it.” In other words,
there needed to be an official estimate of the specific amount each state would
have “assumed” and then be obliged to pay in federal taxes
before
the vote on assumption occurred. According to his own rough
calculations, Virginia would transfer about $3 million of debt to the federal
government, then be charged about $5 million in new taxes. Like the failure to
compensate the original holders of government securities, this was
unfair. 16
If you read Madison’s correspondence during this same time, you get
the strong impression that the problem went much deeper than any shuffling of
account books could ever satisfy. The economic injustice toward Virginia and
most of the southern states—South Carolina was the exception, since it
had not retired much of its debt—was bad enough. But assumption was
symptomatic of malevolent tendencies that transcended mere dollars and cents.
It was about power. Under the guise of doing the states a favor by assuming
their debts, the federal government was implicitly, even covertly, assuming
sovereign authority over the economies of all the states. As Madison put it to
Jefferson in his most typically elliptical style, assumption “would be
peculiarly hard on Virginia,” but was “further objectionable as
augmenting a trust already sufficiently great for the virtue and number of the
federal Legislature.” Virginia, in short, was being asked to trust its
fate to the collective wisdom and virtue of the central government. Assumption,
as Madison came to regard it, was not primarily about money. It was about
control, about trust, about independence. 17
These were
all major chords in a revolutionary melody that most Virginians knew by heart.
Henry Lee, for example, apprised Madison that the assumption debate reminded
him of those glorious days of yesteryear, when the Virginia Assembly refused to
recognize Parliament’s right to tax colonies. “It seems to
me,” Lee wrote, “that we southern people must be slaves in effect,
or cut the Gordion knot at once.” The radical rhetoric of the 1760s and
1770s, now hallowed by its association with the successful war for
independence, came pouring out of Madison’s correspondents in Virginia,
equating assumption with the Stamp Act, the federal Congress with Parliament,
the so-called “fixed insolent northern majority” with Great
Britain. “How do you feel?” Lee asked Madison rhetorically:
“Is your love for the constitution so ardent … that it should
produce ruin to your native country?” By “native country,”
Lee meant Virginia. 18
The entire
atmosphere surrounding the assumption debate had become electromagnetic. And
Madison, who had a justifiable reputation for making himself the calm center in
the midst of all political storms, was being buffeted by shrill accusations
from both sides. Northern congressmen, led by Fisher Ames of Massachusetts,
accused him of threatening the survival of the republic by blocking the
centerpiece of Hamilton’s fiscal program, without which, they believed,
the union would dissolve. Southerners, chiefly Virginians, were telling him
that assumption demonstrated how prophetic the Antifederalist enemies to the
Constitution now looked, and how his previous assurances in the Virginia
ratifying convention and
The Federalist Papers
, assurances that the
Constitution would prove a culmination rather than a betrayal of the American
Revolution, now seemed like false promises.
The word that captured the
essence of the Virginians’ political mentality was
consolidation,
as in “the dreaded consolidation that was denied
by the friends of the new government, when it was under consideration.”
The term conveyed the political fear, so potent among the Antifederalist
critics of the constitutional settlement of 1788, that the states would be
absorbed by the new federal government. It echoed the ideological fear, so
effective as a weapon against the taxes imposed by Parliament and decrees
there needed to be an official estimate of the specific amount each state would
have “assumed” and then be obliged to pay in federal taxes
before
the vote on assumption occurred. According to his own rough
calculations, Virginia would transfer about $3 million of debt to the federal
government, then be charged about $5 million in new taxes. Like the failure to
compensate the original holders of government securities, this was
unfair. 16
If you read Madison’s correspondence during this same time, you get
the strong impression that the problem went much deeper than any shuffling of
account books could ever satisfy. The economic injustice toward Virginia and
most of the southern states—South Carolina was the exception, since it
had not retired much of its debt—was bad enough. But assumption was
symptomatic of malevolent tendencies that transcended mere dollars and cents.
It was about power. Under the guise of doing the states a favor by assuming
their debts, the federal government was implicitly, even covertly, assuming
sovereign authority over the economies of all the states. As Madison put it to
Jefferson in his most typically elliptical style, assumption “would be
peculiarly hard on Virginia,” but was “further objectionable as
augmenting a trust already sufficiently great for the virtue and number of the
federal Legislature.” Virginia, in short, was being asked to trust its
fate to the collective wisdom and virtue of the central government. Assumption,
as Madison came to regard it, was not primarily about money. It was about
control, about trust, about independence. 17
These were
all major chords in a revolutionary melody that most Virginians knew by heart.
Henry Lee, for example, apprised Madison that the assumption debate reminded
him of those glorious days of yesteryear, when the Virginia Assembly refused to
recognize Parliament’s right to tax colonies. “It seems to
me,” Lee wrote, “that we southern people must be slaves in effect,
or cut the Gordion knot at once.” The radical rhetoric of the 1760s and
1770s, now hallowed by its association with the successful war for
independence, came pouring out of Madison’s correspondents in Virginia,
equating assumption with the Stamp Act, the federal Congress with Parliament,
the so-called “fixed insolent northern majority” with Great
Britain. “How do you feel?” Lee asked Madison rhetorically:
“Is your love for the constitution so ardent … that it should
produce ruin to your native country?” By “native country,”
Lee meant Virginia. 18
The entire
atmosphere surrounding the assumption debate had become electromagnetic. And
Madison, who had a justifiable reputation for making himself the calm center in
the midst of all political storms, was being buffeted by shrill accusations
from both sides. Northern congressmen, led by Fisher Ames of Massachusetts,
accused him of threatening the survival of the republic by blocking the
centerpiece of Hamilton’s fiscal program, without which, they believed,
the union would dissolve. Southerners, chiefly Virginians, were telling him
that assumption demonstrated how prophetic the Antifederalist enemies to the
Constitution now looked, and how his previous assurances in the Virginia
ratifying convention and
The Federalist Papers
, assurances that the
Constitution would prove a culmination rather than a betrayal of the American
Revolution, now seemed like false promises.
The word that captured the
essence of the Virginians’ political mentality was
consolidation,
as in “the dreaded consolidation that was denied
by the friends of the new government, when it was under consideration.”
The term conveyed the political fear, so potent among the Antifederalist
critics of the constitutional settlement of 1788, that the states would be
absorbed by the new federal government. It echoed the ideological fear, so
effective as a weapon against the taxes imposed by Parliament and decrees
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