he country would accept, and which would be lasting and
efficient. There was a political chaos for years after the war. Congress
had no generally recognized authority; it was merely a board of
delegates, whose decisions were disregarded, representing a league of
States, not an independent authority. There was no chief executive
officer, no court of national judges, no defined legislature. We were a
league of emancipated colonies drifting into anarchy. There was really
no central government; only an autonomy of States like the ancient
Grecian republics, and the lesser States were jealous of the greater.
The great questions pertaining to slavery were unsettled,--how far it
should extend, and how far it could be interfered with. We had ships and
commerce, but no commercial treaties with other nations. We imported
goods and merchandise, but there were no laws of tariff or of revenue.
If one State came into collision with another State, there was no
tribunal to settle the difficulty. No particular industries were
protected. Of all things the most needed was a national government
superior to State governments, taking into its own hands exclusively the
army and navy, tariffs, revenues, the post-office, the regulation of
commerce, and intercourse with foreign States. Oh, what times those
were! What need of statesmanship and patriotism and wisdom! I have
alluded to various evils of the day. I will not repeat them. Why, our
condition at the end of the War of the Rebellion, when we had a national
debt of three thousand millions, and general derangement and
demoralization, was an Elysium compared with that of our fathers at the
close of the Revolutionary War,--no central power, no constitution, no
government, with poverty, agricultural distress, and uncertainty, and
the prostration of all business; no national credit, no national
eclat,--a mass of rude, unconnected, and anarchic forces threatening to
engulf us in worse evils than those from which we had fled.

The thinking and sober men of the country were at last aroused, and the
conviction became general that the Confederacy was unable to cope with
the difficulties which arose on every side. So, through the influence of
Hamilton, a convention of five States assembled at Annapolis to provide
a remedy for the public evils. But it did not fully represent the varied
opinions and interests of the whole country. All it could do was to
prepare the way for a general convention of States;