Chapter 30. Conceived in Liberty 30. Maryland and South Carolina Ratify
30. Maryland and South Carolina Ratify
It is not surprising that the next state to ratify should be Maryland, where the Constitution commanded a comfortable popular majority. But the proceedings were curious. The Federalists were actually quite worried, for some of the great men and leading oligarchs of the state were opposed to the Constitution, and they could have wielded great influence. They included Samuel Chase and former governors William Paca and Thomas Johnson, who had all refused to become delegates to the Constitution Convention; the present Governor William Smallwood; John Francis Mercer; and especially Attorney General Luther Martin; who had led the liberal bloc at the convention and bitterly attacked the Constitution afterward.
Federalist fears seemed to be justified at the time, when under the dominance of Samuel Chase, the House forced the Maryland legislature to postpone the convention until April 21. George Washington wrote forceful letters in the state, despairing that if Maryland refused to ratify or even adjourned its convention, the Constitution would not be ratified in Virginia. But while the Federalists organized and
propagandized with their usual fervor, the Antifederals proved strangely silent: none of them except Luther Martin wrote against the Constitution, and few Antifederal candidates bothered to run in the election. The Antifederal camp was also hurt by the defections of Johnson and later of Paca. The people of Maryland were accustomed to following the lead of the local oligarchs, and hence great activity by the leaders on one side and apathy or defection on the other could only have one result. The Maryland convention was overwhelmingly Federalist, and the Federalist delegates treated Chase, Martin, and the other important opponents with pure contempt and refused even to speak at all in favor of the Constitution. The convention quickly ratified the Constitution, without even bothering to recommend amendments by a lopsided vote of 63-11 on April 26. What Antifederal votes that existed were concentrated in the upper Chesapeake Bay counties, but Maryland is one state where no professed economic or sectional explanation of the voting (whether the very different ones by Beard, Main, or McDonald) is at all convincing. However, Main’s observation that, in a sense, Maryland, situated as it was between the Chesapeake and Potomac, had no non-commercial interior is valuable.
The aftermath of the ratification struggle in Maryland was a heated election contest for members of the U.S. Congress from Baltimore. In one respect, Maryland was consistent with the voting pattern in other states: the urban centers of Annapolis and Baltimore were heavily pro-Constitution, even though the countryside around Baltimore provided the bulk of the voters in opposition. Dr. James McHenry, one of the leaders in the fight for ratification at the convention and who ran against Samuel Chase for Congress, accused Chase of being “anti-mechanic” for voting against the Constitution. Chase was also bitterly attacked by Robert Smith, one of Baltimore’s wealthiest merchants. Chase’s election meetings were drowned out by mobs of hecklers and attacked by groups with bludgeons, and the Chase ticket predictably lost the election.
South Carolina was a touchy proposition indeed. The people were overwhelmingly opposed to the Constitution, but, on the other hand, the seaboard planter districts were grotesquely overrepresented in the state legislature and hence in the convention, and the seaboard was the great area of Federalist strength. As in the other states of the Union, the seaboard was joined by all classes, high and low, in the major port city of Charleston in favor of the Constitution. In contrast, the backcountry farmer region where the bulk of the people lived was overwhelmingly against the Constitution.
The crucial vote came early in January 1788, on the question of whether the South Carolina House should call a state convention. James Lincoln eloquently led the backcountry forces in opposition, and he was joined by Rawlins Lowndes, leader of a small Antifederal group of wealthy lowland planters, and the brilliant Judge Aedanus Burke, the great opponent of the Society of the Cincinnati. The vote in favor of holding the convention could not have been closer: 76-75. Thus, despite the handicap of poor representation, the Antifederal forces came within one vote of blocking the Constitution then and there; a shift of one man might have well stopped ratification in its tracks. Without both Carolinas (North Carolina, would, like Rhode Island, refuse to ratify), Virginia would surely not have joined, and the Constitution scheme would have been defeated. But the House did approve the convention, and the South Carolina Antifederalists were never to come that close again. The convention was called for May 12.
The voting in the House reflected an overwhelming sectional split: from the eastern seaboard (Charlestown and the large planters, preponderantly slave parishes), virtually every vote favored a convention; from the west backcountry parishes, only two delegates failed to be opposed. The only intra-sectional division occurred in the “border” parishes between the two areas; their representatives voted against a convention by a narrow margin.
Yet, despite the closeness of the vote, when the convention met at Charleston, the delegates were split by about 125-100 in favor of the Constitution. The reasons for this shift in strength are by now familiar. First, Federalist domination of the press, and hence of propaganda outlets, all of which were located in Charleston and subject to severe pressure in that zealously Federal city. A second familiar factor was the lack of leadership, cohesion, and organization on the part of the Antifederal forces scattered throughout the vast backcountry as contrasted to the energy, cohesion, and supreme organization of the geographically concentrated Federalists. The greater wealth and influence of the Federalist leadership helped account for the great advantage in organization.
At the convention the Antifederalists found themselves deprived of the vital leadership of Rawlins Lowndes, who didn’t attend because he saw the effort futile. With the able leaders in their camp, the Federalist pressure was able to swing twenty to twenty-five Antifederalist delegates to their camp. The wining and dining of the up-country delegates by the social Charleston aristocracy and the chilling news of Maryland’s ratification combined to change these Antifederal votes, and South Carolina ratified the Constitution on May 23 by the large margin of 149-73.
An analysis of a more pivotal vote on adjournment two days earlier (defeated by 135-89) shows that the coastal parishes voted 111-9 against adjournment and for the Constitution. Of the nine holdouts against this virtual unanimity, four came from a “border” parish. Apart from a Federalist pocket around the Savannah and Edisto district, the backcountry voted 72-9 against the Constitution. Of the Antifederal renegades on the final vote, half came from the swing “border” region.
It should be noted that the areas that sent Antifederal delegates contained 80 percent of the white population of South Carolina, while three-fourths of the slaves lived in the federal parishes. Once again, the Federalists included the bulk of the wealthy, the lawyers, the large slave-owning planters, the top army officers, the leading ministers, the merchants, the educated, and the powerful, joined by the artisans and mechanics of Charleston. The Antifederalist masses were almost all small farmers.
After the vote of South Carolina on ratification, Judge Burke penned a moving description of the sorrowful reaction of the backcountry:
In some places the people had a Coffin painted black, which borne in funeral procession, was solemnly buried, as an emblem of the dissolution and internment of publick Liberty. … They feel that they are the very men, who, as mere Militia, half-armed and half-clothed have fought and defeated the British regulars in sundry encounters. They think that after having disputed and gained the Laurel under the banners of Liberty, now, that they are likely to be robbed both of the honour and the fruits of it, by a Revolution purposely contrived for it.18
Eight states had now ratified; the Constitution saga was now driving toward a climax. The month of June would prove crucial for three state conventions: New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York would be held during that time.
- 18. Main, The Antifederalists, pp. 133–34. Also see Ibid., pp. 215–20. [Editor’s remarks] Ibid., pp. 107, 213–14; Allan Nevins, The American States During and After the Revolution, 1775–1789 (New York: Macmillan, 1924), pp. 320–21.
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