They
debated interminably and did little. Each member usually felt
that he must champion the interests of his own State against the
hostility of others. It was not easy to create a sense of
national life. The union was only a league of friendship. States
which for a century or more had barely acknowledged their
dependence upon Great Britain, were chary about coming under the
control of a new centralizing authority at Philadelphia. The new
States were sovereign and some of them went so far as to send
envoys of their own to negotiate with foreign powers in Europe.
When it was urged that Congress should have the power to raise
taxes in the States, there were patriots who asked sternly what
the war was about if it was not to vindicate the principle that
the people of a State alone should have power of taxation over
themselves. Of New England all the other States were jealous and
they particularly disliked that proud and censorious city which
already was accused of believing that God had made Boston for
Himself and all the rest of the world for Boston. The religion of
New England did not suit the Anglicans of Virginia or the Roman
Catholics of Maryland, and there was resentful suspicion of
Puritan intolerance. John Adams said quite openly that there were
no religious teachers in Philadelphia to compare with those of
Boston and naturally other colonies drew away from the severe and
rather acrid righteousness of which he was a type.
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