after its commerce in its own peculiar fashion and the devil
might take the hindmost. Their rivalries and jealousies were like
those of petty kingdoms. If one State should close her ports is
to English ships, the others would welcome them in order to
divert the trade, with no feeling of national pride or federal
cooperation.

The Articles of Confederation had empowered Congress to make
treaties of commerce, but only such as did not restrain the
legislative power of any State from laying imposts and regulating
exports and imports. If a foreign power imposed heavy duties upon
American shipping, it was for the individual States and not for
Congress to say whether the vessels of the offending nation
should be allowed free entrance to the ports of the United
States: It was folly to suppose, ran the common opinion, that if
South Carolina should bar her ports to Spain because rice and
indigo were excluded from the Spanish colonies, New Hampshire,
which furnished masts and lumber for the Spanish Navy, ought to
do the same. The idea of turning the whole matter over to
Congress was considered preposterous by many intelligent
Americans.

In these thirteen States were nearly three and a quarter million
people hemmed in a long and narrow strip between the sea and an
unexplored wilderness in which the Indians were an ever present
peril. The Southern States, including Maryland, prosperous
agricultural regions, contained almost one-half the English-
speaking population of America. As colonies, they had found the
Old World eager for their rice, tobacco, indigo, and tar, and
slavery was the means of labor so firmly established that