The real political life and interest of the people centered State legis lation, legal in the state governments. Leaders like Patrick Henry, and religious. John Hancock, and George Clinton served as governors. The judiciary in nearly all the states ranked high. Under the new constitutions, established after the Declaration of Independence, it rested upon the authority of the people and not of an alien government as before the Revolution. So great was the respect for its personnel and the confidence in its honesty, that in some states it ventured to stand between the legislature and the state constitution, declaring laws unconstitutional and therefore void, thus paving the way for the high position subsequently taken by the national Supreme Court. Such cases during the Confederation were those of Holmes v. Walton in New Jersey in 1780, Caton v. Commonwealth of Virginia in 1782, Trevett v. Weeden in Rhode Island in 1786, and Bayard v. Singleton in North Carolina in 1787. In 1791 the Supreme Court of New Hampshire came to a similar conclusion in the case of Gilman v. McClary. Some attempt was made to render judicial processes more simple and less expensive. In Virginia the laws of entail and primogeniture, by which great estates were kept intact and passed on from eldest son to eldest son, were abolished. In Virginia also, after a hard fight, Madison and Jefferson succeeded in disestablishing the state church, and in most of the states some steps were taken towards the separation of church and state, though it was to be many years before officeholding was made universally independent of religious belief, and taxes for the support of religion were abolished. Special interest attaches to the antislavery agitation of Antislavery the period. The Quakers had always opposed slavery, and there had been a few other voices crying in the wilderness. The region north of the Carolinas had sufficient slaves, in fact, more than it wanted, and the colonies there had endeavored to get the consent of the English government to the prohibition of their importation. During the Revolution, movement. Economic problems and paper money. many states had prohibited the trade. Slavery had, in fact, ceased to pay except in the newly exploited districts of the extreme South. Under these circumstances the equality doctrines of the Revolution were readily extended to the negroes, at least to the extent of causing the majority of the leaders of thought to condemn slavery. There began an era of abolition. Vermont led the way in 1777. The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 was later interpreted as abolishing slavery, and New Hampshire followed in 1783. Pennsylvania in 1780 began gradual emancipation, and similar laws were adopted in 1784 by Connecticut and Rhode Island. New York and New Jersey followed in 1799 and . 1804. The number of slaves actually freed was small; some were sold south, and some continued to be held under the gradual emancipation acts, except in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, almost until the Civil War. In Virginia there was an equal disposition to free the slaves, but the property sacrifice would have been greater, and the future of the freed negroes was too uncertain. The movement, therefore, halted at the Mason-Dixon line, while the Northwest Ordinance, prohibiting slavery north of the Ohio, carried the division to the Mississippi, and a new sectionalism, ominous for the future, but by no means sharp at this time, was thus foreshadowed. Even the state governments were not able to deal with all their problems successfully. The Revolution, like all wars, left behind it much economic distress. Not only was there destruction of wealth, but also much wealth changed hands. To a great degree the rich grew richer and the poor poorer. This was intensified during the Confederation, for the coast region and the merchants recovered from the effects of the war sooner than the farmers of the interior, who found taxes heavier, but no new means of making money. In 1783 and 1784 there were large imports of long desired English goods, and many, particularly the farmers, thinking that independ ence would mean immediate good times, bought more than they could pay for. They became indebted to the merchants, who came to constitute a creditor class. Taxes, too, were heavier than before the Revolution, because of the state debts created to carry on the war, and they were levied chiefly upon landowners. The farmers came to hate those to whom they owed money, the lawyers who attempted to collect the debts, and the judges who insisted upon payment, or sent the debtor to prison in accordance with the law of that day. In the South, many of the merchants belonged to the debtor class. The chief political question that divided these classes was that of currency. Congress, as has been stated, had repudiated the paper money it had issued during the Revolution, and furnished only a small amount, which was speedily withdrawn, after the war. The question was, therefore, left to the states. There was undoubtedly too little money for the needs of the country. Gold and silver were sent abroad to pay for our imports, which were very heavy during the first years after the peace, really exceeding the capacity of the country to pay for them. The debtor class demanded the issuance of unlimited amounts of paper, which would make it easy to pay debts and taxes. This desire for cheap money was not the result of dishonesty, but of lack of financial experience. The colonies generally had been a debtor community, and before the Revolution had indulged in many dangerous financial experiments, and had been kept from others only by the restraining hand of England. Moreover, the Revolution had spread the idea. that a legislature was omnipotent and could do anything the people desired; that it could make value where no value was before. The paper-money party was the conservative American party; the sound-money party was a progressive element standing for ideas associated with England and composed of men interested in loaning money, a new business in America. In the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, the paper-money party succeeded to a degree. In Rhode Island it gained full control. Currency was issued, for the redemption of which there was little hope, and it was voted that if the creditor refused it, the debt could be absolved by depositing the amount at court and advertising the fact in the newspapers, and that the creditor in such case be deprived of the franchise. Such notices began "Know ye," and the papers were so filled with them that that phrase became the nickname of the party. Creditors fled their debtors, and were brought into court for refusing to accept payment. The state supreme court, in the case of Trevett v. Weeden, decided that the law was unconstitutional, whereupon the legislature began an attack upon the court. While the Rhode Island government ceased to be a protection to property, that of Massachusetts was threatened with overthrow or dismemberment for protecting it. There, the debtors obtained in 1782 the right to tender, at prices to be fixed by arbitration, cattle or indeed almost any form. of property as payment for debt, but paper money was refused. Taxes were high, state officers received what seemed to the farmer extravagant salaries, and lawyers, who were Shays's Re- universally distrusted, grew rich. Under the lead of Captain Shays, the movement for relief assumed, during the fall and early winter of 1786-1787, an insurrectionary form in the western counties. Thanks to the energy of Governor Bowdoin the insurrection was put down, but the movement was not stamped out. Governor Bowdoin was defeated for reëlection, and there was widespread sympathy for Shays. bellion. Tendencies toward dissolution. The states were not only torn by politics but were threatened with dissolution. In Maine and in the Berkshires there was talk of secession from the rest of Massachusetts; Pennsylvania and North Carolina were similarly threatened with disruption; and Kentucky and Virginia were trying to agree to separate. Vermont, which was an unrecognized state, occu States seemed as liable to pying territory claimed by New Hampshire, New York, and BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES American History Leaflets, nos. 22 and 23. Paine, Thomas, Western The Public Good. problems. Sources. accounts. Adams, B. H., Maryland's Influence in Founding a National Historical Commonwealth (Johns Hopkins Historical Studies, III, no. 1). Ford, A. 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