me, the information which I received personally from General Dayton. It has been done from a recollection of ten years, and I may have differed much from General Dayton in his phraseology, but I am confident I have faithfully stated the facts. I have related this anecdote at different times to gentlemen of information, to all of whom it was entirely new. Some of them requested me to furnish them a written copy, but I deemed that improper without the permission of General Dayton; and I intended, the first opportunity I should have, to make the same request of him—but the hand of death has removed him.
In committing this anecdote to paper, I have been actuated not only by a wish to gratify you, but by a desire to perpetuate the facts, if, as I fear, they are not elsewhere recorded. As they relate to a very important feature in our republican institutions, and to some of the most celebrated individuals who achieved our independence and framed our national government, they will, I am persuaded, be interesting to every lover of this happy country.
I am, very affectionately,
- Your father,
- Wm. Steele.
To Jonathan D. Steele.
ⅭⅭⅭⅬⅥ. James Madison to Andrew Stevenson.[1]
Will you pardon me for pointing out an error of fact into which you have fallen, as others have done, by supposing that the term, national applied to the contemplated Government, in the early stage of the Convention, particularly in the propositions of Mr. Randolph, was equivalent to unlimited or consolidated. This was not the case. The term was used, not in contradistinction to a limited, but to a federal Government. As the latter operated within the extent of its authority thro’ requisitions on the confederated States, and rested on the sanction of State Legislatures, the Government to take its place, was to operate within the extent of its powers directly & coercively on individuals, and to receive the higher sanction of the people of the States. And there being no technical or appropriate denomination applicable to the new and unique System, the term national was used, with a confidence that it would not be taken in a wrong sense, especially as a right one could be readily suggested if not sufficiently implied by some of the propositions themselves. Certain it is that not more than two or three members of the Body and they rather theoretically than practically, were in
- ↑ Documentary History of the Constitution, Ⅴ, 332–334.
