To President Adams's credit, he was no abettor of these hateful decrees, and did little to enforce them. The sedition law, however, did not rest with him for execution, and was applied right and left. Evidently its champions were swayed largely by political motives. Matthew Lyon, a fiery Republican member of Congress from Vermont, had, in an address to his constituents, charged the President with avarice and with "thirst for ridiculous pomp and foolish adulation," He was convicted of sedition, fined $1,000, and sentenced to four months in prison. This impoverished him, as well as took him from his place in Congress for most of a session. Adams refused pardon, but in 1840 Congress paid back the fine to Lyon's heirs.

It is now admitted that these measures were unconstitutional, as invading freedom of speech and of the press, and assigning to the Federal Judiciary a common-law jurisdiction in criminal matters. But they were also highly unwise, subjecting the Federalist Party to the odium of fearing free speech, of declining a discussion of its policy, and of hating foreigners. The least opposition to the party in power, or criticism of its official chiefs, became criminal, under the head of "opposing" the Government. A joke or a caricature might send its author to jail as "seditious." It was surely a travesty upon liberty when a man could be arrested for expressing the wish, as a salute was fired, that the wadding might hit John Adams behind. Even libels upon government, if it is to be genuinely free, must be ignored—a principle now acted upon by all constitutional States.

But the Federalists were blind to considerations like these. As Schouler well remarks: "A sort of photophobia afflicted statesmen, who, allowing little for the good sense and spirit of Americans, or our geographical disconnection with France, were crazed with the fear that this Union might be, like Venice, made over to some European potentate, or chained in the same galley with Switzerland or Holland, to do the Directory's bidding. That, besides this unfounded fear, operated the desire of ultra-Federalists to take revenge upon those presses which had assailed the British treaty and other pet measures, and abused Federal leaders; and the determination to entrench themselves in authority by forcibly disbanding an opposition party which attracted a readier support at the polls from the oppressed of other countries, no candid writer can at this day question."

[1798]

It was next the turn of the Republicans to blunder. In November, 1798, the Kentucky Legislature passed a series of resolutions, drawn up by John Breckenridge upon a sketch by Jefferson, in effect declaring the alien and sedition acts not law, but altogether void and of no force. In December the Virginia Legislature put forth a similar series by Madison, milder in tone and more cautiously expressed, denouncing those acts as "palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution." A year after their first utterance, the Kentucky law-makers further "resolved that the several States who formed (the Constitution), being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy." Virginia again declared it a State's right "to interpose" in such cases.

These resolutions were intended to stir reflection and influence opinion, and, if possible, elicit a concurrent request to Congress from the various States to repeal the obnoxious acts. They do not hint at the use of force. Their execration of the hated laws is none too strong, and their argument as a whole is masterly and unanswerable. But at least those of Kentucky suggest, if they do not contain, a doctrine respecting the Constitution which is untenable and baneful, in kernel the same that threatened secession in Jackson's time and brought it in Buchanan's. The State, as such, is not a party to the Constitution. Still less is the Legislature. Nor is either, but the Supreme Court, the judge whether in any case the fundamental law has been infringed.

Procuring the resolutions, however, proved a crafty political move. The enormity of the despicable acts was advertised as never before, while the endorsement of them by federalist legislators went upon record. Petitions for repeal came in so numerous and numerously signed that the VIth Congress could not but raise a committee to consider such action. It reported adversely, and the report was accepted, the majority in the House, fifty-two to forty-eight, trying contemptuously to cough down every speaker lifting his voice on the opposite side.

[1799]

This sullen obstinacy in favor of a miserable experiment sealed the doom of Federalism. In vain did the party orators plead that liberty of speech and the press is not license, but only the right to utter "the truth," that hence this liberty was not abridged by the acts in question, and that aliens had no constitutional rights, but enjoyed the privileges of the land only by favor. The fact remained, more and more appreciated by ordinary people, that a land ruled by such maxims could never be free.

So a deep distrust of Federalism sprung up, as out of sympathy with popular government. It was furthered by the attachment of prominent Federalists to England. Several of them are on record as ready to involve the United States in an expedition planned by one Miranda, to conquer Spanish America in aid of Great Britain, Spain and ourselves being perfectly at peace. The federalist chieftains were too proud, ignoring too much the common voter. They often expressed doubt, too, as to the permanence of popular institutions. Federalism had too close affinity with Puritanism to suit many outside New England. And then—deadly to the party even had nothing else concurred—there was a quarrel among its leaders. Hamilton, the Essex Junto (Pickering, Cabot, Quincy, Otis), and their supporters were set against Adams and his friends. This rivalry of long standing was brought to a head by Adams's noble and self-sacrificing independence in accepting France's overtures for peace, when Hamilton, Pickering, King, and all the rest, out of private or party interest rather than patriotism, wished war.

[1800]

Toward 1800, Democracy bade fair soon to come into power, but the Federalists learned no wisdom. Rather were they henceforth more factious than ever, opposing Jefferson and Madison even when they acted on purely federalist principles. Tooth and nail they fought against the acquisition of Louisiana, the War of 1812, and the protective tariff of 1816, which was carried by Republicans. A worse spirit still was shown in their disunion scheme of 1804, after the purchase of Louisiana, and in the Hartford Convention of 1814. Federalism had further lost ground by its mean and revolutionary devices on resigning power in 1801, first to make Burr President instead of Jefferson, and, failing in this, to use its expiring authority in creating needless offices for its clients.

In consequence of such ill-advised steps, federalist strength waned apace. In 1804 Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland alone chose federalist electors, the last only two such. In 1808 these were joined by the remaining New England States, North Carolina also casting three federalist votes. In 1812, indeed, Clinton received eighty-nine votes to Madison's one hundred and twenty-eight; but in 1816 again only Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware were federalist. In 1820 not a State had a federalist majority. State elections in Maryland, North Carolina, Delaware, and Connecticut commonly went federalist till 1820, and in Massachusetts till 1823, when the Republicans swept this commonwealth too, Essex County and all.

Yet Federalism did not die without fixing its stamp indelibly upon our institutions. Not to mention the Whig and the modern Republican Parties, close reproductions of it, or the public credit, its child, methods of administration passed with little change from Adams to Jefferson and his successors, and federalist principles modified the entire temper, and directed in no small degree the action, of the Democratic Party while in power. The nation was exalted more, state rights subordinated, and the Constitution construed ever more broadly. Thus there was silently and gradually imparted to our governmental fabric a consistency and a solidity which were of incalculable worth against storms to come.



CHAPTER VII.

THE WEST

[1787]

A simple resolution of the Continental Congress in 1780 has proved of the highest consequence for the subsequent development of our country. It declared that all territorial land should be national domain, to be disposed of for the common benefit of the States, with the high privilege of itself growing into States coequal with the old Thirteen. The treaty of 1783 carried this domain north to the Lakes, west to the Mississippi. The Ohio divided it into a northwestern and a southwestern part. The land to the west of themselves Virginia and North Carolina claimed, and it became Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively, erected into statehood, the one June 1, 1792, the other June 1, 1796, these being the fifteenth and sixteenth States in order. Vermont, admitted in 1791, was the fourteenth. Virginia never released Kentucky till it became a State. The Tennessee country, ceded to the United States by North Carolina in 1784, the cession revoked and afterward repeated, had already, under the name of Frankland, enjoyed for some time a separate administration. The nucleus of Kentucky civilization was on the northern or Ohio River border, that of Tennessee in the Cumberland Valley about Nashville; but by 1800 the borders of these two oases had joined.

United States land has since broadened westward to the Pacific, over the infinite areas which in 1800 belonged to Spain. From an early period there have been, as now, unorganized territory and also partially organized and fully organized territories, the last being inchoate States, ready to be admitted to full membership in the Union when sufficiently populous, on condition of framing each for itself a republican constitution.



General Arthur St. Clair.

[1788]

The great ordinance of 1787, re-enacted by the First Congress, forever sealing the same to civil and religious liberty, opened the Northwest for immediate colonization, twenty thousand people settling there in the next two years. The territory was organized and General St. Clair made governor. In 1788 Marietta was founded, named from Marie Antoinette, also Columbia near the mouth of the Little Miami. In the same year Losantiville, subsequently called Fort Washington, and now Cincinnati, was laid out, the first houses having gone up in 1780. Louisville, settled so early as 1773, contained in 1784 over one hundred houses. Emigrants in hundreds and thousands yearly poured over the mountains and down the Ohio. By the census of 1790 there were 4,280 whites northwest of this river, 1,000 at Vincennes, 1,000 on the lands of the Ohio Company, 1,300 on Symmes's purchase between the Great and the Little Miami, Cincinnati being part of this purchase. In 1800 these numbers had much increased. The settlements which had Pittsburgh for a nucleus had also greatly extended, reaching the Ohio. Northern and Central Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna Valley was yet a wilderness. St. Louis, in Spanish hands, but to become French next year, had been founded, and opposite it were the beginnings of what is now Alton, Ill.

[1790]

The centre of United States population in 1790 was twenty-three miles east of Baltimore. It has since moved westward, not far from the thirty-ninth parallel, never more than sixteen miles north of it, or three to the south. In 1800 it was eighteen miles west of Baltimore; in 1810 it was forty-three miles northwest by west of Washington; in 1820, sixteen miles north of Woodstock, Va.; in 1830, nineteen miles west-southwest of Moorfield, W. Va.; in 1840, sixteen miles south of Clarksburg, same State; in 1850, twenty-three miles southeast of Parkersburg, same State; in 1860, twenty miles south of Chillicothe, 0.; in 1870, forty-eight miles east by north of Cincinnati; in 1880, eight miles west by south of that city; in 1890, twenty miles east of Columbus, Ind., west by south of Greensburg. It has never since been so far north as in 1790, and it has described a total westward movement of four hundred and fifty-seven miles.

The land system of the United States was at first a bad one, in tended to secure immediate revenue from the sale of immense pieces at auction, on long credit, at very few points, the land to find its way into the hands of actual settlers only through mercenary speculators. The honest pioneer was therefore at the mercy of these land-sharks, greedy and unpatriotic in the extreme.

The western movement aroused the Indians, of whom there were, in 1790, from 20,000 to 40,000 north of the Ohio. The idea of amalgamating or even civilizing these people had long been practically given up. Settlers agreed in denouncing them as treacherous, intractable, bloodthirsty, and faithless. So incessant and terrific were their onslaughts, the Ohio Valley had come to be known as "the dark and bloody ground." The British, still occupying the western posts, used their influence to keep up and intensify Indian hostility to the United States settlers and Government.

In September, 1790, Governor St. Clair sent Harmar against the Indians on the Miami and Maumee. He had about fifteen hundred men, two-thirds of them militia. The expedition was ill-managed from the first, and, after advancing as far as the present Fort Wayne, came back with great loss to itself, having exasperated rather than injured the red men. Harmar, chagrined, soon resigned.

The Indians south of the Ohio were perhaps twice as numerous as those north, and partly civilized. The Chickasaws and Choctaws, nearest the Mississippi, gave little trouble. Not so the Cherokees and Creeks, whose seats were nearer the whites. The Creeks claimed parts of Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas, justified herein by acts of the Continental Congress. However, the whites invaded this territory, provoking a fierce war, wherein the Cherokees allied themselves with the Creeks of Alabama and Georgia. This brave tribe had border troubles of its own with Georgia. These various hordes of savages, having the Florida Spaniards to back them with counsel, arms, and ammunition, were a formidable foe, which might have annihilated Georgia but for aid from the general Government. McGillivray, the half-breed chief of the Creeks, was enticed to New York, where the kindness of Washington and the evident desire of Congress to deal with his people fairly, resulted in a treaty, August 13, 1790, which secured peace to the Southwest for a long time.

[1791]

Touching the northwestern redskins, Harmar's defeat had convinced Washington that mild measures were not yet the thing. A larger force was fitted out against them under St. Clair in person, whom, as an old Revolutionary comrade, Washington still trusted. General Butler was second in command. The two thousand regulars and one thousand militia rendezvoused at Cincinnati in the autumn of 1791. Part object of the expedition was to build a military road, with forts at intervals, all the way to the upper Wabash. Progress was therefore slow.

A fort was constructed on the present site of Hamilton, 0.; then one to the northwest, near Greenville, 0., close to the present Indiana line. From here the army pressed northwesterly still farther.

St. Clair was heroic, but incompetent through age and the gout. Some of his militia deserted. Chills and fever shook the remainder of his too slender host. His orders were not well obeyed. On November 9th, encamping by a small branch of the Wabash, St. Clair's force was most vehemently attacked by Indians, under the redoubtable Joseph Brant or Thayendanegea—famed for his bloody exploits against us during the Revolution—and well-nigh annihilated. Five high officers, including Butler, were killed, and as many more sank from wounds. Cannons, guns, accoutrements, in fact the whole equipment of the army, were lost. After a four hours' fight St. Clair, sick but brave as a tiger, horse after horse shot beneath him, part of the time carried in a litter, his gray locks streaming in the breeze, put himself at the head of the five hundred who remained unscathed, and hewed his way through walls of savages to the rear. Six o'clock that night found the survivors back at Greenville, twenty-nine miles from the scene of carnage. Had the Indians pursued instead of stopping to mutilate the slain, every soul must have perished.



Joseph Brant or Thayendanegea.

[1793]

The announcement of this disaster called forth in the East a universal howl of rage at the unfortunate commander. Even Washington went beside himself: "To suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a surprise—the very thing I guarded him against! O God! O God, he is worse than a murderer! How can he answer it to his country? The blood of the slain is upon him, the curse of widows and orphans, the curse of Heaven." St. Clair came East to explain. Hobbling into Washington's presence, he grasped his hand in both his own and sobbed aloud. He was continued as governor, but had to resign his major-generalship, which passed to Anthony Wayne.

Wayne was every inch a warrior. Cautiously advancing over the road St. Clair's fugitives had reddened with their blood, he reached Fort Jefferson, at Greenville, in June, 1793. Next year he advanced to the junction of the Au Glaize with the Maumee. The Indians fleeing, he pursued to the foot of the Maumee Rapids, where he encountered them encamped by a fort which the English, defying the treaty, still held, fifty miles inside our lines. Wayne, agreeably to Washington's policy, tried to treat. Failing, he attacked, routed the enemy, and mercilessly ravaged the country, burning crops and villages. Building Fort Wayne as an advanced post, he came back and made his headquarters at Fort Jefferson. The Indians' spirit and opposition were at last broken. Their delegates flocked to Wayne, suing for peace. Captives were surrendered. The whole Ohio Territory now lay open to peaceful occupation, and emigrants crowded northward from the Ohio in great companies.

[1794]

The pioneer bought land wherever he found a vacant spot that pleased him, building his hut, breaking up any open land for crops, and as rapidly as possible clearing for more. His white neighbors, if any were near, lent their assistance in this work. His rough dwelling of logs, with one room, floored with puncheon, caulked with mud, and covered with bark or thatch, however uncomfortable from our point of view, made him a habitable home. When this primitive mansion was no longer sufficient, he was usually able to rear another out of hewn logs, with glass windows and a chimney. Then he felt himself an aristocrat, and who will deny that he was so? A large family grew up around him, neighbors moved in, the forest disappeared, the savages and wild beasts that at first harassed him slunk away, while the fruitful soil, with such exchanges and mail privileges as were speedily possible, yielded him all the necessaries and many of the comforts of life.

[1800]

So rapid was the increase of population henceforth, that Congress, in 1800, divided the territory, the line running north from the junction of the Kentucky with the Ohio. All west of this was to be known as the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison its governor, and a territorial legislature to follow so soon as a majority of the inhabitants should desire.

On February 19, 1803, Ohio became a State. Mainly through Governor Harrison's exertions a better system of marketing public land was begun, in healthy contrast with the old. It allowed four land-offices in Ohio and Indiana. Lands once offered at auction and not sold could be pre-empted directly by private individuals on easy terms. Actual settlement and cultivation were thus furthered, speculation curbed, and the government revenues vastly increased.



Dugout of a Southwestern Pioneer

[1802]

We have spoken mostly of the Northwest. The present States of Alabama and Mississippi north of 31 degrees, except a narrow strip at the extreme north owned by South Carolina, were claimed by Georgia, but the part of this territory south of 32 degrees 30 minutes the United States also claimed, as having before the Revolution been separated from Georgia by the king and joined to West Florida, so that it, like the Northwest, passed to the United States at the treaty of 1783. This section was organized in 1798 as the Mississippi Territory. In 1802 Georgia relinquished all claim to the northern part as well, which Congress added to the Mississippi Territory. At this date there were settlements along the Mississippi bluffs below the Yazoo bottom.



Robert Fulton



CHAPTER VIII.

SOCIAL CULTURE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

[1800]

In 1800 the population of our land was 5,305,482, of whom 896,849 were slaves. New York City had 60,489; Philadelphia, 40,000; Boston, 24,937; Baltimore, 23,971; Charleston, 18,712; Providence, 7,614; Washington, 3,210. The population of Vermont, Northern and Western New York, and the Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania had grown considerably more dense since 1790. The social life, ideas, and habits of the rural districts had not altered much from those prevalent in colonial days, but in the more favored centres great improvements, or, at any rate, changes, might have been marked.

Even far in the country framed buildings were now the most common, the raising of one being a great event. The village school gave a half holiday. Every able-bodied man and boy from the whole country-side received an invitation—all being needed to "heave up," at the boss carpenter's pompous word of command, the ponderous timbers seemingly meant to last forever. A feast followed, with contests of strength and agility worthy of description on Homer's page.

Skating was not yet a frequent pastime, nor dancing, save in cities and large towns. Balls every pious New Englander abhorred as sinful. The theatre was similarly tabooed—in Massachusetts, so late as 1784, by law. New York and Philadelphia frowned upon it then, though jolly Baltimore already gave it patrons enough. When, in 1793, yellow fever desolated Philadelphia, one theory ascribed the affection to the admission of the theatre. In other cities passion for the theatre was growing, and even Massachusetts tolerated it by an act passed in 1793. President Washington, while in New York, oftener than many thought proper, attended the old, sorrily furnished play-house in John Street, the only one which the city could then boast. John Adams also went now and again. Both were squinted at through opera-glasses, which were just coming into use and thought by the crowd to be infinitely ridiculous. Good hours were kept, as the play began at five.



Fulton's First Experiment with Paddle-wheels.

All sorts of shows, games, and sports which the country could afford or devise were immensely popular, the most so, and the roughest, in the South. Horse-racing, cock-fighting, shooting matches, at all which betting was high, were there fashionable, as well as most brutal man-fights, in which ears were bitten off and eyes gouged out. President Thomas Jefferson was exceedingly fond of menageries and circuses, his diary abounding in such entries as: "pd for seeing a lion 21 months old 11-1/2 d.;" "pd seeing a small seal .125 ;" "pd seeing elephant .5;" "pd seeing elk .75 ;" "pd seeing Caleb Phillips a dwarf .25;" "pd seeing a painting .25."

Lotteries were universal, and put to uses which now seem excessively queer. Whenever a bridge or a public edifice, as a schoolhouse, was to be built, a street paved or a road repaired, the money was furnished through a lottery. In the same way manufacturing companies were started, churches aided, college treasuries replenished. It was with money collected through a lottery that Massachusetts first encouraged cotton spinning; that the City Hall of New York was enlarged, the Court House at Elizabeth rebuilt, the Harvard University library increased, and many pretentious buildings put up at the Federal City. [Footnote: McMaster's United States, 588.] This was but a single form of the sporting mania. The public stocks, as well as the paper of the numerous canals, turnpikes, and manufacturing corporations now springing up, were gambled in a way which would almost shock Wall Street today.



Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage.

Anthracite coal had been discovered and was just beginning to be mined, but on account of the plentifulness of wood was not for a long time largely used. The first idea of steam navigation was embodied in an English patent taken out by Jonathan Hulls in 1736. The initial experiment of the kind in this country was by William Henry, on the Conestoga River, Pennsylvania, in 1763. John Fitch navigated the Delaware steam-wise in 1783-84. In 1790 one of Fitch's steam paddle-boats made regular trips between Philadelphia and Trenton for four months. In 1785-86 Oliver Evans experimented in this direction, as did Rumsey, in Virginia, in 1787. One Morey ran a stern-wheeler of his own make from Hartford to New York in 1794. Chancellor Livingston built a steamer on the Hudson in 1797. It was only in 1807 that Fulton finished his "Clermont" and made a passage up the Hudson to Albany from New York. It took thirty-three hours, and was the earliest thoroughly successful steam navigation on record. He subsequently built the "Orleans" at Pittsburgh. It was completed and made the voyage to New Orleans in 1811. No steamboat ruffled the waters of Lake Ontario till 1816. The pioneer steam craft on Lake Erie was launched at Black Rock, May 28, 1818. It is recorded as wonderful that in less than two hours it had gotten fifteen miles from shore.



John Fitch's Steamboat at Philadelphia.



Massachusetts Bill of Three Shillings in 1741.

At the North the muster or general training was, for secular entertainment, the day of days, when the local regiment came out to reveal and to perfect its skill in the manual and in the evolutions of the line. Side-shows and a general good time constituted for the crowds its chief interest. Cider, cakes, pop-corn, and candy drained boys' pockets of pennies, those who could afford the fun going in to see the one-legged revolutionary soldier with his dancing bear, the tattooed man, the ventriloquist, or the then "greatest show on earth." College commencements, too, at that time usually had all these festive accompaniments, and many a boy debated whether to spend his scant change here or at the muster. In New England, Christmas was not observed; it was hardly known, in fact, Thanksgiving taking its place, proclaimed with the utmost formality by the Governor some weeks in advance.

Intemperance was still terribly common; worst in the newer sections of the country. There is extant a message of William Henry Harrison, while Governor of Indiana Territory, to his legislature, against this evil, urging better surveillance of public-houses. "The progress of intemperance among us," it runs, "outstrips all calculation, and the consequences of its becoming general I shudder to unfold. Poverty and domestic embarrassment and distress are the present effects, and prostration of morals and change of government must inevitably follow. The virtue of the citizens is the only support of a Republican Government. Destroy this and the country will become a prey to the first daring and ambitious chief which it shall produce."



New Hampshire Bill of Forty Shillings in 1742.

To counteract this and other vices, which were justly viewed as largely the results of ignorance, philanthropic people were at this period establishing Sunday-schools, following the example of Robert Raikes, who began the movement at Gloucester, England, in 1781. They had been already introduced in New England, but were now making their way in Philadelphia and elsewhere. The first Methodist bishop, Asbury, zealously furthered them. They had, to begin with, no distinctive religious character, and churches even looked upon them with disfavor; but their numbers increased and their value became more apparent until the institution was adopted by all denominations.

Before 1800 the new United States coinage, with nearly the same pieces as now, had begun to circulate, but had had little success at that date in driving out the old foreign coins of colonial times. Especially were there still seen Spanish dollars, halves, quarters, fifths or pistareens, and eighths—the last being the Spanish "real," "ryall," or "royall," worth twelve and a half cents—and sixteenths or half-reals, worth six and one-quarter cents each. Many of these pieces were sadly worn, passing at their face value only when the legend could be made out. Sometimes they were heated to aid in this. Many were so worn that a pistareen would bring only a Yankee shilling, sixteen and two-thirds cents; the half-pistareen, only eight cents; the real, ten; the half-real, five.



Massachusetts Twopence of 1722.

The denominations of the colonial money of account were also still in daily use, and, indeed, might be heard so late as the Civil War. The "real," twelve and one-half cents, was in New York a shilling, being one-twentieth of the pound once prevalent in the New York colony. In New England it was a "nine-pence," constituting nearly nine-twelfths, or nine of the twelve pence of an old New England shilling of sixteen and two-thirds cents. Twenty such shillings had been required for the New England pound, which was so much more valuable than the pound of the New York colony. But neither one or any colonial pound was the equivalent of the pound sterling.



Pine Tree Twopence. "IN MASATHVSET" "NEW ENGLAND" "1662"



Pine Tree Threepence. "MASATHVSET" "NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "III"

In the middle colonies, including Pennsylvania, the pound had possessed still a different value, the Spanish dollar, in which the Continental Congress kept its accounts, there equalling ninety pence. This is why those accounts stand in dollars and ninetieths, a notation so puzzling to many. A "real" would here be about one-eleventh of ninety pence, hence called the "eleven-penny-piece," shortened into "levy." Dividing a levy by two would give five (and a fraction); hence the term "five-penny-piece," "fippenny," or "fip," for the half-real or six and one-quarter cent piece. There are doubtless yet people in Virginia and Maryland who never say "twenty-five cents," but instead, "two levies and a fip."



Pine Tree Sixpence. "IN MASATHVSET" "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "VI"

General intelligence had improved, partly from the greater number, better quality, and quicker and fuller distribution of newspapers. Correspondents were numerous. Intelligent persons visiting at a distance from home were wont to write long letters to their local newspapers, containing all the items of interest which they could scrape together. Papers sprung up at every considerable hamlet. Even the Ohio Valley did not lack. Perhaps four and a half million copies a year were issued in the whole country by 1800. They were admitted now—not so, however, under the original postal law—as a regular part of the mails, and thus found their way to nearly all homes. The news which they brought was often old news, of course, post riders requiring twenty-nine and one-half hours between Philadelphia and either New York or Baltimore; but they were read with none the less avidity. Its first mail reached Buffalo in 1803, on horseback. Mail went thither bi-weekly till 1806, then weekly. Postal rates were high, ranging for letters from six cents for thirty miles to twenty-five for four hundred and fifty miles or over. So late as 1796 New York City received mails from North and from South, and sent mails in both directions, only twice weekly between November 1st and May 1st, and but thrice weekly the rest of the year. In 1794 the great cities enjoyed carriers, who got two cents for each letter delivered. In 1785 there were two dailies, The Pennsylvania Packet and The New York Advertiser, but, as yet, no Sunday paper appeared, nor any scientific, religious, or illustrated journal, nor any devoted to literature or trade. The New York Medical Repository began in 1797, the first scientific periodical in America. In 1801 seventeen dailies existed. Paper was scarce and high, so that appeals were published in most of the news sheets imploring people to save their rags.



Pine Tree Shilling. "IN MASATHVSET" "ANO NEW ENGLAND" "1652" "XII"



Postal Progress, 1776-1876.

The press was more violently partisan and indecently personal than now. To oppose the federalist United States Gazette the republican National Gazette had been started, which, with brilliant meanness, assailed not only Washington's public acts, but his motives and character. Him, and still more Adams, Hamilton, and the other leading Federalists, it, in nearly every issue, charged with conspiracy to found a monarchy.

Republican journals reeked with such doggerel as:

"See Johnny at the helm of State, Head itching for a crowny; He longs to be, like Georgy, great, And pull Tom Jeffer downy."

[Footnote: 2 McMaster, 383]

Federalists were not behind in warfare of this sort. Jefferson was the object of their continual and vilest slander. In New England, the stronghold of Federalism, nearly every Sunday's sermon was an arraignment of the French, and impliedly of their allies, the Republicans. [Footnote: 2 McMaster, 383] From Jefferson's election—he was a conservative free-thinker—they seemed to anticipate the utter extermination of Christianity, though the man paid in charities, mostly religious, as for Bibles, missionaries, chapels, meeting-houses, etc., one year of his presidency, $978.20; another year, $1,585.60. One preacher likened the tribute which Talleyrand demanded of Adams's envoys to that which Sennacherib required of Hezekiah. [Footnote: Isaiah, 36] Another compared Hamilton, killed in a duel, to Abner, the son of Ner, slain by Joab. Another took for his text the message which Hezekiah sent to the Prophet Isaiah: "This is a day of trouble and of rebuke and of contumely," [Footnote: Isaiah, 37: 3 seq.] etc. Another attacked Republicanism outright from the words: "There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel." [Footnote: Joshua. 7: 13] The coolest federalist leaders could fall prey to this partisan temper. Lafayette meditated settling in this country. Such was his popularity here that no one would have dared to oppose this openly. Hamilton, however, while favoring it publicly, yet, lest the great Frenchman's coming should help on the republican cause, secretly did his utmost to prevent it. Even Washington, who was human after all, connived, it seems, at this piece of duplicity.

According to a federalist sheet, Hamilton's death called forth "the voice of deep lament" save from "the rancorous Jacobin, the scoffing deist, the snivelling fanatic, and the imported scoundrel." "Were I asked," said an apologist, "whether General Hamilton had vices, in the face of the world, in the presence of my God, I would answer, No."

Another poetized of the

"Great day When Hamilton—disrobed of mortal clay— At God's right hand shall sit with face benign, And at his murderer cast a look divine."

In 1800 instrumental music might have been heard in some American churches. There were Roman Catholic congregations in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Baltimore had its Catholic bishop. The Protestant Episcopal Church in America had been organized. Methodism, independent of England since 1784, was on its crusade up and down the land, already strong in New York and the South, and in 1790 a Methodist church had been gathered in Boston.

The manufacture of corduroys, bed-ticking, fustian, jeans, and cotton-yarn had been started. Iron ore and iron ware of nearly all sorts was produced. Syracuse was manufacturing salt. Lynn already made morocco leather, and Dedham, straw braid for hats. Cotton was regularly exported in small quantities from the South. In New York one could get a decayed tooth filled or a set of false teeth made. Four daily stages ran between New York and Philadelphia. The Boston ship Columbia had circumnavigated the globe. The United States Mint was still working by horse-power, not employing steam till 1815. Whitney's cotton-gin had been invented in 1793. Terry, of Plymouth, Conn., was making clocks. There were in the land two insurance companies, possibly more. Cast-iron ploughs, of home make, were displacing the old ones of wood. Morse's "Geography" and Webster's "Spelling-book" were on the market, and extensively used.



Cotton Plant.



The Cotton-Gin. From the original model.

The great industrial inventions which were to color the entire civilization of mankind had a powerful effect upon America. So early as 1775, in England, Crompton's mule-jenny had superseded Hargreaves' spinning machine. The latter had improved on the old spinning-wheel by making eight, and later eighty, threads with the effort and time the old arrangement had required for one; but the threads were no better, and could be used only for woof, linen being required for warp. Arkwright's roller arrangement was an improvement upon Hargreaves'. It bettered the quality of the threads, making them evener, so that they could serve for warp as well as woof. Crompton's mule was another quantitative improvement, combining the excellences of both Hargreaves and Arkwright. One man could with this machinery work twenty-two hundred spindles, and they went much faster than by the ancient wheel. Then came steam-power. Watts's engine was adapted to spinning and carding cotton at Manchester in 1783. Two years later the cylinder printing of cottons was invented, and a little after began the use of acid in bleaching.



Eli Whitney.

These mighty industrial devices did not cross to America immediately, but were all here before the time of which we now write. A spinning-jenny was indeed exhibited in Philadelphia so early as 1775. During the Revolution, Philadelphia was a seat of much manufacture. We have in an earlier chapter remarked that Beverly, Mass., had a cotton factory in 1787. Oxen furnished its power, as a horse did that for the first Philadelphia mill. A cotton mill was also started very early at Worcester, but whether in 1780 or 1789 may admit of doubt. There is some evidence that before July, 1790, a cotton factory run by water, with ginning, carding, and spinning machines, the last of eighty-four spindles apiece, was in operation near Statesburg, S. C.; but whether it was successful or not is not known. Oliver Evans was operating a single-flue boiler for steam-power by 1786. Soon after he had one with two flues, and in 1779 a high-pressure or non-condensing engine, the principle of which he is by many believed to have invented. He was the earliest builder of steam-engines in the United States, having in 1804 secured a patent for the high-pressure device. His factory furnished engines to all parts of the country.

England did her best to prevent all knowledge of the new manufacturing machinery from crossing the Atlantic. The Act 21 George III., c. 37, denounced upon anyone who should aid toward giving America any tool, machine, or secret relating to manufacture in any branch, a penalty of 200 pounds and one year's imprisonment. In vain. Partly by smuggling, partly by invention, the new arts soon flourished here as there. Some Scotch artisans who came to Bridgewater, Mass., by invitation from Mr. Hugh Orr, of that town, constructed, about 1786, the first cotton-spinning machines in America, including the Arkwright inventions.

To build and launch the English machinery with full success was, however, reserved for Samuel Slater, a native of Belper, Derbyshire, England, who, in 1790, erected at Pawtucket, R. I., the Old Mill in rear of Mill Street, which still stands and runs. Slater had served his time at the making of cotton-manufacturing machinery with J. Strutt, who, had been Arkwright's partner. In Strutt's factory he had risen to be overseer. So thoroughly had he mastered the business that, on arriving here, he found himself able to imitate the foreign machines from memory alone, without model, plan, or measurement. Having gotten his gear in readiness, almost solely with his own hands, December 20, 1790, he started three cards, drawing and roving, also seventy-two spindles, all on the Arkwright plan, the first of the kind ever triumphantly operated on this side of the ocean. President Jackson styled Slater "the father of American manufactures," and 1790 may be taken as the birth-year of the American factory system.

The Tariff, the embargo policy of President Jefferson, and the hatred toward England, taking form in organizations pledged to wear only home-made clothing, all powerfully stimulated the erection of factories. A report in 1810, of Albert Gallatin, Madison's Secretary of the Treasury, states that by the end of the year preceding, eighty-seven cotton factories had arisen in this country, calculated for eighty thousand spindles. The power loom, however, not used in England till about 1806, did not begin its work here till after the War of 1812. [Footnote: See. further, Period II., Chap. VIII.]



CHAPTER IX.

DEMOCRACY AT THE HELM

[1801]

By the original mode of election, President and Vice-President could not be separately designated on electors' tickets, so that, soon as party spirit led each elector to vote for the same two men, these two were tied for the first place. This occurred in 1801. The republican candidates were Jefferson and Burr. Each had the same number of electoral votes, seventy-three, against sixty-five for Adams, sixty-four for C. C. Pinckney, and one for John Jay. There being no choice, the election went to the House. This had a federalist majority, but was, by the parity of the two highest candidates, constitutionally shut up to elect between these, both of them Republicans. Jefferson as the abler and from the South, was more than Burr an object of federalist hate. Against Hamilton's advice, to his honor be it remembered, the Federalists agreed to throw their votes for Burr. But the vote then, as to-day in such a case, had to be by States. There were sixteen States, nine being necessary to a choice. In nineteen ballots on February 11th, nine the 12th, one the 13th, four the 14th, one each the 16th and 17th, thirty-five in all, Jefferson every time carried eight States and Burr six, while Maryland and Vermont were equally divided, and therefore powerless.

The fear at last began to be felt that the Union would go to pieces and the Federalists be to blame. Accordingly, on the 36th ballot, five Federalists from South Carolina, four from Maryland, one from Vermont, and one from Delaware—Mr. Bayard, grandfather to President Cleveland's first Secretary of State—did not vote, enabling the republican members from Vermont and Maryland to cast the votes of those States for Jefferson. Thus, with ten States, he was elected, Burr becoming Vice-President. This crisis led, in 1804, to the XIIth Amendment to the Constitution, which directs each elector to vote for Vice-President as such. There can hardly now be a tie between the two leading presidential candidates, and if there is for any reason delay in electing the President, the Senate may proceed to elect the Vice-President at once. The improvement became manifest when, in 1825, the House again had to elect the President, and chose John Quincy Adams over Crawford and Jackson.



Thomas Jefferson. From the painting by Gilbert Stuart—property of T. Jefferson Coolidge.

The Democratic Party proved to have entered upon a long lease of power. For forty years its hold upon affairs was not relaxed, and it was in no wise broken even by the elections of Harrison in 1840 and Taylor in 1848. Nor did it ever appear probable that the Whigs, upon anyone of the great issues which divided them from the Democrats, were in a way to win permanent advantage. Not till after 1850 had the ruling dynasty true reason to tremble, and then only at the rise of a new party, the modern Republicans, inspired by the bold cry of anti-slavery, which the Whigs had never dared to raise.

As to its main outlines, the democratic policy was well foreshadowed in Jefferson's first inaugural. It favored thrift and simplicity in government, involving close limitation of army, navy, and diplomatic corps to positive and tangible needs. It professed peculiar regard for the rights and interests of the common man, whether of foreign or of native parentage. Strict construction of the Constitution, which was to a great extent viewed as a compact of States, was another of its cherished ideas. It also maintained special friendliness for agriculture and commerce. From its strict constructionism sprung, further, its hostility to internal improvements; from this and from its regard to agriculture and commerce resulted its dislike to restrictive tariffs. Particularly after the whig schism, about 1820, did these ideas stand forth definite and pronounced as the authoritative democratic creed. In and from Jackson's time they were more so still.

Yet in most respects Jefferson has remained the typical Democrat, He had genuine faith in the people, in free government, in unfettered individuality, His administration was frugal almost to a fault. He insisted upon making the civil power supreme over the military, and scorned all pretensions on the part of any particular class to rule, In two points only was his democracy ideal rather than illustrative of that which followed, viz., adroitness in giving trend and consistency to legislation, and non-partisan administration of the civil service. In the former no executive has equalled him, in the latter none since Quincy Adams.

Growing up as a scholar and a gentleman-farmer, with refined tastes, penning the great Declaration, which was early scouted for its abstractions, long minister to France, where abstract ideas made all high politics morbid, the sage of Monticello turned out to be one of the most practical presidents this nation has ever had. If he overdid simplicity in going to the Capitol on horseback to deliver his first inaugural, tying his magnificent horse, Wildair, to a tree with his own hands, he yet entertained elegantly, and his whole state as President, far from humiliating the nation, as some feared it would, was in happy keeping with its then development and nature. His cabinet, Madison, Gallatin, Dearborn, Smith, and Granger, was in liberal education superior to any other the nation has ever had, every member a college graduate, and the first two men of distinguished research and attainments.

As to the civil service, Jefferson, it is true, made many removals from office, some doubtless unwise and even unjust; but in judging of these we must remember his profound and unquestionably honest conviction that the Federalists lacked patriotism. It was this belief which dictated his prosecution, almost persecution, of Burr, whom Federalists openly befriended and defended.



Aaron Burr. From a painting by Vallderlyn at the New York Historical Society.

Aaron Burr was the brilliant grandson of President Edwards. Graduating at Princeton at the early age of seventeen, he studied theology a year, then law, which on the outbreak of the Revolution he deserted for army life at Boston. He went in Arnold's expedition to Canada, was promoted to be colonel, and served on Washington's staff. In Canada he did service as a spy, disguised as a priest and speaking French or Latin as needed. His legal studies completed, 1783 found him in practice in New York, office at No. 10 Little Queen Street. Both as lawyer and in politics he rose like a meteor, being Hamilton's peer in the one, his superior in the other. Organizing his "Little Band" of young Republicans, spite of federalist opposition and sneers from the old republican chiefs, he became Attorney-general of New York in 1789. In 1791, superseding Schuyler, he was United States senator from that State, and in 1800, Vice-President.

Higher he could not mount, as federalist favor cursed him among his own party, yet was too weak to aid him independently. It was kept down by Hamilton, who saw through the man and opposed him with all his might. For this Burr forced him to a duel, and fatally shot him, July 11, 1804.

Indicted for murder, Burr now disappears from politics, but only to emerge in a new role. During all the early history of our Union the parts beyond the Alleghanies were attached to it by but a slender thread, which Spanish intrigue incessantly sought to cut. At this very time Spain was pensioning men in high station there, including General Wilkinson, commanding our force at New Orleans. Could not Burr detach this district or a part of it from our Government and make here an empire of his own? Or might he not take it as the base of operations for an attack on Spanish America that should give him an empire there? Some vision of this sort danced before the mad genius's vision, as before that of Hamilton in the Miranda scheme. Many influential persons encouraged him, with how much insight into his plan we shall never know. Wilkinson was one of these. Blennerhassett, whose family and estate Burr irreparably blasted, was another. He expected aid from Great Britain, and from disaffected Mexicans.

From the outset the West proved more loyal than he hoped, and when, at the critical moment, Wilkinson betrayed him, he knew that all was lost. Sinking his chests of arms in the river near Natchez, he took to the Mississippi woods, only to be recognized, arrested by Jefferson's order, and dragged to Richmond to jail. As no overt act was proved, he could not be convicted of treason; and even the trial of him for misdemeanor broke down on technical points. The Federalists stood up for Burr as if he had been their man, while Jefferson on his part pushed the prosecution in a fussy and personal way, ill becoming a President.

Jefferson's most lasting work as national chief-magistrate was his diplomacy in purchasing for the Union the boundless territory beyond the Mississippi, prized then not for its extent or resources, both as yet unknown, but as assuring us free navigation of the river, which sundry French and Spanish plots had demonstrated essential to the solid loyalty of the West. Louisiana, ceded by France to Spain in 1762, became French again in 1801. Napoleon had intended it as the seat of a colonial power rivalling Great Britain's, but, pressed for money in his new war with that kingdom, concluded to sell. He wished, too, the friendship of the United States against Great Britain, and knew not the worth of what he was bargaining away. Willing to take fifty million francs, he offered for one hundred million, speedily closing with Livingston and Monroe's tender of eighty, we to assume in addition the French spoliation claims of our citizens. The treaty of purchase was signed May 2, 1803, and ratified by the Senate the 17th of the following October.

This stupendous transaction assured to our Republic not only leading hand in the affairs of this continent, but place among the great powers of the world. Its 1,124,685 square miles doubled the national domain. It opened path well toward, if not to, the Pacific, and made ours measureless tracts of agricultural and mining lands, rich as any under the sun.



Stephen Decatur.

If it originated many of the most perplexing questions which have agitated our national politics, as those relating to slavery in this territory itself, to the acquisitions from Mexico, to the Pacific railways, and to the Indians and the Chinese, all this has been amply compensated by the above and countless other benefits.

Equally brilliant if less impressive was another piece of Jefferson's foreign policy. He might be over-friendly to France, but elsewhere he certainly did not believe in peace at any price. The Barbary powers had begun to annoy our commerce soon after Independence. The Betsey was captured in 1784, next year the Maria, of Boston, and the Dauphin, of Philadelphia, and their crews of twenty-one men carried to a long and disgraceful captivity in Algiers.

The Dey's bill for these captives, held by him as slaves, was:

3 Captains at $6,000 $18,000 2 Mates at $4,000 8,000 2 Passengers at $4,000 8,000 14 Seamen at $1,400 19,600 ————- $53,600 For custom, eleven per cent 5,896 ————- $59,496

Later a single cruise lost us ten vessels to these half-civilized people.

Following European precedent, Washington had made, in 1795, a ransom-treaty with this nest of pirates, to carry out which cost us a fat million. The captives had meantime increased to one hundred and fifteen, though the crews of the Maria and the Dauphin had wasted away to ten men. Nearly a million more went to the other North-African freebooters. The policy of ransoming was, indeed, cheaper than force. Count d'Estaing used to say that bombarding a pirate town was like breaking windows with guineas. The old Dey of Algiers, learning the expense of Du Quesne's expedition to batter his capital, declared that he himself would have burnt it for half the sum.

Yet it makes one's blood hot to-day to read how our fathers paid tribute to those thieves. The Dey had, in so many words, called us his slaves, and had actually terrorized Captain Bainbridge, of the man-of-war George Washington, into carrying despatches for him to Constantinople, flying the Algerine pirate flag conspicuously at the fore. After anchoring—this was some requital—Bainbridge was permitted to hoist the Stars and Stripes, the first time that noble emblem ever kissed the breeze of the Golden Horn.

[1803]

Jefferson loathed such submission, and vowed that it should cease. Commodore Dale was ordered to the Mediterranean with a squadron to protect our ships there from further outrage. One of his vessels, the Experiment, soon captured a Tripoli cruiser of fourteen guns, the earliest stroke of any civilized power for many years by way of showing a bold front to these pestilent corsairs.

This was on August 6, 1801. In 1803 Preble was placed in command of the Mediterranean fleet, with some lighter ships to go farther up those shallow harbors. Bainbridge had the misfortune while in pursuit of a Tripoli frigate to run his ship, the Philadelphia, on a rock, and to be taken prisoner with all his crew. The sailors were made slaves. Lieutenant Decatur penetrated the Tripoli harbor under cover of night, and burned the Philadelphia to the water's edge. Tripoli was bombarded, and many of its vessels taken or sunk. Commodore Barron, who had succeeded Preble, co-operated with a land attack which some of the Pasha's disaffected subjects, led by the American General Eaton, made upon Tripoli. The city was captured, April 27th, and the pirate prince forced to a treaty. Even now, however, we paid $60,000 in ransom money.



Lieutenant Decatur on the Turkish Vessel during the Bombardment of Tripoli.



CHAPTER X.

THE WAR OF 1812

[1807]

Although paying, so long as Jay's treaty was in force, for certain invasions of our commerce, Great Britain had never adopted a just attitude toward neutral trade. She persisted in loosely defining contraband and blockade, and in denouncing as unlawful all commerce which was opened to us as neutrals merely by war or carried on by us between France and French colonies through our own ports.

The far more flagrant abuse of impressment, the forcible seizure of American citizens for service in the British navy, became intolerably prevalent during Jefferson's administration. Not content with reclaiming deserters or asserting the eternity of British citizenship, Great Britain, through her naval authorities, was compelling thousands of men of unquestioned American birth to help fight her battles. Castlereagh himself admitted that there had been sixteen hundred bona fide cases of this sort by January 1, 1811. And in her mode of asserting and exercising even her just claims she ignored international law, as well as the dignity and sovereignty of the United States. The odious right of search she most shamefully abused. The narrow seas about England were assumed to be British waters, and acts performed in American harbors admissible only on the open ocean. When pressed by us for apology or redress, the British Government showed no serious willingness to treat, but a brazen resolve to utilize our weak and too trustful policy of peace.

One instance of this shall suffice. Commodore Barron, in command of the United States war vessel Chesapeake, was attacked by the Leopard, a British two-decker of fifty guns, outside the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, to recover three sailors, falsely alleged to be British-born, on board. Their surrender being refused, the Leopard opened fire. The Chesapeake received twenty-one shots in her hull, and lost three of her crew killed and eighteen wounded. She had been shamefully unprepared for action, and was hence forced to strike, but Humphreys, the Leopard's commander, contemptuously declined to take her a prize. There was no excuse whatever for this wanton and criminal insult to our flag, yet the only reparation ever made was formal, tardy, and lame.



James Madison. From a painting by Gilbert Stuart—property of T. Jefferson Coolidge.

Bad was changed to worse with the progress of the new and more desperate war between Great Britain and Napoleon. The Emperor shut the North-German ports to Britain; Britain declared Prussian and all West European harbors in a state of blockade. The Emperor's Berlin decree, November, 1806, paper-blockaded the British Isles; his Milan decree, December, 1807, declared forfeited all vessels, wherever found, proceeding to or from any British port, or having submitted to British search or tribute. In fine, Britain would treat as illicit all commerce with the continent, France all with Britain. But while Napoleon, in fact, though not avowedly, more and more receded from his position, England maintained hers with iron tenacity.

[1810]

Sincere as was our Government's desire to maintain strict neutrality in the European conflict, it naturally found difficulty in making England so believe. Their opponents at home ceaselessly charged Jefferson, Madison, and all the Republicans with partiality to France, so that Canning and Castlereagh were misled; and they were confirmed in their suspicion by Napoleon's crafty assumption that our embargo or non-intercourse policy was meant to act, as it confessedly did, favorably to France. Napoleon's confiscation of our vessels, at one time sweeping, he advertised as a friendly proceeding in aid of our embargo. Yet all this did not, as Castlereagh captiously pretended, prove our neutrality to be other than strict and honest. At this time it certainly was both. So villainously had Napoleon treated us that all Americans now hated him as heartily as did any people in England.

[1812]

The non-intercourse mode of hostility, a boomerang at best, had played itself out before Jefferson's retirement; and since George's ministry showed no signs whatever of a changed temper, guiltily ill-prepared as we were, no honorable or safe course lay before us but to fight Great Britain. Clay, Calhoun, Quincy Adams, and Monroe—the last the soul of the war—deserved the credit of seeing this first and clearest, and of the most sturdy and consistent action accordingly. Their spirit proved infectious, and the Republicans swiftly became a war party.

Most of the "war-hawks," as they were derisively styled, were from the South and the southern Middle States. Fearing that, if it were a naval war, glory would redound to New England and New York, which were hotbeds of the peace party, they wished this to be a land war, and shrieked, "On to Canada." They made a great mistake. The land operations were for the most part indescribably disgraceful. Except the exploits of General Brown and Colonel Winfield Scott, subsequently the head of the national armies, not an action on the New York border but ingloriously failed. The national Capitol was captured and burnt, a deed not more disgraceful to England in the commission than to us in the permission. Of the officers in command of armies, only Harrison and Jackson earned laurels.

Harrison had learned warfare as Governor of Indiana, where, on November 7, 1811, he had fought the battle of Tippecanoe, discomfiting Tecumseh's braves and permanently quieting Indian hostilities throughout that territory. In the new war against England, after Hull's pusillanimous surrender of Detroit, the West loudly and at length with success demanded "Tippecanoe" as commander for the army about to advance into Canada. Their estimate of Harrison proved just. Overcoming many difficulties and aided by Perry's flotilla on Lake Erie, he pursued Proctor, his retreating British antagonist, up the River Thames to a point beyond Sandwich. Here the British made a stand, but a gallant charge of Harrison's Kentucky cavalry irreparably broke their lines. The Indians, led by old Tecumseh in person, made a better fight, but in vain. The victory was complete, and Upper Canada lay at our mercy.



Tecumseh

Andrew Jackson also began his military experience by operations against Indians. The southern redskins had been incited to war upon us by British and Spanish emissaries along the Florida line. Tecumseh had visited them in the same interest. The horrible massacre at Fort Mims, east of the Alabama above its junction with the Tombigbee, was their initial work. Five hundred and fifty persons were there surprised, four hundred of them slain or burned to death. Jackson took the field, and in an energetic campaign, with several bloody engagements, forced them to peace. By the battle of the Horse-Shoe, March 27, 1814, the Creek power was entirely crushed.

Subsequently placed in command of our force at New Orleans, Jackson was attacked by a numerous British army, made up in large part of veterans who had seen service under Wellington in Spain. Pakenham, the hero of Salamanca, commanded. Jackson's position was well chosen and strongly fortified. After several preliminary engagements, each favorable to the American arms, Pakenham essayed to carry the American works by storm. The battle occurred on January 8, 1815. It was desperately fought on both sides, but at its close Jackson's loss had been trifling and his line had not been broken at a single point, while the British had lost at least 2,600, all but 500 of these killed or wounded. The British immediately withdrew from the Mississippi, leaving Jackson entirely master of the position.

But the naval operations of this war were far the most famous, exceeding in their success all that the most sanguine had dared to hope, and forever dispelling from our proud foe the charm of naval invincibility. The American frigate Constitution captured the British Guerriere. The Wasp took the Frolic, being soon, however, forced to surrender with her prize to the Poitiers, a much larger vessel. The United States vanquished the Macedonian, and the Constitution the Java. One of the best fought actions of the war was that of McDonough on Lake Champlain, with his craft mostly gunboats or galleys. His victory restored to us the possession of Northern New York, which our land forces had not been able to maintain.



Oliver H, Perry.

[1813-1814]

The crowning naval triumph during the war, one of the most brilliant, in fact, in all naval annals, was won by Oliver Hazard Perry near Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, over the Briton, Barclay, a naval veteran who had served under Nelson at Trafalgar. The fleets were well matched, the American numbering the more vessels but the fewer guns. Barclay greatly exceeded Perry in long guns, having the latter at painful disadvantage until he got near. Perry's flag-ship, the Lawrence, was early disabled. Her decks were drenched with blood, and she had hardly a gun that could be served. Undismayed, Perry, with his insignia of command, crossed in a little boat to the Niagara. Again proudly hoisting his colors, aided by the wind and followed by his whole squadron, he pressed for close quarters, where desperate fighting speedily won the battle. Barclay and his next in command were wounded, the latter dying that night. "We have met the enemy and they are ours," Perry wrote to Harrison, "two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop."

Triumph far more complete might have attended the war but for the perverse and factious federalist opposition to the administration. Some Federalists favored joining England out and out against Napoleon. Having with justice denounced Jefferson's embargo tactics as too tame, yet when the war spirit rose and even the South stood ready to resent foreign affronts by force, they changed tone, harping upon our weakness and favoring peace at any price. Tireless in magnifying the importance of commerce, they would not lift a hand to defend it. The same men who had cursed Adams for avoiding war with France easily framed excuses for orders in council, impressment, and the Chesapeake affair.

Apart from Randolph and the few opposition Republicans, mostly in New York, this Thersites band had its seat in commercial New England, where embargo and war of course sat hardest, more than a sixth of our entire tonnage belonging to Massachusetts alone. From the Essex Junto and its sympathizers came nullification utterances not less pointed than the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, although, considering the sound rebukes which the latter had evoked, they were far less defensible. Disunion was freely threatened, and actions either committed or countenanced bordering hard upon treason. The Massachusetts Legislature in 1809 declared Congress's act to enforce embargo "not legally binding." Governor Trumbull of Connecticut declined to aid, as requested by the President, in carrying out that act, summoning the Legislature "to interpose their protecting shield" between the people and "the assumed power of the general Government." "How," wrote Pickering, referring to the Constitution, Amendment X., "are the powers reserved to be maintained, but by the respective States judging for themselves and putting their negative on the usurpations of the general Government?" A sermon of President Dwight's on the text, "Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord," even Federalists deprecated as hinting too strongly at secession. This unpatriotic agitation, from which, be it said, large numbers of Federalists nobly abstained, came to a head in the mysterious Hartford Convention, at the close of 1814, and soon began to be sedulously hushed—in consequence of the glorious news of victory and peace from Ghent and New Orleans.



Perry transferring his Colors from the Lawrence to the Niagara.

While the Congregationalists, especially their clergy, were nearly all stout Federalists, opposing Jefferson, Madison, and the war, the Methodists and Baptists almost to a man stood up for the administration and its war policy with the utmost vigor, rebuking the peace party as traitors. [Footnote: The writer's grandfather, a Baptist minister, was as good as driven from his pulpit and charge at Templeton, Mass., because of his federalist sympathies in this war.] Timothy Merritt, a mighty Methodist preacher on the Connecticut circuit, has left us from these critical times a stirring sermon on the text, Judges v. 23, "Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." Meroz was the federalist party and England's ministry and army were "the mighty."

Czar Alexander, regarding our hostility as dangerous to England, with whom he then stood allied against Napoleon, sought to end the war. The Russian campaign of 1812 practically finished Napoleon's career, so leaving England free to press operations in America. In April, 1814, Paris was captured. The United States therefore accepted Alexander's offices. Our commissioners, Adams, Clay, Gallatin, Marshall, Bayard, and Russell met the English envoys at Ghent, and after long discussions, in which more than once it seemed as if the war must proceed, the treaty of Ghent was executed, December 24, 1814, a fortnight before the battle of New Orleans.

It was an honorable peace. If we gained no territory we yielded none. The questions of Mississippi navigation and the fisheries were expressly reserved for future negotiations. Upon impressment and the abuse of neutrals, exactly the grievances over which we had gone to war, the treaty was silent, and peace men laughed at the war party on this account, calling the war a failure. The ridicule was unjust. Had Napoleon been still on high, or the negotiations been subsequent to the New Orleans victory, England would doubtless have been called upon to renounce these practices. But experience has proved that such a demand would have been unnecessary. No outrage of these kinds has occurred since, nor can anyone doubt that it was our spirit as demonstrated in the war of 1812 which changed England's temper. Hence, in spite of our military inexperience, financial distress, internal dissensions, and the fall of Napoleon, which unexpectedly turned the odds against us, the war was a success.

End of Volume II.