%265. Battle of the Thames.%—Perry's victory was a grand one. It gave him command of Lake Erie, and enabled him to carry Harrison's soldiers over to Canada, where, on the Thames River, Harrison defeated the British and Indians. These two victories regained all that had been lost by the surrender of Hull.

Along the New York border little was done during 1813. The Americans made a raid into Canada, and to their shame burned York. The British attacked Sacketts Harbor and were driven off. The Americans sent an expedition down the St. Lawrence against Montreal, but the leaders got frightened and took refuge in northern New York.

%266. Campaign of 1814.%—In 1814 better officers were put in command, and before winter came the Americans, under Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott, had won the battles of Chippewa and Lundys Lane, and captured Fort Erie. But the British returned in force, burned Black Rock and Buffalo in revenge for the burning of York, and forced the Americans to leave Canada.

The fighting along the Niagara River, by holding the army in that place, prevented the Americans from attacking Montreal, and enabled the British to gather a fleet on Lake Champlain, and send an army down from Quebec to invade New York state just as Burgoyne had in 1777. But the land force was defeated by General Macomb at Plattsburg, while Thomas McDonough utterly destroyed the fleet in Plattsburg Bay. This was one of the great victories of the war.

%267. The Sea Fights.%—While our army on the frontier was accomplishing little, our war ships were winning victory after victory on the sea. At the opening of the war, our navy was the subject of English ridicule and contempt. We had sixteen ships; she had 1200. She laughed at ours as "fir-built things with a bit of striped bunting at their mastheads." But before 1813 came, these "fir-built things" had destroyed her naval supremacy.[1] With the details of all these victories on the sea we will not concern ourselves. Yet a few must be mentioned because the fame of them still endures, and because they are examples of naval warfare in the days when the ships fought lashed together, and when the boarders, cutlass and pistol in hand, climbed over the bulwarks and met the enemy on his own deck, man to man. During 1812 the frigate Constitution, whose many victories won her the name of "Old Ironsides," sank the Guerriere; the United States captured and brought to port the Macedonian; and the Wasp, a little sloop of eighteen guns, after the most desperate engagement of the whole war, captured the British sloop Frolic.

[Footnote 1: One reason for the success of the American navy was the experience it had gained in the clash with France, and also in a war with Tripoli in 1801-1805. At that time the Christian nations whose ships sailed the Mediterranean Sea were accustomed to pay annual tribute to Tripoli and other piratical states on the north coast of Africa, under pain of having their ships seized and their sailors reduced to slavery. A dispute with the United States led to a war which gained for our ships the freedom of the Mediterranean.]

When these sloops were some two hundred feet apart, the Wasp opened with musketry and cannon. The sea, lashed into fury by a two days' cyclone, was running mountain high. The vessels rolled till the muzzles of their guns dipped in the water. But the crews cheered lustily and the fight went on. When at last the crew of the Wasp boarded the Frolic, they were amazed to find that, save the man at the wheel and three officers who threw down their swords, not a living soul was visible. The crew had gone below to avoid the terrible fire of the Wasp. Scarcely was the battle over when the British frigate Poictiers bore down under a press of sail, recaptured what was left of the Frolic, and took the Wasp in addition.

During 1813 the Constitution took the Java; the Hornet sank the Peacock; the Enterprise captured the Boxer off Portland, Maine. These and many more made up the list of American victories. But there were British victories also. The Argus, after destroying twenty-seven vessels in the English Channel, was taken by the Pelican; the Essex, after a marvelous cruise around South America, was captured by two frigates. The Chesapeake was forced to strike to the Shannon.

The Chesapeake was at anchor in Boston harbor, in command of James Lawrence, when the British frigate Shannon ran in and challenged her. Lawrence went out at once, and after a short, fierce fight was defeated and killed. As his men were carrying him below, mortally wounded, he cried, "Don't give up the ship!" words which Perry, as we have seen, afterwards put on his flag, and which his countrymen have never since forgotten.[1]

[Footnote 1: On the naval war read Maclay's History of the Navy, Part Third; Roosevelt's Naval War of 1812; McMaster, Vol. IV., pp. 70-108.]

%268. The British blockade the Coast.%—Never, in the course of her existence, had England suffered such a series of defeats as we inflicted on her navy in 1812 and 1813. The record of those years caused a tremendous excitement in Great Britain, all the vessels she could spare were sent over, and with the opening of 1814, the whole coast of the United States was declared to be in a state of blockade.[1] In New England, Eastport (Moose Island) and Nantucket Island quickly fell. A British force went up the Penobscot to Hampden, and burned the Adams. The eastern half of Maine was seized, and Stonington, in Connecticut, was bombarded.

[Footnote 1: All except New England had been blockaded since 1812; and in 1813 the coast of Chesapeake Bay had been ravaged.]

%269. Burning of Washington.%—Further down the coast a great fleet and army from Bermuda, under General Ross and Admiral Cockburn, came up the Chesapeake Bay, landed in Maryland, and marched to Washington. At Bladensburg, a little hamlet near the capital, the Americans made a feeble show of resistance, but soon fled; and about dark on an August night, 1814, a detachment of the British reached Washington, marched to the Capitol, fired a volley through the windows, entered, and set fire to the building. When the fire began to burn brightly, Ross and Cockburn led the troops to the President's house, which was sacked and burned. Next morning the torch was applied to the Treasury building and to the Departments of State and War. Several private houses and a printing office were also destroyed before the British began a hasty retreat to the Chesapeake.[1]

[Footnote 1: Adams's History, Vol. VIII., Chaps. 5, 6; McMaster's History, Vol. IV., pp. 135-148; Memoirs of Dolly Madison, Chap. 8.]

%270. Baltimore attacked.%—Once on the bay, the army was hurried on board the ships and carried to Baltimore, where for a day and a night they shelled Fort McHenry.[2] Failing to take it, and Ross having been killed, Cockburn reembarked and sailed away to Halifax.

[Footnote 2: Francis S. Key, an American held prisoner on one of the British ships, composed the words of The Star-Spangled Banner while watching the bombardment.]

%271. The Victory at New Orleans.%—The army was taken to Jamaica in order that it might form part of one of the greatest war expeditions England had ever fitted out. Fifty of the finest ships her navy could furnish, mounting 1000 guns and carrying on their decks 20,000 veteran soldiers and sailors, had been quietly assembled at Jamaica during the autumn of 1814, and in November sailed for New Orleans.

News of this intended attack had reached Madison, and he had given the duty of defending New Orleans to Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, one of the most extraordinary men our country has produced. The British landed at the entrance of Lake Borgne in December, 1814, and hurried to the banks of the Mississippi. But Jackson was more than a match for them. Gathering such a force of fighting men as he could, he hastened from the city and with all possible speed threw up a line of rude earthworks, and waited to be attacked. This line the British under General Pakenham attacked on January 8, 1815, and were twice driven back with frightful loss of life. Never had such a defeat been inflicted on a British army. The loss in killed, wounded, and missing was 2036 men. Jackson lost seventy-one men. Five British regiments which entered the battle 3000 strong reported 1750 men killed, wounded, and missing.[1]

[Footnote 1: Adams's History, Vol. VIII., Chaps. 12-14; McMaster, Vol. IV., pp. 182-190]

%272. Peace.%—For a month after this defeat the British lingered in their camp. At last, in February, the army departed to attack a fort on Mobile Bay. The fort was taken, and two days later the news of peace put an end to war. The treaty was signed at Ghent in December, 1814; but it did not reach the United States till February, 1815.

In the treaty not a word was said about the impressment of our sailors, nor about the right of search, nor about the Orders in Council, nor about inciting the Indians to attack our frontier, all of which Madison had declared to be causes of the war. Yet we gained much. Our naval victories made us the equal of any maritime power, while at home the war did far more to arouse a national sentiment, consolidate the union, and make us a nation than any event which had yet occurred.

SUMMARY

1. The land war may be divided into:

A. War along the frontier. B. War along the Atlantic coast. C. War along the Gulf coast.

2. War along the Canadian frontier resulted in a gain to neither side. In 1812 Americans were beaten at Detroit and at Queenstown, and failed to invade Canada. In 1813 the Americans were beaten at Frenchtown, but defeated the Canadians at Forts Meigs and Stephenson, and at the Thames River, and recovered Detroit. Perry won the battle of Lake Erie. The Americans failed in the attempt to take Montreal. In 1814 the battles of Chippewa and Lundys Lane were won, and Fort Erie was taken. But the British burned Buffalo and Black Rock and drove the Americans out of Canada. McDonough won the battle of Lake Champlain.

3. During 1812-13 the British blockaded the coast from the east end of Long Island south to the Mississippi. New England was not blockaded till 1814. Then depredations began, and during the year Washington was taken and partly burned, and Baltimore attacked.

4. Later in the year the British, after the attack on Baltimore, went south, and early in 1815 were beaten by Jackson at New Orleans.

5. The navy won a series of successive victories. The defeats were about half as numerous as the victories.

6. Peace was announced in February, 1815.



/ / / / 1812. Hull surrenders Detroit. 1812. Harrison attempts to recover it. Detroit . . < 1813. Frenchtown. Battle of Lake Erie. The Harrison invades Canada and wins expeditions the battle of the Thames. against Canada. < / 1812. Van Rensselaer repulsed. War 1813. York taken and burned. Second on < Niagara . . < 1814. Battles of Chippewa and Lundys War for land Lane, and capture of Fort Erie. Independence < Americans driven from Canada. / 1813. Expedition against Montreal. St. Lawrence < 1814. British come down from Canada. Defeated on Lake Champlain. / 1812. Blockade of the coast south of Rhode Island. War on 1813. Ravages on the coast of Chesapeake Bay. the 1814. Entire coast blockaded. Seaboard. < New England attacked. Washington taken and partly burned. Baltimore attacked. 1815. Victory at New Orleans. War on / The ship duels. the sea. The fleet victories on the Lakes.



CHAPTER XIX

PROGRESS OF OUR COUNTRY BETWEEN 1790 AND 1815

%273.% Twenty-five years had now gone by since Washington was inaugurated, and in the course of these years our country had made wonderful progress. In 1790 the United States was bounded west by the Mississippi River. By 1815 Louisiana had been purchased, the Columbia River had been discovered, and the Oregon country had been explored to the Pacific. In 1790 the inhabitants of the United States numbered less than four millions. In 1815 they were eight millions. In 1790 there were but thirteen states in the Union, and two territories. In 1815 there were eighteen states and five territories.

%274. The Three Streams of Westward Emigration.%—Sparse as was the population in 1789, the rage for emigration had already seized the people, and long before 1790 the emigrants were pouring over the mountains in three great streams. One, composed of New England men, was pushing along the borders of Lake Champlain and up the Mohawk valley. A second, chiefly from Pennsylvania and Virginia, was spreading itself over the rich valleys of what are now West Virginia and Kentucky. Further south a third stream of emigrants, mostly from Virginia and North Carolina, had gone over the Blue Ridge Mountains, and was creeping down the valley of the Tennessee River.[1]

[Footnote 1: For an account of the movement of population westward along these routes, see The First Century of the Republic, pp. 211-238.]

For months each year the Ohio was dotted with flatboats. One observer saw fifty leave Pittsburg in five weeks. Another estimated that ten thousand emigrants floated by Marietta during 1788. As this never-ending stream of population spread over the wilderness, building cabins, felling trees, clearing the land, and driving off the game, the Indians took alarm and determined to expel them.

%275. The Indian War.%—During the summer of 1786 the tribes whose hunting grounds lay in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky took the warpath, sacked and burned a little settlement on the Holston, and spread terror along the whole frontier. But the settlers in their turn rose, and inflicted on the Indians a signal punishment. One expedition from Tennessee burned three Cherokee towns. Another from Kentucky crossed the Ohio, penetrated the Indian country, burned eight towns, and laid waste hundreds of acres of standing corn. Had the Indians been left to themselves, they would, after this punishment, have remained quiet. But the British, who still held the frontier post at Detroit, roused them, and in 1790 they were again at work, ravaging the country north of the Ohio. They rushed down on Big Bottom (northwest of Marietta) and swept it from the face of the earth. St. Clair, who was governor of the Northwest Territory, sent against them an expedition which won some success—just enough to enrage and not enough to cow them.

%276. St. Clair; Wayne.%—Not a settlement north of the Ohio was now safe, and had it not been for the men of Kentucky, who came to the relief, and in two expeditions held the Indians in check till the Federal government could act, every one of them would have been destroyed. The plan of the Secretary of War was to build a chain of forts from Cincinnati to Lake Michigan, and late in 1791 St. Clair set off to begin the work. But the Indians surprised him on a branch of the Wabash River, and inflicted on him one of the most dreadful defeats in our history. Public opinion now forced him to resign his command, which was given to Anthony Wayne, who, after two years of careful preparation, crushed the Indian power at the falls of the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio. The next year, 1795, a treaty was made at Greenville, by which the Indians gave up all claim to the soil south and east of a boundary line drawn from what is now Cleveland southwest to the Ohio River.

%277. Kentucky and Vermont become States.%—These Indian wars almost stopped emigration to the country north of the Ohio, though not into Kentucky or Tennessee. For several years past the people of the District of Kentucky had been desirous to come into the Union, but had been unable to make terms with Virginia, to which Kentucky belonged. At last consent was obtained and the application made to Congress. But the Kentuckians were slave owners, were identified with Southern and Western interests, and cared little for the commercial interests of the East, and as this influence could be strongly felt in the Senate, where each state had two votes, it was decided to offset those of Kentucky by admitting the Eastern state of Vermont.

What is now Vermont was once the property of New Hampshire, was settled by people from New England under town rights granted by the governor of New Hampshire, and was called "New Hampshire Grants." In 1764, however, the governor of New York obtained a royal order giving New York jurisdiction over the Grants on the ground that in 1664 the possessions of the Duke of York extended to the Connecticut River. Then began a controversy which was still raging bitterly when the Revolution opened, and the Green Mountain Boys asked recognition as a state and admission into the Congress, a request which the other states were afraid to grant lest by so doing they should offend New York. Thereupon the people chose delegates to a convention (in 1777), which issued a declaration of independence, declared "New Connecticut, alias Vermont," a state, and made a constitution. In this shape matters stood in 1791, when as an offset to Kentucky Vermont was admitted into the Union. As she was a state with governor, legislature, and constitution, she came in at once. Kentucky had to make a constitution, and so was not admitted till 1792. Four years later (1796) Congress admitted Tennessee.



%278. The New Territories; Ohio becomes a State.%—The quieting of the Indians by Wayne in 1794, the opening of the Mississippi River to American trade by Spain in 1795, coupled with cheap lands and low taxes, caused another rush of population into the Ohio valley. Between 1795 and 1800 so many came that the Northwest Territory was cut in twain and the new territory of Indiana was organized in 1800. The acceptance by Spain in 1795 of 31 deg. north latitude as the boundary of the Floridas, gave the United States control of the greater part of old West Florida, which in 1798 was organized as the Mississippi Territory. Hardly a year now elapsed without some marked sign of Western development. In 1800 Congress, under the influence of William Henry Harrison, the first delegate from the Northwest Territory, made a radical change in its land policy. Up to that time every settler must pay cash. After 1800 he could buy on credit, pay in four annual installments, and west of the Muskingum River could purchase as little as 320 acres. This credit system led to another rush into the Ohio valley, and so many people entered the Northwest Territory, that in 1803 the southern part of it was admitted into the Union as the state of Ohio.

]

[Footnote 1: From an old print.]

In 1802 Georgia ceded her western lands, which were added to the Mississippi Territory. From the Louisiana purchase there was organized in 1804 the territory of Orleans, and in 1805 the territory of Louisiana (see p. 247). In 1805, also, the lower peninsula of Michigan was cut off from Indiana and organized as Michigan Territory. In 1809 the territory of Illinois was organized (p. 247). In 1812 the territory of Orleans became the state of Louisiana.

The third census showed that in 1810 the population of the United States was 7,200,000, and that of these over 1,000,000 were in the states and territories west of the Alleghanies.

%279. Indian Troubles; Battle of Tippecanoe.%—As the settlers north of the Ohio moved further westward, and as more came in, their farms and settlements touched the Indian boundary line. In Indiana, where, save a strip sixty miles wide along the Ohio River, and a few patches scattered over the territory, every foot of soil was owned by the Indians, this crowding led to serious consequences. The Indians first grew restive. Then, under the lead of Tecumthe, or Tecumseh, they founded a league or confederacy against the whites, and built a town on Tippecanoe Creek, just where it enters the Wabash. Finally, when Harrison, who was governor of Indiana Territory, bought the Indian rights to the Wabash valley, the confederacy refused to recognize the sale, and gave such signs of resistance that Harrison marched against them, and in 1811 fought the battle of Tippecanoe and burned the Indian village. For a time it was thought the victory was as signal as that of Wayne. But the Indians were soon back on the old site, and in our second war with Great Britain they sided with the British.



%280. Industrial Progress.%—In 1789 our country had no credit and no revenue, and was burdened with a great debt which very few people believed would ever be paid. But when the government called in all the old worthless Continental money and certificates and gave the people bonds in exchange for them, when it began to lay taxes and pay its debts, when it had power to regulate trade, when the National Bank was established and the merchants were given bank bills that would pass at their face value all over the country, business began to revive. The money which the people had been hiding away for years was brought out and put to useful purposes. Banks sprang up all over the country, and companies were founded to manufacture woolen cloth and cotton cloth, to build bridges, to construct turnpike roads, and to cut canals. Between 1789 and 1795 the first carpet was woven in the United States, the first broom made from broom corn, the first cotton factory opened, the first gold and silver coins of the United States were struck at the mint, the first newspaper was printed in the territory northwest of the Ohio River, the first printing press was set up in Tennessee, the first geography of the United States was published, and daily newspapers were issued in Baltimore and Boston. It was during this period that a hunter named Guinther discovered anthracite coal in Pennsylvania; that Whitney invented the cotton gin; that Samuel Slater built the first mill for making cotton yarns; that Eli Terry started the manufacture of clocks as a business; that cotton sewing thread was first manufactured in the United States at Pawtucket, R.I.; and that the first turnpike in our country was completed. This extended from Philadelphia to Lancaster, a distance of sixty-two miles.

%281. The Period of Commercial and Agricultural Prosperity.%—Just at this time came another change of great importance. Till 1793 we had scarcely any commerce with the West Indies. England would not allow our vessels to go to her islands. Neither would Spain, nor France, except to a very limited degree. It was the policy of these three countries to confine such trade as far as possible to their own merchants. But in 1793 France, you remember, made war on England and opened her West Indian ports to all neutral nations. The United States was a neutral, and our merchants at once began to trade with the islanders. What these people wanted was lumber, flour, grain, provisions, salt pork, and fish. All this led to a demand, first, for ships, then for sailors, and then for provisions and lumber—to the benefit of every part of the country except the South. New England was the lumber, fishing, shipbuilding, and commercial section. New York and Pennsylvania produced grain, flour, lumber, and carried on a great commerce as well. So profitable was it to raise wheat, that in many parts of Virginia the people stopped raising tobacco and began to make flour, and soon made Virginia the second flour-producing state in the Union. Until after 1795 the people of the Western States were cut off from this trade. But in that year the treaty with Spain was made, and the people of the West were then allowed to float their produce to New Orleans and there sell it or ship it to the West Indies. Kentucky then became a flour-producing state.

As a consequence of all this, people stopped putting their money into roads and canals and manufactures, and put it into farming, shipbuilding, and commerce. Between 1793 and 1807, therefore, our country enjoyed a period of commercial and agricultural prosperity. But with 1807 came another change. In that year the embargo was laid, and for more than fifteen months no vessels were allowed to leave the ports of the United States for foreign countries. Up to this time our people had been so much engaged in commerce and agriculture, that they had not begun to manufacture. In 1807 all the blankets, all the woolen cloth, cotton cloth, carpets, hardware, china, glass, crockery, knives, tools, and a thousand other things used every day were made for us in Great Britain. Cotton grown in the United States was actually sent to England to be made into cloth, which was then carried back to the United States to be used.

%282. "Infant Manufactures."%—As the embargo prevented our ships going abroad and foreign ships coming to us, these goods could no longer be imported. The people must either go without or make them at home. They decided, of course, to make them at home, and all patriotic citizens were called on to help, which they did in five ways.

First, in each of the cities and large towns people met and formed a "Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Manufactures." Every patriotic man and woman was expected to join one of them, and in so doing to take a pledge not to buy or use or wear any article of foreign make, provided it could be made in this country.

In the second place, these societies for the encouragement of domestic manufactures, "infant manufactures," as they were called, offered prizes for the best piece of homemade linen, homemade cotton cloth, or woolen cloth.

In the third place, they started "exchanges," or shops, in the cities and large towns, to which anybody who could knit mittens or socks, or make boots and shoes or straw bonnets, or spin flax or wool, or make anything else that the people needed, could send them to be sold.

In the fourth place, men who had money came forward and formed companies to erect mills and factories for the manufacture of all sorts of things. If you were to see the acts passed by the legislatures of the states between 1808 and 1812, you would find that very many of them were charters for iron works, paper mills, thread works, factories for making cotton and woolen cloth, oilcloth, boots, shoes, rope.

In the fifth place, the legislatures of the states passed resolutions asking their members to wear clothes made of material produced in the United States,[1] offered bounties for the best wool, and exempted the factories from taxation and the mill hands from militia and jury duty.

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. III., pp. 496-509.]

Thus encouraged, manufactures sprang up in the North, and became so numerous that in 1810, when the census of population was taken, Congress ordered that statistics of manufactures should be collected at the same time. It was then found that the value of the goods manufactured in the United States in 1810 was $173,000,000.

%283. Internal Improvements: Roads; Canals; Steamboats.%—But there was yet another great change for the better which took place between 1790 and 1815. We have seen how during this quarter of a century our country grew in area, how the people increased in number, how new states and territories were made, how agriculture and commerce prospered, and how manufactures arose. It is now time to see how the people improved the means of interstate commerce and communication.

You will remember that in 1790 there were no bridges over the great rivers of the country, that the roads were very bad, that all journeys were made on horseback or in stagecoaches or in boats, and that it was not then possible to go as far in ten hours as we can now go in one. You will remember, also, that the people were moving westward in great numbers.

As the people thus year by year went further and further westward, a demand arose for good roads to connect them with the East. The merchants on the seaboard wanted to send them hardware, clothing, household goods, farming implements, and bring back to the seaports the potash, lumber, flour, skins, and grain with which the settlers paid for these things. If they were too costly, frontiersmen could not buy them. If the roads were bad, the difficulty of getting merchandise to the frontier would make them too costly. People living in the towns and cities along the seaboard were no longer content with the old-fashioned slow way of travel. They wanted to get their letters more often, make their journeys and have their freight carried more quickly.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. III., pp. 462-465.]

About 1805, therefore, men began to think of reviving the old idea of canals, which had been abandoned in 1793, and one of these canal companies, the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, applied to Congress for aid. This brought up the question of a system of internal improvements at national expense, and Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, was asked to send a plan for such a system to Congress, which he did. Congress never approved it.

%284. The National Pike.%—Public sentiment, however, led to the commencement of a highway to the West known as the National Pike, or the Cumberland Road. When Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state in 1803, Congress promised that part of the money derived from the sale of land in Ohio should be used to build a road from some place on the Ohio River to tide water. By 1806 the money so set apart amounted to $12,000, and with this was begun the construction of a broad pike from Cumberland (on the Potomac) in Maryland to Wheeling (on the Ohio) in West Virginia.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History, Vol. III., pp. 469-470.]

]

[Footnote 1: From an oil painting.]

%285. Steamboats.%—This increasing demand for cheap transportation now made it possible for Fulton to carry into successful operation an idea he had long had in mind. For twenty years past inventors had been exhibiting steamboats. James Rumsey had exhibited one on the Potomac. John Fitch had shown one on the Delaware in 1787. (See p. 190.) In 1804 Robert Fulton exhibited a steamboat on the Seine at Paris in France; Oliver Evans had a steam scow on the Delaware River at Philadelphia; and John Stevens crossed the Hudson from Hoboken to New York in a steamboat of his own construction. In 1806 Stevens built another, the Phoenix.[1]

[Footnote 1: Preble's History of Steam Navigation , pp. 35-66; Thurston's Robert Fulton in Makers of America Series.]

These men were ahead of their time, and it was not till the August day, 1807, when Robert Fulton made his experiment on the Hudson, that the era of the steamboat opened. His vessel, called the Clermont, made the trip up the river from New York to Albany in thirty-two hours.

]

[Footnote 2: Made from the original drawings, and now in the National Museum.]

Then the usefulness of the invention was at last appreciated, and in 1808 a line of steam vessels went up and down the Hudson. In 1809 Stevens sent his Phoenix by sea to Philadelphia and ran it on the Delaware. Another steamboat was on the Raritan River, and a third on Lake Champlain. In 1811 a boat steamed from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and in 1812 steam ferryboats plied between what is now Jersey City and New York, and between Philadelphia and Camden.[3]

[Footnote 3: On the early steamboats see McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. III., pp. 486-494.]

%286. The Currency; the Mint.%—Quite as marvelous was the change which in five and twenty years had taken place in money matters. When the Constitution became law in 1789, there were no United States coins and no United States bills or notes in circulation. There was no such thing as a national currency. Except the gold and silver pieces of foreign nations, there was no money which would pass all over our country. To-day a treasury note, a silver certificate, a national bank bill, is received in payment of a debt in any state or territory. In 1789 the currency was foreign coins and state paper. But the Constitution forbade the states ever to make any more money, and as their bills of credit already issued would wear out by use, the time was near when there would be no currency except foreign coins. To prevent this, Congress in 1791 ordered a mint to be established at Philadelphia, and in 1792 named the coins to be struck, and ordered that whoever would bring gold or silver to the mint should have it made into coins without cost to him. This was free coinage. As both gold and silver were to be coined, the currency was to be bimetallic, or of two metals.[1] The ratio of silver and gold was 15 to 1. That is, fifteen pounds' weight of silver must be made into as many dollars' worth of coins as one pound of gold. The silver coins were to be the dollar, half and quarter dollar, dime and half dime; the gold were to be the eagle, half eagle, and quarter eagle. Out of copper were to be struck cents and half cents. As some years must elapse before our national coins could become abundant, certain foreign coins were made legal tender.

[Footnote 1: The first silver coin was struck in 1794; the first gold, in 1795; the first cent and half cent, in 1793.]

%287. "Federal Money."%—The appearance of the new money was followed by another change for the better. In colonial days the merchants and the people expressed the debts they owed, or the value of the goods they sold, in pounds, shillings, and pence, or in Spanish dollars. During the Revolution, and after it, this was continued, although the Continental Congress always kept its accounts, and made its appropriations, in dollars. But when the people began to see dollars, half dollars, and dimes bearing the words "United States of America," they knew that there really was a national coinage, or "Federal money," as they called it, and between 1795 and 1798, one state after another ordered its treasurer to use Federal money instead of pounds, shillings, and pence; and thereafter in laying taxes, and voting appropriations for any purpose, the amount was expressed in dollars and cents. The merchants and the people were much slower in adopting the new terms; but they came at last into general use.

%288. Rise of the State Banks.%—Had the people been forced to depend on the United States mint for money wherewith to pay the butcher and the baker and the shoemaker, they would not have been able to make their payments, for the machinery at the mint was worked by hand, and the number of dimes and quarters turned out each year was small. But they were not, for as soon as confidence was restored, banks chartered by the states sprang up in the chief cities in the East, and as each issued notes, the people had all the currency they wanted.

In 1790, when Congress established the National Bank, there were but four state banks in the whole country: one in Philadelphia, one in New York, one in Boston, and one in Baltimore. By 1800 there were twenty-six, in 1805 there were sixty-four, and in 1811 there were eighty-eight.

In that year (1811) the charter of the National Bank expired, and as Congress would not renew it, many more state banks were created, each hoping to get a part of the business formerly done by the National Bank. Such was the "mania," as it was called, for banks, that the number rose from eighty-eight in 1811, to two hundred and eight in 1814, which was far more than the people really needed.

Nevertheless, all went well until the British came up Chesapeake Bay and burned Washington. Then the banks in that part of the country boxed up all their gold and silver and sent it away, lest the British should get it. This forced them to "suspend specie payments"; that is, refuse to give gold or silver in exchange for their own paper. As soon as they suspended, others did the same, till in a few weeks every one along the seaboard from Albany to Savannah, and every one in Ohio, had stopped paying coin. The New England banks did not suspend.

%289. No Small Change.%—The consequences of the suspension were very serious. In the first place, all the small silver coins, the dimes, half dollars, and quarter dollars, disappeared at once, and the people were again forced to do as they had done in 1789, and use "ticket money." All the cities and towns, great and small, printed one, two, three, six and one fourth, twelve and one half, twenty-five, and fifty-cent tickets, and sold them to the people for bank notes. Steamboats, stagecoaches, and manufacturing companies, merchants, shopkeepers—in fact, all business men—did the same.

In the second place, as the banks would not exchange specie for their notes, people who did not know all about a bank would not take its bills except at very much less than their face value. That is, a dollar bill of a Philadelphia bank was not worth more than ninety cents in paper money at New York, and seventy-five cents at Boston. This state of things greatly increased the cost of travel and business between the states, and prevented the government using the money collected at the seaports in the East to pay debts due in the West.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History, Vol. IV., pp. 280-318.]

%290. The Second Bank of the United States.%—Lest this state of affairs should occur again, Congress, exercising its constitutional "power to regulate the currency," chartered a second National Bank in 1816, and modeled it after the old one. Again the parent bank was at Philadelphia; but the capital was now $35,000,000. Again the public money might be deposited in the bank and its branches, which could be established wherever the directors thought proper. Again the bank could issue paper money to be received by the government in payment of taxes, land, and all debts.

The Republicans had always denied the right of Congress to charter a bank. But the question was never tested until 1819, when Maryland attempted to collect a tax laid on the branch at Baltimore. The case reached the Supreme Court of the United States, which decided that a state could not tax a corporation chartered by Congress; and that Congress had power to charter anything, even a bank.

SUMMARY

1. The census returns of 1790 showed that population was going west along three highways.

2. As a result of this movement, Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796), and Ohio (1803) entered the Union.

3. The population of the country increased from 3,380,000 in 1790 to 7,200,000 in 1810; and the area from about 828,000 to 2,000,000 square miles.

4. The period 1790-1810 was one of marked industrial progress, and of great commercial and agricultural prosperity. It was during this time that manufactures arose, that many roads and highways and bridges were built, and that the steamboat was introduced.

5. A national mint had been established. The charter of the National Bank had expired, and numbers of state banks had arisen to take its place. These banks had suspended specie payment, and the government had been forced to charter a new National Bank.

PROGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES FROM 1709 TO 1815

_Territorial Changes. 1790-1812.

Movement of Population into the West.

Northern Stream. Checked by Indian war. Indians quieted by Wayne. Population again moved westward.

New states. 1791. Vermont. 1792. Kentucky. 1796. Tennessee. 1803. Ohio. 1812. Louisiana.

New Territories. 1798. Mississippi. 1800. Indiana. 1802. Mississippi enlarged. 1804. Orleans. 1805. Michigan. 1805. Louisiana (called Missouri after 1812). 1809. Illinois.

Expansion of Territory. 1795. Spain accepts 31 deg. as the boundary. 1802. Georgia cedes her western territory. 1803. Louisiana purchased from France.

Industrial Progress First carpet mill. First brooms. First United States gold and silver coins. First press in Tennessee. Daily newspapers. Discovery of hard coal. Cotton gin. Manufacture of clocks. Sewing thread. Rise of manufactures. Dependence of United States on Great Britain before 1807. Effect of the embargo. Manner of encouraging manufactures. Agricultural Progress Effect of the French war. State of agriculture in New England. New York and Pennsylvania. The South. Improvements in Transportation Demand for roads and canals. The national pike. Steamboats. Early forms. Fitch's. Fulton's. Stevens's. Rapid introduction of. Financial Condition Federal money. The United States mint established. Free coinage. Bimetallism. Coins struck. Federal money comes slowly into use. State Banks. What led to the chartering of state banks. Their rapid increase. Effect of the expiration of the charter of the Bank of the United States. General suspension in 1814. Reason for chartering the second Bank of the United States.



CHAPTER XX

SETTLEMENT OF OUR BOUNDARIES

%291. Monroe inaugurated.%—The administration of Madison ended on March 4, 1817, and on that day James Monroe and Daniel D. Tompkins were sworn into office. They had been nominated at Washington in February, 1816, by a caucus of Republican members of Congress, for no such thing as a national convention for the nomination of a President had as yet been thought of. The Federalists did not hold a caucus; but it was understood that their electors would vote for Rufus King for President.[1]

[Footnote 1: In 1816 there were nineteen states in the Union (Indiana having been admitted in that year), and of these Monroe carried sixteen and King three. The inauguration took place in the open air for the first time since 1789.]



%292. Death of the Federalist Party.%—The inauguration of Monroe opens a new era of great interest and importance in our history. From 1793 to 1815, the questions which divided the people into Federalists and Republicans were all in some way connected with foreign countries. They were neutral rights, Orders in Council, French Decrees, impressment, embargoes, non-intercourse acts, the conduct of England, the insolence of the French Directory, the triumphs and the treachery of Napoleon. Every Federalist sympathized with England; every Republican was a warm supporter of France.

But with the close of the war in 1815, all this ended. Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. Europe was at peace, and there was no longer any foreign question to divide the people into Federalists and Republicans. This division, therefore, ceased to exist, and after 1816 the Federalist party never put up a candidate for the presidency. It ceased to exist not only as a national but even as a state party, and for twelve years there was one great party, the Republican, or, as it soon began to be called, the Democratic.

%293. The "Era of Good Feeling."%—A sure sign of the disappearance of party and party feeling was seen very soon after Monroe was inaugurated. In May, 1817, he left Washington with the intention of visiting and inspecting all the forts and navy yards along the eastern seaboard and the Great Lakes. Beginning at Baltimore, he went to New York, then to Boston, and then to Portland; where he turned westward, and crossing New Hampshire and Vermont to Lake Champlain, made his way to Ogdensburg, where he took a boat to Sacketts Harbor and Niagara, whence he went to Buffalo, and Detroit, and then back to Washington.

Wherever he went, the people came by thousands to greet him; but nowhere was the reception so hearty as in New England, the stronghold of Federalism. "The visit of the President," said a Boston newspaper, "seems wholly to have allayed the storms of party. People _now meet in the same room_ who, a short while since, _would scarcely pass along the same street_". Another said that since Monroe's arrival at Boston "party feeling and animosities have been laid aside, and but one great _national feeling_ has animated every class of our citizens." So it was everywhere, and when, therefore, the Boston Sentinel_ called the times the "era of good feeling," the whole country took up the expression and used it, and the eight years of Monroe's administration have ever since been so called.

%294. Trouble with the Seminole Indians.%—Though all was quiet and happy within our borders, events of great importance were happening along our northern, western, and southern frontier. During the war with England, the Creek Indians in Georgia and Alabama had risen against the white settlers and were beaten and driven out by Jackson and forced to take refuge with the Seminoles in Florida. As they had been the allies of England, they fully expected that when peace was made, England would secure for them the territory of which Jackson had deprived them. When England did not do this, they grew sullen and savage, and in 1817 began to make raids over the border, run off cattle and murder men, women, and children. In order to stop these depredations, General Jackson was sent to the frontier, and utterly disregarding the fact that the Creeks and Seminoles were on Spanish soil, he entered West Florida, took St. Marks and Pensacola, destroyed the Indian power, and hanged two English traders as spies.[1]

[Footnote 1: Parton's Life of Jackson, Chaps. 34-36; McMaster's History, Vol. IV., pp. 430-456.]

%295. The Canadian Boundary; Forty-ninth Parallel.%—This was serious, for at the time the news reached Washington that Jackson had invaded Spanish soil and hanged two English subjects, important treaties were under way with Spain and Great Britain, and it was feared his violent acts would stop them. Happily no evil consequences followed, and in 1818 an agreement was reached as to the dividing line between the United States and British America.

When Louisiana came to us, no limit was given to it on the north, and fifteen years had been allowed to pass without attempting to establish one. Now, however, the boundary was declared to be a line drawn south from the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods to the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude and along this parallel to the summit of the Rocky Mountains.

%296. Joint Occupation of Oregon.%—The country beyond the Rocky Mountains, the Oregon country, was claimed by both England and the United States; so it was agreed in the treaty of 1818 that for ten years to come the country should be held in joint occupation.

%297. The Spanish Boundary Line.%—One year later (1819) the boundary of Louisiana was completed by a treaty with Spain, which now sold us East and West Florida for $5,000,000. Till this time we had always claimed that Louisiana extended across Texas as far as the Rio Grande. By the treaty this claim was given up, and the boundary became the Sabine River from the Gulf of Mexico to 32 deg., then a north line to the Red River; westward along this river to the 100th meridian; then northward to the Arkansas River, and westward to its source in the Rocky Mountains; then a north line to 42 deg., and then along that parallel to the Pacific Ocean.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. IV., pp. 457-480.]

%298. Russian Claims on the Pacific.%—The Oregon country was thus restricted to 42 deg. on the south, and though it had no limit on the north the Emperor of Russia (in 1822) undertook to fix one at 51 deg., which he declared should be the south boundary of Alaska. Oregon was thus to extend from 42 deg. to 51 deg., and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. But Russia had also founded a colony in California, and seemed to be preparing to shut the United States from the Pacific coast. Against all this John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, protested, telling the Russian minister that European powers no longer had a right to plant colonies in either North or South America.

%299. The Holy Allies and the South American Republics.%—This was a new doctrine, and while the United States and Russia were discussing the boundary of Oregon, it became necessary to make another declaration regarding the rights of European powers in the two Americas.

Ever since 1793, when Washington issued his proclamation of neutrality (p. 206), the policy of the United States had been to take no part in European wars, nor meddle in European politics. This had been asserted repeatedly by Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe,[1] and during all the wars from 1793 to 1815 had been carefully adhered to. It was supposed, of course, that if we did not meddle in the affairs of the Old World nations, they would not interfere in affairs over here. But about 1822 it seemed likely that they would interfere very seriously.

[Footnote 1: See Washington's Farewell Address; Jefferson's Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801; also his message to Congress, Oct. 17, 1803; Monroe's Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817, and messages, Dec. 2, 1817, Nov. 17, 1818, Nov. 14, 1820; see also American History Leaflets, No. 4.]



Beginning with 1810, the Spanish colonies of Mexico and South America (Chile, Peru, Buenos Ayres, Colombia) rebelled, formed republics, and in 1822 were acknowledged as free and independent powers by the United States. Spain, after vainly attempting to subdue them, appealed for help to the powers of Europe, which in 1815 had formed a Holy Alliance for the purpose of maintaining monarchical government. For a while these powers (Russia, Prussia, Austria, France) held aloof. But in 1823 they decided to help Spain to get back her old colonies, and invited Great Britain to attend a Congress before which the matter was to be discussed. But Great Britain had no desire to see the little republics destroyed, and in the summer of 1823, the British Prime Minister asked the American minister in London if the United States would join with England in a declaration warning the Holy Allies not to meddle with the South American republics. Thus, just at the time when Adams was protesting against European colonization in the Northwest, England suggested a protest against European meddling in the affairs of Spanish America. The opportunity was too good to be lost, and Adams succeeded in persuading President Monroe to make a protest in behalf of the nation against both forms of European interference in American affairs. Monroe thought it best to make the declaration independent of Great Britain, and in his annual message to Congress, December 2, 1823, he announced three great guiding principles now known as the

%300. Monroe Doctrine.%—

1. Taking up the matter in dispute with Russia, he declared that the American continents were no longer open to colonization by European nations.

Referring to the conduct of the Holy Allies, he said,

2. That the United States would not meddle in the political affairs of Europe.

3. That European governments must not extend their system to any part of North or South America, nor oppress, nor in any other manner seek to control the destiny of any of the nations of this hemisphere.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's With the Fathers, pp. 1-54; Tucker's Monroe Doctrine.]

The protest was effectual. The Holy Allies did not meddle in South American affairs, and the next year (1824) Russia agreed to make no settlement south of 54 deg. 40'.

SUMMARY

1. At the presidential election of 1816 the Federalist party, for the last time, voted for a presidential candidate. Party politics were dead, and the "era of good feeling" opened.

2. Many important matters which were not settled by the Treaty of Ghent were disposed of:

A. The forty-ninth parallel was made the boundary from a point south of the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.

B. Oregon was held in joint occupation.

C. The line 54 deg. 40' was established.

3. The boundary between the United States and the Spanish possessions was drawn, and Florida was acquired.

4. The Monroe doctrine was announced.

* * * * *

SOME RESULTS OF THE WAR.

Death of the Federalist party ...

End of the European war. Disappearance of old party issues. Monroe elected President. The "era of good feeling."

Seminole War ...

Creek Indians join the English. Driven out of Alabama by Jackson. Take refuge with Florida Seminoles. After the war rise against the settlers in Georgia. Destroyed by Jackson.

The boundaries ...

1818. Northern boundary of Louisiana settled to the Rocky Mountains. 1819. Treaty with Spain settled the south boundary of Louisiana. 1818. Joint occupation of Oregon. 1824. North boundary of Oregon established at 54 deg. 40'.

The Monroe Doctrine.

The Holy Allies. The South American republics. Proposal of the Holy Allies to reduce the South American republics. The Monroe Doctrine announced (1823).



CHAPTER XXI

THE RISING WEST

%301. Rush into the West.%—The settlement of our boundary disputes, especially with Spain, was most timely, for even then people were hurrying across the mountains by tens of thousands, and building up new states in the Mississippi valley. The great demand for ships and provisions, which from 1793 to 1807 had made business so brisk, had kept people on the seaboard and given them plenty of employment. But after 1812, and particularly after 1815, trade, commerce, and business on the seaboard declined, work became scarce, and men began to emigrate to the West, where they could buy land from the government on the installment plan, and where the states could not tax their farms until five years after the government had given them a title deed. Old settlers in central New York declared they had never seen so many teams and sleighs, loaded with women, children, and household goods, traveling westward, bound for Ohio, which was then but another name for the West.

As the year wore away, the belief was expressed that when autumn came it would be found that the worst was over, and that the good times expected to follow peace would keep people on the seaboard. But the good times did not return. The condition of trade and commerce, of agriculture and manufactures, grew worse instead of better, and the western movement of population became greater than ever.

%302. Rapid Growth of Towns.%—Fed by this never-ending stream of newcomers, the West was almost transformed. Towns grew and villages sprang up with a rapidity which even in these days of rapid and easy communication would be thought amazing. Mt. Pleasant, in Jefferson County, Ohio, was in 1810 a little hamlet of seven families living in cabins. In 1815 it contained ninety families, numbering 500 souls. The town of Vevay, Ind., was laid out in 1813, and was not much better than a collection of huts in 1814. But in 1816 the traveler down the Ohio who stopped at Vevay found himself at a flourishing county seat, with seventy-five dwellings, occupied by a happy population who boasted of having among them thirty-one mechanics of various trades; of receiving three mails each week, and supporting a weekly newspaper called the Indiana Register. Forty-two thousand settlers are said to have come into Indiana in 1816, and to have raised the population to 112,000.

Letters from New York describe the condition of that state west of Utica as one of astonishing prosperity. Log cabins were disappearing, and frame and brick houses taking their place. The pike from Utica to Buffalo was almost a continuous village, and the country for twenty miles on either side was filling up with an industrious population. Auburn, where twenty years before land sold for one dollar an acre, was the first town in size and wealth west of Utica, and land within its limits brought $7000 an acre. Fourteen miles west was Waterloo, on the Seneca River, a village which did not exist in 1814, and which in 1816 had fifty houses. Rochester, the site of which in 1815 was a wilderness, had a printing press, a bookstore, and a hundred houses in 1817.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. IV., pp. 381-386.]

%303. Scenes on the Western Highways.%—By 1817 this migration was at its height, and in the spring of that year families set forth from almost every village and town on the seaboard. The few that went from each place might not be missed; but when they were gathered on any one of the great roads to the West, as that across New York, or that across Pennsylvania, they made an endless procession of wagons and foot parties.

A traveler who had occasion to go from Nashville to Savannah in January, 1817, declares that on the way he fell in with crowds of emigrants from Carolina and Georgia, all bound for the cotton lands of Alabama; that he counted the flocks and wagons, and that—carts, gigs, coaches, and wagons, all told—there were 207 conveyances, and more than 3800 people. At Haverhill, in Massachusetts, a train of sixteen wagons, with 120 men, women, and children, from Durham, Me., passed in one day. They were bound for Indiana to buy a township, and were accompanied by their minister. Within thirteen days, seventy-three wagons and 450 emigrants had passed through the same town of Haverhill. At Easton, Pa., which lay on the favorite westward route for New Englanders, 511 wagons, with 3066 persons, passed in a month. They went in trains of from six to fifty wagons each day. The keeper of Gate No. 2, on the Dauphin turnpike, in Pennsylvania, returned 2001 families as having passed his gate, bound west, between March and December, 1817, and gave the number of people accompanying the vehicles as 16,000. Along the New York route, which went across the state from Albany to Buffalo, up Lake Erie, and on by way of Chautauqua Lake to the Allegheny, the reports are just as astonishing. Two hundred and sixty wagons were counted going by one tavern in nine days, besides hundreds of people on horseback and on foot.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History. Vol. IV., pp. 387, 388.]

%304. Life on the Frontier.%—The "mover," or, as we should say, the emigrant, would provide himself with a small wagon, very light, but strong enough to carry his family, provisions, bedding, and utensils; would cover it with a blanket or a piece of canvas or with linen which was smeared with tar inside to make it waterproof; and with two stout horses to pull it, would set out for the West, and make his way across Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, then the greatest city of the West, with a population of 7000. Some, as of old, would take boats and float down the Ohio; others would go on to Wheeling, be ferried across the river, and push into Ohio or Indiana or Illinois, there to "take up" a quarter section (160 acres) of government land, or buy or rent a "clearing" from some shiftless settler of an earlier day. Government land intended for sale was laid out in quarter sections of 160 acres, and after being advertised for a certain time was offered for sale at public auction. What was not sold could then be purchased at the land office of the district at two dollars an acre, one quarter to be paid down, and three fourths before the expiration of four years. The emigrant, having gathered eighty dollars, would go to some land office, "enter" a quarter section, pay the first installment, and make his way in the two-horse wagon containing his family and his worldly goods to the spot where was to be his future home. Every foot of it in all probability would be covered with bushes and trees.



%305. The Log Cabin.%—In that case the settler would cut down a few saplings, make a "half-faced camp," and begin his clearing. The "half-faced camp" was a shed. Three sides were of logs laid one on another horizontally. The roof was of saplings covered with branches or bark. The fourth side was open, and when it rained was closed by hanging up deerskin curtains. In this camp the newcomer and his family would live while he grubbed up the bushes and cut down trees enough to make a log cabin. If he were a thrifty, painstaking man, he would smooth each log on four sides with his ax, and notch it half through at each end so that when they were placed one on another the faces would nearly touch. Saplings would make the rafters, and on them would be fastened planks laid clapboard fashion, or possibly split shingles.

An opening was of course left for a door, although many a cabin was built without a window, and when the door was shut received no light save that which came down the chimney, which was always on the outside of the house. To form it, an opening eight feet long and six feet high was left at one end of the house, and around this a sort of bay window was built of logs and lined with stones on the inside. Above the top of the opening the chimney contracted and was made of branches smeared both inside and out with clay. Generally the chimney went to the peak of the roof; but it was by no means unusual for it to stop about halfway up the end of the cabin.

]

[Footnote 1: The birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, restored (reproduced, together with the first picture on the next page, from Tarbell's Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, by permission of the publishers, S.S. McClure, Limited).]

If the settler was too poor to buy glass, or if glass could not be had, the window frame was covered with greased paper, which let in the light but could not be seen through. The door was of plank with leather hinges, or with iron hinges made from an old wagon tire by the nearest blacksmith or by the settler himself. There was no knob, no lock, no bolt.

In place of them there was a wooden latch on the inside, which could be lifted by a person on the outside of the door by a leather strip which came through a hole in the door and hung down. When this latch string was out, anybody could pull it, lift the latch, and come in. When it was drawn inside, nobody could come in without knocking. The floor was made of "puncheons," or planks split and hewn with an ax from the trunk of a tree, and laid with the round side down. The furniture the settler brought with him, or made on the spot.

]

The household utensils were of the simplest kind. Brooms and brushes were made of corn husks. Corn was shelled by hand and was then either carried in a bag slung over a horse's back to the nearest mill, perhaps fifteen miles away, or was pounded in a wooden hominy mortar with a wooden pestle, or ground in a hand mill. Chickens and game were roasted by hanging them with leather strings before the open fire. Cooking stoves were unknown, and all cooking was done in a "Dutch oven," on the hearth, or in a clay "out oven" built, as its name implies, out of doors.

]

]

[Footnote 1: From originals in the National Museum, Washington.]

%306. Clearing and Planting.%—The land about the cabin was cleared by grubbing the bushes and cutting down trees under a foot in diameter and burning them. Big trees were "deadened," or killed, by cutting a "girdle" around them two or three feet above the ground, deep enough to destroy the sap vessels and so prevent the growth of leaves.[1]

[Footnote 1: For a delightful account of life in the West, read W. C. Howells's Recollections of Life in Ohio (edited by his son, William Dean Howells).]

In the ground thus laid open to the sun were planted corn, potatoes, or wheat, which, when harvested, was threshed with a flail and fanned and cleaned with a sheet. At first the crop would be scarcely sufficient for home use. But, as time passed, there would be some to spare, and this would be wagoned to some river town and sold or exchanged for "store goods."

If the settler chose his farm wisely, others would soon settle near by, and when a cluster of clearings had been made, some enterprising speculator would appear, take up a quarter section, cut it into town lots, and call the place after himself, as Piketown, or Leesburg, or Gentryville. A storekeeper with a case or two of goods would next appear, then a tavern would be erected, and possibly a blacksmith shop and a mill, and Piketown or Leesburg would be established. Hundreds of such ventures failed; but hundreds of others succeeded and are to-day prosperous villages.

]

[Footnote 1: From a model in the National Museum at Washington.]

%307. The New States._—While the northern stream of population was thus traveling across New York, northern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and into Michigan, the middle stream was pushing down the Ohio. By 1820 it had greatly increased the population of southern Indiana and Illinois, and crossing the Mississippi was going up the Missouri River. In the South the destruction of the Indian power by Jackson in 1813, and the opening of the Indian land to settlement, led to a movement of the southern stream of population across Alabama to Mobile. Now, what were some of the results of this movement of population into the Mississippi valley? In the first place, it caused the formation and admission into the Union of six states in five years. They were Indiana, 1816; Mississippi, 1817; Illinois, 1818; Alabama, 1819; Maine, 1820; Missouri, 1821.

%308. Slave and Free States.%—In the second place, it brought about a great struggle over slavery. You remember that when the thirteen colonies belonged to Great Britain slavery existed in all of them; that when they became independent states some began to abolish slavery; and that in time five became free states and eight remained slave states. Slavery was also gradually abolished in New York and New Jersey, so that of the original thirteen only six were now to be counted as slave states. You remember again that when the Continental Congress passed the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the territory lying between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes, Pennsylvania and the Mississippi River, it ordained that in the Northwest Territory there should be no slavery. In consequence of this, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were admitted into the Union as free states, as Vermont had been. Kentucky was originally part of Virginia, and when it was admitted, came in as a slave state. Tennessee once belonged to North Carolina, and hence was also slave soil; and when it was given to the United States, the condition was imposed by North Carolina that it should remain so. Tennessee, therefore, entered the Union (in 1796) as a slave state. Much of what is now Alabama and Mississippi was once owned by Georgia, and when she ceded it in 1802, she did so with the express condition that it should remain slave soil; as a result of this, Alabama and Mississippi were slave states. Louisiana was part of the Louisiana Purchase, and was admitted (1812) as a slave state because it contained a great many slaves at the time of the purchase.

Thus in 1820 there were twenty-two states in the Union, of which eleven were slave, and eleven free. Notice now two things: 1. That the dividing line between the slave and the free states was the south and west boundary of Pennsylvania from the Delaware to the Ohio, and the Ohio River; 2. That all the states in the Union except part of Louisiana lay east of the Mississippi River. As to what should be the character of our country west of that river, nothing had as yet been said, because as yet no state lying wholly in that region had asked admittance to the Union.

%309. Shall there be Slave States West of the Mississippi River?%—But when the people rushed westward after the war, great numbers crossed the Mississippi and settled on the Missouri River, and as they were now very numerous they petitioned Congress in 1818 for leave to make the state of Missouri and to be admitted into the Union.

The petitioners did not say whether they would make a slave or a free state; but as the Missourians owned slaves, everybody knew that Missouri would be a slave state. To this the free states were opposed. If the tobacco-growing, cotton-raising, and sugar-making states wanted slaves, that was their affair; but slavery must not be extended into states beyond the Mississippi, because it was wrong. No man, it was said, had any right to buy and sell a human being, even if he was black. The Southern people were equally determined that slavery should cross the Mississippi. We cannot, said they, abolish slavery; because if our slaves were set free, they would not work, and as they are very ignorant, they would take our property and perhaps our lives. Neither can we stop the increase of negro slave population. We must, then, have some place to send our surplus slaves, or the present slave states will become a black America.

%310. The Missouri Compromise.%—Each side was so determined, and it was so clear that neither would yield, that a compromise was suggested. The country east of the Mississippi, it was said, is partly slave, partly free soil. Why not divide the country west of the great river in the same way? At first the North refused. But it so happened that just at this moment Maine, having secured the consent of Massachusetts, applied to Congress for admission into the Union as a free state. The South, which had control of the Senate, thereupon said to the North, which controlled the House of Representatives, If you will not admit Missouri as a slave state, we will not admit Maine as a free state. This forced the compromise, and after a bitter and angry discussion it was agreed

1. That Maine should come in as a free, and Missouri as a slave, state.

2. That the Louisiana Purchase should be cut in two by the parallel of 36 deg. 30', and that all north of the line except Missouri should be free soil[1]. This parallel was thereafter known as the "Missouri Compromise Line."

[Footnote 1: The Compromise was violated in 1836, when the present northwest corner of Missouri was taken from the free territory and added to that state. See maps, pp. 299 and 348]



The admission of Maine and Missouri raised the number of states to twenty-four.[1] No more were admitted for sixteen years. When Missouri applied for admission as a state, Arkansas was (1819) organized as a territory.

[Footnote 1: For the compromise read Woodburn's Historical Significance of the Missouri Compromise (in Report American Historical Association, 1893, pp. 251-297); McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. IV., Chap. 39.]

%311. The Second Election of Monroe.%—This bitter contest over the exclusion of slavery from the country west of the Mississippi shows how completely party lines had disappeared in 1820. In the course of that year, electors of a President were to be chosen in the twenty-four states. That slavery would play an important part in the campaign, and that some candidate would be put in the field by the people opposed to the compromise, might have been expected. But there was no campaign, no contest, no formal nomination. The members of Congress held a caucus, but decided to nominate nobody. Every elector, it was well known, would be a Republican, and as such would vote for the reelection of Monroe and Tompkins. And this almost did take place. Every one of the 229 electors who voted was a Republican, and all save one in New Hampshire cast votes for Monroe. But this one man gave his vote to John Quincy Adams. He said he did not want Washington to be robbed of the glory of being the only President who had ever received the unanimous vote of the electors.

March 4, 1821, came on Sunday. Monroe was therefore inaugurated on Monday, March 5.

SUMMARY

1. The dull times on the seaboard, the cheap land in the West, the love of adventure, and the desire to "do better" led, during 1814-1820, to a most astonishing emigration westward.

2. The rush of population into the Mississippi valley caused the admission of six states into the Union between 1816 and 1821.

3. The question of the admission of Missouri brought up the subject of shutting slavery out of the country west of the Mississippi, which ended in a compromise and the establishment of the line 36 deg. 30'.

MOVEMENT OF POPULATION.

Northern Stream.

Effect of hard times in the East.— Scenes along the highways.—Arrival of the emigrants in the West.—The half-faced camp.—The log cabin.— Household utensils.—Clearing the land.—Growth of towns.

Middle Stream.

Moves down the Ohio valley, across southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and pushes up the Missouri.

Southern Stream.

The defeat of the Creek Indians opens their lands in Mississippi Territory to settlement.

* * * * *

This settlement of the West leads to:

Admission into the Union of:

1816. Indiana. 1817. Mississippi. 1818. Illinois. 1819. Alabama.

Admission of these states brings up the question of slavery.

1820. Maine. 1821. Missouri.

Organization of new territories.

1819. Arkansas. 1822. 1823. Florida.

Status of slavery after 1820.

FREE STATES.

N.H., Vt., Mass., R.I., Conn. N.Y., N.J., Pa., Ohio, Ind., Ill., Maine.

SLAVE STATES.

Del., Md., Va., N.C., S.C., Ga., Ala., Miss. La., Ky., Tenn., Missouri.

Country west of the Mississippi.

1804. Not settled. 1819. Attempt to make Missouri a slave state. 1820. The compromise.



CHAPTER XXII

THE HIGHWAYS OF TRADE AND COMMERCE

%312. Improvement in Means of Travel%.—We have now considered two of the results of the rush of population from the seaboard to the Mississippi valley; namely, the admission of five new Western states into the Union, and the struggle over the extension of slavery, which resulted in the Missouri Compromise. But there was a third result,—the actual construction of highways of transportation connecting the East with the West. Along the seaboard, during the five years which followed the war, great improvements were made in the means of travel. The steamboat had come into general use, and, thanks to this and to good roads and bridges, people could travel from Philadelphia to New York between sunrise and sunset on a summer day, and from New York to Boston in forty-eight hours. The journey from Boston to Washington was now finished in four days and six hours, and from New York to Quebec in eight days.

]

[Footnote 1: From an old engraving. Passengers from Philadelphia landed here from the steamboat and took stage for New Brunswick.]



In the West there was much the same improvement. The Mississippi and Ohio swarmed with steamboats, which came up the river from New Orleans to St. Louis in twenty-five days and went down with the current in eight. Little, however, had been done to connect the East with the West. Until the appearance of the steamboat in 1812, the merchants of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, and a host of other towns in the interior bought the produce of the Western settlers, and floating it down the Ohio and the Mississippi sold it at New Orleans for cash, and with the money purchased goods at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, and carried them over the mountains to the West. Some went in sailing vessels up the Hudson from New York to Albany, were wagoned to the Falls of the Mohawk, and then loaded in "Schenectady boats," which were pushed up the Mohawk by poles to Utica, and then by canal and river to Oswego, on Lake Ontario. From Oswego they went in sloops to Lewiston on the Niagara River, whence they were carried in ox wagons to Buffalo, and then in sailing vessels to Westfield, and by Chautauqua Lake and the Allegheny River to Pittsburg. Goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore were hauled in great Conestoga wagons drawn by four and six horses across the mountains to Pittsburg. The carrying trade alone in these ways was immense. More than 12,000 wagons came to Pittsburg in a year, bringing goods on which the freight was $1,500,000.

]

[Footnote 1: From an old print.]



With the appearance of the steamboat on the Mississippi and Ohio, this trade was threatened; for the people of the Western States could now float their pork, flour, and lumber to New Orleans as before, and bring back from that city by steamboat the hardware, pottery, dry goods, cotton, sugar, coffee, tea, which till then they had been forced to buy in the East[1].

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. IV., pp. 397-410, 419-421.]

This new way of trading was so much cheaper than the old, that it was clear to the people of the Eastern States that unless they opened up a still cheaper route to the West, their Western trade was gone.



%313. The Erie Canal.%—In 1817 the people of New York determined to provide such a route, and in that year they began to cut a canal across the state from the Hudson at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo. To us, with our steam shovels and drills, our great derricks, our dynamite, it would be a small matter to dig a ditch 4 feet deep, 40 feet wide, and 363 miles long. But on July 4, 1817, when Governor De Witt Clinton turned the first sod, and so began the work, it was considered a great undertaking, for the men of those days had only picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and gunpowder to do it with.

Opposition to the canal was strong. Some declared that it would swallow up millions of dollars and yield no return, and nicknamed it "Clinton's Big Ditch." But Clinton was not the kind of man that is afraid of ridicule. He and his friends went right on with the work, and after eight years spent in cutting down forests, in blasting rocks, in building embankments to carry the canal across swamps, and high aqueducts to carry it over the rivers, and locks of solid masonry to enable the boats to go up and down the sides of hills, the canal was finished.[1]

[Footnote 1: McMaster's History, Vol. IV., pp. 415-418.]



Then, one day in the autumn of 1825, a fleet of boats set off from Buffalo, passed through the canal to Albany, where Governor De Witt Clinton boarded one of them, and went down the Hudson to New York. A keg of water from Lake Erie was brought along, and this, when the fleet reached New York Harbor, Clinton poured with great ceremony into the bay, to commemorate, as he said, "the navigable communication opened between our Mediterranean seas [the Great Lakes] and the Atlantic Ocean."

%314. Effect of the Erie Canal%.—The building of the canal changed the business conditions of about half of our country. Before the canal was finished, goods, wares, merchandise, going west from New York, were carried from Albany to Buffalo at a cost of $120 a ton. After the canal was opened, it cost but $14 a ton to carry freight from Albany to Buffalo. This was most important. In the first place, it enabled the people in New York, in Ohio, in Indiana, in Illinois, and all over the West, to buy plows and hoes and axes and clothing and food and medicine for a much lower price than they had formerly paid for such things. Life in the West became more comfortable and easy than ever before.

In the next place, the Eastern merchant could greatly extend his business. How far west he could send his goods depended on the expense of carrying them. When the cost was high, they could go but a little way without becoming so expensive that only a few people could buy them. After 1825, when the Erie Canal made transportation cheap, goods from New York city could be sold in Michigan and Missouri at a much lower price than they had before been sold in Pittsburg or Buffalo.

%315. New York City the Metropolis.%—The New York merchant, in other words, now had the whole West for his market. That city, which till 1820 had been second in population, and third in commerce, rushed ahead and became the first in population, commerce, and business.

The same was true of New York state. As the canal grew nearer and nearer completion, the people from other states came in and settled in the towns and villages along the route, bought farms, and so improved the country that the value of the land along the canal increased $100,000,000.

A rage for canals now spread over the country. Many were talked of, but never started. Many were started, but never finished. Such as had been begun were hurried to completion. Before 1830 there were 1343 miles of canal open to use in the United States.

%316. The Pennsylvania Highway to the West.%—In Pennsylvania the opening of the Erie Canal caused great excitement. And well it might; for freight could now be sent by sailing vessels from Philadelphia to Albany, and then by canal to Buffalo, and on by the Lake Erie and Chautauqua route to Pittsburg, for one third what it cost to go overland. It seemed as if New York by one stroke had taken away the Western commerce of Philadelphia, and ruined the prosperity of such inland towns of Pennsylvania as lay along the highway to the West. The demand for roads and canals at state expense was now listened to, and in 1826 ground was broken at Harrisburg for a system of canals to join Philadelphia and Pittsburg. But in 1832 the horse-power railroad came into use, and when finished, the system was part railroad and part canal.

%317. The Baltimore Route to the West.%—This energy on the part of Pennsylvania alarmed the people of Baltimore. Unless their city was to yield its Western trade to Philadelphia they too must have a speedy and cheap route to the West. In 1827, therefore, a great public meeting was held at Baltimore to consider the wisdom of building a railroad from Baltimore to some point on the Ohio River. The meeting decided that it must be done, and on July 4, 1828, the work of construction was begun. In 1830 the road was opened as far as Ellicotts Mills, a distance of fifteen miles. The cars were drawn by horses.

The early railroads, as the word implies, were roads made of wooden rails, or railed roads, over which heavy loads were drawn by horses. The very first were private affairs, and not intended for carrying passengers.[1]

[Footnote 1: The first was used in 1807 at Boston to carry earth from a hilltop to a street that was being graded. The second was built near Philadelphia in 1810, and ran from a stone quarry to a dock. It was in use twenty-eight years. The third was built in 1826, and extended from the granite quarries at Quincy, Mass., to the Neponset River, a distance of three miles. The fourth was from the coal mines of Mauchchunk, Pa., to the Lehigh River, nine miles. The fifth was constructed in 1828 by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company to carry coal from the mines to the canal.]

%318. Public Railroads.%—In 1825 John Stevens, who for ten years past had been advocating steam railroads, built a circular road at Hoboken to demonstrate the possibility of using such means of locomotion. In 1823 Pennsylvania chartered a company to build a railroad from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna. But it was not till 1827, when the East was earnestly seeking for a rapid and cheap means of transportation to the West, that railroads of great length and for public use were undertaken. In that year the people of Massachusetts were so excited over the opening of the Erie Canal that the legislature appointed a commission and an engineer to select a line for a railroad to join Boston and Albany.

At this time there was no such thing as a steam locomotive in use in the United States. The first ever used here for practical purposes was built in England and brought to New York city in 1829, and in August of that year made a trial trip on the rails of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. The experiment was a failure; and for several years horses were the only motive power in use on the railroads. In 1830, however, the South Carolina Railroad having finished six miles of its road, had a locomotive built in New York city, and in January, 1831, placed it on the tracks at Charleston. Another followed in February, and the era of locomotive railroading in our country began.

%319. The Portage Railroad.%—As yet the locomotive was a rude machine. It could not go faster than fifteen miles an hour, nor climb a steep hill. Where such an obstacle was met with, either the road went around it, or the locomotive was taken off and the cars were let down or pulled up the hill on an inclined plane by means of a rope and stationary engine.[1] When Pennsylvania began her railroad over the Alleghany Mountains, therefore, she used the inclined-plane system on a great scale, so that in its time the Portage Railroad, as it was called, was the most remarkable piece of railroading in the world.

[Footnote 1: Such an inclined plane existed at Albany, where passengers were pulled up to the top of the hill. Another was at Belmont on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, and another on the Paterson and Hudson road near Paterson.]

The Pennsylvania line to the West consisted of a horse railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna River; of a canal out the Juniata valley to Hollidaysburg on the eastern slope of the Alleghany Mountains, where the Portage Railroad began, and the cars were raised to the summit of the mountains by a series of inclined planes and levels, and then by the same means let down the western slope to Johnstown; and then of another canal from Johnstown to Pittsburg.



As originally planned, the state was to build the railroad and canal, just as it built turnpikes. No cars, no motive power of any sort, except at the inclined planes, were to be supplied. Anybody could use it who paid two cents a mile for each passenger, and $4.92 for each car sent over the rails. At first, therefore, firms and corporations engaged in the transportation business owned their own cars, their own horses, employed their own drivers, and charged such rates as the state tolls and sharp competition would allow. The result was dire confusion. The road was a single-track affair, with turnouts to enable cars coming in opposite directions to pass each other. But the drivers were an unruly set, paid no attention to turnouts, and would meet face to face on the track, just as if no turnouts existed. A fight or a block was sure to follow, and somebody was forced to go back. To avoid this, the road was double-tracked in 1834, when, for the first time, two locomotives dragging long trains of cars ran over the line from Lancaster to Philadelphia. As the engine went faster than the horses, it soon became apparent that both could not use the road at the same time; and after 1836 steam became the sole motive power, and the locomotive was furnished by the state, which now charged for hauling the cars.[1]

[Footnote 1: On the early railroads see Brown's History of the First Locomotives in America.]



The puffing little locomotive bore little resemblance to its beautiful and powerful successors. No cab sheltered the engineer, no brake checked the speed, wood was the only fuel, and the tall smokestack belched forth smoke and red-hot cinders. But this was nothing to what happened when the train came to a bridge. Such structures were then protected by roofing them and boarding the sides almost to the eaves. But the roof was always too low to allow the smokestack to go under. The stack, therefore, was jointed, and when passing through a bridge the upper half was dropped down and the whole train in consequence was enveloped in a cloud of smoke and burning cinders, while the passengers covered their eyes, mouths, and noses.

%320. Railroads in 1835.%—In 1835 there were twenty-two railroads in operation in the United States. Two were west of the Alleghanies, and not one was 140 miles long. For a while the cars ran on "strap rails" made of wooden beams or stringers laid on stone blocks and protected on the top surface, where the car wheel rested, by long strips or straps of iron spiked on. The spikes would often work loose, and, as the car passed over, the strap would curl up and come through the bottom of the car, making what was called a snake head. It was some time before the all-iron rail came into use, and even then it was a small affair compared with the huge rails that are used at present.

%321. Mechanical Inventions.%—The introduction of the steamboat and the railroad, the great development of manufactures, the growth of the West, and the immense opportunity for doing business which these conditions offered, led to all sorts of demands for labor-saving and time-saving machinery. Another very marked characteristic of the period 1825-1840, therefore, is the display of the inventive genius of the people. Articles which a few years before were made by hand now began to be made by machinery.

Before 1825 every farmer in the country threshed his grain with a flail, or by driving cattle over it, or by means of a large wooden roller covered with pegs. After 1825 these rude devices began to be supplanted by the threshing machine. Till 1826 no axes, hatchets, chisels, planes, or other edge tools were made in this country. In 1826 their manufacture was begun, and in the following year there was opened the first hardware store for the sale of American-made hardware.

The use of anthracite coal had become so general that the wood stove was beginning to be displaced by the hard-coal stove, and in 1827 fire bricks were first made in the United States. It was at about this time that paper was first made of hay and straw; that boards were first planed by machine; that bricks were first made by machinery; that penknives and pocketknives were first manufactured in America; that Fairbanks invented the platform weighing scales; that chloroform was discovered; that Morse invented the recording telegraph; that a man in New York city, named Hunt, made and sold the first lock-stitch sewing machine ever seen in the world; that pens and horseshoes were made by machine; that the reaping machine was given its first public trial (in Ohio); and that Colt invented the revolver.

%322. Condition of the Cities.%—Yet another characteristic of the period was the great change which came over the cities and towns. The development of canal and railroad transportation had thrown many of the old highways into disuse, had made old towns and villages decline in population, and had caused new towns to spring up and flourish. Everybody now wanted to live near a railroad or a canal. The rapid increase in manufactures had led to the occupation of the fine water-power sites, and to the creation of many such manufacturing towns as Lowell (in Massachusetts) and Cohoes (in New York). The rise of so many new kinds of business, of so many corporations, mills, and factories, caused a rush of people to the cities, which now began to grow rapidly in size.



This made a change in city government necessary. The constable and the watchman with his rattle had to give place to the modern policeman. The old dingy oil lamps, lighted only when the moon did not shine, gave place to gas. The cities were now so full of clerks, workingmen, mechanics, and other people who had to live far away from the places where they were employed, that a cheap means of transportation about the streets became necessary. Accordingly, in 1830, an omnibus line was started in New York.[1] It succeeded so well that in 1832 the first street horse-car line in America was operated in New York city.

[Footnote 1: Many did not know what the word "Omnibus" painted along the top of the stages meant. Some thought it was the name of the man who owned them. It is, of course, a Latin word, and means "for all"; that is, the stages were public conveyances for the use of all.]

%323. The Owenite Communities.%—The efforts thus made everywhere and in every way to increase the comforts and conveniences of mankind turned the years 1820-1840 into a period of reform. Anything new was eagerly taken up. When, therefore, a Welshman named Robert Owen came over to this country, and introduced what he considered a social reform, numbers of people in the West became his followers. Owen believed that most of the hardships of life came from the fact that some men secured more property and made more money than others. He believed that people should live together in communities in which the farms, the houses, the cattle, the products of the soil, should be owned not by individual men, but by the whole community. He held that there should be absolute social equality, and that no matter what sort of work a man did, whether skilled or unskilled, it should be considered just as valuable as the work of any other man.

All this was very alluring, and in a little while Owenite communities were started in Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and New York, only to end in failure.[2]

[Footnote 2: Noyes's History of American Socialism.]

%324. The Mormons.%—But there was a social movement started at this time which still exists. In 1827, at Palmyra, in New York, a young man named Joseph Smith announced that he had received a new bible from an angel of the Lord. It was written, he said, on golden plates, which he claimed to have read by the aid of two wonderful stones; and in 1830 he gave to the world The Book of Mormon.

After the book appeared, Smith and a few others organized a church. Many at once began to believe in the new religion. But the West seemed so much better a field that in 1831 Smith and his followers started for Ohio, and at Kirtland established a Mormon community. There the Mormons lived for several years, and then went to Missouri, whence they were expelled, partly because they were an antislavery people. In 1840 they settled on the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois and built the town of Nauvoo. At Nauvoo they remained till 1846, when, having adopted polygamy, they were driven off by the people of Illinois, and, led by Brigham Young, marched to Council Bluffs, in Iowa. There they stopped to look about them for a safe place of abode, and finally, in 1847, left Council Bluffs for Great Salt Lake, then in the dominions of Mexico.[1]

[Footnote 1: Kennedy's Early Days of Mormonism.]

SUMMARY

1. The rise of the new states in the West, and the appearance of the steamboat on the Mississippi, were the causes of a great revival of public interest in internal improvements.

2. The first to build a great western highway was New York state, which, between 1817 and 1825, built the Erie Canal.

3. This cut down the cost of moving freight to the West, led to settlement along the banks of the canal, and made New York city the metropolis of the country.

4. It was during this period, 1815-1830, that many inventions, discoveries, and improvements were made in the arts and sciences.

5. The railroad was introduced, and the steam locomotive successfully used.

6. The cities grew, and in New York the omnibus and the street car began to be used.

The movement of population into the West.—The formation of new states there.—The rise of manufactures in the East.—The fine market the West offers for the products and importations of the Eastern States.

* * * * *

Lead to great rivalry between the Atlantic seaboard cities for Western trade.

* * * * *

This rivalry leads to the development of three routes to the West.

The New York Route.

1807. Steamboats on the Hudson. 1817-25. Erie Canal 1818. Steamboats on the Lakes. Chautauqua Lake and Allegheny valley. Effect of Erie Canal.

The Pennsylvania Route.

Old Conestoga wagons. Effect of Erie Canal. 1827. Pennsylvania state canals and railroads. The Portage Railroad.

The Baltimore Route.

1828. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad commenced.

* * * * *

The expansion of the country.—The development of the steamboat, the railroad, and manufactures, and the increased opportunities for doing business.

* * * * *

Lead to demand for labor-saving and time-saving machinery.

Hard-coal grate and stove. Fire bricks. Paper made from straw. Brick-making machine. Planing machine. Platform scales. Reaping machine. Colt's revolver. Sewing machine (Hunt). Steel pens. Threshing machine. Telegraph (electric). Steam printing press. Matches, etc., etc.



CHAPTER XXIII

POLITICS FROM 1824 TO 1845

%325. New Political Institutions.%—Of the political leaders of Washington's time few were left in 1825. The men who then conducted affairs had almost all been born since the Revolution, or were children at the time.[1] The same is true of the mass of the people. They too had been born since the Revolution, and, growing up under different conditions, held ideas very different from the men who went before them. They were more democratic and much less aristocratic, more humane, more practical. They abolished the old and cruel punishments, such as branding the cheeks and foreheads of criminals with letters, cutting off their ears, putting them in the pillory and the stocks; they partly abolished imprisonment for debt; they established free schools, reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries. They amended their state constitutions or made new ones, and extended the right to vote, and introduced new political institutions, some of which were of doubtful value, but are still used.