“A ceaseless and voluminous writer for the newspapers”

In his 1906 History of Washington County, Maryland, Thomas J. C. Williams wrote a lot about Benjamin Galloway, who, he said, died in August 1831 at the age of seventy-nine.

In addition to mentioning Galloway at many points in the book, usually in discussions of local politics, Williams wrote:

Possibly there are some citizens of Hagerstown now living who can remember an eccentric old gentleman with long white hair, with elegant manners and courteous demeanor, who lived in the stone house at the corner of Washington and Jonathan streets . . .

He was somewhat convivial, and very fond of writing for the newspapers. He generally wore a blue coat the pockets of which were filled with newspapers and manuscript. It was difficult for an acquaintance to pass him on the street. He was anxious to declaim upon politics, or to read his latest communication to the [Hagerstown] Torch Light or his last poem, to anyone who was willing to listen to him.

This gentleman was Benjamin Galloway, for nearly forty years one of the best known and most conspicuous citizens of the County. Galloway was born in England in 1752, was educated at Eton and received a legal education at the Temple in London. Throughout the contentions between the home government and the Colonies which led to the war for Independence his sympathies were with the Colonists, and before the declaration of hostilities he embarked for America and settled in Anne Arundel County.

According to J. Reaney Kelly’s article about the Galloway family estate, “‘Tulip Hill,’ Its History and Its People,” published in the Maryland Historical Magazine in 1965, Benjamin Galloway was actually born in Maryland. Or if he was born in England, it was because his American-born parents were visiting there.

Benjamin was sent to Britain for education in 1769, which seems too late for Eton. He was back in Maryland in late 1771, then in London again in May 1773, meeting “Mr. [Charles Willson] Peale the artist” and hoping to study law. In Britain when the war began, Benjamin Galloway returned home to marry by July 1777.

By that time, Galloway was a member of the Maryland house of delegates, though for only a couple of sessions. Williams wrote:

He was a member of the first State Legislature and, attracting attention by his zeal for the patriot cause, he, although but twenty-five years of age, received the appointment of Attorney General in the new government. This office he held but a very short time, not more than a month, when he resigned. This unfortunate resignation returned to torment Galloway at every political controversy into which he entered, and he was never out of them. It was charged each time that the office of Attorney General had been renounced because of timidity, or because he was secretly a Tory. These accusations were furiously repelled. He had resigned, he said, only in deference to the commands of a timid father.

Indeed, Maryland’s official record says Benjamin Galloway was named state attorney general on 6 January 1778. Officially, he declined the appointment, not even getting into office, and Luther Martin (shown above) was appointed to the job on 11 February and held it for more than a quarter-century. By 1803, Galloway was feuding with Martin.

Galloway married Miss Henrietta Chew, of Washington County, and removed from Anne Arundel to reside on “Chew’s farm” near the Potomac, six miles below Williamsport. There he was living in 1798. His republicanism was so pronounced, that in that year, when war with France seemed unavoidable, during a temporary absence from his home, a report was circulated that he sympathized with the French against his own government, and had declared his intention of joining them if they landed on our soil. This report he denounced in the newspaper as the work of a calumniator and a villain.

In 1800, he had removed to Hagerstown, and occupied a house owned by Nathaniel Rochester. In 1802, he received the appointment of Associate Justice for Washington County, but shortly resigned the office. He was a member of St John’s Episcopal Church, and for a time a vestryman of the parish.

All through his life he was a ceaseless agitator. He was constantly a candidate for the legislature, and several times for elector of the Senate. In 1822, he was elected, and made a diligent member. Again in 1823 he was elected after a fierce campaign at the head of the “Christian ticket,” in opposition to the removal of the disabilities of the Jews. He was a ceaseless and voluminous writer for the newspapers, and gave and received many trenchant blows. One of his favorite objects of assault was the banks. The prevailing system of banking he declared to be nothing more than public swindling and called and addressed a public meeting on this subject.

Another detail Williams reported was that Galloway “greatly indulged” his “large number of slaves,” particularly “a girl who was raised in the house as a family pet, and who frequently engaged in capers which would have made a less indulgent master sell her to the cotton fields.” This was not presented as a sign of Galloway’s good character.

In sum, Williams described Benjamin Galloway as a conspicuous crank, especially on political subjects, though no doubt wealthy, intelligent, and courteous.

Williams also reprinted Galloway’s anecdote about George Washington. But given the sketch of his character, how reliable does that story seem?

TOMORROW: Reasons for skepticism.

“The army shall not consist of more than — thousand men”

When John Francis Mercer arrived late at the Constitutional Convention on 6 Aug 1787, he was only twenty-eight years old—the second youngest man there. But he wasn’t shy about speaking up.

The day after Mercer signed in, James Madison’s notes portray the young Maryland delegate as saying, “The Constitution is objectionable in many points, but in none more than the present” issue. The next day: “Mr. MERCER expressed his dislike of the whole plan, and his opinion that it never could succeed.”

This Teaching American History profile says Mercer attended the convention until 16 August, but Madison recorded him speaking the following day as well. That was his last documented contribution to the debate. But did he stick around silently (or silently enough for Madison not to quote him)?

On Saturday, 18 August, George Mason and Elbridge Gerry (shown above) spoke at length about the danger of a standing (permanent) army and the value of a militia system. Madison’s notes say:

Mr. MASON introduced the subject of regulating the militia. He thought such a power necessary to be given to the General Government. He hoped there would be no standing army in time of peace, unless it might be for a few garrisons. The militia ought, therefore, to be the more effectually prepared for the public defence. . . .

Mr. GERRY took notice that there was no check here against standing armies in time of peace. The existing Congress is so constructed that it cannot of itself maintain an army. This would not be the case under the new system. The people were jealous on this head, and great opposition to the plan would spring from such an omission. He suspected that preparations of force were now making against it. [He seemed to allude to the activity of the Governor of New York at this crisis in disciplining the militia of that State.] He thought an army dangerous in time of peace, and could never consent to a power to keep up an indefinite number. He proposed that there should not be kept up in time of peace more than — thousand troops. His idea was, that the blank should be filled with two or three thousand.

That seem to be the basis of the anecdote about George Washington that I quoted yesterday: “A member made a motion that congress should be restricted to a standing army not exceeding five thousand, at any one time.” Supposedly Washington, chairing the convention, whispered to a Maryland delegate “to amend the motion, by providing that no foreign enemy should invade the United States, at any one time, with more than three thousand troops.”

Mercer, uncle of the Virginia legislator who told that story in 1817, seems the most likely candidate to have been that Maryland delegate. However, Madison’s notes make no mention of Mercer in the discussion that followed:

Mr. L[uther]. MARTIN and Mr. GERRY now regularly moved, “provided that in time of peace the army shall not consist of more than — thousand men.”

General [Charles Cotesworth] PINCKNEY asked, whether no troops were ever to be raised until an attack should be made on us?

Mr. GERRY. If there be no restriction, a few States may establish a military government.

Mr. [Hugh] WILLIAMSON reminded him of Mr. MASON’S motion for limiting the appropriation of revenue as the best guard in this case.

Mr. [John] LANGDON saw no room for Mr. GERRY’S distrust of the representatives of the people.

Mr. [Jonathan] DAYTON. Preparations for war are generally made in time of peace; and a standing force of some sort may, for aught we know, become unavoidable. He should object to no restrictions consistent with these ideas.

The motion of Mr. MARTIN and Mr. GERRY was disagreed to, nem. con.

“Nem. con.” meant that motion to limit the army was voted down unanimously.

Was John F. Mercer even present that day? As I said above, Mercer doesn’t appear in Madison’s notes after 17 August, and he left the convention sometime before its end because he disagreed with its goal. But the anecdote about Washington’s whisper, if we believe it, hints that Mercer was still present on 18 August.

Dr. James McHenry, another Maryland delegate Washington may have addressed so frankly, definitely was present on 18 August. He wrote brief notes on the discussion. McHenry didn’t record anything about the size of the standing army, however. That might have been because he mostly wrote down when the convention agreed to amend its draft, not when it decided not to.

Either way, there was a moment when the Constitutional Convention discussed the possibility of a numerical limit on the size of the U.S. Army. And the anecdote about Washington’s whisper described that moment almost two decades before Madison’s notes were published.

TOMORROW: John F. Mercer’s objections.

[Who was the youngest delegate to the convention? Jonathan Dayton, who had the last word in that debate over the size of the U.S. army.]

The Imprint of Madison’s Hand

A couple of years ago, I attended a seminar at the Massachusetts Historical Society on a paper by Prof. Mary Sarah Bilder of Boston College Law School. She had been studying James Madison’s record of the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787.

That in itself wasn’t unusual; Madison’s notes, first published in 1840, have become the standard source on what happened in those discussions. For folks who take an “originalist” stance to legal interpretations, they’re crucial to what the Founders supposedly meant.

Bilder had focused not on Madison’s record but on how that record had changed since 1787, as revealed by surviving notes and versions copied out by other people in the meantime. The result is the new book Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention.

In this History News Network article, Bilder laid out the basis of her book:

To a remarkable degree, Madison’s revised Notes created the narrative we inherit of the Convention. Hundreds of books and articles have been written about the Convention. They rely on one manuscript: Madison’s Notes. In 1840, after Madison’s death, Dolley Madison published his Notes. They remain the authority for scholars, historians, journalists, lawyers, and judges.

Madison’s Notes are the only source that covers every day of the Convention from May 14 to September 17, 1787. No other source depicts the Convention as Madison’s Notes do: as a political drama, with compelling characters, lengthy discourses on political theories, crushing disappointments, and seemingly miraculous successes. The Notes are, as the Library of Congress catalogs them, properly considered a “Top Treasure” of the American people.

But the Notes do not date in their entirety to the summer of 1787. They are covered in revisions. This fact is known–but the number is a shock. When I saw the manuscript in the conservation lab at the Library of Congress—in the aptly named Madison Building—the additions appear in various ink shades, with handwriting, some youthful, some with the shake of Madison’s later years. Madison even added slips of paper with longer revisions. . . .

Madison’s Notes were revised as he changed his understanding about the Convention, the Constitution, and his own role. Madison’s Notes were originally taken as a legislative diary for himself and likely Thomas Jefferson. They tracked his political ideas, his strategies, and the positions of allies and opponents. The original Notes reflected what Madison cared about.

I love talking about the Notes with students because they know that one cannot take notes of oneself speaking. When they are called on, they either leave their notes blank or they compose that section later, reflecting what they realized afterwards was the right answer. Madison’s own speeches are thus the most troubling in terms of reliability. In fact, in the years immediately after the Convention, he likely replaced several of the sheets containing his speeches in order to distance himself from statements that became controversial. . . .

Beginning in 1789, Madison began to revise the Notes to convert his diary into a record of debates. Along the way, he converted himself into a different Madison. In the original Notes, Madison was annoyed and frustrated. Slowly by altering a word here, a phrase there, he became a moderate, dispassionate observer and intellectual founder of the Constitution.

One particular area of evolution was Madison’s idea of how much control the federal government had over the states. He went into the convention with the idea that the national government should have a veto over state laws, but that idea was unpopular enough that his notes preserve no record of such a suggestion. Of course, Madison continued to change his thinking about the balance of power between state and nation from the late 1780s to the mid-1810s, depending on his circumstances.

Another issue, inextricably related to that one, was how the Constitution treated slavery. Bilder addressed that in a recent essay at We’re History:

Madison’s role in promoting slavery is often overlooked because historians have relied on Madison’s revised version of his record of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, known to historians as Madison’s Notes. They are the most important source for what happened at the Constitutional Convention. In two comments Madison recorded in his Notes, he spoke against slavery at the Convention. They are the only two times in the Notes he claims to have spoken against slavery. Both occasions occur on August 25. No other delegates’ notes from the Convention contain a single word indicating that Madison was opposed to slavery.

New evidence suggests that Madison composed his anti-slavery comments two years after it appeared he had written them. Madison did not finish the Notes until after the Convention, and he wrote the Notes from August 22 to September 17 after the fall of 1789. Curiously, one of the sentences Madison attributes to himself bears a strange resemblance to a statement that he had originally recorded another delegate, Maryland’s Luther Martin, making on August 21.

Madison was the delegate who suggested enumerating enslaved people not as property but as three-fifths of people, the basis of what became known as the “slave power” in ante-bellum America.

Gerry and Warren, Anti-Federalist Allies

The Massachusetts Historical Society recently bought a 1788 letter from James Warren to Elbridge Gerry (shown here) that hasn’t appeared in any published correspondence of the two politicians. It does appear online at the Wisconsin Historical Society’s monumental roundup of documents about the ratification of the Constitution.

By 1788, Warren and Gerry had worked together for nearly two decades, first as Whigs opposing the Crown in the Massachusetts legislature and Provincial Congress, then as part of the Revolutionary War effort—Warren as paymaster general for the army in 1775-76 and leader of the Massachusetts legislature, Gerry as a member of the Continental Congress.

In the mid-1780s Warren, unlike many of his wealthy Massachusetts merchant friends, didn’t fully condemn the Shays’ Rebellion. He and his wife, Mercy, preferred a weak national government and feared an overreaction to that rural uprising. There was indeed a Constitutional Convention in response. Gerry served as a Massachusetts delegate to it and came away opposed to the result.

Gerry reported to the Massachusetts legislature on 18 Oct 1787 about what he saw wrong with the proposed new government:

My principal objections to the plan are that there is no adequate provision for a representation of the people—that they have no security for the right of election—that some of the powers of the Legislature are ambiguous and others are indefinite and dangerous—that the Executive is blended with and will have an undue influence over the Legislature—that the judicial department will be oppressive—that treaties of the highest importance may be formed by the President with the advice of two thirds of a quorum of the Senate—and that the system is without the security of a bill of rights. These are objections which are not local but apply equally to all the States.

The Massachusetts ratification convention met in early 1787. It asked Gerry to testify, but when he did Richard Dana, a Federalist, complained that he was trying to enter into the debate even though he wasn’t a delegate. Gerry published an angry defense of himself. Despite his arguments, the Massachusetts convention ratified the new Constitution with a request for amendments.

By then the debate was becoming national. Gerry and fellow Anti-Federalist Luther Martin of Maryland engaged in a newspaper exchange with the Federalist delegate Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, who wrote as “A Landholder.” Ellsworth then claimed that Gerry had badmouthed Martin during the national convention, apparently trying to drive a wedge between them. Gerry published an open letter complaining about that.

By the summer of 1788, enough states had ratified the Constitution to give it legal force. Gerry was feeling rather ill used, and that’s when James Warren sent him this sympathetic letter about unfair attacks on him.

TOMORROW: Which rather veered off the topic.