But before Hamilton could be of signal service to the country as an organizer and legislator, it was necessary to have a national government which the country would accept, and which would be lasting and efficient.  There was a political chaos for years after the war.  Congress had no generally recognized authority; it was merely a board of delegates, whose decisions were disregarded, representing a league of States, not an independent authority.  There was no chief executive officer, no court of national judges, no defined legislature.  We were a league of emancipated colonies drifting into anarchy.  There was really no central government; only an autonomy of States like the ancient Grecian republics, and the lesser States were jealous of the greater.  The great questions pertaining to slavery were unsettled,—­how far it should extend, and how far it could be interfered with.  We had ships and commerce, but no commercial treaties with other nations.  We imported goods and merchandise, but there were no laws of tariff or of revenue.  If one State came into collision with another State, there was no tribunal to settle the difficulty.  No particular industries were protected.  Of all things the most needed was a national government superior to State governments, taking into its own hands exclusively the army and navy, tariffs, revenues, the post-office, the regulation of commerce, and intercourse with foreign States.  Oh, what times those were!  What need of statesmanship and patriotism and wisdom!  I have alluded to various evils of the day.  I will not repeat them.  Why, our condition at the end of the War of the Rebellion, when we had a national debt of three thousand millions, and general derangement and demoralization, was an Elysium compared with that of our fathers at the close of the Revolutionary War,—­no central power, no constitution, no government, with poverty, agricultural distress, and uncertainty, and the prostration of all business; no national credit, no national eclat,—­a mass of rude, unconnected, and anarchic forces threatening to engulf us in worse evils than those from which we had fled.

The thinking and sober men of the country were at last aroused, and the conviction became general that the Confederacy was unable to cope with the difficulties which arose on every side.  So, through the influence of Hamilton, a convention of five States assembled at Annapolis to provide a remedy for the public evils.  But it did not fully represent the varied opinions and interests of the whole country.  All it could do was to prepare the way for a general convention of States; and twelve States sent delegates to Philadelphia, who met in the year 1787.  The great public career of Hamilton began as a delegate from the State of New York to this illustrious assembly.  He was not the most distinguished member, for he was still a young man; nor the most popular, for he had too much respect for the British constitution, and was too aristocratic