such, is master of its destiny. There is no society without a certain rule or organization. Cannibals, also, obey their chiefs. The family state is the beginning of social organization, and requires it for the purposes of support and education. It is, within its domestic limits, as independent as a nation within her political boundaries.

That the people, by their votes, and not by the states, have adopted the constitution, is an important fact in regard to the validity of the covenant, because on this fact, not the state governments, not Congress, but only the people, have to decide. Mind that no single state can leave the Union without the permission of the whole people or nation.

The preamble expresses the main objects of the constitution. First, A MORE PERFECT UNION. This was, as we have seen, most desirable. The new state governments cleaved with the same obstinacy to the national business as the English government, from the fear that Congress might become too powerful; from which cause sprung up a separate party, the republicans, opposing the federalists. This fear is unfounded, if we concede to Congress but national political business. You must remember that the business managed by states or Congress is called political or public business, which I shall, in a separate letter, endeavor clearly to explain. This Union has now been, after much trouble and a bloody war, achieved, by adopting the present constitution, which gives to Congress the national business, leaving to the states the municipal, and to society, or the people at large, the free, non-political affairs to manage.

The declared aim of the constitution is, further, to ESTABLISH JUSTICE. This is the supreme and ultimate object of all political organizations. St. Paul, as you know from his first letter to Timothy, had already said, "The law [or state] is not made for the righteous, but for the lawless" etc. This means: if men would always act right, there would be, of course, no need of states, Congress, courts, sheriffs, troops, jails, etc. But this not being the case, we have to organize society, in order to establish and realize justice, on account of the lawless, and thus INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY and PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE. On this account, Congress has also to take care for the COMMON DEFENSE. It is a part and the consequence of the establishment of justice, and its execution, at home and with regard to foreign nations. If all this is well done, the BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY will most certainly be secured to ourselves and our posterity; while the reverse, as injustice and lawlessness, will sow the seeds of discord, civil commotions, general misery, and despotism. The blessings of liberty consist chiefly in being un-subject that is, in full possession of the rights of self-government, so that man is not hindered in regard to his industrial pursuits, culture, and management of his public affairs. No organic law, that I am acquainted with, protects people in this regard better than our federal constitution. For such a rational liberty, however, very few men comparatively are, yet prepared. The majority mistake liberty for licentiousness.

The men who framed this constitution could hardly have introduced it by a better preamble. It shows best what a clear and practical conception they had of their task. They have erected a monument of their wisdom, which, although made for their time, arid the actual wants of their society, composed of very heterogeneous elements (Americans, Indians, Europeans, and Africans), is, notwithstanding, a perfect pattern of an organic law for all states and nations, as we shall often have opportunity to notice. I promise you that you will admire it the more, the longer you live.

Biographies:

Salmon Portland Chase, chief justice, was born in Cornish. N. H., Jan. 13, 1808, son of Ithamar and Janette (Ralston) Chase, and sixth in descent from Aquila and Ann Chase, emigrants, who left England in 1640, and settled in Newbury, Mass. His father was a farmer and in 1815 removed from Cornish to Keene, N. H., where, with his wife and eleven children, he established a new home, having in 1812 engaged in the manufacture of glass and become bankrupt. Salmon attended the district school until 1817, when his father died, and he was sent to Windsor, Vt., where he continued his studies. In 1820 his mother sent him to Worthington, Ohio, at the suggestion of her brother-in-law, Bishop Philander Chase, who conducted a collegiate school at that place, and who agreed to give him a home and educational advantages. He made the journey with an elder brother and H. R. Schoolcraft, who were going west to join the Cass exploring expedition. On the removal of the bishop to Cincinnati in 1822, to accept the presidency of Cincinnati college, Salmon entered that institution, and in 1823, when his uncle went to Europe to procure funds to establish Kenyon college, he returned to his mother's home in Keene, N. H., taught school at Royalton, Vt., and matriculated at Dartmouth college in 1824, graduating with the class of 1826. He then went south, expecting to find employment as tutor in some private family, but in this was disappointed, and returning as far as Washington he there was refused a situation in one of the departments, his uncle, Dudley Chase, of Vermont, declining to aid him on the ground that such an appointment had already ruined one nephew. He secured a private school, where he had among other pupils a son of Attorney-General Wirt. This incident led to an offer from Mr. Wirt to receive the young tutor as a law student, and he was admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia in 1829. He continued his school until 1830, when he returned to the home of his uncle in Cincinnati, and was admitted as an attorney and counsellor at the Ohio bar. His anxious waiting for clients was relieved by industrious application to the preparation of an edition of the statutes of Ohio, which his conscientious codification, copious annotation, and comprehensive historical sketch of the growth and development of the territory and state, expanded to three volumes. Upon its publication the fame of the author spread with its rapid sale, all previous "Statutes of Ohio" being superseded by the new work. Practice now came to the young barrister, and among his clients were the bank of the United States in Cincinnati, and the Lafayette, a prominent city bank, which engaged his services as director, secretary of the board, and solicitor. This experience directed the mind of the rising lawyer to subjects of finance, and was the preparatory school of the future U. S. treasurer. The question of slavery and the rights of fugitives from bondage was at this time (1837) uppermost in the public mind, especially in the vicinity of Cincinnati. Mr. Chase was retained us counsel for a colored woman claimed as a fugitive slave, and also in the case of James G. Birney, prosecuted under a state law for harboring a fugitive slave. Both causes were defended by him before the state supreme court, and his arguments against the right of the federal government to demand of a state magistrate any service in the case of a slave voluntarily brought by his master into a free state and there escaping from his control, and in maintaining that the law of 1793 was unwarranted by the constitution of the United States, and therefore void, were published and extensively circulated by the anti-slavery party. In the case of Van Zandt, before the supreme court of the United States in 1846, he was associated with William H. Seward, and there argued that under the ordinance of 1787 no fugitive from service could be reclaimed from Ohio, unless escaped from one of the original slave states, and that the question of slavery was an interstate, and not a federal question for adjudication by Congress. In politics Mr. Chase had taken no positive position, and had supported either Whig or Democrat as they promised to further his one political idea, the blotting out of slavery but in 1841 he called the convention that organized the Liberty party in Ohio, wrote the address to the people, and supported the candidate for governor named by the party. In 1843, when the Liberty party met in convention at Baltimore to nominate candidates for president and vice-president, Mr. Chase was a member of the committee on resolutions, and opposed the radical proposition offered, refusing to support the third clause of the Constitution if it was applied to the case of a fugitive slave, his opposition preventing its becoming a part of the committee's report. It was, however, introduced before the convention and adopted. The movement for a convention of "all who believe that all that is worth preserving in republicanism can be maintained only by uncompromising war against the usurpation of the slave power, and are therefore resolved to use all constitutional and honorable means to effect the extinction of slavery within the respective states, and its reduction to its constitutional limits in the United States" was led by Mr. Chase, and was intended to invite representation only from the southern and western states. It met in Cincinnati in June, 1845, and the address, urging the necessity of a political organization determined upon the overthrow of the slave power, was prepared by Mr. Chase, as chairman of the committee on platform. The second Liberty national convention was held in 1847, and in it Mr. Chase opposed making a ticket, and advised waiting to see how the Wilmot proviso would affect the political parties and the action of Congress. In 1848 he prepared a call for a free territory state convention at Columbus, Ohio, which was signed by over three thousand voters. This resulted in the national convention at Buffalo, N. Y., in August, 1848, over which Mr. Chase presided, and which nominated the Free-Soil ticket, Van Buren and Adams. Mr. Chase was the next year elected by the Democrats and Federal Whigs, as United States senator. In 1852, when the Democratic national convention at Baltimore nominated Franklin Pierce and denounced the agitation of the slavery question, and the ticket and platform were upheld by the Democrats of Ohio, Mr. Chase withdrew from the party, and prepared the platform for an independent party, which was adopted by the Pittsburgh convention of 1852. He opposed the Clay compromise in a speech in the senate; and his amendment providing against the introduction of slavery in the territories, to which the bill applied, received twenty-five votes, while thirty voted against the amendment. He also offered an amendment to the fugitive slave bill, by which so-called fugitive slaves should be accorded trial by jury, and another granting immunity to slaves escaping from states to territories, or the reverse, thus conforming the act to the provisions of the constitution, both of which were defeated. When the Nebraska bill was introduced in 1854, he drew up and caused to be circulated an appeal to the people to oppose the measure, and in the senate on February 3 made a speech in which he elaborated the objectionable features of the bill. On the very night of its passage he made an earnest protest against the measure. His efforts in the senate were directed to the confining of the question of slavery within its constitutional limits, to securing non-intervention on the part of the Federal government in the affairs of the states and territories, to upholding the individual rights of persons and states, and to securing economy in the administration of financial affairs. He favored free homesteads to actual settlers, cheap postage, government aid towards the construction of the Pacific railroad, and liberal appropriations for harbor and river improvements. The opponents of the Nebraska bill and of the administration nominated Mr. Chase for governor of Ohio in July, 1855, and he was elected. His policy, as outlined in his inaugural address, was economy in the administration of state affairs, annual sessions of the legislature, and liberal support to schools. At the Republican national convention of 1856 a majority of the Ohio delegates, backed by a large following from other states, proposed his name as a presidential candidate, but at his personal request it was withdrawn. In 1857 he was again a candidate for governor, and received the largest vote ever given to a candidate for that office in Ohio. When the Republican national convention met at Chicago in 1860, Ohio presented Mr. Chase as a candidate, and in the first ballot he received forty-nine votes; but when the votes of Ohio were needed to secure Mr. Lincoln's nomination they were promptly furnished. In the same year he was elected to a seat in the United States senate, and resigned it to accept the portfolio of the treasury in the cabinet of President Lincoln. The treasury was in need of money, and the secretary asked for $8,000,000, April 2, 1861, of which amount $3,099,000 was tendered at or under six percent. He refused all bids at higher rates than six percent and placed the balance in two-year treasury notes at par or over. When Fort Sumter was first fired upon, the secretary went to New York and obtained $50,000,000 from the banks in exchange for treasury notes payable in coin, and soon after obtained $100,000,000 more from the same source. The bankers could not sell the bonds for coin, and on Dec. 27, 1861, the agreement to suspend specie payment was entered into. When the resources of the banks were found inadequate to supply the secretary's demand for money, he, largely through the suggestion of Mr. O. B. Potter of New York, issued "the greenback," which was made legal tender by act of Congress, for all purposes except custom duties; these treasury notes, running for various lengths of time, and bearing interest at from six to seven and three-tenths percent payable in coin, were readily taken by the people and the loan became very popular. This popular loan was followed by the national banking system, a part of the original plan of Mr. Potter. These financial measures enabled the government to prosecute the war, and furnished a stable currency. When Mr. Chase left the treasury department, June 30, 1864, the national debt amounted to $1,740,690,489. On Dec. 6, 1864, President Lincoln named Mr. Chase as chief justice of the U. S. supreme court, to succeed Justice Taney deceased, and his nomination was immediately confirmed by the senate. In the impeachment trial of President Johnson in March, 1868, Chief Justice Chase presided, and his impartial and dignified demeanor won the respect of all save the intense partisans conducting the prosecution. He became dissatisfied with the policy of the Republican party as voiced by the majority in Congress, and when the Democratic national convention met in New York in July, 1868, he was announced as a candidate for the presidency. At one time his chances of the nomination seemed to be flattering, but the tide changed before the balloting began, and he received but four votes. In the presidential canvass of 1872 he favored the election of Mr. Greeley, the Democratic candidate. Dartmouth conferred on him the degree of LL. D in 1855. Mr. Chase was thrice married, and his daughter Katherine, born to his second wife, Eliza Ann (Smith), to whom he was married Sept. 26, 1839, was the head of his household in Washington, his third wife, Sara Bella Dunlap (Ludlow), having died some years before. Miss Chase, popularly known as Kate Chase, was a society leader during the war; she was married to Senator William Sprague of Rhode Island, and after the expiration of her husband's senatorial term established a palatial home in Rhode Island. Chief Justice Chase's health became greatly impaired through a paralytic stroke, and he died in New York city, May 7, 1872.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Hannibal Hamlin, vice-president of the United States, was born on Paris Hill, Maine, Aug 27, 1809; son of Dr. Cyrus and Anna (Livermore) Hamlin; gran/lson of Capt. Eleazer Hamlin of Pembroke, Mass., who commanded a body of Continental minutemen, which included his sons, Africa, America, Europe and Asia, in the war of the Revolution; and a descendant of James Hamlin, who settled on Cape Cod in 1639. He was prepared for college at Hebron academy, but after 1829 when his father died he was obliged to devote his time to the care of the farm, teaching school in the winter seasons to provide for his mother and sisters. He had made some progress in the study of law, but found little time to prosecute it. He joined with Horatio King in the publication of The Jeffersonian, a local newspaper, which he sold to his partner at the end of a year and again took up the study of law in the office of Gen. Samuel Fessenden in Portland, and was admitted to the bar in 1833, settling at Hampden, Penobscot county. In 1835 he was elected by the Democrats a representative in the state legislature and served, 1835-40. He was speaker of the hoase for three terms, the youngest man to fill that position in Maine. He was defeated for representative in the 27th congress in the election of 1840, but was a representative in the 28th and 29th congresses, 1843-47. He signalled his maiden Democratic speech in congress by announcing that he was an uncompromising foe to the extension of slavery, and after the speech he was congratulated by John Quincy Adams, former President of the United States, who greeted him with: "Light breaketh in the east! sir, light breaketh in the east!" His second notable speech was in opposition to the annexation of Texas, and during his second term he denounced the practice of duelling, offered and secured the passage of the celebrated "Wilmot proviso" through the house, and was named by the antislavery Democrats as speaker. He was the candidate of the anti-slavery Democrats before the state legislature as U.S. senator in 1846, but was defeated by one vote after the legislature had balloted six weeks. He was elected a representative in the state legislature in 1847 and in May, 1848, was elected by a majority of one vote U.S. senator to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Senator John Fairfield and which was at the time of his election held temporarily by W. B. S. Moor, appointed to the vacancy by Governor Dana. He was re-elected in 1850 for a full senatorial term after a dead-lock in the legislature for three months. He renounced his allegiance to the Democratic party on the nomination of Buchanan in 1856, became the Republican candidate for governor of Maine, and was elected by 25,000 plurality. He resigned from the senate on Feb. 6, 1857, to assume the governorship and was succeeded in the U.S. senate by Amos Nourse. He was again elected to the U.S. senate in 1857 and resigned the governorship Feb. 20, 1857, to take his seat in the senate, March 4, 1857. He resigned the senatorship, Jan. 1, 1861, having been elected Vice-President on the ticket with Abraham Lincoln for President and was succeeded in the senate by Lot M. Morrill. He presided over the senate throughout the first term of Mr. Lincoln's administration. In 1864 his party gave the vice-presidential nomination to the south, the administration fearing the recognition of the independence of the southern Confederacy by Great Britain and France unless the Republican party took its vice-presidential candidate from a central southern state. He declined the secretaryship of the treasury offered him by President Lincoln; was appointed collector of the port of Boston by President Johnson in 1865 and resigned the lucrative office in 1866 as he disapproved of the policy of the President. He was again elected U.S. senator in 1869 and for the fifth time in 1875. He declined reelection in 1881, after a service of twenty-five years as U.S. senator, during which time he had held the chairmanship of the committees on commerce, post-offices and post-roads, and of foreign affairs. In 1881 President Garfield offered him the position of U.S. minister to Germany, Italy or Spain, and he accepted the mission to Spain, but resigned the post in 1883. He was regent of the Smithsonian institution, ex offico, 1861-65, and by appointment, 1870-82, and was for a time dean of the board. He received the degree of LL.D. from Colby in 1859, and was trustee of the institution, 1857-91. He was the third citizen of the United States who had been elected and served as Vice-President to die on the nation's birthday. He was twice married, both of his wives being daughters of Judge Stephen Emery of Paris Hill, Maine. He died at the Tanatine Club rooms, Bangor, Maine, July 4, 1891.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Thomas Hinckley, colonial governor, was born in England about 1618. He joined the Plymouth colony with his parents about 1635, settled first at Scituate, and in 1639 removed to Barnstable. He was elected a deputy of the colony in 1645; representative in 1647, and served as magistrate and assistant, 1658-80, as commissioner, 1673-92, and as councillor, 1692-1706. He became governor of the Plymouth colony on the death of Governor Josiah Winslow in 1680, and except during Governor Andros's administration, 1687-91, he governed the colony until its union with the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1692. He kept a diary of his life, and collected valuable information about the affairs of Plymouth colony. Three volumes of his writings, belonging to the Old South collection of the Rev. Thomas Prince, were placed in the Boston Public Library in 1866. He died in Barnstable, Mass., April 25, 1706.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

William Rufus King, Vice-President of the United States, was born in Sampson county, N.C., April 6, 1786; son of William King. His father was a delegate to the North Carolina constitutional conventions of 1787, 1788 and 1789, to consider the constitution of the United States, and a delegate to the general assembly for several terms. William Rufus was a student at the University of North Carolina in 1801, was a student m the law office of William Duffy at Fayetteville, N.C., and was admitted to the bar in 1806. He was a representative in the state legislature, 1806-10, and was appointed solicitor for Wilmington, N.C. He was a Democratic representative from North Carolina in the l2th, 13th and 14th congresses, serving from Nov. 4, 1811, until 1816, when he resigned to accept the appointment of secretary of legation to accompany William Pinckney, who had been appointed special envoy to Naples and U.S. minister to St. Petersburg, Russia. He returned to the United States in 1818, and settled in Cahaba, Dallas county, Ala., removing in 1826 to Selma, Ala. He was a member of the convention which framed the state constitution, and one of the first U.S. senators, serving, by continuous re-elections, 1819-44. While in the senate, he was chairman of the committees on public lands, commerce and other important committees, and served as president pro tempore of the senate in the 24th, 25th and 26th congresses, 1835-41. He resigned in 1844 to accept the position of U.S. minister to France under appointment of President Tyler, serving, 1844-46. While in France he secured the friendship of Louis Philipe, and prevented the intervention of European powers in the annexation of Texas. He returned to the United States in 1846, and in 1848 was appointed U.S. senator to fill the unexpired term of Arthur P. Bagley, who had resigned to become U.S. minister to Russia. In 1849 he was elected U.S. senator for the full term, to expire in 1855. He was elected president pro tempore of the senate, May 6, 1850, and on the death of President Taylor and the accession of Vice-President Fillmore to the Presidency, he became acting Vice-President of the United States, and served as such until Dec. 20, 1852. He was elated Vice-President of the United States by the Democratic party, with Franklin Fierce as President, in 1852, but did not live to enter upon the duties of his office. In January, 1853, by the advice of his physicians, he went to Cuba, and being unable to return for his inauguration, March 4, 1853, received the official oath at Havana, Cuba, by special act of congress. On April 17, 1853, he returned to Cahaba, Dallas county, Ala, where he died, April 18, 1853.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

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