In the ratification controversy of 1787- 1788 American political leaders warmly debated all of the powers which were delegated to the central authority in the new United States Constitution. Included in the scrutiny were the powers given to the Congress “to provide and maintain a navy.”
The United States was diplomatically and militarily weak, forbidden by Spain to use the Mississippi River which formed the western boundary, barred from valuable carrying trade by the prohibitions of other nations, and unable even to take control of western posts held by British troops on American soil. Seaborne trade could not be guaranteed against piracy. And events were soon to prove the difficulty of enforcing American neutrality during a war involving the major powers of Europe. Today it is generally accepted that these problems and weaknesses might have been more easily dealt with if the American Confederation had been able “to provide and maintain a navy.”
Although the discussion was not organized as a whole, and proceeded according to personal and local judgments of opportunities to score points effectively in different places at different times, it can be considered as one grand national debate because the pamphlet and newspaper exchanges seem to have conveyed all of the principal arguments to all parts of the country before the ratification process was completed.
II
In reviewing the work of the Constitutional Convention one finds no trace of a discussion of naval power apart from the general war power. There was a good deal of debate which was concerned with the danger to popular liberty from a standing army or from the abuse of state militia by the proposed federal government, but no one cited a standing navy as a menace to the liberty of the whole people. On naval power the Convention as a whole acted only to approve the present phrasing of the Constitution. Gouverneur Morris once suggested the creation of executive departments by name, including the office of Secretary of Marine, but his proposal was referred to the Committee of Detail and was not heard of again.
If one considered only the official resolutions of the subsequent ratifying conventions it might be thought that they agreed with the Constitutional Convention in ignoring the navy-to-be. Although several of the conventions recommended amendments to the Constitution which would have altered the provisions governing the army and the militia, not one of the recommendations mentioned matters specifically naval. In the debates on the floors of the conventions and in the press, however, the ore is richer.1 The question of the use and abuse of the naval power was argued at length several times, although the orators and pamphleteers devoted more words to the general war power, to the much-feared “standing army,” and to the militia, than they did to the navy. When the naval power was discussed, it came about in this way: the supporters of the Constitution (nowadays called the Federalists) urged that if the Constitution were ratified the possession of the naval power would be one of the good results. Their opponents, the anti- Federalists, argued either that it would be one of the bad results, or, if a navy were desirable, it was not necessary to ratify the Constitution in order to have it.
III
Considering the circumstances of the debate, the Federalists presented a methodical case: The United States needed naval power for self-defense. Only a union under the new Constitution could provide it. Rejection or postponement of ratification would frustrate the hope of acquiring a naval force. Possession of a navy would allow the United States to influence world affairs in its own interest.
To the Federalists the need of a navy for self-defense was an obvious fact. The United States was secure only by the kindness of foreign nations. Under the old Confederation the United States could not protect its foreign commerce. Without men or money, or a government strong enough to raise either, as a member said in the South Carolina legislature, “we hold the property that we now enjoy at the courtesy of other powers.” In this defenseless condition the country ought to dread the outbreak of another war in Europe since the unprotected American coast could not be guaranteed against attack. According to James Wilson of the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, there might be safety beyond the Appalachians but there could be none in the coastal plains, and he asked “With what propriety can we hope our flag will be respected, while we have not a single gun to fire in its defence?” Alexander Hamilton observed that the violation of treaties was a major cause of wars. The United States had treaties with six nations of which five were maritime peoples and thereby able to injure the country.
The anti-Federalists devoted a deal of breath to convince their fellows that the United States was in no danger from across the Atlantic and hinted at insincerity in the Federalists who alleged the peril. In the Virginia ratifying convention Patrick Henry said he could see no danger, because the United States was at peace with all nations. The principal adversaries, if any, would be Britain, France, and Spain, and he claimed that private intelligence from Thomas Jefferson, the United States Minister to France, supported the opinion that there was no danger from them. In fact the United States was very difficult to attack and could therefore be considered relatively strong. In the same convention, William Grayson ridiculed the need for naval defense by sarcastically citing the North African pirates as the chief naval threat which was to “fill the Chesapeake with mighty fleets . . . An old soldier in the Massachusetts ratifying convention told his colleagues to take courage in the ability of the commonwealth to defend itself—“they cannot starve us out; they cannot bring their ships on the land . . . .” In both the Massachusetts and Virginia conventions anti-Federalists said that Federalist talk of foreign naval perils was merely a stratagem to frighten the delegates into ratifying the Constitution.
The pirates and extortioners of North Africa gave a ready-made issue to the Federalists, although they did not exploit it as fully as one would expect. Since the British no longer protected American shipping in the Mediterranean the freedom of that sea would have to be won or bought by the Americans. John Adams, although later known as a navy-minded President, thought the purchase of safe-conduct would be the most economical practice, while Thomas Jefferson, not usually thought of as predisposed to favor a navy, said the United States should protect its merchants in the Mediterranean. John Jay, while Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the old Confederation Congress, had the notion that privateers might be serviceable in protecting the trade and the merchant crews, but it is hard to see what profit there would be for the owners of the private fleet. Meanwhile, he thought it would be well to let the national humiliation sink in, because it might stimulate the establishment of a government which could make the country respectable abroad. The idea of gaining some political advantage from the national shame was not Jay’s alone. Rufus King, in 1785, had written to Elbridge Gerry that the Barbary pirates were a real menace, but the danger was being exaggerated “for mercantile purposes.” The uneasiness so generated could be used to benefit the national government and commerce. Both Jay and King were or became experts on foreign affairs. To judge by their attitude toward Mediterranean piracy one could conclude that the Algerine menace has seemed more weighty with modern writers than with those who were alive at the time of the Barbary aggressions. To a nation which had survived a century and a half of Indian fighting and faced another century of it, perhaps the Algerine menace seemed a little remote.
Federalist references to the Algerines usually occurred incidentally in the course of cataloging misfortunes which could be blamed on the weakness of the existing Confederation. John Jay in a pamphlet, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in the South Carolina legislature, and a delegate in the Massachusetts convention, all mentioned the piracies, but only in passing. Hugh Williamson, in a newspaper letter, was more emphatic. He said the United States could not resist the weakest enemy, that the Algerines could land on the American coast and enslave the citizens, for “You have not a single sloop of war.”
The only anti-Federalist to make a reasoned reply to this argument was Melancthon Smith, a delegate to the New York convention. He said it was easier to say than to prove that our troubles with the Algerines were the result of defects in the Confederation. There were two ways to deal with the Mediterranean pirates: fight them or make a treaty. The existing Congress could do either. It only needed money, and he would be willing to allow reasonable powers to raise money.
Thus far the Federalist case was concerned with arguing that the United States needed a navy. But there seem to have been those who agreed on the need for a navy but did not agree that the new Constitution was necessary. To them the Federalists said, in effect, only the new union which will result from the ratification of the Constitution can provide and maintain a navy.
That only the Constitution could make naval defense possible was emphatically argued by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and David Ramsay, the historian. In a contribution to the Federalist Papers Madison said the union would be the source of maritime strength, and maritime strength would be a chief security against foreign dangers. Certainly the coastal inhabitants should be interested, for they had been left in peace so long only by good luck. Virginia and Maryland ought to feel the most anxiety, and, next to them, New York, with its exposed district of Long Island and its great navigable river. Indeed, New York City was almost a hostage “for ignominious compliances with the dictates of a foreign enemy, or even with the rapacious demands of pirates and barbarians.” He suggested the possibility of a new European war, in which event an escape from troubles at sea and on the coast “will be truly miraculous.” The present government—“the phantom of a General Government”—would be of no help. On the floor of the Virginia convention he admitted that he did not like the maintenance of armed forces in time of peace, but he submitted to necessity: “Weakness will invite insults.” A strong government was less likely to be insulted. Therefore, to avoid large armaments, establish the proposed government. “The best way to avoid danger is to be in a capacity to withstand it.” This speech of the “Father of the Constitution” was surely consistent with his broad aim to establish a government strong enough to preserve the liberty gained by the Revolution.
In the same series, the Federalist Papers, Hamilton also adverted to “this great National object, a Navy.” Union would help in several ways to provide and maintain a navy. The navy would be the product of the resources of all the states. Each part of the country had something advantageous to a navy. In the South there was tar, pitch, turpentine, and better wood than elsewhere. The middle states and some southern states had iron of good quality. As for seamen, they “must chiefly be drawn from the Northern hive.” The need of a navy to protect foreign trade was obvious; trade and the navy “by a kind of reaction, mutually beneficial, promote each other.” For those who approved of a navy but not of the Constitution, he added another advantage of the proposed government. It could secure the fisheries which were the indispensable “nursery of seamen” for the navy.
David Ramsay asserted in a pamphlet that protection by a navy would be a local advantage to the southern states. If the union were to be dissolved, creditor nations might try forcibly to collect debts owed by the United States, in which case, being most valuable, southern exports would be most liable to seizures. Southern coasts were also the least defended and therefore most likely to be attacked. With no money, no navy, no way to support an army “we lie at the mercy of every invader; our sea-port towns may be laid under contribution, and our country ravaged.” But under the new Constitution the south was to be protected by the whole union, and the gain of respect abroad would probably lead to the negotiation of commercial treaties to open the West Indian ports and revive the dying maritime trade.
Hamilton also contended that to defeat the ratification of the Constitution would end all hope of having a navy. Several maritime powers were already uneasy over the “adventurous spirit, which distinguishes the commercial character of America.” They fear the United States might cut into their carrying trade. Therefore they will discourage the union, “clipping the wings, by which we might soar to a dangerous greatness.”
Edmund Randolph, Governor of Virginia and soon to be Secretary of State of the United States, told the Virginia convention, “I beg gentlemen to consider these things— our inability to raise and man a navy, and the dreadful consequences of the dissolution of the Union.” The nation which commanded the sea commanded the land, and “The sea can only be commanded by commercial nations.” The United States could become such a commercial nation, but not unless the Constitution was adopted. Alexander Contee Hanson, in a pamphlet published at Annapolis, took up the point of the denial of navies to the states individually in peacetime. It was a positive advantage to the southern states, he said, because they could not hope to rival the “eastern states by sea.” Jay, in the Federalist Papers, deprecated any idea of state or sectional navies, asking his readers to consider how unimportant British seapower would have been if its shipping regulations were the separate rules of the independent kingdoms of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Local rivalries would prevent the rise of naval strength, and, worse, the local governments, in alliance with foreign nations, would jealously counterbalance each other.
Would the states, in time, without the Constitution, become strong enough to revive their trade? Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, later Chief Justice of the United States, thought it very improbable. Other nations profited by the country’s weakness. Their trade strengthens them and produces experienced seamen “to man their ships of war when they wish again to conquer you by arms.” Ellsworth and the others who referred to the malice of the maritime powers were not imagining difficulties. It had been said in England that it was not to the British interest to protect the Americans in the Mediterranean, that if the Barbary pirates were suppressed small nations could become important carriers.
Edmund Randolph examined the particular situation of Virginia. He doubted that an independent, sovereign Virginia could survive apart from the other states. Even such powerful nations as France and Great Britain had found it necessary to make alliances. “What divine preeminence is Virginia possessed of above other states? Can Virginia send her navy and thunder to bid defiance to foreign nations?” If she were as isolated as San Marino she might exist as an independent nation, but “the large, capacious Bay of Chesapeake, which is but too excellently adapted for the admission of enemies, renders her very vulnerable.” Virginia was very well situated for the promotion of foreign trade but “in a very unhappy position with respect to the access of foes by sea . . .
Virginia bordered Spain, a natural enemy. France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands could conceivably attempt by force to collect debts owed to them or their citizens. Other American states had grounds for quarrels with Virginia, and there were the fishery and currency problems which could generate heat. Therefore an independent Virginia must provide and maintain her own armed forces, including a navy. Because a fleet could not be built in a hurry, the ships must be kept ready in time of peace. This would take money, and Randolph doubted whether Virginia could raise it.
Patrick Henry rose to reply to Randolph. Assuming that the country must be strong in order to protect itself from foreign foes, he denied that the Constitution would make it so. The Constitution was only a piece of paper. “Will the paper on the table prevent the attacks of the British navy, or enable us to raise a fleet equal to the British fleet?” Great Britain had the strongest fleet in the world; it could attack anywhere. The paper could not “raise a powerful fleet.”
In the course of the ratification controversy there had been some discussion of the possibility of calling a second Constitutional Convention which would meet the objections to the Constitution then being debated. John Jay undertook to defeat this tendency with an inventory of the dangers of delay. Among the hazards he included the hostility of certain nations which did not wish to see the United States become a naval power and which would exert influence in this country to assure the failure of another convention. A delegate to the Massachusetts convention also brought forward the idea that European powers were standing off and on, so to speak, awaiting the dissolution of the United States. Thereupon they would send privateers “and entirely destroy our commerce.”
Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers, took a long-range view of American naval policy, which may be appropriately selected to “close” the constructive case for the Federalists. United under an effective government, the country would be able to found a navy in the not too distant future. Perhaps it would not be able to compete on equal terms with the sea forces of the great powers, but it would be enough to give the United States a respectable weight if thrown into the balance of power on one side or the other; for example, a few American ships of the line, if sent into the West Indies during a war, might tip the balance and give victory to the side they aided. These considerations would increase the value of both the friendship and the neutrality of the United States, which might thereby become “the Arbiter of Europe in America.”
If the states were not united, the rivalries of the parts would check each other in this sort of enterprise. They would then be subject to the depredations of the contenders. By weakness a nation “forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.” “Under a vigorous national government ... a flourishing marine would ... be the inevitable offspring of moral and physical necessity.”
Hamilton’s dream was Patrick Henry’s nightmare. If the Americans approved of the new government it would be “because we like a great, splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire” with an army, a navy “and a number of things.” He mourned the decay of the American spirit—“ ... in its youth, the language of America was different: liberty, sir, was then the primary object.” Nowadays the Americans were unhappy because “we do not make nations tremble. Would this constitute happiness, or secure liberty?” Henry was consistent throughout the ratification controversy. While other men dreamed of a great America, expanding into the silent forests of the west, with a population counted in nine digits, and rivaling Britain and France on the seas, he comes into focus as one whose greatest hope for his country was that it would one day take its place in the family of nations on a par with the United Provinces of the Netherlands or the Swiss Confederacy.
IV
The anti-Federalists had a case of their own. The Atlantic ocean was three thousand miles broad and a barrier to aggressors. A navy would be the darling of New England and an instrument to oppress the South. As stated in the Constitution the naval power of the Congress was unlimited and therefore dangerous. The United States could use its men and money better than by sending them to sea. To build a navy would provoke Europe to attack the United States, which might otherwise hope to be left in peace. In short, as Melancthon Smith told the New York convention, it would be “wild and ridiculous” to build a navy.
The idea that the breadth of the Atlantic was sufficient naval defense certainly called forth luminous talents. The doctrine of the Atlantic Moat was James Monroe’s, in the Virginia convention. The best rebuttals were those of Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall. Monroe asked rhetorically whether there was any danger to the United States from Europe, and answered himself: “View the distance between us and them: the wide Atlantic—an ocean three thousand miles across—-lies between us.” He acknowledged that Spain and Britain held territories contiguous to the United States but dismissed that danger with the simple assertion that both nations profited from American friendship. John Marshall, on the same floor and day, answered that “the sea makes them neighbors to us. Though an immense ocean divides us, we may speedily see them with us.” Hamilton’s rebuttal has a curiously modern tone: “The improvements in the art of navigation, have, as to the facility of communication, rendered distant nations, in a great measure, neighbors.”
The attempt to arouse sectional feeling against the proposed naval power of the Congress was forcibly made in the South Carolina legislature by Rawlins Lowndes. He was one of several anti-Federalists who thought naval threats were being used to alarm delegates into hasty action. It was his opinion that neither France nor Britain would allow the other to conquer the United States, and, as for the navy, even if it were needed to preserve liberty at home and respect abroad, it would be a northern navy, not a southern one, and the country would belong to the north.
Such sectional feeling was, of course, the chief general obstacle to the ratification of the Constitution. Federalists went to considerable lengths to argue against it, indeed, the whole of the Federalist case for the Constitution is a generalized attack on sectionalism. With regard to naval power, sectionalism was attacked vigorously in South Carolina and in New York. In the South Carolina legislature the line was taken that whatever advantage might accrue to the North should be accepted for the good of the whole country. A South Carolina legislator was even willing to accept an American “Navigation Act” to monopolize shipping for Americans (a notion usually abhorrent to southern spokesmen) because it would develop the shipping of New England, “for we had no other resource, in the day of danger than in the naval force of our northern friends.” The Americans could not expect to be a great nation until they were strong at sea. If any part were invaded, it would be difficult for the Congress to send help any long distance overland. If the United States became a naval power, Europe would hesitate to risk forces so far from home, and, it should be remembered, the route of West Indian trade passed close to the United States and could be easily attacked from these shores. On the same subject, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney contended that South Carolina was too weak to be independent. If an invader sent a fleet to the Chesapeake to distract the Virginians and then attacked South Carolina, as Sir Henry Clinton did in 1780, it would be dangerous to the defenders, and, if the enemy came with a larger force than Clinton’s, he would conquer. South Carolina should have a very close union with New England because that section had naval strength. The northerners did not need the South to maintain their independence, but they needed the union for the protection and extension of their seaborne commerce, while the South needed New England for survival.
David Ramsay’s pamphlet summarized the case against a sectional animus toward American naval power. He emphasized the point that, if each state tried to have its own navy, New England would be the best protected section. It would obviously be better to leave the power to the Congress. “A common navy, paid out of the common treasury, and to be disposed of by the united voice of a majority for the common defence of the weaker as well as of the stronger states, is promised, and will result from the federal constitution.”
In New York, Jay, Hamilton, and Robert R. Livingston separately made the point that New York was defenseless against attack from the sea. Jay and Livingston added that the neighbors—New Jersey and Connecticut—were unfriendly owing to their resentment of state customs duties they paid in order to bring merchandise through New York port. Jay implied that New York would stand alone if the union were dissolved and she were attacked. Hamilton stated this as a specifically naval problem: “Your capital is accessible by land, and by sea is exposed to every daring invader
James Iredell’s pamphlet referred to the sectional feeling in a more general way. To those who feared the passage of navigation acts under the new Constitution, he suggested that competition for cargoes among American shippers would keep freights at reasonable rates. It would also encourage shipbuilding, and the country could move gradually toward “raising a navy in America which, however distant the prospect, ought certainly not to be out of our sight.”
Several anti-Federalists pointed to the absence of limits on the naval power of the Congress as reason for rejecting the Constitution (although not on that ground alone). No Federalist answered this specific point, but there was a closely related debate on broader ground. In New York it had been suggested that separate lists of objects taxable by the states and by the United States should be written into the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton answered this at length in the Federalist Papers and included an analysis of the relation of taxation to seapower: “National defense needs are impossible to predict. If the nation intends to be a commercial power, it must have the means to defend its commerce. The support of a navy and of naval wars would involve contingencies that must baffle all the efforts of political arithmetic.” The passions of war are stronger in human beings than are the sentiments of peace. It would be unrealistic to build national policy on “speculations of lasting tranquillity.” (His “hardboiled” opinion of the nature of man, so well known in other connections, was made plain here.) In short, his advice was, do not in advance make it impossible for the Congress to finance the unpredictable costs of naval warfare.
The Virginia convention heard the most extended attack on the naval power of the Congress. It was delivered on two days by William Grayson (who died two years later while serving in the United States Senate). His basic argument was that the United States could not afford to have a navy. He began by considering the alleged danger that the country would be involved in any war between France and Britain, and argued that the member-nations of the “Armed Neutrality” could protect neutral nations. But, he went on, even if this were not true, the profits of a temporary wartime trade would not make up for the expense “of rendering ourselves formidable at sea ...” or compensate for the danger of the attempt. To have a navy at present would be “impracticable and inexpedient.” Both seamen and factory workers must be drawn from surplus population, yet the American population, considered in relation to its land area, was small. “I think, therefore, that all attempts to have a fleet, till our western lands are fully settled, are nugatory and vain. How will you induce your people to go to sea?” Any man would rather be a farmer than a sailor.
Instead of providing a navy the first cares should be to promote agriculture and population, and thus become strong enough to prevent partition. “I think that the sailors who would be prevailed on to go to sea would be a real loss to the community,” that their departure would cause the “neglect of agriculture and loss of labor.” Grayson concluded his first installment: When the United States became strong, then it should have a fleet, not “a small one, but . . . one sufficient to meet any of the maritime powers.”
A good many other speeches intervened and then, two days later, Grayson rose again (apparently having spent the interval in the study of naval estimates). He re-introduced the subject bluntly: “I conceive that the power of providing and maintaining a navy is at present dangerous . . . .” The power would be in the hands of those who stood to gain by oppressing Virginia. It would also arouse European nations against the United States. They would wish to prevent commercial competition and, therefore, would bring on war to check the creation of a new naval power. Furthermore, the United States could not afford a navy. A seventy-four gun ship would cost ninety-eight thousand pounds. To man and provision her and to pay the men would require forty-eight thousand pounds more. The United States must pay more than European nations for seamen because arbitrary governments could compel service at improper pay. These probable costs simply meant that “ . . . America cannot do it.” Instead of the present unlimited clause, the Constitution should provide that there be no more ships than would be needed to protect commerce. Then Europe would not be annoyed.
How, asked Grayson, would the Navy be raised? It would be built and equipped in the North, and the South would be in the power of the North. The South would be asked for its share of the expenses but would not get the “emoluments.” Even if this were not the case, there was no reason to have a fleet. The United States should remain obscure, grow slowly, and avoid giving provocation to Europe. A navy was talked of “daily” in the North, but to build it would bring on a war with Britain or France. Yet a fleet would not be able to defend the South.
Two men replied to Grayson in the Virginia convention, one of whom merely made the mild observation that the Congress would not be required by the Constitution to provide and maintain a navy, that it was a discretionary power. The other, James Innes, felt more strongly about Grayson’s contentions. He repeated Grayson’s notion that if the United States remained helpless Europe would do her no harm, but if the country tried to become respectable “they will crush you! Is this the language or consolation of an American?” Grayson’s position was disgraceful. As for Innes himself, he wished the United States not only free but “formidable, terrible, and dignified,” not dependent for national security on the whims of princes. It seems probable that these remarks were equally addressed to Patrick Henry, who had jeered at dreams of national grandeur on the same floor three weeks earlier.
V
In assessing the naval controversy as a whole, three corollaries seem worth noting. They concern the southern interest in the naval argument, the place in the debate of America’s chief political classic, the Federalist Papers, and the relation of the debate to American intellectual history.
Southerners, to judge by the time and the words they devoted to the subject, were much more interested in the discussion of the naval power of the Congress than northerners were. There were more speeches, pamphlets, and open letters, which made substantial reference to the naval power, by southerners than by residents of the middle states and New England taken together. Their concerns in the matter were made clear in their remarks. The Federalists among them were economically dependent on the export of raw materials, and they had debts which could conceivably provoke foreign creditors to levy upon them by force. Southern anti-Federalists thought the value of the one and the threat of the other were being exaggerated for authoritarian purposes. Southern Federalists also referred to the peculiar difficulty of overland travel in their section as a tactical military problem and emphasized the need to move defense forces from one part of the coast to another by water. Thus it was that the section of the nation with the fewest merchant ships and the fewest dockyard facilities was the most talkative on the subject of national naval policy.
If the anti-Federalists had any hope of capturing the mind of posterity, they were unlucky in their rebuttal case which could not command genius equal to that of the authors of the Federalist Papers. When read in the context of the controversy then raging, this work is seen to be more of a day-to-day cumulative utilitarian rebuttal than the constructive classic of political philosophy we sometimes think it. Hamilton carried the burden of the naval argument. He wrote four times on significant points and Madison and Jay each wrote once. All three developed the argument that only by ratifying the new Constitution could the nation be assured of having a navy. In this, as in other matters, the reader who wishes a quick view of the naval side of the grand constitutional controversy would be best advised to consult the Federalist Papers, bearing in mind, of course, that the series was written in the interest of one side only.2
In the whole debate the lines of argument varied according to the vision of the future of America in the minds of the beholders. The imagination of the debaters was controlled to some extent by the fact that the United States was planted on a continent (no doubt the discussion would have been quite different if the participants had been an island people). But the controversy was not merely the conflict between the ocean and the continent. The debate revealed not two viewpoints, but three, one favoring the naval power of the Congress, and two opposed.
The Federalists had a dream of the United States as a true nation in the eighteenth century sense, dressed in the panoply and regalia of power, her seaports forested with masts, her trade guarded by a public fleet built of southern timber and manned by northern men, her integrity guarded at the cannon’s mouth, her envoys abroad respected as men of some influence in shifting the weights in the balance of power.
The anti-Federalists, on the other hand, were divided. One set of men also prophesied greatness, but a greatness to be achieved by turning their backs on the seas and the older worlds. They hoped to direct the national energies toward the interior where there were trails to blaze, soundless rivers to navigate, forests to cut, and raw clearings to plow. They believed that the people, of their own inclination, faced west toward farmland. At some remote day the country might be able to spare men to go to sea, but, meanwhile, men’s strength and skill were needed more for axmanship than helmsmanship. Although today we are not likely to agree that they faced an “either-or” choice, this was a respectable position, quite in accord with the American character—the true continental dream.
Allied with these westward-looking men there was another, smaller group, opposed to greatness and detesting national power. They might be called the Little Americans, whose ruling doctrine was localism. In the Revolution they had won home rule for their neighborhoods and that was all they cared about. They seem to have envisioned the United States as peopled by fiercely republican freemen, loosely confederated on a long narrow coastal strip, their provincial affairs more engrossing than the transactions of the distant, gaudy monarchies beyond the concentric arcs of the ocean and the sky.
A great generalization of the history of the human intellect holds that the progress of ideas is not from the simple to the complicated but from the vague to the clear. In the controversy over the future of American sea- power we see a step in the clarification of an ill-defined idea of American membership in the international community (although not a community based on altruism or benevolence). This idea was contending with a rather more distinct conception of the American people as self-sufficient and unassociated with the rest of the world. In over-simple language, these rival ideas are known as “internationalism” and “isolationism.” The belief in a policy of detachment from foreign affairs was really two notions: the doctrine that the development and exploitation of their great land-mass should be the preoccupation of Americans, and the doctrine that only the affairs of one’s own locality mattered. The “Little America” kind of provincialism has pretty well lost its magic, but the claims of the globe and the claims of the continent still compete for our support.
1. The records of the naval controversy are to be found in several places. Part of the story—a relatively small part—is found in the journals and notes of the Constitutional Convention. The discussion was much expanded in the state conventions called to consider the ratification of the Constitution. Simultaneously there was a printing press war of pamphlets and letters-to- editors, of which the letters of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, now known as The Federalist Papers, made up the most voluminous and best remembered part. Since it was the public word which influenced the public mind, an adequate understanding of the debate as it was seen by contemporaries can be gained from the speeches, pamphlets, and open letters.
2. Numbers 3, 11, 24, and 32, by Hamilton; number 40 by Madison; number 4 by Jay.