The Billeting Act was a British Act of Parliament passed in 1765 directing Colonial (American) legislatures to make special contributions toward the support of an army. The Act was resisted in New York and in South Carolina. Research Billeting Act
The Chisholm Case was a legal proceeding in the USA that eventually led, through the enactment of the 11th Amendment to the US. Constitution, to a limitation on the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Decided in 1793 by the US. Supreme Court, the case of Chisholm v. Georgia (2 Dallas 419) was brought against the state of Georgia by Alexander Chisholm, a citizen of South Carolina, regarding an inheritance of which he was the legatee. The Supreme Court took jurisdiction under ArticleIII, Section 2, of the Constitution, which confers jurisdiction on the federal courts in cases between a state and citizens of another state. Georgia challenged both the right of citizens to sue state governments and the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in such cases. The Supreme Court ruling affirmed the jurisdiction of the courts.
On March the 5th, 1794, Congress passed the 11th Amendment, which was ratified on February the 7th, 1795. It removed from the jurisdiction of the federal courts cases in which a citizen of one state is the plaintiff and the government of another state is the defendant; it limited the jurisdiction of the federal courts to cases in which the government of a state is the plaintiff and the citizen of another state is the defendant. Research Chisholm Case
When the newly formed United States was drawing up its constitution, disagreements occurred within the parties involved. Compromises were formed at the Convention of 1787, which was mainly divided as to whether, in the new government, one State's influence should be equal to that of any other State, or should be based on population. The plans for a Constitution submitted by Edmund Randolph, of Virginia, and William Paterson, of New Jersey, were diametrically opposed in this respect. The former favoured representation according to population in both Houses; the latter an equal vote for each State and only one House. Johnson, of Connecticut, proposed as a compromise, two Houses, an equal representation in the Senate and a proportionate one in the House. Ellsworth formally moved that this be adopted, and thus the first compromise was effected after considerable debate.
The second compromise was in regard to the regulation of commerce by Congress. It was proposed to tax both exports and imports at the discretion of Congress. C C Pinckney declared that South Carolina would not enter the Union if exports were to be taxed, since nearly the whole of her wealth lay in one article of export, rice. Hence it was decided, on August the 6th, that 'no tax or duty shall be laid by the Legislature on articles exported from any State', and on these terms the Federal control over commerce was conceded.
The Declaration of Independence was made in 1776 by the 13 English colonies in North America breaking away from all allegiance to the British Crown. The Declaration was mainly the work of Thomas Jefferson. Already in December 1775 the Congress had declared itself independent of the English parliament and by this declaration had repudiated allegiance to the Crown.
Absolute separation from Great Britain was not at first contemplated by the colonies. New England favoured it, but the Southern States were opposed. The transfer of the war to the southward in May and June, 1776, brought them to this view. The North Carolina Convention took the first step toward independence by a resolution 'to concur with those in the other colonies in declaring independence', April 22, 1776. Virginia, May 17, 1776, prepared the title of the document by directing her Representatives to propose in Congress a 'Declaration of Independence'. Such a resolution was offered by Richard Henry Lee on June the 7th, 1776. This resolution was adopted on July the 2nd. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert R Livingston were the committee appointed to draft the Declaration. The draft was formulated almost entirely by Jefferson. Before July the 1st, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey had instructed their delegates to vote against the Declaration. This instruction was rescinded, South Carolina came over to the majority, and Delaware's vote, at first divided, was in the affirmative. The Declaration was, therefore, adopted by the unanimous vote of twelve States, New York alone not voting, on July the 4th, 1776. The New York Convention afterward ratified the Declaration. The engrossed copy was signed on August the 2nd. The Declaration sets forth the rights of man and of the colonists, enumerates their grievances against the British Government, and declares 'that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States'.
In America, the Federal Party was the first political party which had control of the Federal Government. When the Constitution of 1787 was before the people for ratification, those who favoured its adoption took the name of Federalists, giving to its opponents that of Anti-Federalists. In the First Congress, definite party divisions were not found. Before the second had ended, there was a definite division between Federalists and those who called themselves Republicans or Democrats. Hamilton was the leader of the former, Jefferson of the latter. Hamilton's financial measures had been acceptable to those who desired strong government, the commercial classes, those who wished to see the Union drawn still more closely together, still further in the direction of centralization and national consolidation. Their opponents stigmatised them as monarchists. Beside Hamilton and Vice-President John Adams, the party's chief leaders were Fisher Ames, Cabot, Sedgwick, Strong, Pickering and Quincy, of Massachusetts; Ellsworth, Tracy, Griswold and Hillhouse, of Connecticut; Rufus King, Jay and Gouverneur Morris, of New York; Dayton, of New Jersey; Bayard, of Delaware; Marshall, Henry Lee, of Virginia, and C. C. Pinckney, of South Carolina. George Washington was more inclined to this party than to the other.
The Federal Party's strength was always greatest in New England. When war broke out between England and France in 1793, the Federalists, conservative and averse to the French Revolution, favoured Great Britain. In 1796 they elected John Adams President, but failed to elect Thomas Pinckney Vice-President. In 1797 they tried to bring the country into war with France, but Adams, never so extreme as the bulk of the party, prevented this; the result was a schism in the party. In 1798 the party passed the Alien and Sedition laws, which forever destroyed their popularity. In the election of 1800 Adams and Pinckney were decisively defeated by Jefferson and Burr; the causes were, the acts mentioned, internal dissensions, and the indifference of intellectual and acute leaders to popular feelings. During the administrations of Jefferson and Madison the party dwindled. As an opposition party, it took strict-constructionist ground. Some of its leaders engaged in projects for a disruption of the Union. Finally, its unpatriotic course in the War of 1812 and the odium excited by the Hartford Convention destroyed it utterly. Holding the Government during the critical years 1789-1801, it had given it strength, but it distrusted the people top much for permanent success in America. Research Federal Party
The Marmion Case was an American legal case involving slaves. Under an act of the South Carolina Legislature passed in 1822, any free negroes entering the ports of the State on ships could be imprisoned until the ship departed. This was done in the case of the Marmion. In 1824 the Attorney-General and in 1823 the District Court of the United States rendered opinions that this law was incompatible with the Constitution and the international obligations of the United States. Research Marmion Case
The Nashville Convention was a convention of delegates from the Southern States of America at Nashville, Tennessee in June, 1850, suggested by the Mississippi State Convention of the previous year. The convention was called to consider the slavery question and the encroachments of Northern abolitionists. It did not meet with universal approval. The Wilmotproviso and the Missouri Compromise were disapproved of, but resolutions of open resistance advanced by Texas, South Carolina and Mississippi were voted down. The convention met again in November, and again moderate resolutions were adopted. Research Nashville Convention
A newspaper is a publication reporting and commenting upon news. The first periodicals were published by the Romans., the first newspapers proper were produced in Venice by the government, published monthly during the war of 1563 against the Turks.
The first genuine newspaper established in the United States was the Boston News Letter founded at Boston in 1704 by Postmaster John Campbell, and continued until 1776. Previous to this there had been
issued at Boston three publications of one number each. Of these the first, called a Newspaper Extraordinary consisted wholly of extracts from a letter of Dr. Increase Mather, who was then in London endeavouring to obtain a new charter for Massachusetts. This letter was published by Samuel Green in 1689.
On September the 25th, 1690, appeared the first and only number of
Publick Occurrences Foreign and Domestic issued by Benjamin Harris. The authorities promptly seized and suppressed the paper as 'a pamphlet published contrary to law and containing reflections of a very high nature'. In 1697 B Green and J Allen republished a news letter, bearing no title, which had been issued in London the same year. It was printed on a single page, .and contained small news items from the continent. After the Boston News Letter there appeared in 1719 the Boston Gazette Andrew Bradford issuing the American Weekly Mercury at Philadelphia the same year. James Franklin established the New England Courant at Boston two years later. This was suppressed for its attacks upon the Government and clergy, but was revived by Benjamin Franklin. WilliamBradford began the Gazette at New York in 1725, and John Peter Zenger the New York Weekly Journal in 1733, in the cause of the people against the Colonial Government. Zenger's paper may be regarded as a prototype of the modern news journal. Newspapers were founded in the other American colonies in the following order: In Maryland, at Annapolis, in 1727; in South Carolina, at Charleston, in 1731; in Rhode Island, at Newport, in 1731; in Virginia, at Williamsburg, in 1736; in North Carolina, at New Berne, in 1755; in Connecticut, at New Haven, in 1755; in New Hampshire, at Portsmouth, in 1756; in Georgia, at Savannah, in 1763; in Vermont, at Westminster, in 1781.
Between 1704 and 1775 seventy-eight different newspapers had been printed with varied success in the American colonies. Of these, thirty-nine were in actual process of publication at the outbreak of the American War of Independence. The papers most influential in advancing the revolutionary cause were the Boston Gazette and the Massachusetts Spy, On the British occupation of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, most of the Whig journals were suspended. It has been estimated that the thirty-nine newspapers of 1775 circulated about 1,300,000 copies annually.
After the Federal Constitution was adopted in America the newspapers fell largely into the hands of English immigrants, men of versatility and talent. Violent partisan controversies arose. The most influential papers of this period were the Columbian Centinel, published at Boston during forty years, commencing in 1784, by Benjamin Russell; the New York Minerva, established at New York in 1793 by Noah Webster; the New York Evening Post, established as the central organ of the Federalists in 1801; the Philadelphia Aurora, founded by Benjamin Franklin Bache in 1790, and afterward edited with vindictive partisanship by William Duane, an Englishman; the Philadelphia National Gazette, established in 1791 by Philip Freneau; and the National Intelligencer, established at Washington by Samuel H Smith in 1800.
The first American penny paper was the New York Sun, established in 1833 by Benjamin Day. The first American Sunday paper was the Sunday Courier, appearing in New York in 1825, with but little success. The chief period of the political influence of editors in the United States was that beginning in 1830 and ending after the American Civil War. Before that date the editor was often of little account, but from 1830 to 1870 the paper was often known chiefly as the organ of the individual editor's opinions. Research Newspaper
In America, nullification is the formal suspension by a State government of the operation of a law of the United States within the territory under the jurisdiction of the State. It was first suggested as the rightful remedy in the case of illegal stretches of Federal legislative authority, in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799. Practical exemplifications of its operation were afforded by Pennsylvania in the Olmstead case in 1809, by Georgia in the matter of the Cherokees 1825 to 1830, etc. But the theory was most completely developed by John C Calhoun, and its most important application was in South Carolina in 1832, in her protest against the tariff of that year, which was exceedingly distasteful to the Southern States. Calhoun's nullification contemplated a suspension of the objectionable law by an aggrieved State, until three-fourths of the States in national convention should overrule the nullification. The question turned upon the dogma of State sovereignty. The State Legislature of 1832, made up of nullifiers, put the State in a position for war and passed various acts resuming powers expressly prohibited to the States by the Constitution. On December the 11th, President Jackson issued the 'nullification proclamation', declaring nullification to be incompatible with the existence of the Union and contrary to the Constitution. On February the 1st, 1833, a bill called the 'bloody bill', was passed by Congress, authorizing the enforcement of the tariff. On February the 26th, Clay submitted a compromise tariff bill, which was enacted. In consequence of this the South Carolina Convention repealed the nullification ordinance on March the 16th, 1833. Research Nullification
Patrol was a military system adopted by the parishes of most of the Southern colonies of America, notably South Carolina. The patrol was a sort of police for the parish, and was designed especially to prevent and subdue insurrections among the slaves. In South Carolina the patrol was established by law in 1704. The patrollers furnished their own pistols and horses. They rode from plantation to plantation and arrested all slaves who- could not show passes from their owners. This system soon became general through the South, and continued under various forms for many years.
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Billeting Act
