10 Southern Historical Society Papers.
far as the framers of the Constitution were concerned, it seems to me clear that, acting as wise men of conflicting views naturally would act in a formative period during which many conflicting views pre- vailed, they did not care to incur the danger of a shipwreck of their entire scheme by undertaking to settle, distinctly and in advance, abstract questions, the discussion of which was fraught with danger. In so far as they could, they, with great practical shrewdness, left those questions to be settled, should they ever present themselves in concrete form, und^r the conditions which might then exist. The truth thus seems to be that the mass of those composing the Con- vention of 1787, working under the guidance of a few very able and exceedingly practical men, of constructive mind, builded a great deal better than they knew. The delegates met to harmonize trade differences; they ended by perfecting a scheme of political union that had broad consequences of which they little dreamed. If they had dreamed of them, the chances are the fabric would never have been completed. That Madison, Hamilton and Jay were equally blind to consequences does not follow. They probably designed a nation. If they did, however, they were too wise to take the pub- lic fully inro their confidence; and, today, "no impartial student of our constitutional history can doubt for a moment that each State ratified " the form of government submitted in " the firm belief that at any time it could withdraw therefrom." (Donn Piatt, George H. Thomas, p. 88.) Probably, however, the more far-seeing, and, in the long run, they alone count, shared with Washington in the belief that this withdrawal would not be unaccompanied by practical difficulty. And, after all is said and done, the legality of secession is somewhat of a metaphysical abstraction so long as the right of revolution is inalienable. As matter of fact it was to might and revolution the South appealed in 1861; and it was to coercion the government of Union had recourse. So with his supreme good sense and that political insight at once instinctive and unerring, in respect to which he stands almost alone, Washington foresaw this alternative in 1798.* He looked upon the doctrine of secession as a
- Washington seems, indeed, to have foreseen it from the commencement.
Hardly was the independence of the country achieved before he began to direct his efforts toward the creation of a nation, with a central power ade- quate to a coercive policy if called for by the occasion.
Thus, in March, 1783, he wrote to Nathaniel Greene (Ford, Writings of Washington, Vol. X, p. 203, note): " It remains only for the States to be wise, and to establish their independence on the basis of an inviolable, efficacious
