ereignty. "A great and independent fund of revenue," said Madison,
"is passing into the hands of a single body of men, who can raise troops
to an indefinite number, and appropriate money to their support for an
indefinite period of time.... Yet no blame has been whispered, no alarm
has been sounded," even by men most zealous for state rights and most
suspicious of Congress. Within a few months this argument was to be
cited with telling effect against those who hesitated to accept the
Federal Constitution because of the great powers which it conferred upon
the general government. Unless you give a government specific powers,
commensurate with its objects, it is liable on occasions of public
necessity to exercise powers which have not been granted. Avoid the
dreadful dilemma between dissolution and usurpation, urged Madison, by
clothing the government with powers that are ample but clearly defined.
In a certain sense, the action of Congress in 1787 was a usurpation of
authority to meet an emergency which no one had foreseen, as in the
cases of Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana and Lincoln's emancipation of
the slaves. Each of these instances marked, in one way or another, a
brilliant epoch in American history, and in each case the public
interest was so unmistakable that the people consented and applauded.
The theory upon which the Ordinance of 1787 was based was one which
nobody could fail to understand, though perhaps no one would then have
known just how to put it into words. It was simply the thirteen states,
through their delegates in Congress, dealing with the unoccupied
national domain as if it were the common land or folkland of a
stupendous township.

[Sidenote: Spain, hearing of the secret article in the treaty of 1783,
loses her temper and threatens to shut up the Mississippi River.]

The vast importance of the lands between the Alleghanies and the
Mississippi was becoming more apparent every year, as the westward
movement of population went on. But at this time their value was much
more clearly seen by the southern than by the northern states. In the
north the westward emigration was only just beginning to pass the
Alleghanies; in the south, as we have seen, it had gone beyond them
several years ago. The southern states, accordingly, took a much sounder
view than the northern states of the importance to the Union of the free
navigation of the Mississippi River. The difference was forcibly
illustrated in the d