[7] Connecticut reserved the ownership (and till 1800 the government) of a tract 120 miles long, west of Pennsylvania. Of this "Western Reserve of Connecticut," some 500,000 acres were set apart in 1792 for the relief of persons whose houses and farms had been burned and plundered by the British. The rest was sold and the money used as a school fund.

[8] When the settlers on the Watauga (pp. 181, 182) heard of this, they became alarmed lest Congress should not accept the cession, and forming a new state which they called Franklin, applied to Congress for admission into the Union. No attention was given to the application. North Carolina repealed the act of cession, arranged matters with the settlers, and in 1787 the Franklin government dissolved.

[9] The favorite time for the river trip was from February to May, when there was high water in the Ohio and its tributaries the Allegheny and Monongahela. Then the voyage from Pittsburg to Louisville could be made in eight or ten days. An observer at Pittsburg in 1787 saw 50 flatboats depart in six weeks. Another man at Fort Finney counted 177 passing boats with 2700 people in eight months.

[10] In order to encourage enlistment in the army, Congress had offered to give a tract of land to each officer and man who served through the war. The premium in land, or gift, over and above pay, was known as land bounty.

[11] Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 505- 519. All the land bought by the Ohio Company was not for its use. A large part was for another, known as the Scioto Company, which sent an agent to Paris and sold the land to a French company. This, in turn, sold in small pieces to Frenchmen eager to leave a country then in a state of revolution. In 1790, accordingly, several hundred emigrants reached Alexandria, Virginia, and came on to the little square of log huts, with a blockhouse at each corner, which the company had built for them and named Gallipolis. Most of them were city-bred artisans, unfit for frontier life, who suffered greatly in the wilderness.

[12] The land was included in the limits laid down in the charter of Massachusetts; but that charter was granted after the Dutch were in actual possession of the upper Hudson. In 1786 a north and south line was drawn 82 miles west of the Delaware. Ownership of the land west of that line went to Massachusetts; but jurisdiction over the land, the right to govern, was given to New York.

[13] Connecticut, under her sea-to-sea grant from the crown, claimed a strip across northern Pennsylvania, bought some land there from the Indians (1754), and some of her people settled on the Susquehanna in what was known as the Wyoming Valley (1762 and 1769). The dispute which followed, first with the Penns and then with the state of Pennsylvania, dragged on till a court of arbitration appointed by the Continental Congress decided in favor of Pennsylvania.

[14] Because of Champlain's discovery of the lake which now bears his name (p. 115), the French claimed most of Vermont; on their early maps it appears as part of New France, and as late as 1739 they made settlements in it. About 1750 the governor of New Hampshire granted land in Vermont to settlers, and the country began to be known as "New Hampshire Grants"; but in 1763 New York claimed it as part of the region given to the Duke of York in 1664. This brought on a bitter dispute which was still raging when, in 1777, the settlers declared New Hampshire Grants "a free and independent state to be called New Connecticut." Later the name was changed to Vermont. But the Continental Congress, for fear of displeasing New York, never recognized Vermont as a state.

[15] Each state was bound to pay its share of the annual expenses; but they failed or were unable to do so.

[16] Why would not Great Britain make a trade treaty with us? Read Fiske's Critical Period, pp. 136-142; also pp. 142-147, about difficulties between the states.

[17] Congress asked for authority to do three things: (1) to levy taxes on imported goods, and use the money so obtained to discharge the debts due to France, Holland, and Spain; (2) to lay and collect a special tax, and use the money to meet the annual expenses of government; and (3) to regulate trade with foreign countries.

[18] The story of Shays's Rebellion is told in fiction in Bellamy's Duke of Stockbridge. Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 313-326.

[19] All the states except Rhode Island.

[20] One had written the Albany Plan of Union; some had been members of the Stamp Act Congress; some had signed the Declaration of Independence, or the Articles of Confederation; two had been presidents and twenty-eight had been members of Congress; seven had been or were then governors of states. In after times two (Washington and Madison) became Presidents, one (Elbridge Gerry) Vice President, four members of the Cabinet, two Chief Justices and two justices of the Supreme Court, five ministers at foreign courts, and many others senators and members of the House of Representatives. One, Franklin, has the distinction of having signed the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France (1778), the treaty of peace with Great Britain (1783), and the Constitution of the United States, the four great documents in our early history.

[21] Every student should read the Constitution, as printed near the end of this book or elsewhere, and should know about the three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial; the powers of Congress (Art. I, Sec. 8), of the President (Art. I, Sec. 7; Art. II, Secs. 2 and 3), and of the United States; courts (Art. III); the principal powers forbidden to Congress (Art. I, Sec. 9) and to the states (Art. I, Sec. 10); the methods of amending the Constitution (Art. V); the supremacy of the Constitution (Art. VI).

[22] To remove the many objections made to the new plan, and enable the people the better to understand it, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay wrote a series of little essays for the press, in which they defended the Constitution, explained and discussed its provisions, and showed how closely it resembled the state constitutions. These essays were called The Federalist, and, gathered into book form (in 1788), have become famous as a treatise on the Constitution and on government. Those who opposed the Constitution were called Anti-Federalists, and they wrote pamphlets and elaborate series of letters in the newspapers, signed by such names as Cato, Agrippa, A Countryman. They declared that Congress would overpower the states, that the President would become a despot, that the Courts would destroy liberty; and they insisted that amendments should be made, guaranteeing liberty of speech, freedom of the press, trial by jury, no quartering of troops in time of peace, liberty of conscience. Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 490-491; 478-479.

[23] Because the Constitution provided that it should go into force as soon as nine states ratified it. North Carolina and Rhode Island did not ratify till some months later, and, till they did, were not members of the new Union.

[24] In three of the eleven states then in the Union (Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia) the presidential electors were chosen by vote of the people. In Massachusetts the voters in each congressional district voted for two candidates, and the legislature chose one of the two, and also two electors at large. In New Hampshire also the people voted for electors, but none receiving a majority vote, the legislature made the choice. Elsewhere the legislatures appointed electors; but in New York the two branches of the legislature fell into a dispute and failed to choose any. Washington received the first vote of all the 69 electors, and Adams received 34 votes, the next highest number.



CHAPTER XVII

OUR COUNTRY IN 1789

THE STATES.—When Washington became President, the thirteen original states of the Union [1] were in many respects very unlike the same states in our day. In some the executive was called president; in others governor. In some he had a veto; in others he had not. In some there was no senate. To be a voter in those days a man had to have an estate worth a certain sum of money, [2] or a specified annual income, or own a certain number of acres. [3]

Moreover, to be eligible as governor or a member of a state legislature a man had to own more property than was needed to qualify him to vote. In many states it was further required that officeholders should be Protestants, or at least Christians, or should believe in the existence of God.

The adoption of the Constitution made necessary certain acts of legislation by the states. They could issue no more bills of credit; provision therefore had to be made for the redemption of those outstanding. They could lay no duties on imports; such as had laid import duties had to repeal their laws and abolish their customhouses. All lighthouses, beacons, buoys, maintained by individual states were surrendered to the United States, and in other ways the states had to adjust themselves to the new government.



THE NATIONAL DEBT.—Each of the states was in debt for money and supplies used in the war; and over the whole country hung a great debt contracted by the old Congress. Part of this national debt was represented by bills of credit, loan-office certificates, lottery certificates, and many other sorts of promises to pay, which had become almost worthless. This was strictly true of the bills of credit or paper money issued in great quantities by the Continental Congress. [4] Besides this domestic debt owed to the people at home, there was a foreign debt, for Congress had borrowed a little money from Spain and a great deal from France and Holland. On this debt interest was due, for Congress had not been able to pay even that.

THE MONEY OF THE COUNTRY.—The Continental bills having long ceased to circulate, the currency of the country consisted of paper money issued by individual states, and the gold, silver, and copper coins of foreign countries. These passed by such names as the Joe or Johannes, the doubloon, pistole, moidore, guinea, crown, dollar, shilling, sixpence, pistareen, penny. A common coin was the Spanish milled dollar, which passed at different ratings in different parts of the country. [5] Congress in 1786 adopted the dollar as a unit, divided it into the half, quarter, dime, half dime, cent, and half cent, and ordered some coppers to be minted; but very few were made by the contractor.



POPULATION.—Just how many people dwelt in our country before 1790 can only be guessed at. In that year they were counted for the first time, and it was then ascertained that they numbered 3,929,000 (in the thirteen states) of whom 700,000 were slaves. All save about 200,000 dwelt along the seaboard, east of the mountains; and nearly half were between Chesapeake Bay and Florida.

The most populous state was Virginia; after her, next in order were Massachusetts (including Maine), Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and New York.

The most populous city was Philadelphia, after which came New York, Boston, Charleston, and Baltimore.

LIFE IN THE CITIES.—What passed for thriving cities in those days were collections of a thousand or two houses, very few of which made any pretension to architectural beauty, ranged along narrow streets, none of which were sewered, and few of which were paved or lighted even on nights when the moon did not shine. During daylight a few constables kept order. At night small parties of men called the night watch walked the streets. Each citizen was required to serve his turn on the watch or find a substitute or pay a fine. He had to be a fireman and keep in his house near the front door a certain number of leather fire buckets with which at the clanging of the courthouse or market bell he would run to the burning building and take his place in the line which passed the full buckets from the nearest pump to the engine, or in the line which passed the empty buckets from the engine back to the pump. Water for household use or for putting out fires came from private wells or from the town pumps. There were no city water works.



Lack of good and abundant water, lack of proper drainage, ignorance of the laws of health, filthy, unpaved streets, spread diseases of the worst sort. Smallpox was common. Yellow fever in the great cities was of almost annual occurrence, and often raged with the violence of a plague.

LACK OF CONVENIENCES.—Few appliances which increase comfort, or promote health, or save time or labor, were in use. Not even in the homes of the rich were there cook stoves or furnaces or open grates for burning anthracite coal, or a bath room, or a gas jet. Lamps and candles afforded light by night. The warming pan, the foot stove (p. 97), and the four- posted bedstead (p. 76), with curtains to be drawn when the nights were cold, were still essentials. The boy was fortunate who did not have to break the ice in his water pail morning after morning in winter. Clocks and watches were luxuries for the rich. The sundial was yet in use, and when the flight of time was to be noted in hours or parts, people resorted to the hour glass. Many a minister used one on Sundays to time his preaching by, and many a housewife to time her cooking. [6]



No city had yet reached such size as to make street cars or cabs or omnibuses necessary. Time was less valuable than in our day. The merchant kept his own books, wrote all business letters with a quill pen, and waited for the ink to dry or sprinkled it with sand. There were no envelopes, no postage stamps, no letter boxes in the streets, no collection of the mails. The letter written, the paper was carefully folded, sealed with wax or a wafer, addressed, and carried to the post office, where postage was paid in money at rates which would now seem extortionate. A single sheet of paper was a single letter, and two sheets a double letter on which double postage was paid. Three mails a week between Philadelphia and New York, and two a week between New York and Boston, were thought ample. The post offices in the country towns consisted generally of a drawer or a few boxes in a store.



NEWSPAPERS could not be sent by mail, and there were few to send. Though the first newspaper in the colonies was printed in Boston as early as 1704, the first daily newspaper in our country was issued in Philadelphia in 1784. Illustrated newspapers, trade journals, scientific weeklies, illustrated magazines, [7] were unknown. Such newspapers as existed in 1789 were published most of them once a week, and a few twice, and were printed by presses worked by hand; and no paper anywhere in our country was issued on Sunday or sold for as little as a penny.

BOOKS.—In no city in 1790 could there have been found an art gallery, a free museum of natural history, a school or institute of any sort where instruction in the arts and sciences was given. There were many good private libraries, but hardly any that were open to public use. Books were mostly imported from Great Britain, or such as were sure of a ready sale were reprinted by some American publisher when enough subscribers were obtained to pay the cost. Of native authors very few had produced anything which is now read save by the curious. [8]

SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.—In education great progress had been made. There were as yet no normal schools, no high schools, no manual training schools, and, save in New England, no approach to the free common school of to-day. There were private, parish, and charity schools and academies in all the states. In many of these a small number of children of the poor, under certain conditions, might receive instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. But as yet the states did not have the money with which to establish a great system of free common schools.



Money in aid of academies and colleges was often raised by lotteries. Indeed, every one of the eight oldest colleges of that day had received such help. [9] In each of these the classes were smaller, the course of instruction much simpler, and the graduates much younger than to-day. In no country of that time were the rich and well-to-do better educated than in the United States, [10] and it is safe to say that in none was primary education—reading, writing, and arithmetic—more diffused among the people. [11]

TRAVEL.—To travel from one city to another in 1789 required at least as many days as it now does hours. [12] The stagecoach, horseback, or private conveyances were the common means of land travel. The roads were bad and the large rivers unbridged, and in stormy weather or in winter the delays at the ferries were often very long. Breakdowns and upsets were common, and in rainy weather a traveler by stagecoach was fortunate if he did not have to help the driver pull the wheels out of the mud. [13]

THE INNS AND TAVERNS, sometimes called coffeehouses or ordinaries, at which travelers lodged, were designated by pictured signs or emblems hung before the door, and were given names which had no relation to their uses, as the Indian Head, the Crooked Billet, the Green Dragon, the Plow and Harrow. In these taverns dances or balls were held, and sometimes public meetings. To those in the country came sleigh-ride parties. From them the stagecoaches departed, and before their doors auctions were often held, and in the great room within were posted public notices of all sorts.



THE SHOPS were designated in much the same way as the inns, not by street numbers but by signs; as the Lock and Key, the Lion and the Glove, the Bell in Hand, the Golden Ball, the Three Doves. One shop is described as near a certain bake-house, another as close by the townhouse, another as opposite a judge's dwelling. The shop was usually the front room of a little house. In the rear or overhead lived the tradesman, his family, and his apprentice.

METHODS OF BUSINESS.—For his wares the tradesman took cash when he could get it, gave short credit with good security when he had to, and often was forced to resort to barter. Thus paper makers took rags for paper, brush makers exchanged brushes for hog's bristles, and a general shopkeeper took grain, wood, cheese, butter, in exchange for dry goods and clothing.

Few of the modern methods of extending business, of seeking customers, of making the public aware of what the merchant had for sale, existed, even in a rude state. There were no commercial travelers, no means of widespread advertising. When an advertisement had been inserted in a newspaper whose circulation was not fifteen hundred copies, when a handbill had been posted in the markets and the coffeehouses, the means of reaching the public were exhausted.

THE WORKINGMAN.—What was true of the merchant was true of men in every walk in life. Their opportunities were few, their labor was hard, their comforts of life were far inferior to what is now within their reach. In every great city to-day are men, women, and boys engaged in a hundred trades, professions, and occupations unknown in 1790. The great corporations, mills, factories, mines, railroads, the steamboats, rapid transit, the telegraph, the telephone, the typewriter, the sewing machine, the automobile, the postal delivery service, the police and fire departments, the banks and trust companies, the department stores, and scores of other inventions and business institutions of great cities, now giving employment to millions of human beings, have been created since 1790.

The working day was from sunrise to sunset, with one hour for breakfast and another for dinner. Wages were about a third what they are now, and were less when the days were short than when they were long. The redemptioner was still in demand in the Middle States. In the South almost all labor was done by slaves.

SLAVERY.—In the North slavery was on the decline. While still under the crown, Virginia and several other colonies had attempted to check slavery by forbidding the importation of more slaves, but their laws for this purpose were disallowed by the king. After 1776 the states were free to do as they pleased in the matter, and many of them stopped the importation of slaves. Moreover, before Congress shut slavery out of the Northwest Territory, the New England states and Pennsylvania had either abolished slavery outright or provided for its extinction by gradual abolition laws. [14]

INDUSTRIES.—In New England the people lived on their own farms, which they cultivated with their own hands and with the help of their children, or engaged in codfishing, whaling, lumbering, shipbuilding, and commerce. They built ships and sold them abroad, or used them to carry away the products of New England to the South, to the ports of France, Spain, Russia, Sweden, the West Indies, and even to China. To the West Indies went horses, cattle, lumber, salt fish, and mules; and from them came sugar, molasses, coffee, indigo, wines. From Sweden and Russia came iron, hemp, and duck.

The Middle States produced much grain and flour. New York had lost much of her fur trade because of the British control of the frontier posts; but her exports of flour, grain, lumber, leather, and what not, in 1791, were valued at nearly $3,000,000. The people of Pennsylvania made lumber, linen, flour, paper, iron; built ships; carried on a prosperous commerce with foreign lands and a good fur trade with the Indians.



In Maryland and Virginia the staple crop was still tobacco, but they also produced much grain and flour. North Carolina produced tar, pitch, resin, turpentine, and lumber. Some rice and tobacco were raised. Great herds of cattle and hogs ran wild. In South Carolina rice was the most important crop. Indigo, once an important product, had declined since the Revolution, and cotton was only just beginning to be grown for export. From the back country came tar, pitch, turpentine, and beaver, deer, and bear skins for export.

THE FUR TRADE.—The region of the Great Lakes, where the British still held the forts on the American side of the boundary, was the chief seat of the fur trade. Goods for Indian use were brought from England to Montreal and Quebec, and carried in canoes to Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Mackinaw, Sault Ste. Marie (map, p. 194), and thence scattered over the Northwest. [15]

SUMMARY

1. In 1789 the states had governments less democratic than at present; in general only property owners could vote and hold office.

2. The states were all in debt, and Congress had incurred besides a large national debt.

3. The population was less than 4,000,000, mostly on the Atlantic seaboard.

4. Cities were few and small, without street cars, pavements, water works, gas or electric lights, public libraries or museums, letter carriers, or paid firemen. Everywhere many of the common conveniences of modern life were unknown.

5. Travel was slow and tiresome, because there were no railroads, steamboats, or automobiles.

6. Occupations were far fewer than now, wages lower, and hours of labor longer. Slavery had been abolished, or was being gradually stopped, in New England and Pennsylvania, but existed in all the other states; and in the South nearly all the labor was done by slaves.

7. New Englanders were engaged in farming, fishing, lumbering, and commerce; the Middle States produced much wheat and flour, and also lumber; the South chiefly tobacco, rice, and tar, pitch, and turpentine.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The states ratified the Constitution on the dates given below:—

1. Delaware......... Dec. 7, 1787 2. Pennsylvania..... Dec. 12,1787 3. New Jersey....... Dec. 18, 1787 4. Georgia.......... Jan. 2, 1788 5. Connecticut...... Jan. 9, 1788 6. Massachusetts.... Feb. 7, 1788 7. Maryland......... April 28, 1788 8. South Carolina... May 23, 1788 9. New Hampshire.... June 21, 1788 10. Virginia........ June 26, 1788 11. New York........ July 26, 1788 12. North Carolina.. Nov. 21, 1789 13. Rhode Island.... May 29, 1790

[2] In New Jersey any "person" having a freehold (real estate owned outright or for life) worth 50 might vote. In New York each voter had to have a freehold of 20, or pay 40 shillings house rent and his taxes. In Massachusetts he had to have an estate of 60, or an income of 3 from his estate.

[3] In Maryland 50 acres; in South Carolina 50 acres or a town lot; in Georgia 10 of taxable property.

[4] When Congress was forced to assume the conduct of the war, money was needed to pay the troops. But the Congress then had no authority to tax either the colonies or the people, so (in 1775-81) it issued bills of credit, or Continental money, of various denominations. A loan office was also established in each state, and the people were asked to loan Congress money and receive in return loan-office certificates bearing interest and payable in three years. But little money came from this source; and the people refused to take the bills of credit at their face value. The states then made them legal tender, that is, made them lawful money for the payment of debts. But as they became more and more plentiful, prices of everything paid for in Continental money rose higher and higher. From an old bill of January, 1781, it appears that in Philadelphia a pair of boots cost $600 in paper dollars; six yards of chintz, $900; eight yards of binding, $400; a skein of silk, $10; and butter, $20 a pound. In Boston at the same time sugar was $10 a pound; beef, $8; and flour, $1575 a barrel. To say of anything that it was "not worth a continental" was to say that it was utterly worthless.

[5] In New England it was valued at six shillings; in New York at eight; in Pennsylvania at seven and six pence; in South Carolina and Georgia at four shillings and eight pence.

[6] The hour glass consisted of two small glass bulbs joined by a small glass tube. In one bulb was as much fine sand as in the course of an hour could run through the tube into the other bulb. At auctions when ships or real estate were for sale it was common to measure time by burning an inch or more of candle; that is, the bidding would go on till a certain length of candle was consumed.

[7] The Massachusetts Magazine was illustrated with occasional engravings of cities and scenery; but it was not what we know as an illustrated magazine. Read a description of the newspapers of this time in McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 35-38.

[8] Franklin is still the most popular of colonial writers. His autobiography, his Way to Wealth, and many of his essays are still republished and widely read. The poetry of Philip Freneau, of John Trumbull, and Francis Hopkinson is still read by many; but it was in political writing that our countrymen excelled. No people have ever produced a finer body of political literature than that called forth by the Revolution. Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 74-80.

[9] Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth. In a lottery "drawn" in 1797 for the benefit of Brown University, 9000 tickets were sold at $6 each—a total of $54,000. Of this, $8000 was kept by the university, and $46,000 distributed in 3328 prizes—2000 at $9 each, 1000 at $12 each, and the rest from $20 to $4000.

[10] In the convention which framed the Constitution twenty of the fifty- five men were college graduates. Five were graduates of Princeton, three of Harvard, three of Yale, three of William and Mary, two of Pennsylvania, one of King's (now Columbia), and one each of Oxford, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

[11] The writings of men who were not college graduates—Washington, Franklin, Dickinson, and many others—speak well for the character of the early schools.

[12] The journey from Boston to New York by land consumed six days, but may now be made in less than six hours. New York was a two days' journey from Philadelphia, but the distance may now be traversed in two hours.

[13] One pair of horses usually dragged the stage eighteen miles, when a fresh team was put on, and if no accident happened, the traveler would reach an inn about ten at night. After a frugal meal he would betake himself to bed, for at three the next morning, even if it rained or snowed, he had to make ready, by the light of a horn lantern or a farthing candle, for another ride of eighteen hours.

[14] In 1777 Vermont forbade the slavery of men and women. In 1780 Pennsylvania passed a gradual abolition act. Massachusetts by her constitution declared "All men are born free and equal," which her courts held prohibited slavery. New Hampshire in her constitution made a similar declaration with a like result. In 1784 Connecticut and Rhode Island adopted gradual abolition laws, providing that children born of a slave parent after a certain date should be free when they reached a certain age, and that their children were never to be slaves. These were states where slaves had never been much in demand, and where the industries of the people did not depend on slave labor.

[15] The departure of a fleet of canoes from Quebec or Montreal was a fine sight. The trading canoe of bark was forty-five feet long, and carried four tons of goods. The crew of eight men, with their hats gaudy with plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied around their throats, their bright-colored shirts, flaming belts, and gayly worked moccasins, formed a picture that can not be described. When the axes, powder, shot, dry goods, and provisions were packed in the canoes, when each voyager had hung his votive offering in the chapel of his patron saint, a boatman of experience stepped into the bow and another into the stern of each canoe, the crew took places between them, and at the word the fleet glided up the St. Lawrence on its way to the Ottawa, and thence on to Sault Ste. Marie, to Grand Portage (near the northeast corner of what is now Minnesota), or to Mackinaw.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE NEW GOVERNMENT

FIRST ACTS OF CONGRESS.—During Washington's first term of office as President (1789-93), the time of Congress was largely taken up with the passage of laws necessary to put the new government in operation, and to carry out the plan of the Constitution.



Departments of State, Treasury, and War were established; a Supreme Court was organized with a Chief Justice [1] and five associates; three Circuits (one for each of the three groups of states, Eastern, Middle, and Southern) and thirteen District Courts (one for each state) were created, and provision was made for all the machinery of justice; and twelve amendments to the Constitution were sent out to the states, of which ten were ratified by the requisite number of states and became a part of the Constitution. [2]

At the second session of Congress provision was made, in the Funding Measure, for the assumption of the Continental and state debts incurred during the war for independence. [3] The District of Columbia as the permanent seat of government was located on the banks of the Potomac, [4] and the temporary seat of government was moved from New York to Philadelphia, there to remain for ten years.

NEW STATES.—The states of North Carolina and Rhode Island, having at last ratified the Constitution, sent representatives and senators to share in the work of Congress during this session.

The quarrel between New York and Vermont having been settled, Vermont was admitted in 1791; and Virginia having given her consent, the people of Kentucky were authorized to form a state constitution, and Kentucky entered the Union in 1792. [5]

THE NATIONAL BANK AND THE CURRENCY.—The funding of the debt (proposed by Hamilton) was the first great financial measure adopted by Congress. [6] The second (1791) was the charter of the Bank of the United States with power to establish branches in the states and to issue bank notes to be used as money. The third (1792) was the law providing for a national coinage and authorizing the establishment of a United States mint for making the coin. [7] It was ordered that whoever would bring gold or silver to the mint should receive for it the same weight of coins. This was free coinage of gold and silver, and made our standard of money bimetallic, or of two metals; for a debtor could choose which kind of money he would pay.



THE REVENUE LAWS.—Other financial measures of Washington's first term were the tariff law, which levied duties on imported goods, wares, and merchandise, the excise or whisky tax, and the law fixing rates of postage on letters. [8]

THE RISE OF PARTIES.—As to the justice and wisdom of the acts of Congress the people were divided in their opinions. Those who approved and supported the administration were called Federalists, and had for leaders Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, Robert Morris, John Jay, and Rufus King; those who opposed the administration were the Anti-Federalists, or Republicans, whose great leaders were Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Gerry, Gallatin, and Randolph.

The Republicans had opposed the funding and assumption measures, the national bank, and the excise. They complained that the national debt was too large, that the salaries of the President, Congressmen, and officials were too high, and that the taxes were too heavy; and they accused the Federalists of a fondness for monarchy and aristocracy.

Washington opened each session of Congress with a speech just as the king opened Parliament, and each branch of Congress presented an answer just as the Lords and Commons did to the king. Nobody could go to the President's reception without a card of invitation. The judges of the Supreme Court wore gowns as did English judges. The Senate held its daily sessions in secret, and shut out reporters and the people. All this the Anti- Federalists held to be unrepublican.



THE ELECTION OF 1792.—When the time came, in 1792, to elect a successor to Washington, there were thus two political parties. Both parties supported Washington for President; but the Republicans tried hard, though in vain, to defeat Adams for Vice President.

OPPOSITION TO THE GOVERNMENT by no means ended with the formation of parties and votes at the polls. The Assembly of Virginia condemned the assumption of the state debts. North Carolina denounced assumption and the excise law. In Maryland a resolution declaring assumption dangerous to the rights of the states was lost by the casting vote of the Speaker. The right of Congress to tax pleasure carriages was tested in the Supreme Court, which declared the tax constitutional. When that court decided (1793) that a citizen of one state might sue another state, Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts called for a constitutional amendment to prevent this, and the Eleventh Amendment was proposed by Congress (1794) and declared in force in 1798. The tax on whisky caused an insurrection in Pennsylvania.

THE WHISKY INSURRECTION.—The farmers around Pittsburg were largely engaged in distilling whisky, refused to pay the tax, and drove off the collectors. Congress thereupon (1794) enacted a law to enforce the collection, but when the marshal arrested some of the offenders, the people rose, drove him away, and by force of arms prevented the execution of the law. Washington then called for troops from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and these marching across the state by a mere show of force brought the people to obedience. Leaders of the insurrection were arrested, tried, and convicted of treason, but were pardoned by Washington. [9]

THE INDIAN WAR.—Still farther west, meantime, a great battle had been fought with the Indians. The succession of boats loaded with emigrants floating down the Ohio, and the arrivals of settlers north of the river at Marietta, Gallipolis, and Cincinnati, had greatly excited the Indians. The coming of the whites meant the destruction of game and of fur-bearing animals, and the pushing westward of the Indians. This the red men determined to resist, and did so by attacking boats and killing emigrants, and in January, 1790, they marched down on the settlement called Big Bottom (northwest of Marietta) and swept it from the face of the earth.

Washington sent fifteen hundred troops from Kentucky and Pennsylvania against the Indians in the autumn of 1790. Led by Colonel Harmar, the troops burned some Indian supplies and villages, but accomplished nothing save to enrage the Indians yet more. Washington thereupon put General St. Clair in command, and in the autumn of 1791 St. Clair set off to build a chain of forts from Cincinnati to Lake Michigan; but the Indians surprised him and cut his army to pieces.



Anthony Wayne was next placed in command, and two years were spent in careful preparation before he began his march across what is now the state of Ohio. At the Falls of the Maumee (August, 1794) he met and beat the Indians so soundly that a year later, by the treaty of Greenville, a lasting peace was made with the ten great nations of the Northwest.

NEUTRALITY.—Washington's second term of office was a stormy time in foreign as well as in domestic affairs. In February, 1793, the French Republic declared war on Great Britain, and so brought up the question, Which side shall the United States take? Washington said neither side, and issued a proclamation of neutrality, warning the people not to commit hostile acts in favor of either Great Britain or France. The Republicans (and many who were Federalists) grew angry at this and roundly abused the President. France, they said, is an old friend; Great Britain, our old enemy. France helped win independence and loaned us money and sent us troops and ships; Great Britain attempted to enslave us. We were bound to France by a treaty of alliance and a treaty of commerce; we were bound to Great Britain by no treaty of any kind. To be neutral, then, was to be ungrateful to France. [10] As a result the Federalists were called the British party, and they, in turn, called the Republicans the French party or Democrats.



GREAT BRITAIN SEIZES OUR SHIPS.—To preserve neutrality under such conditions would have been hard enough, but Great Britain made it harder still by seizing American merchant ships that were carrying lumber, fish, flour, and provisions to the French West Indies. [11]

Our merchants at once appealed to Congress for aid, and the Republicans attempted to retaliate on Great Britain in a way that might have brought on war. In this they failed, but Congress laid an embargo for a short time, preventing all our vessels from sailing to foreign ports; and money was voted to build fortifications at the seaports from Maine to Georgia, and for building arsenals at Springfield (Mass.) and Carlisle (Pa.), and for constructing six frigates. [12]

Washington did not wish war, and with the approval of the Senate sent Chief-Justice John Jay to London to make a treaty of friendship and commerce with Great Britain.

JAY'S TREATY, when ratified (1795), was far from what was desired. But it provided for the delivery of the posts on our northern frontier, its other provisions were the best that could be had, and it insured peace. For this reason among others the treaty gave great offense to the Republicans, who wanted the United States to quarrel with Great Britain and take sides with France. They denounced it from one end of the country to the other, burned copies of it at mass meetings, and hanged Jay in effigy. For the same reason, also, France took deep offense.

TREATY WITH SPAIN.—Our treaty with Great Britain was followed by one with Spain, by which the vexed question of the Mississippi was put at rest. Spain agreed to withdraw her troops from all her posts north of the parallel of 31 degrees. She also agreed that New Orleans should be a port of deposit. This was of great advantage to the growing West, for the farmers, thereafter, could float their bacon, flour, lumber, etc. down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans and there sell it for export to the West Indies or Europe.



THE ELECTION OF 1796.—Washington, who had twice been elected President, now declined to serve a third time, and in September, 1796, announced his determination by publishing in a newspaper what is called his Farewell Address. [13] There was no such thing as a national party convention in those days, or for many years to come. The Federalists, however, by common consent, selected John Adams as their candidate for President, and most of them supported Thomas Pinckney for Vice President. The Republicans put forward Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr and others. The French minister to our country used his influence to help the Republican candidates; [14] but when the election was over, it turned out that Adams [15] was chosen President and Jefferson Vice President. Pinckney, the Federalist candidate for Vice President, was defeated because he failed to receive the votes of all the Federalist electors. [16]

THE X. Y. Z. AFFAIR.—The French Directory, a body of five men that governed the French Republic, now refused to receive a minister whom Washington had just sent to that country (Charles G. Pinckney). This deliberate affront to the United States was denounced by Adams in his first message to Congress; but he sent to Paris a special commission composed of two Federalists and one Republican, [17] in an earnest effort to keep the peace. These commissioners were visited by three agents of the Directory, who told them that before a new treaty could be made they must give a present of $50,000 to each Director, apologize for Adams's denunciation of France, and loan a large sum (practically pay tribute money) to France.

In reporting this affair to Congress the Secretary of State concealed the names of the French agents and called them Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Mr. Z. This gave the affair the name of the X. Y. Z. Mission.

PREPARATION FOR WAR WITH FRANCE (1798).—The reading of the dispatches in Congress caused a great change in feeling. The country had been insulted, and Congress, forgetting politics, made preparations for war. An army was raised and Washington made lieutenant general. The Navy Department was created and the first Secretary of the Navy appointed. Ships were built, purchased, and given to the government; and with the cry, "Millions for defense, not a cent for tribute," the people offered their services to the President, and labored without pay in the erection of forts along the seaboard. Then was written by Joseph Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, and sung for the first time, our national song Hail, Columbia! [18]

THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS.—In preparing for war, Congress had acted wisely. But the Federalists, whom the trouble with France had placed in control of Congress, also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which aroused bitter opposition.

The Alien Acts were (1) a law requiring aliens, or foreigners, to live in our country fourteen years before they could be naturalized and become citizens; (2) a law giving the President power, for the next two years, to send out of the country any alien he thought to be dangerous to the peace of the United States; and (3) the Alien Enemies Act for the expulsion, in time of war, of the subjects of the hostile government.

The Sedition Act provided for the punishment of persons who acted, spoke, or wrote in a seditious manner, that is, opposed the execution of any law of the United States, or wrote, printed, or uttered anything with intent to defame the government of the United States or any of its officials.

Adams did not use the power given him by the second Alien Act; but the Sedition Act was rigorously enforced with fines and imprisonment. Such interference with the liberty of the press cost Adams much of his popularity.

THE VIRGINIA AND KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS.—The Republicans were greatly excited by the Alien and Sedition Acts, and at the suggestion of Jefferson resolutions condemning them as unconstitutional [19] and hence "utterly void and of no force" were passed by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia.



Seven states answered with resolutions declaring the acts constitutional. Whereupon, in the following year (1799), Kentucky declared that when a state thought a law of Congress unconstitutional, that state might veto or nullify it, that is, forbid its citizens to obey it. This doctrine of nullification, as we shall see, was later of serious importance.

THE NAVAL WAR WITH FRANCE.—Meantime, the little navy which had been so hastily prepared was sent to scour the seas around the French West Indies, and in a few months won many victories. [20] The publication of the X. Y. Z. letters created almost as much indignation in France as in our country, and forced the Directory to send word that if other commissioners came, they would be received. Adams thereupon appointed three; but when they reached France the Directory had fallen from power, Napoleon was ruling, and with him a new treaty was concluded in 1800.



THE ELECTION OF 1800.—The cost of this war made new taxes necessary, and these, coupled with the Alien and Sedition Acts, did much to bring about the defeat of the Federalists. Their candidates for the presidency and vice presidency were John Adams and Charles C. Pinckney. The Republicans nominated Jefferson [21] and Aaron Burr, and won. Unfortunately Jefferson and Burr each received the same number of votes, so it became the duty of the House of Representatives to determine which should be President. When the House elects a President, each state, no matter how many representatives it may have, casts one vote. There were then sixteen states [22] in the Union. The votes of nine, therefore, were necessary to elect. But the Federalists held the votes of six, and as the representatives of two more were equally divided, the Federalists thought they could say who should be President, and tried hard to elect Burr. Finally some of them yielded and allowed the Republicans to make Jefferson President, thus leaving Burr to be Vice President.

PRESIDENT JEFFERSON.—The inauguration took place on March 4, 1801, at Washington, to which city the government was removed from Philadelphia in the summer of 1800. [23] Everywhere the day was celebrated with bell ringing, cannonading, dinners, and parades. The people had triumphed; "the Man of the People" was President. Monarchy, aristocracy, and Federalism, it was said, had received a deathblow.

SUMMARY

1. The first Congress under the Constitution passed laws establishing the executive departments and the United States courts, and other laws necessary to put the new government in operation.

2. The debts incurred during the Revolution were assumed and funded, and the permanent seat of government (after 1800) was located on the Potomac.

3. Import and excise duties were laid, a national bank was chartered, and a mint was established for coining United States money.

4. In Washington's second term as President (1793-97) there was war between Great Britain and France, and it was with difficulty that our government succeeded in remaining neutral.

5. Treaties were made with Great Britain and Spain, whereby these powers withdrew from the posts they held in our country, the right of deposit at New Orleans was secured, and peace was preserved.

6. A five years' Indian war in the Northwest Territory was ended by Wayne's victory (1794) and the treaty of Greenville (1795).

7. The people of western Pennsylvania resisted the excise tax on whisky, but their insurrection was easily suppressed by a force of militia.

8. Differences on questions of domestic and foreign policy had resulted in the growth of the Federalist and Republican parties, but party organization was imperfect. In 1796 Adams (Federalist) was elected President, and Jefferson (Republican) Vice President.

9. The British treaty and the election of Adams gave offense to the French government, which made insulting demands upon our commissioners sent to that country. A brief naval war in the French West Indies was ended by a treaty made by a new French government in 1800.

10. The passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts brought out protests against them in what are called the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-99, one of which claimed the right of a state to nullify an act of Congress which it deemed unconstitutional.

11. In the next presidential election (1800) the Republicans were successful; but as Jefferson and Burr had each the same number of votes, the House of Representatives had to decide which should be President and which Vice President. After a long contest Jefferson was given the higher office, as the Republicans had wished.



FOOTNOTES

[1] Washington appointed John Jay the first Chief Justice, and gave the newly created secretaryships of State, Treasury, and War to Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox respectively. These men were intended to be heads of departments; but Washington soon began to consult them and the Attorney General on matters of state and thus made them also a body of advisers known as "the Cabinet." All the Secretaries and the Postmaster General and the Attorney General are now members of the Cabinet.

[2] These ten amendments form a sort of "bill of rights," and were intended to remove objections to the Constitution by those who feared that the national government might encroach on the liberties of the people.

[3] For the different kinds of debt, see p. 211. The Continental money was funded at $1 in government stock for $100 in the paper money; but the other forms of debt were assumed by the government at their face value. All told,—state debts, foreign debt, loan-office certificates, etc.,— these obligations amounted to about $75,000,000. To pay so large a sum in cash was impossible, so Congress ordered interest-bearing stock to be given in exchange for evidence of debt.

[4] As first laid out, the District of Columbia was a square ten miles on a side, and was partly in Virginia and partly in Maryland. But the piece in Virginia many years later (1846) was given back to that state.

[5] After these two states were admitted each was given a star and a stripe on the national flag. Until 1818 our flag thus had fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, no further change being made as new states were admitted. In 1818 two stripes were taken off, the number of stars was made the same as the number of states, and since then each new state has been represented by a new star.

[6] Alexander Hamilton was born in 1757 on the island of Nevis, one of the British West Indies. He was sent to New York to be educated, and entered King's College (now Columbia University). There he became an ardent patriot, wrote pamphlets in defense of the first Congress, and addressed a public meeting when but seventeen. He was captain of an artillery company in 1776, one of Washington's aids in 1777-81, distinguished himself at Yorktown, and (in 1782) went to Congress. He was a man of energy, enthusiasm, and high ideals, was possessed of a singular genius for finance, and believed in a vigorous national government. As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton proposed not only the funding and assumption plans, but the national bank and the mint.

[7] The coins were to be the eagle or ten-dollar piece, half eagle, and quarter eagle of gold; the dollar, half, quarter, dime, and half dime of silver; and the cent and half cent of copper. The mint was established at once at Philadelphia, and the first copper coin was struck in 1793. But coinage was a slow process, and many years passed before foreign coins ceased to circulate. The accounts of Congress were always kept in dollars and cents. But the states and the people used pounds, shillings, pence, and Spanish dollars, and it was several years before the states, by law, required their officers to levy taxes and keep accounts in dollars and cents (Virginia in 1792, Rhode Island and Massachusetts in 1795, New York and Vermont in 1797, New Jersey in 1799).

[8] A single letter in those days was one written on a single sheet of paper, large or small, and the postage on it was 6 cents for any distance under 30 miles, 8 cents from 30 to 60, 10 cents from 60 to 100, and so on to 450 miles, above which the rate was 25 cents. In all our country there were but 75 post offices, and the revenue derived from them was about $100,000 a year.

[9] Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. II, pp. 189-204.

[10] Good feeling toward France led the Republicans to some funny extremes. To address a person as Sir, Mr., Mrs., or Miss was unrepublican. You should say, as in France, Citizen Jones, or Citizeness Smith. Tall poles with a red liberty cap on top were erected in every town where there were Republicans; civic feasts were held; and July 14 (the anniversary of the day the Bastile of Paris fell in 1789) was duly celebrated.

[11] When Great Britain drove French ships from the sea, France threw open the trade with the French West Indies to other ships. But Great Britain had laid down a rule that no neutral could have in time of war a trade with her enemy it did not have in time of peace. Our merchants fell under the ban of Great Britain for this reason.

[12] These frigates were not built. They were really intended for use against the Barbary powers (Morocco, Tunis, Algiers, Tripoli) that were plundering our Mediterranean commerce. These nations of northern Africa had long been accustomed to prey upon European ships and sell the crews into slavery. To obtain protection against such treatment the nations of southern Europe paid these pirates an annual tribute. Some of our ships and sailors were captured, and as we had no navy with which to protect our commerce, a treaty was made with Algiers (1795) which bound us to pay a yearly tribute of "twelve thousand Algerine sequins in maritime stores." We shall see what came of this a few years later.

[13] In the Farewell Address, besides giving notice of his retirement, Washington argued at length against sectional jealousy and party spirit, and urged the promotion of institutions "for the general diffusion of knowledge." He disapproved of large standing armies ("overgrown military establishments"), and earnestly declared that our true policy is "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world," especially European nations. Washington died at Mount Vernon, December 14, 1799.

[14] He called on all French citizens living in the United States to wear on their hats the French tricolor (blue, white, and red) cockade, and of course all the Republican friends of France did the same and made it their party badge. He next published in the newspapers a long letter in which he said, in substance, that unless the United States changed its policy toward France it might expect trouble. This meant that unless a Republican President (Jefferson) was elected, there might be war between the two countries.

[15] John Adams was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1735. He graduated from Harvard College, studied law, and in 1770 was one of the lawyers who defended the soldiers that were tried for murder in connection with the famous "Boston Massacre." He was sent to the First and Second Continental Congresses, and was a member of the committee appointed to frame the Declaration of Independence, and of the committee to arrange treaties with foreign powers. He was for a time associated with Franklin in the ministry to France; in 1780 went as minister to Holland; and in 1783 was one of the signers of the treaty of peace with Great Britain. In 1785 he was appointed the first United States minister to Great Britain; and in 1789- 97 was Vice President.

[16] Adams received 71 votes, Jefferson 68, Pinckney 59, Burr 30, and nine other men also received votes. Under the original Constitution the electors did not vote separately for President and Vice President. Each cast one ballot with two names on it; the man receiving the most votes (if a majority of the number of electors) was elected President, and the man receiving the next highest number was elected Vice President. Thus it happened that while the Federalists elected the President, the Republicans elected the Vice President.

[17] The Federalists were John Marshall and Charles C. Pinckney. Elbridge Gerry was the Republican member.

[18] Read the account of the popular excitement in McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. II, pp. 376-387.

[19] That is, condemning them on the ground that the Constitution did not give Congress power to make such laws. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions are printed in full in MacDonald's Select Documents, 1776- 1861, pp. 149-160.

[20] One squadron that captured a number of vessels was under the command of Captain John Barry. Another squadron under Captain Truxtun captured sixty French privateers. The Constellation took the French frigate Insurgente and beat the Vengeance, which escaped; the Enterprise captured eight privateers and recaptured four American merchantmen; and the Boston captured the Berceau. During the war eighty-four armed French vessels were taken by our navy.

[21] Thomas Jefferson was born on a Virginia plantation April 13, 1743, attended William and Mary College, studied law, and in 1769 became a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. He rose into notice as a defender of colonial rights, was sent to the Second Continental Congress, and in 1776 wrote the Declaration of Independence. Between 1776 and 1789 he was a member of the Virginia legislature, governor of Virginia, member of Congress (1783-1784), and minister to France (1784-1789). He was a strict constructionist of the Constitution; he wrote the original draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, had great faith in the ability of the people to govern themselves, and dreaded the growth of great cities and the extension of the powers of the Supreme Court. He and John Adams died the same day, July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

[22] Tennessee, the sixteenth, was admitted in 1796.

[23] A story is current that on inauguration day Jefferson rode unattended to the Capitol and tied his horse to the fence before entering the Senate Chamber and taking the oath of office. The story was invented by an English traveler and is pure fiction. The President walked to the Capitol attended by militia and the crowd of supporters who came to witness the end of the contested election, and was saluted by the guns of a company of artillery as he entered the Senate Chamber and again as he came out.



CHAPTER XIX

GROWTH OF THE COUNTRY, 1789-1805

PROSPERITY.—Twelve years had now elapsed since the meeting at New York of the first Congress under the Constitution, and they had been years of great prosperity.

When Washington took the oath of office, each state regulated its trade with foreign countries and with its neighbors in its own way, and issued its own paper money, which it made legal tender. Agriculture was in a primitive stage, very little cotton was grown, mining was but little practiced, manufacture had not passed the household stage, transportation was slow and costly, and in all the states but three banks had been chartered. [1]

With the establishment of a strong and vigorous government under the new Constitution, and the passage of the much-needed laws we have mentioned, these conditions began to pass away. Now that the people had a government that could raise revenue, pay its debts, regulate trade with foreign nations and between the states, enforce its laws, and provide a uniform currency, confidence returned. Men felt safe to engage in business, and as a consequence trade and commerce revived, and money long unused was brought out and invested. Banks were incorporated and their stock quickly purchased. Manufacturing companies were organized and mills and factories started; a score of canals were planned and the building of several was begun; [2] turnpike companies were chartered; lotteries [3] were authorized to raise money for all sorts of public improvements,—schools, churches, wharves, factories, and bridges; and speculation in stock and Western land became a rage.

NEW INDUSTRIES.—It was during the decade 1790-1800 that Slater built the first mill for working cotton yarn; [4] that Eli Terry began the manufacture of clocks as a business; that sewing thread was first made in our country (at Pawtucket, R.I.); that Jacob Perkins began to make nails by machine; that the first broom was made from broom corn; that the first carpet mill and the first cotton mill were started; that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin; and that the first steamboat went up and down the Delaware.



THE COTTON GIN.—Before 1790 the products of the states south of Virginia were tar, pitch, lumber, rice, and indigo. But the destruction of the indigo plants by insects year after year suggested the cultivation of some other crop, and cotton was tried. To clean it of its seeds by hand was slow and costly, and to remove the difficulty Eli Whitney of Massachusetts, then a young man living in Georgia, invented a machine called the cotton gin. [5] Then the cultivation of cotton became most profitable, and the new industry spread rapidly in the South.



THE STEAMBOAT.—The idea of driving boats through water by machinery moved by steam was an old one. Several men had made such experiments in our country before 1790. [6] But in that year John Fitch put a steamboat on the Delaware and during four months ran it regularly from Philadelphia to Trenton. He was ahead of his time and for lack of support was forced to give up the enterprise.



THE NEW WEST.—In the western country ten years had wrought a great change. Good times in the commercial states and the Indian war in the West had done much to keep population out of the Northwest Territory from 1790 to 1795. But from the South population had moved steadily over the mountains into the region south of the Ohio River. The new state of Kentucky (admitted in 1792) grew rapidly in population.

North Carolina, after ratifying the Constitution, again ceded her Western territory, and out of this and the narrow strip ceded by South Carolina, Congress (1790) made the "Territory of the United States south of the river Ohio." But population came in such numbers that in 1796 the North Carolina cession was admitted as the state of Tennessee.

In the far South, after Spain accepted the boundary of 31, Congress established the territory of Mississippi (1798), consisting of most of the southern half of the present states of Mississippi and Alabama. Four years later Georgia accepted her present boundaries, and the territory of Mississippi was then enlarged, so as to include all the Western lands ceded by South Carolina and Georgia (map, p. 242).

CLEVELAND.—Jay's treaty, by providing for the surrender of the forts along the Great Lakes, opened that region to settlement, and in 1796 Moses Cleveland led a New England colony across New York and on the shore of Lake Erie laid out the town which now bears his name. Others followed, and by 1800 there were thirty-two settlements in the Connecticut Reserve.

DETROIT.—The chief town of the Northwest was Detroit. Wayne, who saw it in 1796, described it as a crowded mass of one- and two-story buildings separated by streets so narrow that two wagons could scarcely pass. Around the town was a stockade of high pickets with bastions and cannon at proper distances, and within the stockade "a kind of citadel." The only entrances were through two gates defended by blockhouses at either end of a street along the river. Every night from sunset to sunrise the gates were shut, and during this time no Indian was allowed to remain in the town.

INDIANA TERRITORY.—After Wayne's treaty with the Indians, five years brought so many people into the Northwest Territory that in 1800 the western part was cut off and made the separate territory of Indiana. [7] Not 6,000 white people then lived in all its vast area.

The census of 1800 showed that more than 5,000,000 people then dwelt in our country; of these, nearly 400,000 were in the five Western states and territories—Kentucky, Tennessee, Northwest, Indiana, Mississippi.

PUBLIC LAND ON CREDIT.—The same year (1800) in which Congress created the territory of Indiana, it changed the manner of selling the public lands. Hitherto the buyer had been obliged to pay cash. After 1800 he might buy on credit, paying one quarter annually. The effect of this was to bring settlers into the West in such numbers that the state of Ohio was admitted in 1803, and the territory of Michigan formed in 1805. [8]



FRANCE ACQUIRES LOUISIANA.—For yet another reason the year 1800 is a memorable one in our history. When the French Minister of Foreign Affairs heard that Spain (in 1795) had agreed that 31 north latitude should be the dividing line between us and West Florida, he became alarmed. He feared that our next step would be to acquire West Florida, and perhaps the country west of the Mississippi. To prevent this he asked Spain to give Louisiana back to France as France had given it to Spain in 1762 (see page 143); France would then occupy and hold it forever. Spain refused; but soon after Napoleon came into power the request was renewed in so tempting a form that Spain yielded, and by a secret treaty returned Louisiana to France in 1800.



THE MISSISSIPPI CLOSED TO OUR COMMERCE.—The treaty for a while was kept secret; but when it became known that Napoleon was about to send an army to take possession of Louisiana, a Spanish official at New Orleans took away the "right of deposit" at that city and so prevented our citizens from sending their produce out of the Mississippi River. This was a violation of the treaty with Spain, and the settlers in the valley from Pittsburg to Natchez demanded the instant seizure of New Orleans. Indeed, an attempt was made in Congress to authorize the formation of an army of fifty thousand men for this very purpose.



LOUISIANA PURCHASED, 1803.—But President Jefferson did not want war; instead, he obtained the consent of Congress to offer $2,000,000 for West Florida and New Orleans. Monroe was then sent to Paris to aid Livingston, our minister, in making the purchase, and much to their surprise Napoleon offered to sell all Louisiana. [9] After some hesitation the offer was accepted. The price was $15,000,000, of which $11,250,000 was paid to France and $3,750,000 to citizens of our country who had claims against France. [10]

THE BOUNDARIES OF LOUISIANA.—The splendid territory thus acquired had never been given definite bounds. But resting on the discoveries and explorations of Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle, Louisiana was understood to extend westward to the Rio Grande and the Rocky Mountains, and northward to the sources of the rivers that flowed into the Mississippi. Whether the purchase included West Florida was doubtful, but we claimed it, so that our claim extended eastward to the Perdido River.

THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS.—The country having been acquired, it had to be governed. So much of it as lay west of the Mississippi and south of 33 north latitude, with the city of New Orleans and the region round about it, was made the new territory of Orleans. The rest of the purchase west of the Mississippi was called the territory of Louisiana (map, p. 242).

LOUISIANA EXPLORED.—When the Louisiana purchase was made in 1803, most of the country was an unknown land. But in 1804 an exploring party under Meriwether Lewis and William Clark [11] went up the Missouri River from St. Louis, spent the winter of 1804-5 in what is now North Dakota, crossed the Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1805, and went down the Columbia to the Pacific. After passing a winter (1805-6) near the coast, the party started eastward in the spring, recrossed the mountains, and in the autumn reached St. Louis.

ST. LOUIS was then a little frontier hamlet of maybe a thousand people of all sorts—French, Spanish, American, negro slaves, and Indians. The houses were built on a bottom or terrace at the foot of a limestone cliff and arranged along a few streets with French names. The chief occupation of the people was the fur trade, and to them the reports brought back by Lewis and Clark were so exciting that the St. Louis Fur Company was organized to hunt and trap on the upper Missouri.



REFORMS IN THE STATES.—During the years which had passed since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, great political reforms had been made. The doctrine that all men are born politically equal was being put into practice, and the states had begun to reform their old constitutions or to adopt new ones, abolishing religious qualifications for officeholders or voters, [12] and doing away with the property qualifications formerly required of voters. [13] Some states had reformed their laws for punishing crime, had reduced the number of crimes punishable with death from fifteen or twenty to one or two, and had abolished whipping, branding, cutting off the ears, and other cruel punishments of colonial times. The right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was more fully recognized than ever before.

REFORMS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.—When the Republican party came into power in 1801, it was pledged to make reforms "to put the ship of state," as Jefferson said, "on the Republican tack." About a third of the important Federalist office-holders were accordingly removed from office, the annual speech at the opening of Congress was abolished, and the written message introduced—a custom followed ever since by our Presidents. Internal taxes were repealed, the army was reduced, [14] the cost of government lessened, and millions of dollars set aside annually for the payment of the national debt.

That there might never again be such a contested election as that of 1800, Congress submitted to the states an amendment to the Constitution providing that the electors should vote for President and Vice President on separate ballots, and not as theretofore on the same ballot. The states promptly ratified, and as the Twelfth Amendment it went into force in 1804 in time for the election of that year.

JEFFERSON RELECTED.—The Federalist candidates for President and Vice President in 1804 were Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus King; but the Republican candidates, Thomas Jefferson and George Clinton, [15] were elected by a very large majority.

BURR KILLS HAMILTON.—Vice-President Burr, who had consented to be a candidate for the presidency in 1801 (p. 235) against Jefferson, had never been forgiven by his party, and had ever since been a political outcast. His friends in New York, however, nominated him for governor and tried to get the support of the Federalists, but Hamilton sought to prevent this. After Burr was defeated he challenged Hamilton to a duel (July, 1804) and killed him.

BURR'S CONSPIRACY.—Fearing arrest for murder, Burr fled to Philadelphia and applied to the British minister for British help in effecting "a separation of the western part of the United States from that which lies between the Atlantic and the mountains"; for he believed the people in Orleans territory were eager to throw off American rule. After the end of his term as Vice President (March 4, 1805) Burr went west and came back with a scheme for conquering a region in the southwest, enlisted a few men in his enterprise, assembled them at Blennerhassets Island in the Ohio River (a few miles below Marietta), and (in December, 1806) started for New Orleans. The boats with men and arms floated down the Ohio, entered the Mississippi, and were going down that river when General James Wilkinson, a fellow-conspirator, betrayed the scheme to Jefferson. Burr was arrested and sent to Virginia, charged with levying war against the United States, which was treason, and with setting on foot a military expedition against the dominions of the king of Spain, which was a "high misdemeanor." Of the charge of treason Burr was acquitted; that of high misdemeanor was sent to a court in Ohio for trial, and came to naught. [16]



SUMMARY

1. With the establishment of government under the Constitution, confidence was restored and prosperity began.

2. Banks were chartered by the states, some roads and canals were constructed, and money was gathered by lotteries for all sorts of public improvements.

3. New industries were started, and the cotton gin and other machines were invented.

4. The defeat of the Indians, the removal of the British and Spanish from our Western country, and the sale of public land on credit encouraged a stream of emigrants into the West.

5. Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio entered the Union, and the territories of Mississippi, Indiana, and Michigan were organized.

6. The cession of Louisiana to France in 1800, and the closing of the Mississippi River to Americans, led to the purchase of Louisiana in 1803.

7. This great region was organized into the territories of Orleans and Louisiana; and the width of the continent from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia was explored by Lewis and Clark.

8. Many reforms were made in the state and national governments tending to make them more democratic.

9. In 1804 Jefferson was reelected President, but Burr was not again chosen Vice President. Having engaged in a plan for conquering a region in the southwest (1806), Burr was arrested for treason, but was not condemned.



FOOTNOTES

[1] Read "Town and Country Life in 1800," Chap. xii in McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. II.

[2] The Middlesex from Boston to Lowell; the Dismal Swamp in Virginia; the Santee in South Carolina.

[3] In those days lotteries for public purposes were not thought wrong. The Continental Congress and many state legislatures used them to raise revenue. Congress authorized one to secure money with which to improve Washington city. Faneuil Hall in Boston and Independence Hall in Philadelphia were aided by lotteries. Private lotteries had been forbidden by many of the colonies. But the states continued to authorize lotteries for public purposes till after 1830, when one by one they forbade all lotteries.

[4] Parliament in 1774 forbade any one to take away from England any drawing or model of any machine used in the manufacture of cotton goods. No such machines were allowed in our country in colonial times. In 1787, however, the Massachusetts legislature voted six tickets in the State Land Lottery to two Scotchmen named Burr to help them build a spinning jenny. About the same time 200 was given to a man named Somers to help him construct a machine. The models thus built were put in the Statehouse at Boston for anybody to copy who wished, and mills were soon started at Worcester, Beverly, and Providence. But it was not till 1790, when Samuel Slater came to America, that the great English machines were introduced. Slater was familiar with them and made his from memory.

[5] Eli Whitney was born in 1765, and while still a lad showed great skill in making and handling tools. After graduating from Yale College, he went to reside in the family of General Greene, who had been given a plantation by Georgia. While he was making the first cotton gin, planters came long distances to see it, and before it was finished and patented some one broke into the building where it was and stole it. In 1794 he received a patent, but he was unable to enforce his rights. After a few years, South Carolina bought his right for that state, and North Carolina levied a tax on cotton gins for his benefit. But the sum he received was very small.

[6] James Rumsey, as early as 1785, had experimented with a steamboat on the Potomac, and about the same time John Fitch built one in Pennsylvania, and succeeded so well that in 1786 and in 1787 one of his boats made trial trips on the Delaware. Later in 1787 Rumsey ran a steamboat on the Potomac at the rate of four miles an hour.

[7] Not the Indiana of to-day, but the great region including what is now Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and half of Michigan and Minnesota. The settlements were Mackinaw, Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, Cahokia, Belle Fontaine, L'Aigle, Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, Fort Massac, and Vincennes. Notice that most of these names are of French origin. The governor was William H. Harrison, afterward a President.

[8] In 1809 Illinois territory was created from the western part of Indiana territory. When the census was taken in 1810, nearly 1,000,000 people were living west of the Appalachians.

[9] Read the scene between Napoleon and his brothers over the sale of Louisiana, as told in Adams's History of the U. S., Vol. II, pp. 33-39.

[10] The transfer of Louisiana to France took place on November 30, 1803, and the delivery to us on December 20. Our commissioners William C. C. Claiborne and James Wilkinson met the French commissioner Laussat (lo- sah') in the hall of the Cabildo (a building still in existence, p. 243), presented their credentials, received the keys of the city, and listened to Laussat as he proclaimed Louisiana the property of the United States. This ceremony over, the commissioners stepped out on a balcony to witness the transfer of flags. The tricolor which floated from the top of a staff in the Place d'Armes (now Jackson Square) was drawn slowly down and the stars and stripes as slowly raised till the two met midway, when both were saluted by cannon. Our flag was then raised to the top of the pole, and that of France lowered and placed in the hands of Laussat. One hundred years later the anniversary was celebrated by repeating the same ceremony. The Federalists bitterly opposed the purchase of Louisiana. Read McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. II, pp. 629-631. For descriptions of life in Louisiana, read Cable's Creoles of Louisiana, The Grandissimes, and Strange True Stories of Louisiana.

[11] Both Lewis and Clark were Virginians and experienced Indian fighters. On their return Lewis was made governor of the upper Louisiana territory, later called Missouri territory; and died near Nashville in 1809. Clark was likewise a governor of Missouri territory and later a Superintendent of Indian Affairs; he died at St. Louis in 1838. He was a younger brother of George Rogers Clark.

[12] Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia.

[13] In Pennsylvania all free male taxpayers could vote. Georgia and Delaware gave the suffrage to all free white male taxpayers. In Vermont and Kentucky there had never been a property qualification.

[14] In 1802, however, there was founded the United States Military Academy at West Point.

[15] Clinton was born in 1739, took an active part in Revolutionary affairs, was chosen governor of New York in 1777, and was reflected every election for eighteen years. He was the leader of the popular party in that state, was twice chosen Vice President of the United States, and died in that office in 1812.

[16] Burr's trial was conducted (in a circuit court) with rigid impartiality by Chief-Justice John Marshall, one of the greatest judges our country has known. As head of the Supreme Court for thirty-four years (1801-35), he rendered many decisions of lasting influence.



CHAPTER XX

THE STRUGGLE FOR COMMERCIAL INDEPENDENCE

WAR WITH TRIPOLI.—In his first inaugural Jefferson announced a policy of peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations; but unhappily he was not able to carry it out. Under treaties with Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, we had paid tribute or made presents to these powers, to prevent them from attacking our ships. In 1800, however, when Adams sent the yearly tribute to Algiers, the ruler of Tripoli demanded a large present, and when it did not come, declared war. Expecting trouble with this nest of pirates, Jefferson in 1801 sent over a fleet which was to blockade the coast of Tripoli and that of any other Barbary power that might be at war with us. But four years passed, and Tripoli was five times bombarded before terms of peace were dictated by Captain Rodgers under the muzzles of his guns (1805). [1]

GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE.—While our contest with Tripoli was dragging along, France and Great Britain again went to war (1803), and our neutral rights were again attacked. British cruisers captured many American ships on the ground that they were carrying on trade between the ports of France and her colonies.

Napoleon attacked British commerce by decrees which closed the ports of Europe to British goods, declared a blockade of the British Isles, and made subject to capture any neutral vessels that touched at a British port. Great Britain replied with orders in council, blockading the ports of France and her allies, and requiring all neutral vessels going to a closed port to stop at some British port and pay tribute. [2]

As Great Britain ruled the sea, and Napoleon most of western Europe, these decrees and orders meant the ruin of our commerce. Against such rules of war our government protested, claiming the right of "free trade," or the "freedom of the seas,"—the right of a neutral to trade with either belligerent, provided the goods were not for use in actual war (as guns, powder, and shot).

OUR SAILORS IMPRESSED.—But we had yet another cause of quarrel with Great Britain. She claimed that in time of war she had a right to the services of her sailors; that if they were on foreign ships, they must come home and serve on her war vessels. She denied that a British subject could become a naturalized American; once a British subject, always a British subject, was her doctrine. She stopped our vessels at sea, examined the crews, and seized or "impressed" any British subjects found among them— and many American sailors as well. Against such "impressment" our government set up the claim of "sailors' rights"—denying the right of Great Britain to search our ships at sea or to seize sailors of any nationality while on board an American vessel.

THE ATTACK ON THE CHESAPEAKE.—Before 1805 Great Britain confined impressment to the high seas and to her own ports. After 1805 she carried it on also off our coasts and in our ports. Finally, in 1807, a British officer, hearing that some British sailors were among the crew of our frigate Chesapeake which was about to sail, only partly equipped, from the Washington navy yard, ordered the Leopard to follow the Chesapeake to sea and search her. This was done, and when Commodore Barron refused to have his vessel searched, she was fired on by the Leopard, boarded, searched, and one British and three American sailors were taken from her deck. [3]



CONGRESS RETALIATES.—It was now high time for us to strike back at France and Great Britain. We had either to fight for "free trade and sailors' rights," or to abandon the sea and stop all attempts to trade with Europe and Great Britain. Jefferson chose the latter course. Our retaliation therefore consisted of

1. The Long Embargo (1807-9). 2. The Non-intercourse Act (1809). 3. Macon's Bill No. 2 (1810). 4. The Declaration of War (1812).

THE LONG EMBARGO.—Late in December, 1807, at the request of Jefferson, Congress laid an embargo and cut off all trade with foreign ports. [4] The restriction was so sweeping and the damage to farmers, planters, merchants, shipowners, and sailors so great, that the law was at once evaded. More stringent laws were therefore enacted, till at last trade along the coast from port to port was made all but impossible. Defiance to the embargo laws became so general [5] that a Force Act (1809) was passed, giving the President authority to use the army and navy in enforcing obedience. This was too much, and such a storm of indignation arose in the Eastern states that Congress repealed the embargo laws (1809) and substituted

THE NON-INTERCOURSE ACT.—This forbade commerce with Great Britain and France, but allowed it with such countries as were not under French or British control. If either power would repeal its orders or decrees, the President was to announce this fact and renew commerce with that power.

Just at this time the second term of Jefferson ended, [6] and Madison became President (March 4, 1809). [8]

THE ERSKINE AGREEMENT(1809).—And now the British minister, Mr. Erskine, offered, in the name of the king, to lift the orders in council if the United States would renew trade with Great Britain. The offer was accepted, and the renewal of trade proclaimed. But when the king heard of it, he recalled Erskine and disavowed the agreement, and Madison was forced to declare trade with Great Britain again suspended.

MACON'S BILL NO. 2.—Non-intercourse having failed, Congress in 1810 tried a new experiment, and by Macon's Bill No. 2 (so-called because it was the second of two bills introduced by Mr. Macon) restored trade with France and Great Britain. At the same time it provided that if either power would withdraw its decrees or orders, trade should be cut off with the other unless that power also would withdraw them.

Napoleon now (1810) pretended to recall his decrees, but Great Britain refused to withdraw her orders in council, whereupon in 1811 trade was again stopped with Great Britain.

THE DECLARATION OF WAR.—And now the end had come. We had either to submit tamely or to fight. The people decided to fight, and in the elections of 1810 completely changed the character of the House of Representatives. A large number of new members were elected, and the control of public affairs passed from men of the Revolutionary period to a younger set with very different views. Among them were two men who rose at once to leadership and remained so for nearly forty years to come. One was Henry Clay of Kentucky; [9] the other was John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Clay was made speaker of the House of Representatives, and under his lead the House at once began preparations for war with Great Britain, which was formally declared in June, 1812. The causes stated by Madison in the proclamation were (1) impressing our sailors, (2) sending ships to cruise off our ports and search our vessels, (3) interfering with our trade by orders in council, and (4) urging the Indians to make war on the Western settlers.

THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE.—That the British had been tampering with the Indians was believed to be proved by the preparation of many of the Indian tribes for war. From time to time some Indian of great ability had arisen and attempted to unite the tribes in a general war upon the whites. King Philip was such a leader, and so was Pontiac, and so at this time were the twin brothers Tecumthe and the Prophet. The purpose of Tecumthe was to unite all the tribes from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico in a general war, to drive the whites from the Mississippi valley. After uniting many of the Northern tribes he went south, leaving his brother, the Prophet, in command. But the action of the Prophet so alarmed General Harrison, [10] governor of Indiana territory, that he marched against the Indians and beat them at the Tippecanoe (1811). [11]



MADISON RELECTED.—As Madison was willing to be a war President the Republicans nominated him for a second term of the presidency, with Elbridge Gerry [12] for the vice presidency. The Federalists and those opposed to war, the peace party, nominated DeWitt Clinton for President. Madison and Gerry were elected. [13]

THE WAR OPENS.—The war which now followed, "Mr. Madison's War" as the Federalists called it, was fought along the edges of our country and on the sea. It may therefore be considered under four heads:—

1. War on land along the Canadian frontier. 2. War on land along the Atlantic seaboard. 3. War on land along the Gulf coast. 4. War on the sea.

Scarcely had the fighting begun when news arrived that Great Britain had recalled the hated orders in council, but she would not give up the right of search and of impressment, so the war went on, as Madison believed that cause enough still remained.



FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER, 1812.—The hope of the leaders of the war party, "War Hawks" as the Federalists called them, was to capture the British provinces north of us and make peace at Halifax. Three armies were therefore gathered along the Canadian frontier. One under General Hull was to cross at Detroit and march eastward. A second under General Van Rensselaer was to cross the Niagara River, join the forces under Hull, capture York (now Toronto), and then go on to Montreal. The third under General Dearborn was to enter Canada from northeastern New York, arid meet the other troops near Montreal. The three armies were then to capture Montreal and Quebec and conquer Canada.

But the plan failed; Hull was driven out of Canada, and surrendered at Detroit. Van Rensselaer did not get a footing in Canada, and Dearborn went no farther than the northern boundary line of New York.

FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER, 1813.—The surrender of Hull filled the people with indignation, and a new army under William Henry Harrison was sent across the wilds of Ohio in the dead of winter to recapture Detroit. But the British and Indians attacked and captured part of the army at Frenchtown on the Raisin River, where the Indians massacred the prisoners. They then attacked Fort Meigs and Fort Stephenson, but were driven off.