In our last regular episode, George Washington laid out an agenda in his State of the Union Address for the new cession of . In that address, Washington noted with satisfaction, that North Carolina had ratified, making it the twelfth state to to join the Union making it the 13th and final of the original state to ratify the Constitution.
Rhode Island Ratification
As you may recall, the Constitution, by its own terms, went into effect once nine of the thirteen states ratified. By the time elections were organized, eleven states had ratified. Only North Carolina and Rhode Island refused to do so. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, North Carolina, buoyed by the proposal of the Bill of Rights, and seeing threats of trade sanctions if they did not ratify, finally ratified in November of 1789. That left little Rhode Island on its own.
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| Alexander McGillivray |
Merchants and moneyed interests, of course, were aghast at this idea. It motivated the Constitutional Convention to give exclusive authority to the federal government to print paper money. Thus, Rhode Island’s paper money party would come to an end when they joined the new government.
Between September of 1787 and January of 1790, Rhode Island’s legislature, or the people themselves through referendum, rejected all efforts to ratify the US Constitution. In an attempt to put more pressure on them, Congress had approved import tariffs that would essentially make trade between Rhode Island and the other states uneconomical. North Carolina faced this same threat and got Congress to delay implementation until January, 1790. By that time North Carolina was in the Union, but Rhode Island still was not.
In January, Rhode Island officials convinced Congress to delay implementation of tariffs a second time so that Rhode Island could hold another ratifying convention in March. The ratifying convention met and adjourned without a vote on ratification. Finally, on May 18, about a week before the Rhode Island convention would reconvene, a frustrated Congress passed a bill barring all commercial trade between Rhode Island and the other twelve states. It barred US vessels from docking in Rhode Island ports and insisted that Rhode Island make a payment, in lieu of taxes, toward paying off their share of the national war debt.
It would go into effect on July 1, and it was made clear there would be no further delays. Only one member of Congress voted against the bill, which President Washington signed into law..
Federalists in Providence, and a few other areas, debated seceding from Rhode Island and joining the US on their own. The merchants were never happy with the state’s monetary policies, and saw the new trade ban as fatal to their commercial future.
So when the Ratification Convention met again in late May, there was intense pressure to accept the Constitution. Despite the pressure, the initial vote failed pretty decisively. Over the course of the next week, debate continued. At least one town that had been against ratification sent instructions to have its delegates vote in favor. In another case, a town replaced a delegate who refused to vote for ratification.
Finally, late in the afternoon of May 29, the Convention held another vote. It finally agreed to ratify the Constitution by a vote of 34-32. As part of the vote, the delegates called on Congress to protect 18 separate rights and to make 21 amendments to the Constitution, including one to protect the state’s paper money policy. But ratification was not made contingent on any of these changes. Rhode Island had agreed to become part of the United States. Couriers sped the news of ratification to New York, where President Washington reported the official news to Congress on June 1.
A couple of weeks later, the convention convened again to ratify the Bill of Rights that Congress had already proposed. The legislature appointed two US Senators who took their seats on June 25. One Federalist, Theodore Foster, and one Anti-Federalist, Joseph Stanton, Jr. The state held its first election in August, sending Federalist Benjamin Bourne to take up the state’s only House seat in early September.
With Rhode Island’s reluctant ratification, the ratification of the Constitution by all of the states was finally unanimous.
Southwest Territory
While officials in New York were pleased with Rhode Island’s acquiescence, their attention during most of the spring and summer was focused more on the west. The issue of western expansion continued to create challenges for the new federal government.
Northern settlers had already begun moving into the territory north of the Ohio River in what had been established as the Northwest Territory. At the same time settlers from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were pushing westward.
Back in Episode 335, I talked about the State of Franklin which was created out of lands that were part of western North Carolina. The settlers had formed their own state after North Carolina had given the land to the Continental Congress. When Congress did nothing to accept the land, the people formed a new state in 1784 and sought recognition from Congress. Both North Carolina and the Continental Congress refused to recognize the state. For several years though, the state existed and made treaties with Indians in the region.
Franklin’s president, John Sevier, who had been a leader at the Battle of Kings Mountain, made treaties with the nearby Cherokees. The Indians disputed the treaties. Congress’ 1785 Hopewell Treaties that I covered in Episode 339 recognized Cherokee claims on the land. After being rejected by the Americans, Sevier reached out to Spain to see if it could get support from them.
This was too much for the Americans. North Carolina attempted to seize Sevier’s property for non-payment of taxes to North Carolina. Sevier was arrested for treason. Soon afterward, the State of Franklin fell apart. Seeking to put the fight behind them, Sevier swore allegiance to North Carolina, and the Governor pardoned him. The locals would elect him as a state Senator in North Carolina.
Having reunited Franklin as part of North Carolina, the North Carolina legislature once again in early 1790, ceded the territory to the US Congress as part of its creation of a new federal territory. The Southwest Territory consisted of western lands south of the Ohio River that had been ceded by the other states. Virginia had not yet ceded Kentucky. That was still a few years away. So, for the moment, the territory consisted of North Carolina’s session, which would eventually become the state of Tennessee.
Congress essentially governed the Southwest Territory under the same terms as it did the Northwest territory, appointing a territorial governor, and expecting that it would become a state when the population was sufficient. The most significant difference between the Southwest Territory and the Northwest Territory was governed was that it allowed slavery.
Washington appointed William Blount as the new territorial governor. Sevier had wanted the job, but his past actions kept him out of consideration. Blount had been born and raised in western North Carolina, but his path differed greatly from Sevier. Bount’s father, Jacob Blount had been a Justice of the Peace, and had helped Royal Governor William Tryon crush the Regulator movement in the early 1770s. As a young man, William joined the army that was sent to crush the regulators, although he did not see any action..
When the Revolution came though, the Blounts sided with the patriots and served in the militia. Both of William’s brothers accepted commission in the Continental Army. But William remained in the militia. In 1780 he served as commissary to General Hortio Gates, for a few months, until the battle of Camden.
After that, he focused more on politics. Beginning in 1782, Bount served in the Continental Congress with the North Carolina Delegation. In 1783, he returned to state politics. He was the politician who introduced what became known as the Land Grab Act, allowing certain influential North Carolinians to obtain large amounts of western land. He was also active in the settlement of Western lands.
When the state of Franklin became an issue in North Carolina, Blount did not take a strong position with either side. Blount had opposed the Hopewell treaty that Congress signed with the Cherokee.
In 1787, Blount went back to Philadelphia as a North Carolina delegate to the Constitutional Convention. It was there that he and Washington got to know each other a bit. Blount did not stay for the entire convention. He went back to New York where he was still serving in the Confederation Congress, but returned near the convention's end to sign the final document. He then became a leader in the fight for North Carolina’s ratification, which took two tries before the state ratified in November 1789.
It was probably Blount’s reputation as a leading federalist in the state that gave Washington the confidence to nominate him as territorial governor in 1790. Blount appointed Sevier as one of two brigadier generals in the territorial militia, and appointed a number of other former Franklinites to various government positions. Among his appointments was a young attorney who had just passed the bar two years earlier. Blount appointed Andrew Jackson as a prosecutor for the territory. With the Hopewell treaties in place, the population increase in this territory created relatively few incidents with the Indians.
McGillivray and the Creeks
The real threat remained further south. The Cherokee and Muskogee in the Southwest territory had agreed to treaties with Congress in 1785 and were largely in compliance. Congress had also approached the Creeks at the same time, but they refused to sign away their land.
A big part of the Creek resistance was the work of Alexander McGillivray. I’ve mentioned McGillivray before. He was the son of a Scotsman who had settled in South Carolina and married a Creek woman who was herself the daughter of a Frenchman and another Creek woman. So McGillivray was only one-quarter Creek. He was raised in Charleston and lived in white society. When the Revolution began, McGillivray remained loyalist and went to live inland with his Creek relatives as Hoboi-Hili-Miko. Patriots seized his family’s property in South Carolina and McGillivray received a colonel’s commission in the British Army.
When the British left after the war, McGillivray continued to hold a position of power and influence among the Creeks. He discouraged them from giving away more land to the Americans when other tribes signed on in 1785. Instead, he travelled to Pensacola to get support from Spain to protect their land. Spain very much wanted the Creek to serve as a buffer between their control of the Mississippi and the Georgians who were pushing westward.
With Spanish backing, McGillivray tried to consolidate power among the Creek. Traditionally, each village could negotiate for itself. McGillivray wanted to negotiate with the Americans on behalf of all Creeks so that the Americans could not simply pressure one village after another to sell out.
Smaller groups of Creeks had signed treaties with Georgia The Treaty of Augusta in 1783 purported to give away Creek lands to which the signatories had not control. Other Creeks actually living on that land objected.
American negotiators had tried to negotiate a new treaty with the Creek in 1785. Congressional and state negotiators met with the Creek in Galphinton, Georgia. McGillivray, however, did not come. The Creek who did show up did not have authority to negotiate on behalf of all Creeks. Because of this, the federal negotiators gave up and left. However, state negotiators from Georgia were happy to negotiate with those who did show up. Presumably after offering gifts and other personal benefits, got the Creek representatives to sign another treaty that confirmed the land cessions from the Treaty of Augusta in this new Treaty of Galphinton.
Because McGillivray and the majority of the Creeks did not recognize the validity of either of the treaties with Georgia, they went about attacking settlements on their land. They wiped out a settlement at Muscle Shoals, and continued to raid frontier homesteads as they appeared.
Representatives of Congress realized they needed a real treaty that the Creek leadership accepted. The Creek leaders wanted to deal with Congress, and not state officials based on the history of bad faith negotiations.
The Confederation Congress appointed James White as superintendent of Indian affairs in 1786 to engage in negotiations. White was a doctor and a Revolutionary war veteran who had established a home near the new settlement of Knoxville. At the time, this was still the state of Franklin. White ended up resigning his commission in 1788 after Congress failed to back Franklin and instead went to work for the Spanish trying to form an alliance with Franklin. In this role, White ended up helping to supply the Creeks with Spanish arms to use against Georgia settlers. When the state of Franklin collapsed later that year, White returned to his home near Knoxville.
This experience seemed to convince the Creeks that the Confederation Congress seemed more open to a fair treaty than did state officials in Georgia. Around this same time Spanish officials told McGillivray that they could not provide more supplies and military support, forcing the Creek to rely on negotiations with the Americans.
Treaty of New York
Shortly after Washington took office as President, he sent invitations for Creek leaders to meet in New York City to discuss a strong and lasting treaty that would settle the ongoing disputes. Marinus Willet, who I’ve mentioned before for his active role in the War, and who was currently serving as Sheriff of New York, carried Washington’s message to the Creek.
During the summer of 1790 McGillivray led a delegation of Creek and Seminole leaders to New York to negotiate a new treaty with the Americans. The delegation arrived in late July.
While in New York the delegation was greeted by the newly organized Society of Saint Tammany, which was developing into a political organization. It was named after the Delaware Chief Tammany, who had successfully established a peaceful land cession agreement with William Penn a century earlier. The Chiefs were paraded through town, and onlookers celebrated their arrival as they would foreign royalty. President Washington personally received McGillivray and the other Chiefs. He treated them as he would foreign dignitaries.
Meetings between the two sides continued for about three weeks. Secretary of War Henry Knox led the negotiations for the Americans, with some support from Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. In the evenings, President Washington hosted dinners for the Creek leaders, giving them a chance to interact with Senators and Congressmen, and other people. The groups smoked pipes together and exchanged wampum belts. Washington also revealed for the first time a full length portrait of himself, painted by John Trumbull. Newspapers reported that Washington’s dinners were more lavish and festive than anything New York had seen since the inauguration.
In about three weeks the two sides had drafted an acceptable treaty. The Treaty of New York guaranteed boundaries between Creeks and Georgians. No US citizen would be permitted to settle on Indian lands. If they tried they forfeited the protection of the US. The Creek were free to deal with them as they wished. No American could even hunt in Creek territory without a US passport authorizing them to do so. The Creeks agreed to turn over criminals or escaped slaves that had taken refuge among the Creek. If people of either side committed an offense, the other would reach out to authorities to assure they would be punished by their own government, rather than simply seeking retribution.
Beyond setting up borders, the treaty also hoped to bring what the Americans called “a greater degree of civilization” to the Indians. They would provide domestic animals and farm implements in hopes of getting the Creek to take up farming, rather than living primarily as hunters. The Creek would also send a few of their own to live among the Americans, learn their language so they could serve as interpreters and also learn American customs.
To get McGillivray to support the treaty, there were also several secret provisions that impacted only him. McGillivray received a commission as a brigadier general in the US Army, which entitled him to a salary of $1200 per year. By putting the Creek leader on the US payroll, he had a strong incentive to maintain good relations going forward. McGillivray also got a one-time $100,000 payment for properties confiscated from his father during the war.
On August 13, both sides signed the treaty, which the Senate would ratify. McGillivray and the chiefs returned home. A little over a week later, President Washington issued The Proclamation of 1790, warning US citizens to stay out of Indian lands.
With the establishment of the Treaty of New York, Washington and others hoped that the threat of war with the Indians would subside, at least for the time being.
Next week: we take a look at how the new federal government resolved two of the most contentious issues facing the new nation in the Grand Compromise of 1790.
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Next Episode 367 the Grand Compromise, 1790 (coming soon)
Previous Episode 364 New England Tour and NC Ratifies
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Further Reading
Websites
Rhode Island Ratifies the Constitution: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/politics-and-government/rhode-island-ratifies-constitution
“George Washington to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, 1 June 1790,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-05-02-0284
Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Vol. 24-26: https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ATR2WPX6L3UFLH8I
Spanish Treaties with West Florida Indians 1784-1802 https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3143&context=fhq
Kinnaird, Lawrence, et al. “Spanish Treaties with Indian Tribes.” The Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1, 1979, pp. 39–48. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/967131
Stock, Melissa A. “Sovereign or Suzerain: Alexander McGillivray’s Argument for Creek Independence after the Treaty of Paris of 1783.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 2, 2008, pp. 149–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40585053
Kinnaird, Lucia Burk. “THE ROCK LANDING CONFERENCE OF 1789.” The North Carolina Historical Review, vol. 9, no. 4, 1932, pp. 349–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23515214
Goodpasture, Albert V. “DR. JAMES WHITE. PIONEER, POLITICIAN, LAWYER.” Tennessee Historical Magazine, vol. 1, no. 4, 1915, pp. 282–91. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42637324
Spanish Treaties with West Florida Indians 1784-1802 https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3143&context=fhq
Kinnaird, Lawrence, et al. “Spanish Treaties with Indian Tribes.” The Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1, 1979, pp. 39–48. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/967131
Stock, Melissa A. “Sovereign or Suzerain: Alexander McGillivray’s Argument for Creek Independence after the Treaty of Paris of 1783.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 2, 2008, pp. 149–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40585053
Wright, J. Leitch. “Creek-American Treaty of 1790: Alexander McGillivray and The Diplomacy of The Old Southwest.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4, 1967, pp. 379–400. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40578728Southwest Territory 1790-1796: https://www.tngenweb.org/tnletters/territories/sw-terr.html
Spanish Treaties with West Florida Indians 1784-1802 https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3143&context=fhq
Kinnaird, Lawrence, et al. “Spanish Treaties with Indian Tribes.” The Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1, 1979, pp. 39–48. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/967131
Stock, Melissa A. “Sovereign or Suzerain: Alexander McGillivray’s Argument for Creek Independence after the Treaty of Paris of 1783.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 2, 2008, pp. 149–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40585053
Southwest Territory https://tn250.com/voices-volunteers/posts/southwest-territory
Indian Relations 1782-1789 (American Revolution in Georgia) https://ugapress.manifoldapp.org/read/the-american-revolution-in-georgia-1763-1789/section/9569afb7-0b49-4aea-bb2f-4308eaf5be29
William Blount: https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/william-blount-1749-1800
Alexander McGillivray: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-McGillivray
Alexander McGillivray: https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/alexander-mcgillivray-ca-1750-1793
George Washington and Native American Policy: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/native-american-policy
“Henry Knox to George Washington, 6 July 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-03-02-0062
“George Washington to the Commissioners to the Southern Indians, 29 August 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-03-02-0326
“Proclamation, 14 August 1790,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0122
Treaty of New York (1790): https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/treaty-of-new-york-1790
Treaty with the Creeks, 1790: https://treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/treaty-with-the-creeks-1790-0025
Proclamation of 1790: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/gwproc13.asp
Free eBooks
(from archive.org unless noted)
Arthur, John Preston Western North Carolina: A History (from 1730 to 1913), Raleigh, NC: Edward Buncombe Chapter of the DAR, 1914.
Chappell, Absalom Harris The Oconee War. Alexander McGillivray. Gen. Elijah Clark. Col. Benjamin Hawkins, Columbus, GA: Thos Gilbert, 1874 (Google Books).
Hawkins, Benjamin Creek Confederacy and a Sketch of the Creek Country, Savannah, 1848.
Henderson, W. A. Alexander McGillivray, The Last King of the Creeks, Atlanta: Foote & Davies Co. 1903.
Kaminski, John P. et. al (eds) Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Vol. 24, Rhode Island (from Univ. of Wisconsin digital library).
Losing, Benson (ed) The Diary of George Washington, From 1789 to 1791, Richmond: Press of the Historical Society, 1861.
Turner, Francis Marion Life of General John Sevier, New York: The Neale Publishing Co. 1910.
Books Worth Buying
(links to Amazon.com unless otherwise noted)*
Boiler, Jean Lufkin The Most Perfect Justice: Alexander McGillivray and George Washington Strive to Save the Creek Nation, Escambia Press, 2020.
Bordewich, Fergus M. The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government, Simon & Schuster, 2016.
Caughey, John W. McGillivray of the Creeks, Univ. of OK Press, 1938 (borrow on archive.org).
Chernow, Ron Washington, A Life, Penguin Press, 2010.
Elkins, Stanley M. and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800, Oxford Univ. Press, 1993 (borrow on archive.org).
Ellis, Joseph J. His Excellency. George Washington, Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Ellis, Joseph J. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution 1783-1789, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.
Haynes, Joshua S. Patrolling the Border: Theft and Violence on the Creek-Georgia Frontier, 1770–1796, Univ. of Ga. Press, 2018.
Holinshead, Byron (ed) I Wish I'd Been There: Twenty Historians Bring to Life Dramatic Events That Changed America, Doubleday, 2006.
Kaminski, John P. et. al. (eds) Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 24: Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Rhode Island, No. 1 (Volume 24) Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2011 (or download for free from Wisconsin web site).
Leibiger, Stuart Founding Friendship George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic, Univ. of Virginia Press, 1999.
McCullough, David John Adams, Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Meacham, Jon Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Random House, 2012
Randall, Willard Sterne Thomas Jefferson: A Life, Henry Holt and Co. 1993.
Unger, Harlow Giles Mr. President: George Washington and the Making of the Nation's Highest Office, De Capo Press, 2013.
Waring, Alice Noble The Fighting Elder: Andrew Pickens, 1739-1817, Univ. of S.C. Press, 1962 (borrow on archive.org).
* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.William Blount
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