Delegates continue to straggle in every day, but not in sufficient numbers to achieve a quorum. For some, this is a foreboding sign. Today Jared Ingersoll, a Pennsylvania delegate, wrote to his friend Thomas Shippen, “We have no news to communicate, unless our prospects appear to become more gloomy. I look with much anxiety. I fear confusion, if nothing worse. Our federal government seems to be expiring. What will be the substitute, whether better or worse or how soon any other system may get established it is impossible to predict.”
The Virginians and Pennsylvanians continue to meet informally. Most of them agree that the national government must be strengthened. Nevertheless, it is certain there will be those who will vehemently resist reducing the power of the States. Among them are Robert Yates and John Lansing. They arrived from New York today.
Yates and Lansing are part of the “Clinton faction” in New York, headed by Governor George Clinton, and can be counted on to oppose any measures that might advance the power of the confederacy over the States. Both men are from the Albany region of New York, practice law, and contributed to the war for independence. Yates is not well known outside of New York but did participate in the committee which drafted New York’s constitution and has been a justice on the New York Supreme Court since 1777.
John Ten Eyck Lansing is also a lawyer and studied the law under Yates. They are not only close friends and colleagues; they are related by marriage. At thirty-three, Lansing is the Mayor of Albany and already has served as Speaker in the Assembly and representative of New York to the Confederation Congress. During the War he was military secretary to General Philip Schuyler.
New York’s third delegate, Alexander Hamilton, is the philosophical opposite of Yates and Lansing. An ardent nationalist, whom some believe harbors monarchist tendencies, he is just a year younger than Lansing and served as a senior aide to General Washington during the War, including the dark winter at Valley Forge. At war’s end, Hamilton turned to the study of law, including reading under John Jay and William Paterson. He is married to Elisabeth Schuyler Hamilton. However, his passion for public service and uncompromising nationalist position have thrust him into situations where he could truly make a difference.
In 1784, Hamilton argued and won an important case before the New York City Mayor’s Court in which Chief Justice James Duane ruled that “no state in this union can alter or abridge, in a single point, the federal articles or the treaty,” referring to the 1783 Paris Peace Treaty ending the Revolutionary War. Although individual States have broken this and other treaties, as Madison clearly spelled out in his “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” Rutgers v. Waddington was a clear win for the nationalist cause.
However, Hamilton’s judicial triumph was only one of many political skirmishes with the Clintonians. Earlier this year, as a member of the New York legislature, Hamilton proposed that it vote in favor of a five percent import tax requested by the Confederacy Congress. In a lengthy speech outlining the precarious financial position of the country, he lashed out at the inability of Congress to tax and the stinginess of States who paid only a fraction or none at all of what was requested. Then he issued a dour warning: “If these states are not united under a federal government, they will infallibly have wars with each other and their divisions will subject them to all the mischiefs of foreign influence and intrigue.”
When the New York legislature voted to send three delegates to the convention, Hamilton proposed to make it five and even recommended that respected leaders such as John Jay, James Duane and Robert Livingston be appointed. His effort did not succeed. It is clear his intent was to remedy what he sees as a “stacked deck” in the delegation. Moreover, it is unlikely that Governor Clinton would have appointed him had it not been for the intervention of his father-in-law General Schuyler. In the end, a three-to-two vote will probably assure that the New York delegation will not exceed its instructions to meet “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.” [Italics added.]
George Washington is keeping count. His dairy noted that “the representation from New York appeared on the floor today,” but not enough to open the convention. Yesterday he wrote to his nephew, George Augustine Washington, complaining that only four States are represented, “which is highly vexatious to those who are idly and expensively spending their time here.”
Waiting for the day when the business of the convention can begin, Washington is being hosted at events in the city, often with the guiding hands of Mary Morris and her husband Robert. Today he dined at Grey’s Ferry and had tea at the Morris Mansion, “after which accompanied Mrs. Morris and some other ladies to hear a Mrs. O’Connell read (a charity affair). The lady being reduced in circumstances had had recourse to this expedient to obtain a little money. Her performance was tolerable.”
Washington is the prize guest at any event in the city and people admire his “comings and goings” Life is not as pleasant for other delegates. Most are separated from their families for an uncertain time. Lodging, like everything else in Philadelphia, is expensive: to keep costs down and have companionship, some delegates are sharing a room. Hot, humid weather is borne fashionably as they refuse to remove their coats and vests, delegates from New England suffering greater in their wool clothes than those from the South in their lighter linen suits.
Gathering for a purpose, with little to distract them, this increasing number of notable men is anxious for the business to get underway. Daily, reports are received of imminent arrivals.