The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of the United States, Volume 2

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Title: History of the United States, Volume 2

Author: Elisha Benjamin Andrews

Release date: September 10, 2007 [eBook #22567]

Most recently updated: October 7, 2013

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Don Kostuch

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOLUME 2 ***

[Transcriber's Notes]

The debt of England caused by the French and Indian War of 140,000,000

Pounds sterling is equivalent to about 19,000,000,000 Pounds in 2006.

Thomas Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense" is available at

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/comsn10a.txt

[1492-1495] indicate the following text covers this period, until the

next such appearance.

This is a list or unfamiliar (to me) words.

abatis

Defensive obstacle made by laying felled trees on top of each other

with branches, sometimes sharpened, facing the enemy.

appanage

Land or other source of revenue for the maintenance of a member of the

family of a ruling house. Whatever belongs rightfully to one's rank or

station in life. Natural or necessary accompaniment; adjunct. From the

Latin "panis"--bread or "apanar"--to nourish.

Aristides

Athenian statesman and general who fought at Marathon and Salamis. A

central figure in the confederation known as the Delian League.

encomia

Formal expression of praise; eulogy; tribute.

entails

To limit the inheritance of property to a specified succession of

heirs.

exigency

Requiring much effort or immediate action; urgent; pressing.

finical

Exacting about details; finicky; fussy; very particular.

indite

Compose or write.

lief

Gladly; willingly.

mooted

Hypothetical case argued by law students as an exercise. An ancient

English meeting of the freemen of a shire. To discuss or debate.

recreant

Cowardly, craven, unfaithful, disloyal, traitorous, apostate,

renegade.

subaltern

Lower in position or rank. British military rank below captain.

primogeniture

System of inheritance by the eldest son.

whilom

Former; erstwhile; at one time.

[End Transcriber's Notes]

After a painting by Gilbert Stuart. (The Gibbs Portrait.)

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

TO THE PRESENT TIME

By

E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS

CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

With 650 Illustrations and Maps

VOLUME II.

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1912

COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

CONTENTS

PERIOD III

REVOLUTION AND THE OLD CONFEDERATION

1763--1789

CHAPTER 1. RESULTS OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

How Important.

Vergennes's Prophecy.

England in Debt.

Tempted to Tax Colonies.

Colonies Strengthened.

Military Experience Gained.

Leaders Trained.

Fighting Power Revealed.

Best of All, Union.

How Developed.

Nothing but War could have done This.

Scattered Condition of Population then.

Difficulties of Communication.

Other Centrifugal Influences.

France no longer a Menace to the Colonies.

But a Natural Friend and Ally.

Increase of Territory at the Colonies' Disposal.

CHAPTER II. GEORGE III. AND HIS AMERICAN COLONIES

Character of the Young King.

Policy

Advisers.

Indefinite Causes Separating Colonies from England.

England Blind to These.

Ignorant of the Colonies.

Stricter Enforcement of Navigation Laws.

Writs of Assistance.

James Otis.

Stamp Act.

Opposition.

Vigorous and Widespread Retaliation by Non-importation.

England Recedes.

Her Side of the Question.

Lord Mansfield's Argument.

Pitt's.

Constitutional and Historical Considerations not Sufficient.

George III.'s Case Better Legally than Practically.

Natural Rights.

Townshend's Duties.

Massachusetts's Opposition.

Samuel Adams.

Committees of Correspondence.

The Billeting Act.

Boston Massacre.

Statement of Grievances.

The Tea.

Coercion Resolved upon.

First Continental Congress.

Drifting into War.

CHAPTER III. INDEPENDENCE AND THE NEW STATES

Slow Growth of Desire for Independence.

Why.

Early Schemes of Union.

New York Convention of 1690.

Albany Convention of 1754.

Franklin's Plan for a Confederation of Colonies.

Even in 1774 no Hint of Independence.

Hardly in 1775.

Swift Change at Last.

All the Colonies Turn to the New Idea.

Causes.

Dickinson and Harrison.

The King's Barbarity.

The Gaspe Affair.

Capture of Fort William and Mary.

Paine's "Common Sense."

Declaration of Independence Mooted.

Debated.

Drafted.

Passed and Signed.

Jefferson.

How far he Followed Earlier Utterances.

Effect of the Declaration.

Anarchy in the Colonies.

New State Governments.

New Constitutions.

Their Provisions.

Changes from the Old Order.

General Character of the Documents.

CHAPTER IV.  OUTBREAK OF WAR; WASHINGTON'S MOVEMENTS

General Gage in Boston.

Lexington.

Concord.

The Retreat.

Siege of Boston.

Bunker Hill.

Warren's Fall.

Losses of the two Sides.

Washington Commander-in-Chief.

His Character.

Difficulties.

Bad Military System.

Gage Evacuates Boston.

Moultrie's Defence of Charleston Harbor.

New York the Centre of Hostilities.

Long Island Given up.

New York City also.

Forts Washington and Lee Captured.

Retreat across New Jersey.

Splendid Stroke at Trenton.

Princeton.

Brandywine and Germantown.

The Winter at Valley Forge.

Hardships.

Steuben's Arrival and Drill.

Battle of Monmouth.

CHAPTER V. THE NORTHERN CAMPAIGN

On to Canada.

Ethan Allen takes "Old Ti."

Montgomery's Advance.

Benedict Arnold's.

They attack Quebec.

Montgomery Falls.

Morgan in the Lower Town.

The Siege Raised.

Retreat.

Burgoyne's Advance.

The British Plan.

Ticonderoga again in British Hands.

On to Fort Edward.

St. Leger's Expedition.

Battle of Oriskany.

St. Leger Driven Back.

Baume's Expedition.

Battle of Bennington.

Stark.

Burgoyne in a Cul-de-sac.

Gates Succeeds Schuyler.

First Battle of Bemis's Heights or Stillwater.

Burgoyne's Position Critical.

No Tidings from Clinton.

Second Battle.

Arnold the Hero.

The Briton Retreats.

Capitulates.

Little Thanks to Gates.

Importance of Burgoyne's Surrender.

CHAPTER VI. THE SOUTHERN CAMPAIGNS

Massacres of Wyoming and Cherry Valley.

Battle of Rhode Island.

Raids.

Wayne takes Stony Point.

Paul Jones and his Naval Victory.

The War in the South.

Lincoln Surrenders.

All South Carolina Gone.

Clinton's Severity.

Bravely withstood by Southern Leaders and People.

Washington Sends Aid.

Gates and De Kalb.

Battle of Camden.

Exit Gates.

De Kalb's Valor and Death.

Arnold's Treason.

The South Prostrate.

Colonial Victory of King's Mountain.

General Greene to the South.

His History.

His Plan.

Morgan Beats Carleton at Cowpens.

Cornwallis Sweeps Northward.

Greene's Skilful Retreat.

Battle of Guilford Court-House.

Cornwallis to Virginia.

The Carolinas and Georgia Recovered.

Washington to Yorktown.

French Aid.

Cornwallis Surrenders.

Effects.

CHAPTER VII. PEACE

Peace Sentiment in England.

Reasons.

Ill Conduct of the War.

Expense.

Vain Concession.

France Aids America.

Spain too.

Lord North Wavers.

Holland Joins the Colonies.

Cornwallis's Surrender.

Franklin in France.

Influence and Skill.

Joy.

Negotiations for a Treaty of Peace.

The Treaty Signed.

Its Provisions.

Peace a Benediction.

Cessation of Hostilities.

Redcoats Depart.

New York Evacuated.

Washington's Adieu to the Army.

Resigns his Commission.

Revisits Mount Vernon.

CHAPTER VIII. AMERICAN MANHOOD IN THE REVOLUTION

Character of Revolutionary Soldiers.

Causes.

Physical Basis and Previous Training.

Bunker Hill.

Moultrie.

Marylanders at Long Island.

At Monmouth.

Nathan Hale.

Andre.

Paul Jones and his Exploit.

Ethan Allen.

Prescott.

"Old Put."

Richard Montgomery.

General Greene.

Stark.

Dan Morgan.

Other Generals.

Colonel Washington.

De Kalb.

Robert Morris, Financier.

Franklin, Diplomatist.

Washington.

Military Ability.

Mental and Moral Characteristics.

Honesty.

Modesty.

Encomia upon Him.

CHAPTER IX. THE OLD CONFEDERATION

The Revolutionary Congress.

The Articles of Confederation.

Synopsis.

Congress.

Its Powers.

Advantages of the Confederation.

Critical State of Affairs after the War.

State Sovereignty.

Antagonized by Existence of the Articles.

Faults of the Confederation.

No Power over Individuals.

Treaties.

Taxation.

War Debt.

Mutinous Spirit in Army.

Washington's Steadfastness.

Congress Menaced.

Discord of Commercial Laws.

England's Hostile Attitude.

Needed Amendments to the Articles.

Lack of a Central Power.

Northwest Territory.

Ordinance of 1787.

Its Excellence.

The Ohio Company.

Settlement at Marietta.

CHAPTER X. RISE OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION

Anarchy after the Revolution.

Shays' Rebellion.

Washington's Influence.

Continental Sects.

Hamilton's Motion for a Stronger Government.

Massachusetts's Motion.

Forwardness of Virginia.

Of Madison.

Origin of Annapolis Convention, 1786.

Its Action.

Meeting of the Constitutional Convention, 1787.

The Virginia Plan.

New Jersey Plan.

Growth of the Constitution.

Personnel of the Convention.

Its Distinguished Men.

Subsequent Careers of Many.

Rutledge.

Rufus King.

Completion of the Constitution.

Ratification.

Struggle in Massachusetts.

In Virginia.

In New York.

In North Carolina.

In Rhode Island.

"More Perfect Union" at Last.

Part Second

THE UNITED STATES UNDER THE CONSTITUTION

PERIOD I

THE UNITED STATES AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

1789-1814

CHAPTER I. THE NEW GOVERNMENT

Launching the Constitution.

Washington's First Inauguration.

Distribution of our Population in 1790.

In the States.

Cities.

New York City.

Difference between the Old Government and the New.

Status of the State.

Benefits of the New Order.

Popularity of the Constitution.

Thoroughness of First Congress.

Origin of Post-office Department.

Treasury.

Revenue and Monetary System.

Judiciary.

Secretary of War.

Leaders in First Congress.

CHAPTER II. FEDERALISM AND ANTI--FEDERALISM

Origin and Development of the Two Terms.

Policy of Federalism.

Federalists Aristocratic.

Two Stripes of Federalists.

Policy of the Anti-federalists.

Close and Liberal Constructionists.

Argument of the Federalists on Article 1., Section 8.

Reply of Anti-federalists.

Historical Facts in Support of the Latter.

CHAPTER III. DOMESTIC QUESTIONS OF WASHINGTON'S ADMINISTRATIONS

I. TARIFF: Restrictive Policy after the Revolution.

Object of its Advocates to Strengthen the Central Government.

Retaliatory Spirit against England.

Desire for Independence as to Military Supplies.

II. FUNDING THE DEBT: Debt at Close of Revolution.

Congress Liquidates the Domestic Federal Debt.

Assumes State Debts.

Debate on This.

Secured by a "Deal."

Scheme for Payment.

III. THE EXCISE; Excise on Spirits.

Opposition in Pennsylvania.

Result.

IV. THE BANK: Chartered by Congress.

Hostility.

Jefferson's Argument.

Hamilton's.

Good Influence of the Bank.

CHAPTER IV. RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND

Revolution in France.

Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality.

Jefferson's Criticism.

Rives's.

Arguments for Aiding France.

Results of Neutrality.

Federalist Leaning toward Great Britain.

Attitude of Great Britain.

Impressment of our Seamen.

War Imminent.

Jay's Treaty.

Fisher Ames Urges Ratification.

CHAPTER V. RELATIONS WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

Federalists Condemn, Republicans Favor, the French Revolution.

Causes of its Popularity.

Justification of the Administration's Policy.

France Violates the Treaty.

Genet's High-handed Action.

His Insolence and Final Removal.

Effect of Jay's Treaty upon France.

Further Overtures to France.

Result.

Anti-federalists Confounded.

War Feeling in this Country.

Adams's Patriotic Course.

War Averted.

CHAPTER VI. DECLINE OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY

Federalist Excesses.

Alien and Sedition Acts.

Conviction of Matthew Lyon.

Results of the Federalist Policy.

Its Animus.

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.

These Criticised.

Unpopularity of the Federalist Measures.

This Dooms Federalism.

Federalist Dissensions.

Federalist Opposition to the Administration.

Waning Power of Federalism.

Its Good After-influence.

CHAPTER VII. THE WEST

Kentucky and Tennessee become States.

Unorganized and Organized Territory.

Settlements in the Northwest.

Centres of Population.

Early Land System.

Indian Outbreaks.

Harmar's Expedition.

Treaty with the Creeks.

Expedition of St. Clair.

Forts Built.

St. Clair's Defeat.

His Deposition from Military Command.

Wayne's Victory.

Pioneer Life.

Indiana Territory Formed.

Ohio a State.

System of Marketing Public Lands.

Mississippi Territory Organized.

CHAPTER VIII. SOCIAL CULTURE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

Population.

Rural Life.

Theatres.

Sports.

Lotteries.

Steam Navigation.

The Old-fashioned Muster.

Intemperance.

Introduction of Sunday-schools.

Spanish Coins.

Colonial Money still in Use.

"Fip," "Levy," "Pistareen."

Newspapers and Postal Arrangements.

Party Strife.

Innovations and Inventions.

Beginnings of the American Factory System.

Oliver Evans.

Samuel Slater.

CHAPTER IX. DEMOCRACY AT THE HELM

Jefferson's Election.

XIIth Amendment to the Constitution.

Power of Democracy.

Its Policy.

Jefferson the Typical Democrat.

His Character.

His Civil Service Policy.

Burr's Rise.

Shoots Hamilton in a Duel.

His Treason.

His Arrest.

Purchase of Louisiana.

Immense Increase of Territory.

Trouble with the Barbary Powers.

Their Insolence.

Dale's Expedition.

Further Successes.

CHAPTER X. THE WAR OF 1812

Great Britain Ignores International Law.

Impresses American Seamen.

The Chesapeake Affair.

Navigation Act and Berlin Decree.

England Questions our Neutrality.

Preparations for War.

Ill Success of Land Operations.

Harrison's Victory over Proctor.

Jackson Conquers the Creeks.

Battle of New Orleans.

Naval Victories.

Battle of Lake Erie.

Opposition of the Federalists to the War.

New England Remonstrances.

Attitude of Sects.

Treaty of Ghent.

Its Provisions.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

GEORGE WASHINGTON

BLOODY POND, NEAR LAKE GEORGE, WHICH IS SAID TO STILL CONTAIN THE BONES

OF MANY OF THOSE WHO FELL IN THE FIGHT AT

FORT WILLIAM HENRY

KING GEORGE III.

JAMES OTIS, JR.

BURNING THE STAMPS IN NEW YORK

THE BOSTON MASSACRE. (From an engraving by Paul Revere)

PINE TREE FLAG OF MASSACHUSETTS

RATTLESNAKE FLAG OF SOUTH CAROLINA

UNION FLAG. THE FIRST RECOGNIZED CONTINENTAL STANDARD, RAISED FOR THE

FIRST TIME JANUARY 2, 1776

THOMAS PAINE

A PROFILE VIEW OF THE HEIGHTS OF CHARLESTOWN

BUNKER HILL BATTLE. (From a contemporary print)

JOSEPH WARREN

GENERAL HOWE

GENERAL CHARLES LEE. (Although intended for a caricature, this is

considered an excellent likeness)

BARON VON STEUBEN

RICHARD MONTGOMERY

THE DEATH OF MONTGOMERY AT QUEBEC

GENERAL HERKIMER AT THE BATTLE OF ORISKANY

GENERAL JOHN STARK

GENERAL HORATIO GATES

JOHN PAUL JONES'S MEDAL

JOHN PAUL JONES'S MEDAL. (Reverse)

GENERAL SULLIVAN

GENERAL LINCOLN

GENERAL MARION IN CAMP

MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE

BENEDICT ARNOLD

ARNOLD'S ESCAPE

GENERAL NATHANIEL GREENE

THE SURRENDER OF CORNWALLIS AT YORKTOWN

GENERAL DANIEL MORGAN

LORD CORNWALLIS

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

FACSIMILE OF SIGNATURES TO TREATY OF PEACE

JOHN PAUL JONES

FIGHT BETWEEN THE BON HOMME RICHARD AND THE SERAPIS

GENERAL ANTHONY WAYNE

THE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN TARLETON AND COLONEL WASHINGTON

DeKALB WOUNDED AT CAMDEN

THE FRANKLIN PENNY

DOLLAR OF 1794. (The first United States coin)

A SCENE AT SPRINGFIELD DURING SLAYS' REBELLION, WHEN THE MOB ATTEMPTED

TO PREVENT THE HOLDING OF THE COURTS OF JUSTICE

JOHN WESLEY

CELEBRATING THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN NEW YORK

ALEXANDER HAMILTON (From a painting by John Trumbull in the Trumbull

Gallery at Yale College)

ILLICIT DISTILLERS WARNED OF THE APPROACH OF REVENUE OFFICERS

JOHN JAY. (From a painting by S. F. B. Morse in the Yale College

Collection)

JOHN ADAMS. (From a copy by Jane Stuart, about 1874, of a painting by

her father, Gilbert Stuart, about 1800-in possession of Henry Adams)

GEORGE CLINTON. (From a painting by Ezra Ames)

JOHN MARSHALL

ELERIDGE GERRY

GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR

JOSEPH BRANT OR THAYENDANEGEA

DUGOUT OF A SOUTHWESTERN PIONEER

ROBERT FULTON

FULTON'S FIRST EXPERIMENT WITH PADDLE-WHEELS

DEPARTURE OF THE CLERMONT ON HER FIRST VOYAGE

JOHN FITCH'S STEAMBOAT AT PHILADELPHIA

MASSACHUSETTS BILL OF THREE SHILLINGS IN 1741

NEW HAMPSHIRE BILL OF FORTY SHILLINGS IN 1742

MASSACHUSETTS TWOPENCE OF 1722

PINE TREE TWOPENCE

PINE TREE THREEPENCE

PINE TREE SIXPENCE

PINE TREE SHILLING

POSTAL PROGRESS, 1776-1876

COTTON PLANT

THE COTTON GIN. (From the original model)

ELI WHITNEY

THOMAS JEFFERSON. (From the painting by Gilbert Stuart--property of T.

Jefferson Coolidge)

AARON BURR. (From a painting by Vanderlyn at the New York Historical

Society)

STEPHEN DECATUR

LIEUTENANT DECATUR ON THE TURKISH VESSEL DURING THE BOMBARDMENT OF

TRIPOLI

JAMES MADISON (From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--property of T.

Jefferson Coolidge)

TECUMSEH

OLIVER H. PERRY

PERRY TRANSFERRING HIS COLORS FROM THE LAWRENCE TO THE NIAGARA

LIST OF MAPS

THE UNITED COLONIES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION

PLAN OF BUNKER HILL

MAP OF MANHATTAN ISLAND IN 1776, SHOWING THE AMERICAN DEFENCES, ETC.

MAP SHOWING THE PROGRESSIVE ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY BY THE UNITED

STATES

PERIOD III.

REVOLUTION AND THE OLD CONFEDERATION

1763-1789

CHAPTER I.

RESULTS OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

[1763]

The results of the French and Indian War were out of all proportion to

the scale of its military operations. Contrasted with the campaigns

which were then shaking all Europe, it sank into insignificance; and the

world, its eyes strained to see the magnitude and the issue of those

European wars, little surmised that they would dictate the course of

history far less than yonder desultory campaigning in America. Yet here

and there a political prophet foresaw some of these momentous indirect

consequences of the war. "England will erelong repent," said Vergennes,

then the French ambassador at Constantinople, "of having removed the

only check that could keep her colonies in awe. They no longer stand in

need of her protection. She will call on them to contribute toward

supporting the burdens they have helped to bring upon her, and they will

answer by striking off all dependence." This is, in outline, the history

of the next twenty years.

The war in Europe and America had been a heavy drain upon the treasury

of England. Her national debt had doubled, amounting at the conclusion

of peace to 140,000,000 Pounds sterling. The Government naturally

desired to lay upon its American subjects a portion of this burden,

which had been incurred partly on their behalf. The result was that new

system of taxation which the king and his ministers sought to impose

upon the colonies, and which was the immediate cause of the Revolution.

The hated taxes cannot, of course, be traced to the French and Indian

War alone as their source. England had for years shown a growing purpose

to get revenue out of her American dependencies; but the debt incurred

by the war gave an animus and a momentum to this policy which carried it

forward in the face of opposition that might otherwise have warned even

George III. to pause ere it was too late.

[1765]

While the war thus indirectly led England to encroach upon the rights of

the colonies, it also did much to prepare the latter to resist such

encroachment. It had this effect mainly in two ways: by promoting union

among the colonies, and by giving to many of their citizens a good

training in the duties of camp, march, and battle-field.

The value to the colonists of their military experience in this war can

hardly be overestimated. If the outbreak of the Revolution had found the

Americans a generation of civilians, if the colonial cause had lacked

the privates who had seen hard service at Lake George and Louisburg, or

the officers, such as Washington, Gates, Montgomery, Stark, and Putnam,

who had learned to fight successfully against British regulars by

fighting with them, it is a question whether the uprising would not have

been stamped out, for a time at least, almost at its inception.

Especially at the beginning of such a war, when the first necessity is

to get a peaceful nation under arms as quickly as possible, a few

soldier-citizens are invaluable. They form the nucleus of the rising

army, and set the standard for military organization and discipline. In

fact, the French and Indian War would have repaid the colonies all it

cost even if its only result had been to give the youthful Washington

that schooling in arms which helped fit him to command the Continental

armies. Without the Washington of Fort Necessity and of Braddock's

defeat, we could in all likelihood never have had the Washington of

Trenton and Yorktown. Besides Washington, to say nothing of Gates, Gage,

and Mercer, also there, Dan Morgan, of Virginia, began to learn war in

the Braddock campaign.

Bloody Pond, near Lake George, which is said to still contain the

bones of many of those who fell in the fight at Fort William Henry.

Again, the war prepared the colonists for the Revolution by revealing to

them their own rare fighting quality, and by showing that the dreaded

British regulars were not invincible. No foe would, at Saratoga or

Monmouth, see the backs of the men who had covered the redcoats' retreat

from the field of Braddock's death, scaled the abatis of Louisburg, or

brained Dieskau's regulars on the parapet of Fort William Henry.

But there was one thing even more necessary to the Revolutionists than

skill at arms, and that was union. Their only hope of successful

resistance against the might of England lay in concerted action, and

perhaps the most important result of the long war through which they had

been passing was the sense of union and of a common cause with which it

had inspired the thirteen colonies. This feeling was of course still

none too intense. But during the long war the colonies had drawn nearer

to one another than ever before. Soldiers from New Hampshire and North

Carolina, from Virginia and Massachusetts, bivouacked together, and

fought shoulder to shoulder. Colonial officers forgot local jealousies

in a common resentment of the contempt and neglect shown them all alike

by the haughty subalterns of the king. Mutual good-will was fostered by

the money and troops which the southern and less exposed colonies sent

to their sister commonwealths on the frontier. In these and numberless

minor ways a community of sentiment was engendered which, imperfect as

it was, yet prepared the way for that hearty co-operation which was to

carry the infant States through the fiery trial just before them.

It is important to remember, as well, not only that the war built up

this conviction of a common interest, but that nothing except the war

could have done it. The great forces of nineteenth-century

civilization--the locomotive, the telegraph, the modern daily

newspaper--which now bind sixty millions of people, spread over half a

continent, into one nation, were then unknown. The means of

communication and transportation between the colonies were very

primitive. Roads were rough, full of steeps and cuts, and in many

places, especially near cities, almost impassable with mire. It took

seven days to go by stage from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, four days

from Boston to New York. The mail service was correspondingly inadequate

and slow. At times in winter a letter would be five weeks in going from

Philadelphia to Virginia. The newspapers were few, contained little

news, and the circulation of each was necessarily confined to a very

limited area. It has been estimated that the reading-matter in all the

forty-three papers which existed at the close of the Revolution would

not fill ten pages of the New York Herald now. In connection with this

state of things consider the fact that the idea of colonial solidarity

had not then, as now, merely to be sustained. It had to be created

outright. Local pride and jealousy were still strong. Each colony had

thought of itself as a complete and isolated political body, in a way

which it is difficult for us, after a hundred years of national unity,

to conceive. Plainly a lifetime of peace would not have begotten the

same degree of consolidation among the colonies which the war, with its

common danger and common purpose, called into being in a half-dozen

years.

The war did yet another important service by removing a dangerous

neighbor of the colonies. So long as France, ambitious and warlike, kept

foot-hold in the New World, the colonies had to look to the

mother-country for protection. But this danger gone, England ceased to

be necessary to the safety of the embryo political communities, and her

sovereignty was therefore the more readily renounced. English statesmen

foresaw this danger before the Peace of Paris, and but for the

magnanimity of Pitt our western territory might after all have been left

in the hands of France.

And the cession of Canada, besides removing an enemy, helped to

transform that enemy into an active friend. Had France retained her

possessions in America, she would still have had an interest in

maintaining the colonial system, and it is doubtful if even her hatred

of England would have induced her to aid the rebellious colonies. But,

her dream of a great Western empire forever dispelled, she had much to

gain and nothing to lose by drawing sword for the American cause. The

British defeated the French at Quebec only to meet them again at

Yorktown.

One more result remains to be noted, without which what has preceded

would lose half its significance. By the Peace of Paris England

succeeded to all of France's possessions in America east of the

Mississippi; but the most valuable part of this great territory she won

only to hold in trust a few years for her colonial children. The

redcoats under Amherst and Wolfe, who thought they were fighting for

King George, were in reality winning an empire for the Young Republic.

It is not easy to feel the full significance of this. The colonies

might, indeed, have won independence even if France had retained her

grasp on the valley of the Mississippi; but so long as the new-born

nation was shut up to a narrow strip along the Atlantic coast, it would

have been a lion caged. The "conquest of Canada," says Green, "by ...

flinging open to their energies in the days to come the boundless plains

of the West, laid the foundation of the United States."

CHAPTER II.

GEORGE III. AND HIS AMERICAN COLONIES

[1760]

The year after the capture of Quebec a young king ascended the throne of

England, whose action was to affect profoundly the fortunes of the

American colonies. Of narrow mental range and plebeian tastes, but

moral, sincere, and stout-hearted, George III. assumed the crown with

one dominant purpose--to rule personally; and the first decade of his

reign was a constant struggle to free himself from the dictation of

cabinet ministers. In 1770, during the premiership of North, who was

little more than his page, the king gained the day; and for the next

dozen years he had his own way perfectly. All points of policy, foreign

and domestic, even the management of debates in Parliament, he was

crafty enough to get into his hands. To this meddling of his with state

affairs, his impracticable and fickle plans, and the stupidity of the

admirers whom his policy forced upon him, may be traced in very large

measure the breach between England and the colonies.

The Revolution, however, cannot be wholly accounted for by any series of

events which can be set down and labelled. The ultimate causes lie

deeper. Three thousand miles of ocean rolled between England and the

colonies. A considerable measure of colonial self-government was

inevitable from the first, and this, by fostering the spirit of

independence, created a demand for more and more freedom. The social

ties which had bound the early Pilgrims to their native land grew

steadily weaker with each new generation of people who knew no home but

America. The colonists had begun to feel the stirrings of an independent

national life. The boundless possibilities of the future on this new

continent, with its immense territory and untold natural wealth, were

beginning to dawn upon them. Their infancy was over. The leading-strings

which bound them to the mother-country must be either lengthened or cast

off altogether.

King George III.

But England did not see this. Most Englishmen at the beginning of George

III.'s reign regarded the colonies as trading corporations rather than

as political bodies. It was taken for granted that a colony was inferior

to the mother-country, and was to be managed in the interests of the

commercial classes at home. Conflict was therefore inevitable sooner or

later. We have to trace briefly the chief events by which it was

precipitated.

James Otis, Jr.

[1764]

In 1760-61 England tried to enforce the navigation laws more strictly.

Writs of assistance issued, empowering officers to enter any house at

any time, to search for smuggled goods. This measure aroused a storm of

indignation. The popular feeling was voiced, and at the same time

intensified, by the action of James Otis, Jr., a young Boston lawyer,

who threw up his position as advocate-general rather than defend the

hated writs, which he denounced as "instruments of slavery." "Then and

there," said John Adams, "the trumpet of the Revolution was sounded."

In May, 1764, a report reached Boston that a stamp act for the colonies

had been proposed in Parliament, to raise revenue by forcing the use in

America of stamped forms for all sorts of public papers, such as deeds,

warrants, and the like. A feeling of mingled rage and alarm seized the

colonists. It seemed that a deliberate blow was about to be struck at

their liberties. From the day of their founding the colonies had never

been taxed directly except by their own legislatures. Massachusetts, New

York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Virginia at once sent

humble but earnest protests to Parliament against the proposed

innovation.

The act was nevertheless passed in March of the next year, with almost

no opposition. By its provisions, business documents were illegal and

void unless written on the stamped paper. The cheapest stamp cost a

shilling, the price ranging upward from that according to the importance

of the document. The prepared paper had to be paid for in specie, a

hardship indeed in a community where lawsuits were very common, and

whose entire solid coin would not have sufficed to pay the revenue for a

single year. Even bitterest Tories' declared this requirement

indefensible. Another flagrant feature of the act was the provision that

violators of it should be tried without a jury, before a judge whose

only pay came from his own condemnations.

Burning the Stamps in New York.

[1765]

The effect upon the colonies was like that of a bomb in a

powder-magazine. The people rose up en masse. In every province the

stamp-distributor was compelled to resign. In Portsmouth, N. H., the

newspaper came out in mourning, and an effigy of the Goddess of Liberty

was carried to the grave. The Connecticut legislature ordered a day of

fasting and prayer kept, and an inventory of powder and ball taken. In

New York a bonfire was made of the stamps in the public square. The

bells in Charleston, S. C., were tolled, and the flags on the ships in

the harbor hung at half-mast. The colonists entered into agreements to

buy no goods from England until the act was repealed. Even mourning

clothes, since they must be imported, were not to be worn, and lamb's

flesh was abjured that more wool might be raised for home manufacture.

England's colonial trade fell off so alarmingly in consequence that

Manchester manufacturers petitioned Parliament to repeal the act,

asserting that nine-tenths of their workmen were idle. Besides these

popular demonstrations, delegates from nine colonies met in New York, in

October, 1765, often called the Stamp Act Congress, and adopted a

declaration of rights, asserting that England had no right to tax them

without their consent. During the days of the Stamp Act excitement, the

term "colonist" gave way to "American," and "English" to "British," a

term of the deeper opprobrium because Bute, the king's chief adviser,

was a Briton.

Startled by this unexpected resistance, Parliament, in January of the

next year, began to debate repeal. We must in fairness to England look

at both sides of the problem of colonial taxation. As general

administrator of colonial affairs, the English Government naturally

desired a fixed and certain revenue in America, both for frontier

defence against Indians and French and for the payment of colonial

governors.  While each stood ready to defend its own territory, the

colonies were no doubt meanly slow about contributing to any common

fund. They were frequently at loggerheads, too, with their governors

over the question of salaries. On the other hand, the colonists made the

strong plea that self-taxation was their only safeguard against tyranny

of king, Parliament, or governor.

In the great debate which now ensued in Parliament over England's right

to tax America, Mansfield, the greatest constitutional lawyer of his

day, maintained--first, that America was represented in Parliament as

much as Manchester and several other large cities in England which

elected no members to the House of Commons, and yet were taxed; and,

second, that an internal tax, such as that on stamps, was identical in

principle with customs duties, which the colonies had never resisted. In

reply, Pitt, the great champion of the colonies, asserted--first, that

the case of the colonies was not at all like that of Manchester; the

latter happened not to be represented at that time because the election

laws needed reforming, while the colonies, being three thousand miles

away, could in the nature of the case never be adequately represented in

an English Parliament; and, second, that as a matter of fact a sharp

distinction had always, since the Great Charter, been made between

internal taxation and customs duties.

Had the colonies rested their case upon constitutional argument alone it

would have been relatively weak. While it was then a question, and will

be forever, whether the American settlements were king's colonies,

Parliament's colonies, or neither, but peculiar communities which had

resulted from growth, the English lawyers had a good deal of logic on

their side. Unconstitutional measures had indeed been resorted to--the

writs of assistance, taking Americans beyond sea for trial, internal

taxation; yet the real grievance lay far less in these things than in

the fact that the English constitution itself was working in a manner

contrary to colonial interests. Social considerations, too, accounted

for more bitterness than has usually been thought. Our fathers hated the

presence here of a privileged class.

George III.'s policy was therefore wiser legally than politically. This

was, in fact, his ministry's capital mistake--like Lord Salisbury's in

respect to Ireland in 1888--that it had too great regard for the mere

legal aspect of the question, ignoring the practical. The colonists were

too numerous, powerful, and far away, longer to be governed from home,

at least by the old plan. To attempt perpetuation of the old regime

might be lawful, but was certainly impracticable and stupid. Hence

Americans like Jefferson showed themselves consummate politicians in

going beyond Pitt's contention from the constitution and from precedent,

and appealing to the "natural rights" of the colonists. "Our rights,"

said Otis, in substance, "do not rest on a charter, but are inherent in

us as men." "The people" said John Adams in 1765, "have rights

antecedent to all earthly government."

[1767]

The Stamp Act was repealed in February. Its principle, however, was

immediately re-asserted by the "Declaratory Act," in which Parliament

claimed power over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." The repeal

caused great rejoicing in America; but neither king nor Parliament had

changed policy respecting colonial affairs. There soon followed, in

rapid succession, that series of blundering acts of oppression which

completed the work begun by the Stamp Act, and drove the colonists into

rebellion.

In 1767 duties were laid upon glass, paper, painters' colors, and tea.

Massachusetts, again taking the lead, sent a circular-letter to all the

colonies, proposing a united supplication to the throne. For refusal to

rescind this letter the Massachusetts assembly was dissolved at the

command of the angry king. This refusal was the first denial of the

king's prerogative; only the authority of Parliament had been resisted

before. The soul of the colonial cause in Massachusetts at this time was

Samuel Adams, of Boston, "the last of the Puritans," a man of powerful

and logical mind, intrepid heart, and incorruptible patriotism.

America's debt to him for his work in these early years cannot be

estimated. At this juncture he organized committees of safety and

correspondence throughout Massachusetts, which led to the formation of

such committees in the other colonies. They did an invaluable work in

binding the scattered sections together, and providing for emergencies.

[1768]

The Billeting Act, which required the colonists to lodge and feed the

British troops quartered among them, added fuel to the flames. In 1768

the New York legislature refused to comply, and Parliament suspended its

legislative functions.

[1770]

In the fall of the same year, seizing as a pretext two ship-riots which

had occurred in the summer, the king stationed four regiments in Boston.

Public sentiment was shocked and indignant at this establishment of a

military guard over a peaceable community. The presence of the soldiers

was a constant source of irritation. Frequent altercations occurred

between the soldiers and the lower class of citizens. The trouble

culminated in the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770. A squad of soldiers,

set upon by a mob of men and boys, fired into the crowd, killing three

persons and wounding eight others. That the soldiers had considerable

justification is proved by the fact that a jury acquitted all but two,

who were convicted of manslaughter, and branded. But exaggerated reports

of the occurrence spread like wildfire throughout the colonies, and

wrought powerfully for hatred against England.

[1772]

During the next two or three years there was comparative quiet.

Massachusetts, it is true, under the tutelage of Samuel Adams, grew more

radical in its demands. In 1772 the committee of Boston issued a

statement of grievances, adding, as new complaints, the sending of

persons to England for trial, restraints upon colonial manufacturers,

and a rumored plan to establish bishops over America. This statement was

approved by all the colonies, and was sent to Franklin in London. The

country as a whole, however, was weary of the strife, and would gladly

have returned to the old cordial relations with the mother-land.

The Boston Massacre.

From an Engraving by Paul Revere.

[1773]

But George III. could not rest without asserting his supremacy over

America. He made an arrangement with the East India Company by which tea

could be bought in America, spite of the hated tax, cheaper than in

England. Then, at the king's instigation, large shipments of tea were

made to America. The colonists saw through the cunning attempt, and the

tide of resistance rose higher than ever. At New York and Philadelphia

the tea-ships were forced to put to sea again without unlading. At

Charleston the tea was stored in damp cellars and soon spoiled. At

Boston there was a deadlock; the people would not let the tea be landed;

the governor would not let the ships sail without unlading. On the

evening of December 16, 1773, the tax falling due on the next day, a

party of fifty citizens, disguised as Indians, boarded the ships, and

threw three hundred and forty-two chests of tea into the harbor.

[1774]

The Boston tea-party aroused all the blind obstinacy of George III.

"Blows must decide," he exclaimed; "the guilty rebels are to be forced

to submission," The king's anger led to the Boston Port Bill, which was

passed the next year, and closed Boston harbor to all commerce. Changes

were also made in the government of Massachusetts, rendering it almost

entirely independent of the people. Town meetings were forbidden except

for elections. Poor Massachusetts, her liberties curtailed, her commerce

ruined, appealed to her sister colonies for support, and they responded

right heartily. In three weeks from the news of the Port Bill all the

colonies had made the cause of Massachusetts their own. Expressions of

sympathy and liberal gifts of money and provisions poured into Boston

from all over the country. The first Continental Congress assembled at

Philadelphia in September. All the colonies but Georgia were

represented. An earnest statement of grievances was drawn up, with a

prayer to the king for redress. The action of Massachusetts was

approved, and an agreement entered into to suspend all commerce with

England.

Things now hastened rapidly toward open war. British troops were

stationed in Boston, and began fortification. Military preparations were

making everywhere among the colonists. The train was laid. Only a spark

was needed to bring the dreaded explosion.

CHAPTER III.

INDEPENDENCE AND THE NEW STATES

[1775]

The thought of independence in the minds of the colonists was of

surprisingly slow growth. The feeling of dependence on the

mother-country and of loyalty to the king was deep-rooted and died hard.

Even union, which was a pre-requisite to a successful struggle for

independence, came slowly. The old New England Confederation, in 1643-

84, between Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, for

defence against Indians, Dutch, and French, ended without ever having

manifested the slightest vigor. In the latter half of the seventeenth

century Virginia had alliances with some sister colonies for protection

against Indians; but there was no call for a general congress until the

French and Indian attack on Schenectady, in 1690, during King William's

War. Representatives from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and

Plymouth met that year at New York; letters came from Virginia,

Maryland, and Rhode Island. But no permanent union was proposed here,

nor at any of the similar meetings, seven at least, which occurred

between 1690 and 1750.

The Albany Convention, which met in 1754 to prepare for the French and

Indian War, adopted a plan for union presented by Franklin, providing

for a president-general appointed and supported by the Crown, and for a

grand council of delegates elected triennially by the colonies according

to population, and empowered, within limits, to lay taxes and make laws

for the common interest of English America. Franklin believed that the

adoption of this scheme would have postponed the Revolution a century.

But, as it gave so much power to the king, it was rejected by the people

in every colony.

Even after English oppression and the diligent agency of committees of

correspondence had brought union, and delegates from the colonies had

met again and again in Congress, the thought of breaking away from the

mother-land was strange to the minds of nearly all. The instructions to

the delegates to the first Congress, in September, 1774, gave no

suggestion of independence.  On the contrary, colony after colony urged

its representatives to seek the restoration of "harmony and union" with

England. This Congress branded as "calumny" the charge that it wished

"independency." Washington wrote, from the Congress, that independence

was then not "desired by any thinking man in America."

Pine Tree Flag of Massachusetts.

"AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN".

Rattlesnake Flag of South Carolina. "DON'T TREAD ON ME".

The feeling was much the same in 1775. Pennsylvania "strictly" commanded

her representatives to dissent from any "proposition that may lead to

separation." Maryland gave similar instructions in January, 1776.

Independence was neither the avowed nor the conscious object in

defending Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. Washington's commission as

commander-in-chief, two days later, gave no hint of it. And the New

Hampshire legislature so late as December 25, 1775, in the very act of

framing a new state government, "totally disavowed" all such aim. In the

fall of 1775 Congress declared that it had "not raised armies with the

ambitious design of separation from Great Britain."

The swift change which, a little more than six months later, made the

Declaration of Independence possible and even popular, has never yet

been fully explained. In May, 1775, John Adams had been cautioned by the

Philadelphia Sons of Liberty not to utter the word independence. "It is

as unpopular," they said, in "Pennsylvania and all the Middle and

Southern States as the Stamp Act itself."  Early in 1776 this same great

man wrote that there was hardly a newspaper in America but openly

advocated independence. In the spring of 1776 the conservative

Washington declared, "Reconciliation is impracticable. Nothing but

independence will save us." Statesmen began to see that longer delay was

dangerous, that permanent union turned upon independence, and that,

without a government of their own, people would by and by demand back

their old constitution, as the English did after Cromwell's death. "The

country is not only ripe for independence," said Witherspoon, of New

Jersey, debating in Congress, "but is in danger of becoming rotten for

lack of it."

Colony after colony now came rapidly into line. Massachusetts gave

instructions to her delegates in Congress, virtually favoring

independence, in January, 1776. Georgia did the same in February, South

Carolina in March. Express authority to "concur in independency" came

first from North Carolina, April 12th, and the following May 31st

Mecklenburg County in that State explicitly declared its independence of

England. On May 1st Massachusetts began to disuse the king's name in

public instruments. May 4th, Rhode Island renounced allegiance almost in

terms. On May 15th brave old Virginia ordered her delegates in Congress

to bite right into the sour apple and propose independence. Connecticut,

New Hampshire, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania took action in the

same direction during the following month.

[1776]

Union Flag. The first recognized Continental Standard, raised for the

first time January 2,1776.

The king's brutal attitude had much to do with this sudden change. The

colonists had nursed the belief that the king was misled by his

ministers. A last petition, couched in respectful terms, was drawn up by

Congress in the summer of 1775, and sent to England. Out of respect to

the feelings of good John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, who still clung to

England, this address was tempered with a submissiveness which offended

many members. On its being read, Dickinson remarked that but one word in

it displeased him, the word "Congress;" to which Colonel Ben Harrison,

of Virginia, retorted that but one word in it pleased him, and that

"Congress" was precisely the word.

The appeal was idle. The king's only answer was a violent proclamation

denouncing the Americans as rebels. It was learned at the same time that

he was preparing to place Indians, negroes, and German mercenaries in

arms against them. The truth was forced upon the most reluctant, that

the root of England's obduracy was in the king personally, and that

further supplications were useless. The surprising success of the

colonial arms, the shedding of blood at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker

Hill--all which, remember, antedated the Declaration--the increase and

the ravages of the royal army and navy in America, were all efficient in

urging the colonists to break utterly and forever from the

mother-country.

[1772]

The behavior of the Gaspe officers in Narragansett Bay, their illegal

seizures, plundering expeditions on shore, and wanton manners in

stopping and searching boats, illustrate the spirit of the king's

hirelings in America at this time. At last the Rhode Islanders could

endure it no longer. Early on the morning of June 9, 1772, Captain

Abraham Whipple, with a few boatloads of trusty aides, dropped down the

river from Providence to what is now called Gaspe Point, six or seven

miles below the city, where the offending craft had run aground the

previous evening in giving chase to the Newport-Providence packet-boat,

and after a spirited fight mastered the Gaspe's company, put them on

shore, and burned the ship. There would be much propriety in dating the

Revolution from this daring act.

[1774]

Nor was this the only case of Rhode Island's forwardness in the

struggle. December 5, 1774, her General Assembly ordered Colonel

Nightingale to remove to Providence all the cannon and ammunition of

Fort George, except three guns, and this was done before the end of the

next day. More than forty cannon, with much powder and shot, were thus

husbanded for service to come. News of this was carried to New

Hampshire, and resulted in the capture of Fort William and Mary at New

Castle, December 14, 1774, which some have referred to as the opening

act of the Revolution. This deed was accomplished by fourteen men from

Durham, who entered the fort at night when the officers were at a ball

in Portsmouth. The powder which they captured is said to have done duty

at Bunker Hill.

[1776]

Most potent of all as a cause of the resolution to separate was Thomas

Paine's pamphlet, "Common Sense," published in January, 1776, and

circulated widely throughout the colonies. Its lucid style, its homely

way of putting things, and its appeals to Scripture must have given it

at any rate a strong hold upon the masses of the people. It was doubly

and trebly triumphant from the fact that it voiced, in clear, bold

terms, a long-growing popular conviction of the propriety of

independence, stronger than men had dared to admit even to themselves.

Thomas Paine.

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, rose in Congress, and,

in obedience to the command of his State, moved a resolution "that the

united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent

States." John Adams seconded the motion. It led to great debate, which

evinced that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South

Carolina were not yet quite ready for so radical a step. Postponement

was therefore had till July 1st, a committee meantime being appointed to

draft a declaration.

On July 2d, after further long debate, participated in by John Adams,

Dickinson, Wilson, and many other of the ablest men in Congress, not

all, even now, favorable to the measure, the famous Declaration of

Independence was adopted by vote of all the colonies but New York, whose

representatives abstained from voting for lack of sufficiently definite

instructions. We celebrate July 4th because on that day the document was

authenticated by the signatures of the President and Secretary of

Congress, and published, Not until August 2d had all the representatives

affixed their names. Ellery stood at the secretary's side as the various

delegates signed, and declares that he saw only dauntless resolution in

every eye. "Now we must hang together," said Franklin, "or we shall hang

separately."

The honor of writing the Declaration belongs to Thomas Jefferson, of

Virginia, who was to play so prominent a part in the early political

history of the United States. At this time he was thirty-three years

old. He was by profession a lawyer, of elegant tastes, well read in

literature, deeply versed in political history and philosophy. He was

chosen to draft the instrument chiefly because of the great ability of

other state papers from his pen. It is said that he consulted no books

during the composition, but wrote from the overflowing fulness of his

mind.

It is an interesting inquiry how far the language of the document was

determined by utterances of a like kind already put forth by towns and

counties. There had been many of these, and much discussion has occurred

upon the question which of them was first. Perhaps the honor belongs to

the town of Sheffield, Mass., which so early as January 12, 1773,

proclaimed the grievances and the rights of the colonies, among these

the right of self-government. Mendon, in the same State, in the same

year passed resolutions containing three fundamental propositions of the

great Declaration itself: that all men have an equal right to life and

liberty, that this right is inalienable, and that government must

originate in the free consent of the people. It is worthy of note that

the only important change made by Congress in what Jefferson had

prepared was the striking out, in deference to South Carolina and

Georgia, of a clause reflecting on slavery.

Copies of the immortal paper were carried post-haste up and down the

land, and Congress's bold deed was everywhere hailed with enthusiastic

demonstrations of joy. The stand for independence wrought powerfully for

good, both at home and abroad. At home it assisted vacillating minds to

a decision, as well as bound all the colonies more firmly together by

committing them irreconcilably to an aggressive policy. Abroad it tended

to lift the colonies out of the position of rebels and to gain them

recognition among the nations of the earth.

Let us now inquire into the political character of these bodies of

people which this Declaration by their delegates had erected into "free

and independent States."

Five colonies had adopted constitutions, revolutionary of course, before

the decisive manifesto. There was urgent need for such action. The few

remaining fragments of royal governments were powerless and decadent.

Anarchy was threatening everywhere. Some of the royal governors had

fled. In South Carolina the judges refused to act. In other places, as

western Massachusetts, they had been forcibly prevented from acting. In

most of the colonies only small parts of the old assemblies could be

gotten together.

New Hampshire led off with a new constitution in January, 1776. South

Carolina followed in March. By the close of the year nearly all the

colonies had established governments of their own. New York and Georgia

did not formally adopt new constitutions until the next year. In

Massachusetts a popular assembly assumed legislative and executive

powers from July, 1775, till 1780, when a new constitution went into

force. Connecticut and Rhode Island, as we have seen already, continued

to use their royal charters--the former till 1818, the latter till 1842.

Nowhere was the general framework of government greatly changed by

independence. The governors were of course now elected by the people,

and they suffered some diminution of power. Legislatures were composed

of two houses, both elective, no hereditary legislators being

recognized. All the States still had Sunday laws; most of them had

religious tests. In South Carolina only members of a church could vote.

In New Jersey an office-holder must profess belief in the faith of some

Protestant sect. Pennsylvania required members of the legislature to

avow faith in God, a future state, and the inspiration of the

Scriptures. The new Massachusetts constitution provided that laws

against plays, extravagance in dress, diet, etc., should be passed.

Property qualifications continued to limit suffrage. Virginia and

Georgia changed their land laws, abolishing entails and primogeniture.

The sole momentous novelty was that everyone of the new constitutions

proceeded upon the theory of popular sovereignty. The new governments

derived their authority solely and directly from the people. And this

authority, too, was not surrendered to the government, but simply--and

this only in part--intrusted to it as the temporary agent of the

sovereign people, who remained throughout the exclusive source of

political power.

The new instruments of government were necessarily faulty and imperfect.

All have since been amended, and several entirely remodelled. But they

rescued the colonies from impending anarchy and carried them safely

through the throes of the Revolution.

CHAPTER IV.

OUTBREAK OF WAR: WASHINGTON'S MOVEMENTS

[1775]

By the spring of 1775 Massachusetts was practically in rebellion. Every

village green was a drill-ground, every church a town arsenal. General

Gage occupied Boston with 3,000 British regulars. The flames were

smouldering; at the slightest puff they would flash out into open war.

On the night of April 18th people along the road from Boston to Concord

were roused from sleep by the cry of flying couriers--"To arms! The

redcoats are coming!" When the British advance reached Lexington at

early dawn, it found sixty or seventy minute-men drawn up on the green.

"Disperse, ye rebels!" shouted the British officer. A volley was fired,

and seven Americans fell dead. The king's troops, with a shout, pushed

on to Concord. Most of the military stores, however, which they had come

to destroy had been removed. A British detachment advanced to Concord

Bridge, and in the skirmish here the Americans returned the British

fire.

Map of the United Colonies at the Beginning of the Revolution.

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world."

[Footnote: From R. W. Emerson's Concord Hymn, sung at the completion of

the Battle Monument near Concord North Bridge, April 19, 1836.]

Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill.

A Profile View of the Heights of Charlestown.

The whole country was by this time swarming with minute-men. The crack

of the rifle was heard from behind every wall and fence and tree along

the line of march. The redcoats kept falling one by one at the hands of

an invisible foe. The march became a retreat, the retreat almost a rout.

At sunset the panting troops found shelter in Boston. Out of 1,800

nearly 300 were killed, wounded, or missing. The American loss was about

ninety. The war of the rebellion had begun.

All that day and the next night the tramp of minute-men marching to

Boston was heard throughout New England, and by April 20th Gage was

cooped up in the city by an American army. May 25th, he received large

re-enforcements from England.

On the night of June 16th a thousand men armed with pick and spade stole

out of the American camp. At dawn the startled British found that a

redoubt had sprung up in the night on Breed's Hill (henceforward Bunker

Hill) in Charlestown. Boston was endangered, and the rebels must be

dislodged. About half-past two 2,500 British regulars marched silently

and in perfect order up the hill, expecting to drive out the "rustics"

at the first charge. Colonel Prescott, the commanding American officer,

waited till the regulars were within ten rods. "Fire!" A sheet of flame

burst from the redoubt. The front ranks of the British melted away, and

His Majesty's invincibles retreated in confusion to the foot of the

hill. Again they advance. Again that terrible fire. Again they waver and

fall back. Once more the plucky fellows form for the charge, this time

with bayonets alone. When they are within twenty yards, the muskets

behind the earthworks send forth one deadly discharge, and then are

silent. The ammunition is exhausted. The British swarm into the redoubt.

The Continentals reluctantly retire, Prescott among the last, his coat

rent by bayonets. Joseph Warren, of Boston, the idol of Massachusetts,

was shot while leaving the redoubt. The British killed and wounded

amounted to 1,054--157 of them being officers; the American loss was

nearly 500. The battle put an end to further offensive movements by

Gage. It was a virtual victory for the untrained farmer troops, and all

America took courage.

Plan of Bunker Hill.

A. Boston Battery.  B. Charlestown.

C. British troops attacking.  D. Provincial lines.

Bunker Hill Battle.

From a Contemporary Print.

Two days before, Congress had chosen George Washington

commander-in-chief, and on July 2d he arrived at Cambridge. Washington

was forty-three years old. Over six feet in height, and

well-proportioned, he combined great dignity with ease. His early life

as surveyor in a wild country had developed in him marvellous powers of

endurance. His experience in the French and Indian War had given him

considerable military knowledge. But his best title to the high honor

now thrust upon him lay in his wonderful self-control, sound judgment,

lofty patriotism, and sublime courage, which were to carry him, calm and

unflinching, through perplexities and discouragements that would have

overwhelmed a smaller or a meaner man.

Washington fought England with his hands tied. The Continental

government was the worst possible for carrying on war. There was no

executive. The action of legislative committees was slow and

vacillating, and at best Congress could not enforce obedience on the

part of a colony. Congress, too, afraid of a standing army, would

authorize only short enlistments, so that Washington had frequently to

discharge one army and form another in the face of the enemy. His troops

were ill-disciplined, and scantily supplied with clothing, tents,

weapons, and ammunition. Skilled officers were few, and these rarely

free from local and personal jealousies, impairing their efficiency.

[1776]

Washington found that the army around Boston consisted of about 14,500

men fit for duty. He estimated the British forces at 11,000. All the

fall and winter he was obliged to lie inactive for want of powder.

Meantime he distressed the British as much as possible by a close siege.

In the spring, having got more powder, he fortified Dorchester Heights.

The city was now untenable, and on March 17, 1776, all the British

troops, under command of Howe who had succeeded Gage, sailed out of

Boston harbor, never again to set foot on Massachusetts soil.

Joseph Warren.

June 28th, a British fleet of ten vessels opened fire on Fort Moultrie,

in Charleston harbor, S. C. The fort, commanded by Colonel Moultrie,

returned the fire with remarkable accuracy, and after an engagement of

twelve hours the fleet withdrew, badly crippled. This victory gave

security to South Carolina and Georgia for three years.

The discomfited fleet sailed for New York, where the British forces were

concentrating. The plan was to seize the Middle States, and thus keep

North and South from helping one another. August 1st, 2,500 English

troops and 8,000 Hessians arrived. The effective British force was now

about 25,000. Washington was holding New York City with about 10,000 men

fit for duty.

Driven from Long Island by the battle of August 27th, and forced to

abandon New York September 15th, Washington retreated up the Hudson, and

took up a strong position at White Plains. Here the British, attacking,

were defeated in a well-fought engagement; but as they were strongly

re-enforced on October 30th, Washington fell back to Newcastle. Early in

November, guessing that they intended to invade New Jersey and advance

on Philadelphia, he threw his main force across the Hudson.

General Howe.

The fortunes of the American army were now at the lowest ebb, so that

had Howe been an efficient general it must have been either captured or

entirely destroyed. Through the treason of Adjutant Demont, who had

deserted to Lord Percy with complete information of their weakness,

Forts Washington and Lee were captured, November 16th and 20th, with the

loss of 150 killed and wounded, and 2,634 prisoners, besides valuable

stores, small arms, and forty-three pieces of artillery. Manhattan

Island was lost. General Charles Lee, with a considerable portion of the

army, persistently refused to cross the Hudson. Washington, with the

troops remaining, was forced to retreat slowly across New Jersey, the

British army, under Cornwallis, at his very heels, often within

cannon-shot. The New Jersey people were lukewarm, and many accepted

Cornwallis's offers of amnesty. Congress, fearing that Philadelphia

would be taken, adjourned to Baltimore. December 8th, Washington crossed

the Delaware with less than 3,000 men. The British encamped on the

opposite bank of the river. The American army was safe for the present,

having secured all the boats and burned all the bridges within seventy

miles.

Map of Manhattan Island in 1776, showing the American Defences, etc.

General Charles Lee.

Although intended for a caricature, this is considered an excellent likeness.

Washington was soon re-enforced, and now had between five and six

thousand troops. He determined to strike a bold blow that would

electrify the drooping spirits of the army and the country. At Trenton

lay a body of 1,200 Hessians. Christmas night Washington crossed the

Delaware with 2,400 picked men. The current was swift, and the river

full of floating ice; but the boats were handled by Massachusetts

fishermen, and the passage was safely made. Then began the nine-mile

march to Trenton, in a blinding storm of sleet and hail. The soldiers,

many of whom were almost barefoot, stumbled on over the slippery road,

shielding their muskets from the storm as best they could. Trenton was

reached at eight o'clock on the morning of the 26th. An attack was made

by two columns simultaneously. The surprise was complete, and after a

half hour's struggle the Hessians surrendered. Nearly 1,000 prisoners

were taken, besides 1,200 small arms and six guns. Washington safely

retreated across the Delaware.

[1777]

Cornwallis, with 7,000 men, hurried from Princeton to attack the

American army. But Washington, on the night of January 2, 1777, leaving

his camp-fires burning, slipped around the British army, routed the

regiments left at Princeton, and pushing on northward went into winter

quarters at Morristown.

The next campaign opened late. It was the last of August when Howe, with

17,000 men, sailed from New York into Chesapeake Bay, and advanced

toward Philadelphia. Washington flung himself in his path at Brandywine,

September 11th, but was beaten back with heavy loss. September 26th the

British army marched into Philadelphia, whence Congress had fled.

October 4th, Washington attacked the British camp at Germantown. Victory

was almost his when two of the attacking parties, mistaking each other,

in the fog, for British, threw the movement into confusion, and

Washington had to fall back, with a loss of 1,000 men.

In December the American commander led his ragged army into winter

quarters at Valley Forge, twenty-one miles from Philadelphia. It was a

period of deep gloom. The war had been waged now for more than two

years, and less than nothing seemed to have been accomplished. Distrust

of Washington's ability sprang up in some minds. "Heaven grant us one

great soul!" exclaimed John Adams after Brandywine. Certain officers,

envious of Washington, began to intrigue for his place.

Meanwhile the army was shivering in its log huts at Valley Forge. Nearly

three thousand were barefoot. Many had to sit by the fires all night to

keep from freezing. One day there was a dinner of officers to which none

were admitted who had whole trousers. For days together there was no

bread in camp. The death-rate increased thirty-three per cent from week

to week.

Just now, however, amid this terrible Winter at Valley Forge, Baron

Steuben, a  trained German soldier, who had been a pupil of Frederick

the Great, joined our army. Washington made him inspector-general, and

his rigorous daily drill vastly improved the discipline and the spirits

of the American troops. When they left camp in the spring, spite of the

hardships past, they formed a military force on which Washington could

reckon with certainty for efficient work.

Baron von Steuben.

[1778]

The British, after a gay winter in Philadelphia, startled by the news

that a French fleet was on its way to America, marched for New York,

June 18,1778. The American army overtook them at Monmouth on the 28th;

General Charles Lee--a traitor as we now know, and as Washington then

suspected, forced into high place by influence in Congress--General Lee

led the party intended to attack, but he delayed so long that the

British attacked him instead.

The Americans were retreating through a narrow defile when Washington

came upon the field, and his Herculean efforts, brilliantly seconded by

Wayne, stayed the rout. A stout stand was made, and the British were

held at bay till evening, when they retired and continued their march to

New York. Washington followed and took up his station at White Plains.

CHAPTER V.

THE NORTHERN CAMPAIGN

[1775]

At the outbreak of hostilities the thoughts of the colonists naturally

turned to the Canadian border, the old battleground of the French and

Indian War. Then and now a hostility was felt for Canada which had not

slumbered since the burning of Schenectady in 1690.

May 10, 1775, Ethan Allen, at the head of a party of "Green Mountain

Boys," surprised Fort Ticonderoga. Crown Point was taken two days later.

Two hundred and twenty cannon, besides other much-needed military

stores, fell into the hands of the Americans. Some of these heavy guns,

hauled over the Green Mountains on oxsleds the next winter, were planted

by Washington on Dorchester Heights.

In November, 1775, St. Johns and Montreal were captured by a small force

under General Montgomery. The Americans now seemed in a fair way to get

control of all Canada, which contained only 700 regular troops. It was

even hoped that Canada would make common cause with the colonies. Late

in the fall Benedict Arnold led 1,000 men up the Kennebec River and

through the wilderness--a terrible journey--to Quebec. Here he was

joined by Montgomery. On the night of December 30th, which was dark and

stormy, Montgomery and Arnold led their joint forces, numbering some

3,000, against the city. Arnold was to attack the lower town, while

Montgomery sought to gain the citadel. Montgomery had hardly passed the

first line of barricades when he was shot dead, and his troops retreated

in confusion. Arnold, too, was early wounded. Morgan, with 500 of his

famous riflemen, forced an entrance into the lower town. But they were

not re-enforced, and after a desperate street fight were taken

prisoners.

[1776]

A dreary and useless blockade was maintained for several months; until

in May the garrison sallied forth and routed the besiegers. The British

were successful in several small engagements during the summer of 1776;

and the Americans finally had to fall back to Crown Point and

Ticonderoga.

Richard Montgomery.

[1777]

In June of the next year a splendid expedition set sail from St. Johns

and swept proudly up Lake Champlain. Eight thousand British and Hessian

troops, under strict discipline and ably officered, forty cannon of the

best make, a horde of merciless Indians--with these forces General

Burgoyne, the commander of the expedition, expected to make an easy

conquest of upper New York, form a junction with Clinton at Albany, and,

by thus isolating New England from the Middle and Southern States, break

the back of the rebellion.

Ticonderoga was the first point of attack. Sugar Loaf Mountain, which

rose six hundred feet above the lake, had been neglected as too

difficult of access. Burgoyne's skilful engineers easily fortified this

on the night of July 4th, and Fort Ticonderoga became untenable. General

St. Clair, with his garrison of 3,000, at once evacuated it, and fled

south under cover of the night. He was pursued, and his rear guard of

1,200 men was shattered. The rest of his force reached Fort Edward.

The Death of Montgomery at Quebec.

The loss of Ticonderoga spread alarm throughout the North. General

Schuyler, the head of the Northern department, appealed to Washington

for re-enforcements, and fell back from Fort Edward to the junction of

the Mohawk and Hudson.

Meanwhile Burgoyne was making a toilsome march toward Fort Edward.

Schuyler had destroyed the bridges and obstructed the roads, so that the

invading army was twenty-four days in going twenty-six miles. Up to this

point Burgoyne's advance had been little less than a triumphal march;

difficulties now began to surround him like a net.

Burgoyne had arranged for a branch expedition of 700 troops and 1,000

Indians under St. Leger, to sail up Lake Ontario, sweep across western

New York, and join the main body at Albany. August 3d, this expedition

reached Fort Schuyler, and besieged it. A party of 800 militia, led by

General Herkimer, a veteran German soldier, while marching to relieve

the fort, was surprised by an Indian ambush. The bloody battle of

Oriskany followed. St. Leger's further advance was checked, and soon

after, alarmed by exaggerated reports of a second relief expedition

under Arnold, he hurried back to Canada.

At Bennington, twenty-five miles east of Burgoyne's line of march, the

Americans had a depot of stores and horses. Burgoyne, who was running

short of provisions, sent a body of 500 troops, under Baume, to capture

these stores, and overawe the inhabitants by a raid through the

Connecticut valley. About 2,000 militia hastened to the defence of

Bennington. General Stark, who had fought gallantly at Bunker Hill and

Trenton, took command. August 16th, Baume was attacked on three sides at

once, Stark himself leading the charge against the enemy's front. Again

and again his men dashed up the hill where the British lay behind

breastworks. After a fight of two hours Baume surrendered, overpowered

by superior numbers. Re-enforcements which came up a little later were

driven back with considerable loss. The Americans took 700 prisoners and

1,000 stands of arms.

General Herkimer at the Battle of Oriskany.

Burgoyne's situation was becoming dangerous. The failure of St. Leger

and the heavy loss at Bennington seriously disarranged his plans. The

troops detached to defend the posts in his rear had reduced his force to

about 6,000. He was greatly hampered by lack of provisions. Meanwhile

the American army had increased to 9,000. Schuyler had been supplanted

by Gates, who on September 12th advanced to a strong position on Bemis

Heights in the town of Stillwater. The right wing of the army rested on

the Hudson, the left on ridges and wood. In front was a ravine. On the

19th Burgoyne advanced to the attack in three columns. That led by

General Fraser, which tried to turn the American left, was the first to

engage. Arnold's wing, including Morgan's riflemen, met Fraser's

skirmishers a mile from the American lines. They were soon forced to

fall back; Burgoyne's central column came up, and the fight became

general. The battleground was covered by thick woods, with occasional

clearings, and the troops fought at close range. Four hours the battle

raged hotly. The British artillery was taken and retaken again and

again. Thirty-six of the forty-eight British gunners were either killed

or wounded. At sunset the Americans withdrew to their fortified lines,

leaving Burgoyne in possession of the field. It was a drawn battle, but

virtually a victory for the Americans. The British lost about 600, the

Americans half as many.

General John Stark.

Burgoyne's situation was now critical in the extreme. In the heart of

the enemy's country, his forces melting away while his opponents were

increasing, nearly out of provisions and his connections with his base

of supplies threatened by a party assailing Ticonderoga, Burgoyne's only

hope was that Clinton would force a passage up the Hudson. But the

latter, after capturing Forts Clinton and Montgomery early in October,

fell back to the lower Hudson and left Burgoyne to his fate.

October 7th, Burgoyne advanced a picked body of 1,500 men to reconnoitre

the American lines. Morgan's riflemen were sent out to "begin the game."

The fighting soon became even hotter than in the previous battle. In an

hour the whole British line was retreating toward the camp. At this

point Arnold, whom, because of his preference for Schuyler, Gates had

deprived of his command, filled with the fury of battle, dashed upon the

field and assumed his old command. The soldiers greeted him with cheers,

and he led them on in one impetuous charge after another. The enemy

everywhere gave way in confusion, and at dusk the Germans were even

driven from their entrenched camp. The British loss was fully 600.

General Horatio Gates.

The next day Burgoyne retreated to Saratoga, followed by Gates. The fine

army, which had set out with such high hopes only four months before,

was now almost a wreck. Eight hundred were in the hospital. On the 12th

the army had but five days' rations. Burgoyne could neither advance nor

retreat, and on the 17th he surrendered. The army were allowed free

passage to England on condition that they would not re-engage in the

war. The Americans got 35 superb cannon and 4,000 muskets. The Sunday

after the surrender, Timothy Dwight, afterward President of Yale

College, preached to Gates's soldiers from Joel ii. 20, "I will remove

far off from you the northern army."

Gates deserved little credit for the defeat of Burgoyne. Put forward by

New England influence against Schuyler, the favorite of New York, he but

reaped the results of the labors of Herkimer at Oriskany, of Stark at

Bennington, and of Schuyler in obstructing Burgoyne's advance and in

raising a sufficient army. Even in the two battles of Stillwater Gates

did next to nothing, not even appearing on the field. Arnold and Morgan

were the soul of the army on both days. Arnold's gallant conduct was at

once rewarded by a major-generalship. Schuyler, underrated and even

maligned in his day, had to wait for the approval of posterity, which he

has now fully obtained.

The surrender of Burgoyne was the most important event of the war up to

that time. It was of immense service at home, raising the country out of

the despondency which followed upon Brandywine and Germantown. Abroad it

disheartened England, and decided France to acknowledge the independence

of America and to send military aid. From the end of this year, 1777,

victory over England was a practical certainty.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SOUTHERN CAMPAIGNS

[1778]

After the summer of 1778 little of military importance occurred at the

North. July and November of that year were marked by bloody Indian

massacres at Wyoming, Pa., and Cherry Valley, N. Y., the worst in all

that border warfare which was incessant from the beginning to the end of

the Revolution. In August an unsuccessful attempt to regain Newport was

made by General Sullivan, co-operating with a French fleet under

D'Estaing. In the spring and summer of 1779, Clinton, who lay at New

York with a considerable army, closely watched by Washington, sent out

to Connecticut and the coasts of Virginia a number of plundering

expeditions which did much damage. "Mad Anthony Wayne" led a brilliant

attack against Stony Point on the Hudson, captured the British garrison,

and destroyed the fortifications. This year was also marked by a great

naval victory. Paul Jones lashed his vessel, the Bonhomme Richard, to

the British Serapis, off the northeast coast of England, and after a

desperate fight of three hours forced the Serapis to surrender.

But the brunt of the war now fell on the South, where the British,

unsuccessful in the Northern and Middle States, hoped for an easy

conquest. The capture of Savannah in December, 1778, and of Augusta the

next month, laid Georgia prostrate. The royal government was re-instated

by Prevost, the British general. Our General Lincoln, who had been

placed in command of the Southern army, assisted by D'Estaing with his

fleet, besieged Savannah, but on October 9, 1779, was repulsed with

heavy loss.

[1780]

In the spring of 1780 Clinton arrived from New York with a fleet and

troops. Charleston, S. C, was besieged by land and sea. Lincoln was

compelled to surrender with his whole army. Beaufort, Ninety-Six, and

Camden capitulated in rapid succession. Marauding expeditions overran

the State. President Andrew Jackson carried to his grave scars of hurts,

one on his head, another on his hand, given him by Tarleton's men when

he was a boy at Waxhaw. The patriots lay helpless. The loyalists

organized as militia and joined the British. Clinton, elated by success,

hoped to force the entire population into allegiance to the king. The

estates of patriots were sequestered. Any Carolinian found in arms

against the king might be, and multitudes were, hung for treason.

Clinton even issued a proclamation requiring all inhabitants to take

active part on the royalist side. Sumter, Marion, and other leaders,

gathering around them little companies of bold men, carried on a

guerilla warfare which proved very annoying to the British. They would

sally forth from their hiding-places in the swamps, surprise some

British outpost or cut off  some detachment, and retreat with their

booty and prisoners before pursuit could be made.

John Paul Jones's Medal.

"Joanni Pavlo Jones"   "Classis Praefecto."  "Comitia American"

John Paul Jones's Medal (Reverse).

"HOSTIVM NAVIBVS"  "CAPTIS AVTFVCATTS"

"AD ORAM SCOTIAE XXIII SEPT."

"MDCCLXXVIII."

"Dupre E"

But the British army in South Carolina and Georgia was 7,000 strong.

Help must come from without. And help was coming. Washington detached

from his scanty army 2,000 Maryland troops and the Delaware

regiment--all veterans--and sent them south under De Kalb, a brave

officer of German blood, who had seen long service in France. Virginia,

though herself exposed, nobly contributed arms and men. Gates, the

laurels of Saratoga still fresh upon his brow, was, against Washington's

judgment, appointed by Congress to succeed Lincoln.

Cornwallis, whom the return of Clinton to New York had left in command,

lay at Camden, S. C. Gates, as if he had but to look the Briton in the

eye to beat him, pompously assumed the offensive. On August 15th he made

a night march to secure a more favorable position near Camden.

Cornwallis happened to have chosen  the same night for an attack upon

Gates. The two armies unexpectedly met in the woods, nine miles from

Camden, early in the morning of the 16th. Gates's force, increased by

North Carolina militia, was between 3,000 and 4,000. Cornwallis had

about 2,000. The American position was strong, a swamp protecting both

flanks, but at the first bayonet charge of the British veterans the raw

militia threw away their guns and "ran like a torrent." The Maryland and

Delaware Continentals stood their ground bravely, but were finally

obliged to retreat. De Kalb fell, with eleven wounds.

General Sullivan.

This heroic foreigner had been sent hither by Choiseul before the

Revolution to report to the French minister on American affairs, and at

the outbreak of war had at great cost cast in his lot with our fathers.

Sent south to aid Lincoln, he arrived only in time to be utilized by

Gates. De Kalb was the hero of Camden. Wounded and his horse shot from

under him, on foot he led his stanch division in a charge which drove

Rawdon's men and took fifty prisoners. Believing his side victorious he

would not yield, though literally ridden down by Cornwallis' dragoons,

till his wounds exhausted him. Two-fifths of his noble division fell

with him.

The whole army was pursued for miles  and completely scattered. Arms,

knapsacks, broken wagons, dead horses strewed the line of retreat. The

Americans lost 900 killed and as many more prisoners. The British loss

was less than 500. Gates, who had been literally borne off the field by

the panic-stricken militia, rode in all haste two hundred miles north to

Hillsborough, N. C, where he tried to organize a new army.

General Lincoln.

The gloom created at the North by this defeat was deepened by the

startling news that Benedict Arnold, the hero of Saratoga, had turned

traitor. Smarting under a reprimand from Washington for misconduct,

Arnold agreed with Clinton to surrender West Point. The plot was

discovered by the capture of Clinton's agent, Major Andre, who was hung

as a spy. Arnold escaped to the British lines.

There was now no organized American force in the Carolinas, and

Cornwallis began a triumphant march northward. The brave mountaineers of

North Carolina and Virginia rose in arms. October 7th, 1,000 riflemen

fell upon a detachment of 1,100 British, strongly posted on King's

Mountain, N. C, and after a sharp struggle killed and wounded about 400,

and took the rest prisoners. In this battle fell one of the Tory

ancestors of the since distinguished American De Peyster family.

The King's Mountain victory filled the patriots with new hope and zeal,

and kept the loyalists from rising to support the British. Cornwallis

marched south again.

General Marion in Camp.

Gates was now removed and General Nathaniel Greene placed in charge of

the Southern department. Greene was one of the most splendid figures in

the Revolution. Son of a Rhode Island Quaker, bred a blacksmith,

ill-educated save-by private study, which in mathematics, history, and

law he had carried far, he was in 1770 elected to the legislature of his

colony. Zeal to fight England for colonial liberty lost him his place in

the Friends' Society. Heading Rhode Island's contingent to join

Washington before Boston at the first shock of Revolutionary arms, he

was soon made brigadier, the initial step in his rapid promotion.

Showing himself an accomplished fighter at Trenton, Princeton,

Germantown, Monmouth, and the battle of Rhode Island, and a first-rate

organizer as quartermaster-general of the army, he had long been

Washington's right-hand man; and his superior now sent him south with

high hopes and ringing words of recommendation to the army and people

there.

Marquis de Lafayette.

[1781]

Greene's plan of campaign was the reverse of Gates's. He meant to harass

and hinder the enemy at every step, avoiding pitched battles. January

17, 1781, a portion of his army, about 1,000 strong, under the famous

General Daniel Morgan, of Virginia, another hero of Saratoga, was

attacked at Cowpens, S. C., by an equal number of British under the

dashing Tarleton. The British, riddled by a terrible cross-fire from

Morgan's unerring riflemen, followed up by a bayonet charge, fled, and

were for twenty-four miles pursued by cavalry. The American loss was

trifling. Tarleton lost 300 in killed and wounded, and 500 prisoners,

besides 100 horses, 35 wagons, and 800 muskets.

Benedict Arnold.

Cornwallis began a second march northward. Greene's force was too weak

to risk a battle. His soldiers were poorly clad, and most of them were

without tents or shoes. He therefore skillfully retreated across North

Carolina, chased by Cornwallis. Twice the rivers, rising suddenly after

Greene had crossed, checked his pursuers. But on March 15th, re-enforced

to about 4,000, the Quaker general offered battle to Cornwallis at

Guilford Court-House, N. C. He drew up his forces on a wooded hill in

three lines one behind the other. The first line, consisting of raw

North Carolina militia, fled before the British bayonet charge, hardly

firing a shot. The Virginia brigade constituting the second line made a

brave resistance, but was soon driven back. On swept the British

columns, flushed with victory, against the third line. Here Greek met

Greek. The Continentals stood their ground like the veterans they were.

After a long and bloody fight the British were driven back. The

fugitives, however, presently rallied under cover of theartillery, when

Greene, fearing to risk more, withdrew from the field. The British lost

500; the Americans, 400, besides a large part of the militia, who

dispersed to their homes. Cornwallis, with his "victorious but ruined

army," retreated to the southern part of the State. The last of April he

forsook Carolina, and marched into Virginia with 1,400 men.

Arnold's Escape.

Greene, his force reduced to 1,800, carried the war into South Carolina.

Defeated at Hobkirk's Hill, near Camden, and compelled by the approach

of General Rawdon to raise the siege of Ninety-Six, he retreated north.

Meantime Marion and Lee had brought about the evacuation of Camden and

Augusta. Rawdon soon evacuated Ninety-Six, and moved toward the coast,

followed by Greene.

A ceaseless guerilla warfare was kept up, attended with many

barbarities. Slave-stealing was a favorite pursuit on both sides. It is

noteworthy that the followers of Sumter, fighting in the cause of

freedom, were paid largely in slaves. The whole campaign was marked by

severities unknown at the North. The British shot as deserters all who,

having once accepted royal protection, were taken in arms against the

king. In a few cases Americans dealt similarly with Americans fighting

for the British, but in general their procedure was infinitely the more

humane.

General Nathaniel Greene.

The battle of Eutaw Springs practically ended the war in the South. The

British were victorious, but all the advantages of the battle accrued to

the Americans. The British loss was nearly 1,000; the American, 600. In

ten months Greene had driven the British from all Georgia and the

Carolinas except Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah.

Destiny decreed that Washington should strike the last blow for his

country's freedom on the soil of his own State. Cornwallis found himself

in Virginia, the last of May, at the head of 7,000 troops. He ravaged

the State, destroying $10,000,000 worth of property. Lafayette, pitted

against him with 3,000 men, could do little. In August Cornwallis

withdrew into Yorktown, and began fortifications. Lafayette's quick eye

saw that the British general had caged himself. Posting his army so as

to prevent Cornwallis's escape, he advised Washington to hasten with his

army to Virginia. Meanwhile a French fleet blocked up the mouth of

Chesapeake Bay and of James River and York River, cutting off

Cornwallis's escape by water. The last of September Washington's army,

accompanied by the French troops under Rochambeau, appeared before

Yorktown. Clinton, deceived by Washington into the belief that New York

was to be attacked, was still holding that city with 18,000 men. The

American army, 16,000 strong--7,000 French--began a regular siege.

Cornwallis was doomed.

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

General Daniel Morgan.

Two advanced redoubts of the British works were soon carried by a

brilliant assault in which the French and the American troops won equal

honors. On the 19th Cornwallis surrendered. The captive army, numbering

7,247, marched with cased colors between two long lines of American and

French troops, and laid down their arms.

The news of Cornwallis's surrender flew like wild-fire over the country.

Everywhere the victory was hailed as virtually ending the war. Bonfires

and booming cannon told of the joy of the people. Congress assembled,

and marching to church in a body, not as a mere form, we may well

believe, gave thanks to the God of battles, so propitious at last.

CHAPTER VII.

PEACE

[1782]

The peace party and spirit in England increased month by month.

Burgoyne's surrender had dissipated the hope of speedily suppressing the

rebellion. And as the war dragged on and Englishmen by bitter experience

came to realize the bravery, endurance, and national feeling of the

Americans, the conviction spread that three millions of such people,

separated from the mother-country by three thousand miles of boisterous

ocean, could never be conquered by force. Discouragement arose, too,

from the ill conduct of the war. There was no broad plan or consistency

in management. Generals did not agree or co-operate, and were changed

too often. Clinton and Cornwallis hated each other. Burgoyne superseded

Carleton, a better man. But for Lord Germain's "criminal negligence" in

waiting to go upon a visit before sending the proper orders, Clinton

might have met and saved Burgoyne.

There were enormous and needless expenses. By 1779 England's national

debt had increased 63,000,000 pounds; by 1782 it had doubled. Rents were

declining. The price of land had fallen one-third. Hence the war became

unpopular with the landed aristocracy. British manufacturers suffered by

the narrowing of their foreign markets. American privateers, prowling in

all seas, had captured hundreds of British merchant-men. English

sentiment, too, revolted at certain features of the war. Ravaging and

the use of mercenaries and Indians were felt to be barbarous. Time made

clearer the initial error of the government in invoking war over the

doubtful right of taxing America. An increasing number of lawyers took

the American view. Practical men figured out that each year of

hostilities cost more than the proposed tax would have yielded in a

century.

In February, 1778, Parliament almost unanimously adopted proposals to

restore the state of things which existed in America before the war, at

the same time declaring its intention not to exercise its right of

taxing the colonies. Washington spoke for America when he said, "Nothing

but independence will now do." The proposals were rejected by Congress

and by the States separately.

England's difficulties were greatly increased by the help extended to

America from abroad. France, eager for revenge on England, early in the

war lent secret aid by money and military supplies. Later, emboldened by

the defeat of Burgoyne, the French Government recognized the United

States as an independent nation. By a treaty, offensive and defensive,

the two nations bound themselves to fight together for that

independence, neither to conclude a separate peace.

The benefit from this treaty was moral and financial rather than

martial. At Yorktown, to be sure, the French forces rendered invaluable

aid. Without De Grasse's French fleet at the mouths of the York and

James rivers, the British might have relieved Cornwallis by sea. But

Congress needed money more than foreign soldiers, and without France's

liberal loans it is difficult to see how the government could have

struggled through.

Spain, too, joined the alliance of France and the United States and

declared war against England, though from no love for the young

republic. This action hastened the growth of public opinion in England

against the continuance of the American war. In the House of Commons,

Lord Cavendish made a motion for ordering home the troops. Lord North,

prime minister, threw out hints that it was useless to continue the war.

But George III., summoning his ministers, declared his unchanging

resolution never to yield to the rebels, and continued prodding the

wavering North to stumble on in his stupid course.

It was struggling against fate. The next year saw Holland at war with

England, while Catherine, Empress of Russia, was actively organizing the

Armed Neutrality, by which all the other states of Europe leagued

together to resist England's practice of stopping vessels on the high

seas and searching them for contraband goods.

Lord Cornwallis.

England was now involved in four wars, without money to carry them on.

North's majorities in Parliament grew steadily smaller. No doubt much of

the opposition was simply factious and partisan, but it had, after all,

solid basis in principle. England was fighting her own

policy--economically, for she was destined to free trade, and

politically, inasmuch as the freedom which our fathers sought was

nothing but English freedom.

The surrender of Cornwallis tipped the scale. Lord North, when he heard

the news, paced the room in agony, exclaiming again and again, "O God,

it is all over!" The House of Commons, without even a division, resolved

to "consider as enemies to His Majesty and the country" all who should

advise a further prosecution of the war. North resigned, and Shelburne,

Secretary of State in the new ministry, hastened to open peace

negotiations with Franklin at Paris.

Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin, now venerable with years, had been doing at the court

of Versailles a work hardly less important than that of Washington on

the battlefields of America. By the simple grace and dignity of his

manners, by his large good sense and freedom of thought, by his fame as

a scientific discoverer, above all by his consummate tact in the

management of men, the whilom printer, king's postmaster-general for

America, discoverer, London colonial agent, delegate in the Continental

Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, had completely

captivated elegant, free-thinking France. Learned and common folk, the

sober and the frivolous alike, swore by Franklin. Snuff-boxes,

furniture, dishes, even stoves, were gotten up a la Franklin. The old

man's portrait was in every house. That the French Government, in spite

of a monarch who was half afraid of the rising nation beyond sea, had

given America her hearty support, was in no small measure due to the

influence of Franklin. And his skill in diplomacy was of the greatest

value in the negotiations now pending.

These were necessarily long and tedious, but Jay, Franklin's colleague,

made them needlessly so by his finical refusal to treat till England had

acknowledged our independence by a separate act. This, indeed,

jeopardized peace itself, since Shelburne's days of ministerial power

were closing, and his successor was sure to be less our friend. Jay at

last receded, a compromise being arrived at by which the treaty was to

open with a virtual recognition of independence in acknowledging Adams,

Franklin, and Jay as "plenipotentiaries," that is, agents of a sovereign

power. Boundaries, fishery rights, and the treatment of loyalists and

their property were the chief bones of contention.

As the negotiations wore on it became apparent that Spain and France,

now that their vengeance was sated against England by our independence,

were more unfriendly to our territorial enlargement than England itself.

There still exists a map on which Spain's minister had indicated what he

wished to make our western bound. The line follows nearly the meridian

of Pittsburgh. This attitude of those powers excused our

plenipotentiaries, though bound by our treaty with France not to

conclude peace apart from her, for making the preliminary arrangements

with England privately. At last, on November 30, 1782, Franklin, Jay,

and John Adams set their signatures to preliminary articles, which were

incorporated in a treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United

States, France, and Spain, signed at Paris on September 3, 1783. David

Hartley signed for England. Our Congress ratified on February 14, 1784.

The treaty recognized the independence of the United States. It

established as boundaries nearly the present Canadian line on the north,

the Mississippi on the west, and Florida, which now returned to Spain

and extended to the Mississippi, on the south. Despite the wishes of

Spain, the free navigation of the Mississippi, from source to mouth, was

guaranteed to the United States and Great Britain. Fishery rights

received special attention. American fishermen were granted the

privilege of fishing, as before the war, on the banks of Newfoundland,

in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in all other places in the sea where

the inhabitants of both countries had been accustomed to fish. Liberty

was also granted to take fish on such parts of the coast of Newfoundland

as British fishermen should use, and on the coasts, bays, and creeks of

all other British dominions in America. American fishermen could dry and

cure fish on the unsettled parts of Nova Scotia, Labrador, and the

Magdalen Islands. America agreed, for the protection of British

creditors, that debts contracted before the war should be held valid,

and should be payable in sterling money. It was also stipulated that

Congress should earnestly recommend to the several States the

restitution of all confiscated property belonging to loyalists.

"Done at Paris, this third Day of September,

In the Year of our Lord one thousand and seven hundred & eighty three.--

D. Hartley, John Adams, B. Franklin, John Jay"

Facsimile of Signatures to Treaty of Peace

[1783]

Peace came like a heavenly benediction to the country and the army,

exhausted by so long and so fierce a struggle. No general engagement

took place after the siege of Yorktown; but the armies kept close watch

upon each other, and minor skirmishes were frequent. Washington's 10,000

men were encamped near the Hudson, to see that Clinton's forces in New

York did no harm. In the South, Greene's valiant band, aided by Wayne

and his rangers, without regular food or pay, kept the British cooped up

in Charleston and Augusta.

Congress in due time declared cessation of hostilities, and on April 19,

1783, just eight years from the battle of Lexington, Washington read the

declaration at the headquarters of his army. The British had evacuated

Charleston the previous December. In July, Savannah saw the last of the

redcoats file out, and the British troops were collected at New York. On

November 25th, Sir Guy Carleton, who had superseded Clinton, embarked

with his entire army, besides a throng of refugees, in boats for Long

Island and Staten Island, where they soon took ship for England. "The

imperial standard of Great Britain fell at the fort over which it had

floated for a hundred and twenty years, and in its place the Stars and

Stripes of American Independence flashed in the sun. Fleet and army,

royal flag and scarlet uniform, coronet and ribbon, every sign and

symbol of foreign authority, which from Concord to Saratoga and from

Saratoga to Yorktown had sought to subdue the colonies, vanished from

these shores. Colonial and provincial America had ended, national

America had begun."

The American troops took possession of New York amid the huzzas of the

people and the roar of cannon. On November 25th, Washington with his

suite, surrounded by grateful and admiring throngs, made a formal entry

into the city whence he had been compelled to flee seven years before.

The time had now come when the national hero might lay down the great

burden which he had borne with herculean strength and courage through so

many years of distress and gloom. On December 4th he joined his

principal officers at the popular Fraunces's Tavern, near the Battery,

to bid them farewell. Tears filled every eye. Even Washington could not

master his feelings, as one after another the heroes who had been with

him upon the tented field and in so many moments of dreadful strife drew

near to press his hand. They followed him through ranks of parading

infantry to the Whitehall ferry, where he boarded his barge, and waving

his hat in a last, voiceless farewell, crossed to the Jersey shore.

Arrived at Annapolis after a journey which had been one long ovation,

the saviour of his country appeared before Congress, December 23d, to

resign the commission which he had so grandly fulfilled. His address was

in noble key, but abbreviated by choking emotion. The President of

Congress having replied in fitting words, Washington withdrew, and

continued his journey to the long-missed peace and seclusion of his

Mount Vernon home.

CHAPTER VIII.

AMERICAN MANHOOD IN THE REVOLUTION

[1775-1781]

It would be foolish to say that the Revolutionary soldiers never

quailed. Militia too often gave way before the steady bayonet charge of

British regulars, at times fleeing panic-stricken. Troops whose term of

service was out would go home at critical moments. Hardships and lack of

pay in a few instances led to mutiny and desertion. But the marvel is

that they fought so bravely, endured so much, and complained so little.

One reason was the patriotism of the people at large behind them.

Soldiers who turned their backs on Boston, leaving Washington in the

lurch, were refused food along the road home. Women placed rifles in the

hands of husbands, sons, or lovers, and said "Go!"

The rank and file in this war, coming from farm, work-bench,

logging-camp, or fisher's boat, had a superb physical basis for camp and

field life. Used to the rifle from boyhood, they kept their powder dry

and made every one of their scanty bullets tell. The Revolutionary

soldier's splendid courage has glorified a score of battle-fields; while

Valley Forge, with its days of hunger and nights of cold, its sick-beds

on the damp ground, and its bloody footprints in the snow, tell of his

patient endurance.

At Bunker Hill an undisciplined body of farmers, ill-armed, weary,

hungry and thirsty, calmly awaited the charge of old British

campaigners, and by a fire of dreadful precision drove them back. "They

may talk of their Mindens and their Fontenoys," said the British

general, Howe, "but there was no such fire there." At Charleston, while

the wooden fort shook with the British broadsides, Moultrie and his

South Carolina boys, half naked in the stifling heat, through twelve

long hours smoked their pipes and carefully pointed their guns. At Long

Island, to gain time for the retreat of the rest, five Maryland

companies flew again and again in the face of the pursuing host. At

Monmouth, eight thousand British were in hot pursuit of the retreating

Americans. Square in their front Washington planted two Pennsylvania and

Maryland regiments, saying, "Gentlemen, I depend upon you to hold the

ground until I can form the main army." And hold it they did.

Heroism grander than that of the battlefield, which can calmly meet an

ignominious death, was not lacking. Captain Nathan Hale, a quiet,

studious spirit, just graduated from Yale College, volunteered to enter

the British lines on Long Island as a spy. He was caught, and soon swung

from an apple tree in Colonel Rutgers's orchard, a corpse. Bible and

religious ministrations denied him, his letters to mother and sister

destroyed, women standing by and sobbing, he met his fate without a

tremor. "I only regret," comes his voice from yon rude scaffold, "that I

have but one life to give for my country." It is a shame that America so

long had no monument to this heroic man. One almost rejoices that the

British captain, Cunningham, author of the cruelty to Hale, himself met

death on the gallows, in London, 1791. How different from Hale's the

treatment bestowed upon Andre, the British spy who fell into our hands.

He was fed from Washington's table, and supported to his execution by

every manifestation of sympathy for his suffering.

John Paul Jones.

The stanch and useful loyalty of the New England clergy in the

Revolution has been much dwelt upon--none too much, however. With them

should be mentioned the Rev. James Caldwell, Presbyterian pastor at

Elizabeth, N. J., who, when English soldiers raided the town, and its

defenders were short of wadding, tore up his hymn-book for their use,

urging: "Give them Watts, boys, give them Watts."

No fiercer naval battle was ever fought than when Jones, in the old and

rotten Bon Homme Richard, grappled with the new British frigate Serapis.

Yard-arm to yardarm, port-hole to port-hole, the fight raged for hours.

Three times both vessels were on fire. The Serapis's guns tore a

complete breach in the Richard from main-mast to stern. The Richard was

sinking, but the intrepid Jones fought on, and the Serapis struck.

Fight between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis.

As the roll of Revolutionary officers is called, what matchless figures

file past the mind's eye! We see stalwart Ethan Allen entering

Ticonderoga too early in the morning to find its commander in a

presentable condition, and demanding possession "in the name of Almighty

God and the Continental Congress "--destined, himself, in a few months,

to be sailing down the St. Lawrence in irons, bound for long captivity

in England. We behold gallant Prescott leisurely promenading the Bunker

Hill parapet to inspirit his men, shot and shell hurtling thick around.

There is Israel Putnam--"Old Put" the boys dubbed him. He was no

general, but we forgive his costly blunders at Brooklyn Heights and

Peekskill as we think of him leaving plough in furrow at the drum-beat

to arms, and speeding to the deadly front at Boston, or with iron

firmness stemming the retreat from Bunker Hill. Young Richard Montgomery

might have been next to Washington in the war but for Sir Guy Carleton's

deadly grape-shot from the Quebec walls the closing moments of 1775.

Buried at Quebec, his remains were transferred by the State of New York,

July 8, 1818, to their present resting-place in front of St. Paul's, New

York City, the then aged widow tearfully watching the funeral barge as

it floated past Montgomery Place on the Hudson.

General Anthony Wayne.

During a four years' apprenticeship under Washington, General Greene had

caught more of his master's spirit and method than did any other

American leader, and one year's separate command at the South gave him a

martial fame second only to Washington's own. In him the great chief's

word was fulfilled, "I send you a general." A naked, starving army, an

empty military chest, the surrounding country impoverished and full of

loyalists--these were his difficulties. Three States practically cleared

of the royal army in ten months--this was his achievement. He retreated

only to advance, was beaten only to fight again. One hardly knows which

to admire most, his tireless energy and vigilance, his prudence in

retreat, his boldness and vigor in attack, his cheerful courage in

defeat, or his mingled kindness and firmness toward a suffering and

mutinous army.

John Stark, eccentric but true, famous for cool courage--how stubbornly,

with his New Hampshire boys, he held the rail fence at Bunker Hill, and

covered the retreat when ammunition was gone! But Stark's most brilliant

deed was at Bennington. "There they are, boys--the redcoats, and by

night they're ours, or Molly Stark's a widow." Those "boys," without

bayonets, their artillery shooting stones for balls, were little more

than a mob. But with confidence in him, on they rush, up, over, sweeping

Baume's Hessians from the field like a tornado. The figure of General

Schuyler comes before us--quieter but not less noble, an invalid, set to

hard tasks with little glory. His magnanimous soul forgets self in

country as he cheerfully gives all possible help to Gates, his

supplanter, and puts the torch to his own grain-fields at Saratoga lest

they feed the foe.

The Encounter between Tarleton and Colonel Washington.

And matchless Dan Morgan of Virginia, with his band of riflemen, tall,

sinewy fellows, in hunting-shirts, leggins, and moccasins, each with

hatchet, hunter's knife, and rifle, dead sure to hit a man's head every

time at two hundred and fifty yards. It was one of these men who shot

the gallant Briton, Fraser, at Bemis's Heights. Morgan became the ablest

leader of light troops then living. How gallantly he headed the forlorn

hope under the icy walls of Quebec, where he was taken prisoner, and at

Saratoga with his shrill whistle and stentorian voice called his

dauntless braves where the fight was thickest! But Cowpens was Morgan's

crowning feat. Inspiring militia and veterans alike with a courage they

had never felt before, he routs Tarleton's trained band of horse, and

then, skilful in retreat as he had been bold in fight, laughs at baffled

Cornwallis's rage.

Gladly would one form fuller acquaintance with other Revolutionary

leaders: Stirling, Sullivan, Sumter, Mad Anthony Wayne, of Monmouth and

Stony Point fame, Glover with his brave following of  Marblehead

fishermen, who, able to row as well as shoot, manned the oars that

critical night when General Washington crossed to Trenton. But space is

too brief. Colonel Washington, the dashing cavalryman, was the Custer of

the Revolution. All the patriot ladies idolized him. In a hot

sword-fight with the Colonel, Tarleton had had three fingers nearly

severed. Subsequently in conversation with a South Carolina lady

Tarleton said: "Why do you ladies so lionize Colonel Washington? He is

an ignorant fellow. He can hardly write his name." "But you are a

witness that he can make his mark," was the reply.

DeKalb Wounded at Camden.

DeKalb was an American, too--by adoption. It is related that he

expostulated with Gates for fighting so unprepared at Camden, and that

Gates intimated cowardice. "Tomorrow will tell, sir, who is the coward,"

the old fellow rejoined. And tomorrow did tell. As the battle reddened,

exit Gates from Camden and from fame. We have recounted elsewhere how

like a bull De Kalb held the field. A monster British grenadier rushed

on him, bayonet fixed. DeKalb parried, at the same time burying his

sword in the grenadier's breast so deep that he was unable to extract

it. Then seizing the dead man's weapon he fought on, thrusting right and

left, till at last, overpowered by numbers, he slipped and fell,

mortally hurt.

Among the civilian heroes of the Revolution, Robert Morris, the

financier, deserves exceeding praise. Now turning over the lead ballast

of his ships for bullets, now raising $50,000 on his private credit and

sending it to Washington in the nick of time, now leading the country

back to specie payment in season to save the national credit, the

Philadelphia banker aided the cause as much as the best general in the

field.

Faithful and successful envoys as Jay and John Adams were, the

Revolution brought to light one, and only one, true master in the

difficult art of diplomacy--Franklin. Wise with a lifetime's shrewd

observation, venerable with years, preceded by his fame as scientist and

Revolutionary statesman, grand in his plain dignity, the Philadelphia

printer stood unabashed before the throne of France, and carried king

and diplomats with an art that surprised Europe's best-trained

courtiers. Never missing an opportunity, he yet knew, by delicate

intuition, when to speak and when to hold his tongue. Through

concession, intrigue, and delay, his resolute will kept steady to its

purpose. To please by yielding is easy. To carry one's point and be

pleasing still, requires genius. This Franklin did--how successfully,

our treaty of alliance with France and our treaty of peace with England

splendidly attested.

Towering above Revolutionary soldier, general, and statesman stands a

figure summing up in himself all these characters and much more. That

figure is George Washington, the most perfect human personality the

world has known. Washington's military ability has been much underrated.

He was hardly more First in Peace than First in War. That he had

physical courage and could give orders calmly while bullets whizzed all

about, one need not repeat. He was strategist and tactician too. Trenton

and Yorktown do not cover his whole military record. With troops

inferior in every single respect except natural valor, he

out-generalled Howe in 1776, and he almost never erred when acting upon

his own good judgment instead of yielding to Congress or to his

subordinates. His movements on the Delaware even such a captain as

Frederick the Great declared "the most brilliant achievements in the

annals of military action." Washington advised against the attempt to

hold Fort Washington, which failed; against the Canada campaign, which

failed; against Gates for commander in the South, who failed; and in

favor of Greene for that post, who succeeded. His army was indeed driven

back in several battles, but never broken up. At Monmouth his plan was

perfect, and it seems that he must have captured Clinton but for the

treason of Charles Lee, set, by Congress's wish, to command the van.

Indeed, of Washington's military career, "take it all in all, its long

duration, its slender means, its vast theatre, its glorious aims and

results, there is no parallel in history." [Footnote: Winthrop,

Washington Monument Oration. February 23, 1885.]

Yet we are right in never thinking of the Great Man first as a soldier,

he was so much besides. Washington's consummate intellectual trait was

sound judgment, only matched by the magnificent balance which subsisted

between his mental and his moral powers. "George had always been a good

son," his mother said. Nature had endowed him with intense passions and

ambitions, but neither could blind him or swerve him one hair from the

line of rectitude as he saw it. And he made painful and unremitting

effort to see it and see it correctly. He was approachable, but repelled

familiarity, and whoever attempted this was met with a perfectly

withering look. He rarely laughed, and he was without humor, though he

wrote and conversed well. He had the integrity of Aristides. His account

with Congress while general shows scrupulousness to the uttermost

farthing. To subordinate, to foe, even to malicious plotters against

him, he was almost guiltily magnanimous. He loved popularity, yet, if

conscious that he was right, would face public murmuring with heart of

flint. Became the most famous man alive, idolized at home, named by

every tongue in Europe, praised by kings and great ministers, who

compared him with Caesar, Charlemagne, and Alfred the Great, his head

swam not, but with steadfast heart and mind he moved on in the simple

pursuit of his country's weal. "In Washington's career," said Fisher

Ames, "mankind perceived some change in their ideas of greatness; the

splendor of power, and even the name of conqueror had grown dim in their

eyes." Lord Erskine wrote him: "You are the only being for whom I have

an awful reverence." "Until time shall be no more," said Lord Brougham,

"will a test of the progress which our race has made in Wisdom and

Virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of

Washington." And Mr. Gladstone: "If among all the pedestals supplied by

history for public characters of extraordinary nobility and purity I saw

one higher than all the rest, and if I were required at a moment's

notice to name the fittest occupant for it, my choice would light upon

WASHINGTON." [Footnote: See Winthrop's Oration for these and other

encomia.]

CHAPTER IX.

THE OLD CONFEDERATION

[1781]

The Revolutionary Congress was less a government than an exigency

committee. It had no authority save in tacit general consent. Need of an

express and permanent league was felt at an early date. Articles of

Confederation, framed by Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, were adopted by

Congress in November, 1777. They were then submitted to the State

Legislatures for ratification. By the spring of 1779 all the States but

Maryland had given their approval. Upon the accession of the latter, on

March 1, 1781, the articles went into effect at once.

The Confederation bound the States together into a "firm league of

friendship" for common defence and welfare, and this "union" was to be

"perpetual."  Each State retained its "sovereignty" and "independence,"

as well as every power not "expressly delegated" to the central

Government. Inhabitants of each State were entitled to all the

privileges of citizens in the several States. Criminals fleeing from one

State to another were to be returned.

Congress was composed of delegates chosen annually, each State being

represented by not less than two or more than seven. Each State had but

one vote, whatever the number of its delegates.

Taxation and the regulation of commerce were reserved to the State

Governments. On the other hand, Congress alone could declare peace or

war, make treaties, coin money, establish a post-office, deal with

Indians outside of the States, direct the army, and appoint generals and

naval officers. Many other things affecting all the States alike,

Congress alone could do. It was to erect courts for trial of felonies

and piracies on the high seas, and appoint judges for the settlement of

disputes between the States. It was to make estimates for national

expenses, and request of each State its quota of revenue.

To amend the Articles, the votes of the entire thirteen States were

demanded. Important lesser measures--such as those regarding war or

peace, treaties, coinage, loans, appropriations--required the consent of

nine States. Upon other questions a majority was sufficient. A

committee, composed of one delegate from each State, was to sit during

the recess of Congress, having the general superintendence of national

affairs.

The faults of the Confederation were numerous and great. Three

outshadowed the rest: Congress could not enforce its will, could not

collect a revenue, could not regulate commerce.

Congress could not touch individuals; it must act through the State

Governments, and these it had no power to coerce. Five States, for

instance, passed laws which violated the treaty provision about payment

of British creditors; yet Congress could do nothing but remonstrate.

Hence its power to make treaties was almost a nullity. European nations

did not wish to treat with a Government that could not enforce its

promises.

Congress could make requisition upon the States for revenue, but had no

authority to collect a single penny. The States complied or not as they

chose. In October, 1781, Congress asked for $8,000,000; in January,

1783, it had received less than half a million. Lack of revenue made the

Government continually helpless and often contemptible.

Yet in spite of their looseness and other faults, the adoption of the

Articles of Confederation was a forward step in American public law.

Their greatest value was this: they helped to keep before the States the

thought of union, while at the same time, by their very inefficiency,

they proved the need of a stronger government to make union something

more than a thought. The years immediately after the war were an

extremely critical period. The colonies had indeed passed through the

Red Sea, but the wilderness still lay before them. The great danger

which had driven them into union being past, State pride and jealousy

broke out afresh. "My State," not "my country," was the foremost thought

in most minds. There was serious danger that each State would go its own

way, and firm union come, if at all, only after years of weakness and

disaster, if not of war. The unfriendly nations of Europe were eagerly

anticipating such result. At this juncture the Articles of

Confederation, framed during the war when union was felt to be

imperative, did invaluable service. They solemnly committed the States

to perpetual union. Their provisions for extradition of criminals and

for inter-State citizenship helped to break down the barriers between

State and State. Congress, by discharging its various duties on behalf

of all the States, kept steadily before the public mind the idea of a

national government, armed with at least a semblance of authority.

The Franklin Penny.

"United States" "We Are One"

"Fugio"  "1787"  "Mind Your Business"

[1783]

The war had cost about $150,000,000. In 1783 the debt was

$42,000,000--$8,000,000 owed in France and Holland, and the rest at

home. The States contributed in so niggardly a way that even the

interest could not be paid. Five millions were owing to the army. Deep

and ominous discontent spread among officers and men. An obscure

colonel, supposed to be the agent of more prominent men, wrote to

Washington, advocating a monarchy as the only salvation for the country,

and inviting him to become king. In the spring of 1783 an anonymous

address, of menacing tone, was circulated in the army, calling upon it

for measures to force its rights from an ungrateful country.

[1785]

That the army disbanded quietly at last, with only three months' pay, in

certificates depreciated nine-tenths, was due almost wholly to the

boundless influence of Washington. How powerless the Government would

have been to resist an uprising of the army, was shown by a humiliating

incident. In June, 1783, a handful of Pennsylvania troops, clamoring for

their pay, besieged the doors of Congress, and that august body had to

take refuge in precipitate flight.

The country suffered greatly for lack of uniform commercial laws. So

long as each State laid its own imposts, and goods free of duty in one

State might be practically excluded from another, Congress could

negotiate no valuable treaties of commerce abroad.

The chief immediate distress was from this wretchedness of our

commercial relations, whether foreign or between the States at home. If

our fathers would be independent, king and parliament were determined to

make them pay dearly for the privilege. Accordingly Great Britain laid

tariffs upon all our exports thither. What was much harder to bear, an

order of the king in council, July 2, 1783, utterly forbade American

ships to engage in that British West-Indian trade which had always been

a chief source of our wealth. The sole remedy for these abuses in

dealing with England at that time was retaliation, but Congress had no

authority to take retaliatory steps, while the separate States could not

or would not act sufficiently in harmony to do so. If one imposed

customs duties, another would open wide its ports, filling the markets

of the first with British goods by overland trade, so that the customs

law of the first availed nothing. If Pennsylvania and New York laid

tariffs on foreign commodities, New Jersey and Connecticut people, in

buying imported articles from Philadelphia or New York, were paying

taxes to those greater States. North Carolina was in the same manner a

forced tributary to South Carolina and Virginia, as were portions of

Connecticut and Massachusetts to Rhode Island.

Dollar of 1794.

The First United States Coin.

"Liberty"  "1794"  "United States of America"

We also needed a complete system of courts, departments for foreign and

Indian affairs, and an efficient executive. The single vote for each

State was unfair, allowing one-third of the people to defeat the will of

the rest. The article requiring the consent of nine States made it

almost impossible to get important measures through Congress. Delegates

should not have been paid by their respective States. In consequence of

this provision, coupled with other things, Congress decreased in numbers

and importance. In November, 1783, less than twenty delegates were

present, representing but seven States, and Congress had to appeal to

the recreant States to send back their representatives before the treaty

of peace could be ratified.

[1787]

But the one grand defect of the Confederation, underlying all others,

was lack of power. The Government was an engine without steam. The

States, just escaped from the tyranny of a king, would brook no new

authority strong enough to endanger their liberties. The result was a

thin ghost of a government set in charge over a lot of lusty

flesh-and-blood States.

The Confederation, however, did one piece of solid work worthy of

everlasting praise. The Northwest Territory, embracing what is now Ohio,

Indiana. Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, had been ceded to the Union

by the States which originally claimed it. July 13, 1787, Congress

adopted for the government of the territory the famous Ordinance of

1787. It provided for a governor, council, and judges, to be appointed

by Congress, and a house of representatives elected by the people. Its

shining excellence was a series of compacts between the States and the

territory, which guaranteed religious liberty, made grants of land and

other liberal provisions for schools and colleges, and forever

prohibited slavery in the territory or the States which should be made

out of it. Thus were laid broad and deep the foundation for the full and

free development of humanity in a region larger than the whole German

Empire.

The passing of the Ordinance was probably due in large measure to the

influence of the Ohio Company, a colonist society organized in Boston

the year before. It was composed of the flower of the Revolutionary

army, and had wealth, energy, and intelligence. When its agent appeared

before Congress to arrange for the purchase of five million acres of

land in the Ohio Valley, a bill for the government of the territory,

containing neither the antislavery clause nor the immortal principles of

the compacts, was on the eve of passage. The Company, composed mostly of

Massachusetts men, strongly desired their future home to be upon free

soil. Their influence prevailed with Congress, eager for revenue from

the sale of lands, and even the Southern members voted unanimously for

the remodelled ordinance. The establishment of a strong and enlightened

government in the territory led to its rapid settlement. Marietta, 0.,

was founded in April, 1788, and other colonies followed in rapid

succession.

CHAPTER X.

RISE OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION

[1787]

The anarchy succeeding the Revolution was as sad as the Revolution

itself had been glorious. The Articles of Confederation furnished

practically no government with which foreign nations could deal; England

still clung to the western posts, contrary to the treaty of peace, with

no power anywhere on this side to do more than protest; the debt of the

confederacy steadily piled up its unpaid interest; the land was flooded

with irredeemable paper money, state and national; the confederacy's

laws and constitution were ignored or trampled upon everywhere; and the

arrogance and self-seeking of the several States surpassed everything

but their own contemptible weakness.

In 1786 Shays' rebellion broke out in Massachusetts. Solid money was

very scarce, and paper all but worthless, yet many debts contracted on a

paper basis were pressed for payment in hard money. The farmers swore

that the incidence of taxes upon them was excessive, and upon the

merchants too light. But the all-powerful grievance was the sudden

change from the distressing monetary injustice during the Revolution,

with the consequent increase of debts, to a rigid enforcement of

debtors' claims afterward. At this period men were imprisoned for debt,

and all prisons were frightful holes, which one would as lief die as

enter. Meetings were held to air the popular griefs, and grew violent.

In August the court-house at Northampton was seized by a body of armed

men and the court prevented from sitting. Similar uprisings occurred at

Worcester, Springfield, and Concord. The leader in these movements was

Daniel Shays, a former captain in the continental army. Governor Bowdoin

finally called for volunteers to put down the rebellion, and placed

General Lincoln in command. After several minor engagements, in which

the insurgents were worsted, the decisive action took place at

Petersham, where, in February, 1787, the rebels were surprised by

Lincoln. A large number were captured, many more fled to their homes,

and the rest withdrew into the neighboring States. Vermont and Rhode

Island alone offered them a peaceful retreat, the other States giving up

the fugitives to Massachusetts.

A Scene at Springfield, during Shays' Rebellion, when the

mob attempted to prevent the holding of the Courts of Justice.

The Shays commotion, for a long time shaking one of the stanchest States

in the Confederation, well showed the need of a far stronger central

government than the old had been or could be made. Other influences

concurred to the same conviction. Washington's influence, which took

effect mainly through his inspired letter to the States on leaving the

army, was one of these. National feeling was also furthered by the

spread of two religious sects, the Baptists and the Methodists, up and

down the continent, whose missionary preachers, ignoring State lines and

prejudices, helped to destroy the latter in their hearers.

[1785]

During the Revolution, American Methodism had been an appanage of

England.  Wesley had discountenanced our effort at independence, and

when war broke out, all the Methodist preachers left the country, save

Asbury, who secreted himself somewhere in Delaware, waiting for better

days. But in 1784 this zealous body of Christians was organized as an

American affair, its clergy and laity after this displaying loyalty of

the most approved kind.

John Wesley.

Schemes had been mooted looking to a changed political order. A

proposition for a convention of the States to reform the Confederation

passed the New York Legislature in July, 1782, under the influence of

Alexander Hamilton; another passed that of Massachusetts, July, 1785,

urged by Governor Bowdoin; but because of too great love for state

independence and too little appreciation as yet of the serious nature of

the crisis, both motions failed of effect.

The idea of reform which found most favor, the only one which at first

had any chance of getting itself realized, was that of giving Congress

simply the additional power of regulating commerce. Even so moderate a

proposal as this had many enemies, especially in the South. Greatly to

her credit therefore as a Southern State, the purpose of amending the

old Articles in the direction indicated was first taken up in earnest by

Virginia. Her Legislature, soon after opening session in October, 1785,

listened to memorials from Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, and Alexandria,

upon the gloomy prospects of American trade, which led to a general

debate upon the subject. In this, Mr. Madison, by a speech far exceeding

in ability any other that was made, began that extended and memorable

career of efforts for enlarged function in our central government which

has earned him the title of the Father of the Constitution.

The result of this discussion was a bill directing the Virginia

delegation in Congress to propose amendment to the constitution giving

to Congress the needed additional power. The enemies of the bill,

however, succeeded in so modifying it by limiting the proposed grant of

power to a period of thirteen years, that Madison and its other abettors

turned against it and voted to lay it on the table.

There was in existence at this very time  a joint commission

representing Virginia and Maryland, which had been raised for the

purpose of determining what jurisdiction each of the two States had over

the Potomac and in Chesapeake Bay. Madison was one of the Virginia

commissioners. A meeting had been held on March 17, 1785, at which the

commissioners agreed in their report to transcend their instructions and

to recommend to the two States uniform monetary and commercial

regulations entire, including common export and import duties. They thus

reported, adding the still further recommendation that commissioners to

work out the details of such a plan be appointed each year till it

should be completed. The Maryland Legislature adopted the report, adding

the proposition that Delaware and Pennsylvania also should be invited to

enter the system and to send commissioners.

When the commissioners' report, with Maryland's action thereon, came

before the Virginia Legislature, Madison moved, as a substitute for the

mutilated bill which had been tabled previously, that the invitation to

take part in the commission go to all the States. The motion passed by a

large majority.

[1786]

Thus originated the Annapolis Convention of 1786. Nine States appointed

delegates; all but Connecticut, Maryland, and the two Carolinas; but of

the nine only Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York

actually sent them. As the powers granted the commissioners presupposed

a deputation from each of the States, those present, after mature

deliberation, deemed it inadvisable to proceed, drawing up instead an

urgent address to the States to take "speedy measures" for another,

fuller, convention to meet on the second Monday of May, 1787, for the

same purposes as had occasioned this one. Such was the mode in which the

memorable Federal Convention came about. Its seat was Philadelphia.

[1787]

The second Monday of May, 1787, which should have witnessed the opening,

was the 14th, but on that day too few deputies had assembled. So late as

the 25th only nine States were represented. They, however, effected an

organization on the 25th and chose officers. On the 28th eleven States

were present, so that on the next day business began in earnest.

Governor Randolph read and expounded the Virginia plan for a new

government, and Charles Pinckney the South Carolina plan. Both of these

were referred to a committee of the whole to sit next day.

This Virginia plan was substantially the work of Madison, and was the

earliest sketch of the present Constitution of the United States. With

the Pinckney plan, it was worked over, debated, and amended in the

committee of the whole, until June 13th, on which day the committee rose

and reported to the Convention nineteen resolutions based almost wholly

upon the Virginia plan. These were the text for all the subsequent

doings of the Convention.

The so-called New Jersey plan was brought forward on June 15th, the gist

of it being a recurrence to the foolish idea of merely repairing the

Confederation that then was. Its strength, which was slight, consisted

in its accord with the letter of the credentials which the delegates had

brought. It was, however, emphatically rejected, the Convention

stretching instructions, ignoring the old government, and proceeding to

build from the foundations. On July 24th and 26th the resolutions, now

increased to twenty-three, were put in the hands of a committee of

detail to be reported back in the form of a constitution. They

reappeared in this shape on August 6th, and this new document was

henceforth the basis of discussion. On September 8th a new committee was

appointed to revise style and arrangement, and brought in its work

September 13th, after which additions and changes were few. The

Constitution received signature September 17th.

The Federal Convention of 1787 was the most remarkable gathering in all

our national history thus far. Sixty-five delegates were elected, but as

ten never attended, fifty-five properly made up the body. Even these

were at no time all present together. From July 5th to August 13th New

York was not represented. Rhode Island was not represented at all.

Washington was President; Franklin, aged eighty-one, the oldest member;

Gillman, of New Hampshire, aged twenty-five, the youngest. Each State

sent its best available talent, so that the foremost figures then in

American political life were present, the chief exceptions being John

Adams, Jefferson--both abroad at the time--Samuel Adams, not favorable

to the Convention, John Jay, and Patrick Henry. Eight of the members had

signed the great Declaration, six the Articles of Confederation, seven

the Annapolis appeal of 1786. Washington and a good half dozen others

had been conspicuous military leaders in the Revolution. Five had been

or still were governors of their respective States. Nearly all had held

important offices of one sort or another. Forty of the fifty-five had

been in Congress, a large proportion of them coming to the Convention

directly from the congressional session just ended in New York.

It is interesting to note how high many from this Constituent Assembly

rose after the adoption of the paper which they had indited. Washington

and Madison became Presidents, Gerry Vice-President, Langdon senator and

President of the Senate, with duty officially to notify him who was

already First in War that the nation had made him also First in Peace.

Langdon was candidate for Vice-President in 1809. Randolph was the

earliest United States Attorney-General, Hamilton earliest Secretary of

the Treasury, M'Henry third Secretary of War, succeeding General Knox.

Dayton was a representative from New Jersey in the IId, IIId, IVth, and

Vth Congresses, being Speaker during the last, then senator in the VIth,

VIIth, and VIIIth. Ellsworth and Johnson were Connecticut's first pair

of senators, Johnson passing in 1791 to the presidency of Columbia

College, Ellsworth to the national chief-justiceship to succeed Jay.

Rutledge was one of the first associate justices of the Supreme Court.

Subsequently, in July, 1795, Washington nominated him for chief justice,

and he actually presided over the Supreme Court at its term in that

year; but, for his ill-mannered denunciation of Jay's treaty, the Senate

declined to confirm him. Wilson and Patterson also each held the

position of associate justice on the supreme bench of the nation.

Rufus King, after the adoption of the Constitution, removed to New York.

He was a senator from that State between 1789 and 1795, and again

between 1813 and 1826; and Minister to England from 1796 to 1803, and

again after 1826 till his failing health compelled his resignation. He

was the federalist candidate for Vice-President in 1804 and 1808, and

for President in 1816. Sherman of Connecticut, Gillman of New Hampshire,

and Baldwin of Georgia, went into the House of Representatives and  were

promoted thence to the Senate. Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, Gouverneur

Morris, now again of New York, Caleb Strong of Massachusetts, William

Patterson of New Jersey, Richard Bassett of Delaware, Alexander Martin

and Blount of North Carolina, Charles Pinckney and Butler of South

Carolina, and Colonel Few of Georgia, all became senators. Madison,

Gerry, Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania, Carroll of Maryland, and Spaight and

Williamson of North Carolina, all wrought well in the House, but did not

reach the Senate. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was nominated for the

Presidency in 1800, on the ticket with John Adams, again in 1804, and

still again in 1808.

Jared Ingersoll was the federalist candidate for Vice-President in 1812,

on the ticket with De Witt Clinton, against Madison and Gerry. Yates

rose to be Chief Justice of the State of New York, Lansing to be its

Chancellor. Gerry and Strong of Massachusetts, Patterson of New Jersey,

Bassett of Delaware, Spaight and Davie of North Carolina, and Charles

Pinckney of South Carolina, became Governors of their States, as did

Alexander Martin, of North Carolina, a second time.

Having received final revision and signature, the Constitution was

transmitted, with a commendatory letter from Washington, to the old

Congress. Suggestions were added relating to the mode of launching it.

Congress was requested to lay the new Great Charter before the States,

and, so soon as it should have been ratified by nine of them, to fix the

date for the election by these of presidential electors, the day for the

latter to cast their votes, and the time and place for commencing

proceedings under the revised constitution. Congress complied. The

debates of the Convention, only more hot, attended ratification, which

was carried in several States only by narrow majorities.

[1788-1790]

Delaware was the first to ratify, December 7, 1787. Pennsylvania and New

Jersey soon followed, the one on the 12th of the same month, the other

on the 18th. Delaware and New Jersey voted unanimously; Pennsylvania

ratified by a vote of forty-six to twenty-three. During the first month

of the new year, 1788, Georgia and Connecticut ratified, on the 2d and

9th respectively. New Hampshire next took up the question, but adjourned

her convention to await the action of Massachusetts. In this great State

the people were divided almost equally. Of the western counties the

entire population that had sympathized or sided with Shays was bitter

against the Constitution. The larger centres and in general the eastern

part of the State favored it. The vote was had on February 6th, and

showed a majority of only 19 out of 355 in favor of the Constitution.

Celebrating the Adoption of the Constitution in New York.

The good work still remained but half done. It was a crisis.

Accordingly, early in this year, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay published

their weighty articles, since collected in the immortal volume known as

"The Federalist." These discussions seemed to have much effect. Maryland

ratified on April 28th, and South Carolina on May 23d. New Hampshire

fell into line, the necessary ninth State to ratify, June 21st. Thus the

Constitution became binding, yet it was still painfully uncertain what

the action of Virginia and New York would be. In both States the

Constitution was opposed by many of the most influential men, and after

a long and heated canvass adoption occurred in Virginia by a majority of

only ten in a vote of 168; in New York by the narrow majority of two.

Even now North Carolina and Rhode Island remained aloof. The former, not

liking the prospect of isolation, came into the Union November 21, 1789,

after the new government had been some time at work. Rhode Island, owing

to her peculiar history in the matter of religious liberty, which she

feared a closer union would jeopardize, as well as to the strength of

the paper-money fanaticism within her borders, was more obdurate. The

chief difficulty here was to get the legislature to call a convention.

The New York Packet of February 20, 1790, in a letter from Rhode Island,

tells how this was accomplished. Among the anti-adoptionists in the

senate was a rural clergyman who, prompted by his conscience, or, as one

account runs, by exhortation and the offer of a conveyance by an

influential member of the adoption party, was, when Sunday came, absent

upon his sacred work. The occasion was seized for a ballot. The senate

was a tie, but the Governor threw the casting vote for a convention.

This was called as soon as possible, and on May 29, 1790, Rhode Island,

too, at the eleventh hour, made the National Constitution her own. Not

only had a MORE PERFECT UNION been formed at last, but it included all

the Old Thirteen States.

PART SECOND

THE UNITED STATES UNDER THE CONSTITUTION

PERIOD I.

THE UNITED STATES AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

1789-1814

CHAPTER I.

THE NEW GOVERNMENT

Notified on July 2, 1788, that nine States had voted approval of the

Constitution, Congress, on September 13th, set the first Wednesday in

January, 1789, for the choice of electors, the first in February for

their ballot, and the first in March for putting the new government in

motion. The first Wednesday in March, 1789, happening to fall on the

4th, this date has since remained as the initial one for presidencies

and congresses. The First Congress had no quorum in either branch on

March 4th, and did not complete its organization till April 6th.

Washington was inaugurated on April 30th, in New York, where the First

Congress, proceeding to execute the Constitution, held its entire first

session. Its second session was in Philadelphia, the seat of Congress

thence till the second session of the VIth Congress, 1800, since which

time Congress has always met in Washington.

The inauguration of our first President was an imposing event. As the

hero moved from his house on Franklin Square, through Pearl Street to

Broad, and through Broad to Federal Hall, corner of Wall Street, people

thronged every sidewalk, door-way, window, and roof along the entire

line of march. About him on the platform after his arrival stood John

Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Baron Steuben, Generals St. Clair and Knox,

Roger Sherman, and Chancellor Livingston. Washington advanced to the

rail, placed his hand upon his breast, and, bowing low, said audibly, as

the Chancellor in his robes solemnly recited the words, "I swear, so

help me God," reverently kissing the Bible as if to add solemnity to his

oath. "It is done," cried the Chancellor; "long live George Washington,

President of the United States!" The great crowd repeated the cry. It

was echoed outside in the city, off into the country, far north, far

south, till the entire land took up that watchword, which his own

generation has passed on to ours and to all that shall come, Long live

George Washington!

Let us study for a moment the habitat of the people over which the new

Chief Magistrate was called to bear sway. By the census of 1790, the

population of the thirteen States and of the territory belonging to the

Union numbered 3,929,214. It resided almost wholly on the Atlantic coast

from Maine to Florida. Not more than five per cent of it was west of the

mountains. The line of inner settlement, now farther, now nearer, ran at

an average distance from the coast of two hundred and fifty-five miles.

The coast land of Massachusetts, southern New England, and New York was

the most densely covered. The Hudson Valley was well peopled as far as

Albany. Farms and hamlets were to be met all the way from New York

across New Jersey to the Delaware, and far up the Delaware Valley

westward from that river. Maine, still belonging to Massachusetts, had

few settlements except upon her coast and a little way inland along her

great rivers. Vermont, not yet a State and claimed by both New Hampshire

and New York, was well filled up, as was all New Hampshire but the

extreme north.

The westward movement of population took mainly four routes, the Mohawk

and Ontario, the Upper Potomac, the Southwestern Virginia, and the

Western Georgia. The Mohawk Valley was settled, and pioneers had taken

up much land on Lake Ontario and near the rivers and lakes tributary to

it. Elmira and Binghamton had been begun. Pennsylvania settlers had

pressed westward more or less thickly to the lower elevations of the

Alleghanies, while beyond, in the Pittsburgh regions, they were even

more numerous. What is now West Virginia had squatters here and there.

Virginian pioneers had also betaken themselves southwestward to the head

of the Tennessee. North and South Carolina were inhabited as far west as

the mountains, though the population was not dense. In Northern

Kentucky, along the Ohio, lay considerable settlements, and in

Tennessee, where Nashville now is, there was another centre of

civilization. In the Northwest Territory, Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia,

Prairie du Chien, Mackinac, and Green River were outposts, at each of

which a few white men might have been found.

The following table shows pretty nearly the population of the several

States about the end of the Revolution:

New Hampshire

102,000

Massachusetts

330,000

Rhode Island [1783]

51,869 [2,342 of them negroes,

464 mulattoes, 525 Indians.]

Connecticut [1782]

208,870

New York [1786]

215,283

New Jersey[1785]

138,934 [10,500 of them negroes.]

Pennsylvania

330,000

Delaware

37,000

Maryland

250,000 [80,000 of them negroes.]

Virginia

532,000 [280,000 of them negroes.]

North Carolina

224,000 [60,000 of them negroes.]

South Carolina

188,000 [80,000 of them negroes.]

Georgia [rough estimate]

80,000 [20,000 of them negroes.]

Another table exhibits approximately the number of houses in the

principal cities of the country in 1785-86. It was customary then in

estimating population to allow seven persons to each house. This

multiplier is probably too large rather than too small.

Cities

Houses

Population, multiplying

number of houses by seven.

Portsmouth, N. H

450

3,150

Newburyport

510

3,570

Salem, Mass

730

5,210

Boston

2,200

15,400

Providence

560

3,920

Newport

790

5,530

Hartford

300

2,100

New Haven

400

2,800

New York

3,340

23,380

Albany and suburbs

550

3,850

Trenton

180

1,260

Philadelphia and suburbs

4,500

31,500

Wilmington

400

2,800

Baltimore

1,950

13,650

Annapolis

260

1,820

Frederick, Md.

400

2,800

Alexandria

300

2,100

Richmond

310

2,170

Petersburg

280

1,960

Williamsburg

230

1,610

Charleston

1,540

10,780

Savannah

200

1,400

The first New York City Directory appeared in 1786. It had eight hundred

and forty-six names, not going above Roosevelt and Cherry Streets on

the East side, or Dey Street on the West. There were then in the city

three Dutch Reformed churches, four Presbyterian, three Episcopal, two

German Lutheran, and one congregation each belonging to the Catholics,

Friends, Baptists, Moravians, and Jews. In 1789 the Methodists had two

churches, and the Friends two new Meetings. The houses in the city were

generally of brick, with tile roofs, mostly English in style, but a few

Dutch. The old Fort, where the provincial governors had resided, still

stood in the Battery. The City Hall was a brick structure, three stories

high, with wings, fronting on Broad Street. Want of good water greatly

inconvenienced the citizens, as there was no aqueduct yet, and wells

were few. Most houses supplied themselves by casks from a pump on what

is now Pearl Street, this being replenished from a pond a mile north of

the then city limits. New York commanded the trade of nearly all

Connecticut, half New Jersey, and all Western Massachusetts, besides

that of New York State itself. In short it did the importing for

one-sixth of the population of the Union. Pennsylvania and Maryland made

the best flour. In the manufacture of iron, paper, and cabinet ware,

Pennsylvania led all the States.

Over this rapidly growing portion of the human race in its widely

separated homes there was at last a central government worthy the name.

The old Articles of Confederation had been no fundamental law, not a

foundation but a homely botch-work of superstructure, resembling more a

treaty between several States than a ground-law for one. In the new

Constitution a genuine foundation was laid, the Government now holding

direct and immediate relations with each subject of every State, and

citizens of States being at the same time citizens of the United States.

Hitherto the central power could act on individuals only through States.

Now, by its own marshals, aided if need were by its army, it could

itself arrest and by its own  courts try and condemn any transgressor of

its laws.

But if the State relinquished the technical sovereignty which it had

before, it did not sink to the level of an administrative division, but

increased rather in all the elements of real dignity and stability. Over

certain subjects the new constitution gave the States supreme, absolute,

and uncontrollable power. The range of this supreme state prerogative

is, in fact, wider on the whole than that of national. For national

action there must be demonstrable constitutional warrant, for that of

States this is not necessary. In more technical phrase: to the United

States what is not granted is denied, to the State what is not denied is

granted. It is a perpetual reminder of original state sovereignty, that

no State can without its consent be deprived of its equal suffrage in

the Senate. Each State also must have at least one representative.

States cannot be sued by private persons or corporations. Even upon

subjects constitutionally reserved for national law, if Congress has not

legislated state statute is valid.

Precisely as its advocates had prophesied, this revised order worked

well, bringing a blessed new feeling of security. On commerce and

business it conferred immense benefits, which rapidly became

disseminated through all classes of the population. The sense and

appearance of unity and consequent strength which the land had enjoyed

in the early days of the Revolution came back in greater completeness,

and was most gratifying to all. There was still a rankling hatred toward

England, and men hostile to central government on other grounds were

reconciled to it as the sole condition of successful commercial or naval

competition with that country.

The consequence was a wide-spread change of public feeling in reference

to the Constitution very soon after its adoption. Bitterest hostility

turned to praise that was often fulsome, reducing to insignificance an

opposition that had probably comprised a popular majority during the

very months of ratification. Many shifted their ground merely to be on

the popular side. With multitudes Washington's influence had more weight

than any argument.

The Constitution's unfortunate elasticity of interpretation also for the

time worked well. People who had fought it saw how their cherished views

could after all be based upon it. All parties soon began, therefore, to

swear by the Constitution as their political Bible. The fathers of the

immortal paper were exalted into demigods. Fidelity to the Constitution

came to be pre-eminently the watchword of those till now against its

adoption. They in fact shouted this cry louder than the Federalists, who

had never regarded it a perfect instrument of government. It came to

pass ere long that nothing would blast a public measure so instantly or

so completely as the cry of its unconstitutionality.

[Click on map for larger image.]

Map Showing the Progressive Acquisitions of Territory by the United States

Few can form any idea of the herculean work performed by the First

Congress in setting up and starting our present governmental machinery.

The debt which we owe the public men of that time is measureless. With

such care and wisdom did they proceed, that little done by them has

required alteration, the departments having run on decade after decade

till now essentially in their original grooves. The Senate formed itself

into its three classes, so that one-third of its members, and never more

than this, should retire at a time. Four executive departments were

created, those of State, the Treasury, War, and the

Attorney-Generalship. The first occupants were, respectively, Jefferson,

Hamilton, Knox, and Randolph.

Of the present departments of government the post-office alone has come

down from colonial times, Benjamin Franklin having been general

superintendent thereof under the British Government. He was re-appointed

by the second Continental Congress, in July, 1775. The First Congress

under the Constitution erected a general post-office, but its head

attained the dignity of a regular cabinet officer not till about 1830,

and then only by custom. To begin with, in fact, there was strictly no

cabinet in the modern sense. Washington's habit was to consult his

ministers separately.

Under the Articles of Confederation there had been a treasury board of

several commissioners, and a superintendent of finance. The new

arrangement, making one man responsible, was a great improvement. A law

was passed forbidding the Secretary of the Treasury to be concerned in

trade or commerce, that is, to be a merchant. The late A. T. Stewart,

appointed by President Grant to the office, was rejected as ineligible

under this law. Yet no department of our Government has had a finer

record than the Treasury.

Not only had the First Congress to vote revenue, but to make provision

for the collection of this. Revenue districts had to be mapped out, the

proper officers appointed, and light-houses, buoys, and public piers

arranged for along the whole coast.  Salaries were to be fixed, and a

multitude of questions relating to the interpretation and application of

the Constitution to be solved by patient deliberation. The United States

Mint was erected, and our so felicitous monetary system, based upon the

decimal principle along with the binary, established in place of the

desperate monetary chaos prevailing before. Hitherto there were four

sorts of colonial money of account all differing from sterling, while

Mexican dollars and numberless other forms of foreign money were in

actual circulation.

The noblest part of all this work was the organization of the federal

judiciary, through an act drawn up with extraordinary ability by Oliver

Ellsworth of Connecticut. A Chief Justice--the first one was John

Jay--and five associates were to constitute the Supreme Court. District

courts were ordained, one per State and one each for Kentucky and Maine,

not yet States; also three circuit courts, the eastern, the middle, and

the southern; and the jurisdiction of each grade was accurately fixed.

As yet there were no special circuit judges, nor, excepting the

temporary ones of 1801, were there till some eighty years later. Clerks,

marshals, and district-attorneys were part of this first arrangement.

Originally the Attorney-General was little but an honorary officer. He

kept his practice, had no public income but his fees, and resided where

he pleased.

As his title implies, the Secretary of War was to have charge of all the

nation's means of offence and defence, there being until April 30, 1796,

no separate secretary for the navy. We had indeed in 1789 little use for

such a functionary, not a war-vessel then remaining in Government's

possession. In 1784 our formidable navy consisted of a single ship, the

Alliance, but the following year Congress ordered her sold.

The senators most active in the creations just reviewed were Langdon,

King, and Robert Morris, besides Ellsworth. In the House, Madison outdid

all others in toil as in ability, though worthily seconded by

distinguished men like Fisher Ames, Gerry, Clymer, Fitzsimmons,

Boudinot, and Smith. The three Connecticut representatives, Sherman,

Trumbull, and Wadsworth, made up perhaps the ablest state delegation in

the body.

CHAPTER II.

FEDERALISM AND ANTI-FEDERALISM

[1790]

Early in the life of our Constitution two parties rose, which, under

various names, have continued ever since. During the strife for and

against adoption, those favoring this had been styled Federalists, and

their opponents, Anti-Federalists. After adoption--no one any longer

really antagonizing the Constitution--the two words little by little

shifted their meaning, a man being dubbed Federalist or Anti-Federalist

according to his preference for strong national government or for strong

state governments. The Federalist Party gave birth to the Whig Party,

and this to the modern Republican Party. The Anti-Federalists came to be

called "Republicans," then "Democratic-Republicans," then simply

"Democrats."

The central plank of the federalist platform was vigorous single

nationality. In aid of this the Federalists wished a considerable army

and navy, so that the United States might be capable of ample

self-defence against all foes abroad or at home. Partly as a means to

this, partly to build up national feeling, unity, self-respect, and due

respect for the nation abroad, they sought to erect our national credit,

which had fallen so low, and to plant it on a solid and permanent basis.

As still further advancing these ends they proposed so to enforce regard

for the national authority and laws and obedience to them, that within

its sphere the nation should be absolutely and beyond question paramount

to the State.

In many who cherished them these noble purposes were accompanied by a

certain aristocratic feeling and manner, a carelessness of popular

opinion, an inclination to model governmental polity and administration

after the English, and an impatience with what was good in our native

American ideas and ways, which, however natural, were unfortunate and

unreasonable. Puffed up with pride at its victory in carrying the

Constitution against the opposition of the ignorant masses, this party

developed a haughtiness and a lack of republican spirit amounting in

some cases to deficient patriotism.

The early Federalists were of two widely different stripes. There were

among them Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Jay; and there were the

interested and practical advocates of the same, made up of business men

and the wealthy and leisurely classes, who, without intending to be

selfish, were governed in political sympathy and action mainly by their

own interests.

The greatest early Anti-Federalists were Jefferson, Madison, and

Randolph, all of whom had been ardent for the Constitution. The party as

a whole, indeed, not only acquiesced in the re-creation of the general

Government, but was devotedly friendly to the new order. But while

Republicans admitted that a measure of governmental centralization was

indispensable, they prized the individual State as still the main pillar

of our political fabric, and were hence jealous of all increased

function at the centre. It became more and more their theory that the

States, rather than the individuals of the national body politic, had

been the parties to the Constitution, so making this to be a compact

like the old Articles, and the government under it a confederacy as

before 1789.

Another issue divided the parties, that between the strict and the more

free interpretation of the Constitution--between the close

constructionists and the liberal constructionists. The question dividing

them was this: In matters relating to the powers of the general

Government, ought any unclear utterance of the Constitution to be so

explained as to enlarge those powers, or so as to confine them to the

narrowest possible sphere? Each of the two tendencies in construction

has in turn brought violence to our fundamental law, but the sentiment

of nationality and the logic of events have favored liberality rather

than narrowness in interpreting the parchment. When in charge of the

government, even strict constructionists have not been able to carry out

their theory. Thus Jefferson, to purchase Louisiana, was obliged, from

his point of view, to transcend constitutional warrant; and Madison, who

at first opposed such an institution as unconstitutional, ended by

approving the law which chartered the Second United States Bank.

The Federalists used to argue that Article I, Section VIII., the part of

the Constitution upon which debate chiefly raged, could not have been

intended as an exhaustive statement of congressional powers. The

Government would be unable to exist, they urged, to say nothing of

defending itself and accomplishing its work, unless permitted to do more

than the eighteen things there enumerated. They further insisted that

plain utterances of the Constitution presuppose the exercise by Congress

of powers not specifically enumerated, explicitly authorizing that body

to make all laws necessary for executing the enumerated powers "and all

other powers vested in the Government of the United States or in any

department or officer thereof."

In reply the Anti-Federalists made much of the titles "United States,"

"Federal," and the like, in universal use. They appealed to concessions

as to the nature of our system made by statesmen of known national

sympathies. Such concessions were plentiful then and much later. Even

Webster in his immortal reply to Hayne calls ours a government of

"strictly limited," even of "enumerated, specified, and particularized"

powers. Two historical facts told powerfully for the anti-federalist

theory. One was that the government previous to 1789 was unquestionably

a league of States; the other was that many voted for the present

Constitution supposing it to be a mere revision of the old. Had the

reverse been commonly believed, adoption would have been more than

doubtful.

CHAPTER III.

DOMESTIC QUESTIONS OF WASHINGTON'S ADMINISTRATIONS

[1790-1791]

I. Tariff.--Upon declaring their independence the United States threw

open their ports, inviting trade from all nations. During the Revolution

foreign commerce had become an important interest, and at its close the

inclination of all, the more so from memory of England's accursed

navigation acts, would have been to leave it untrammelled. Several

motives, however, induced resort to a restrictive policy which,

beginning with 1789, and for years expected to be temporary, has been

pursued with little deviation ever since. Of course the Government

needed revenue, and the readiest means of securing this was a tax on

imports. Rates were made low, averaging until 1808 only 11-1/4 per cent.

As a consequence the revenues were large.

The movers of this first tariff, especially Hamilton, also wished by

means of it to make the central Government felt as a positive power

throughout the land. It had this effect. All custom-houses passed to the

United States, and United States officers appeared at every port, having

an authority, in its kind, paramount to that of state functionaries.

A stronger consideration still was to retaliate against England. In

spite of America's political independence the old country was determined

to retain for her merchant marine its former monopoly here. Orders in

council practically limited all the commerce of England and her

remaining colonies with this country to English ships, although, from

the relations of the two lands and the nature of their productions, our

chief foreign trade must still be with England. There was no way to meet

this selfish policy but to show that it was a game which we too could

play.

Besides, however we behaved toward the mother-land, we needed to be

prepared for war, because it was evident that George III. and his

ministers had only too good a will to reduce us again to subjection if

opportunity offered. Should we, by taxing imports, become independent in

the production of war material, a fresh struggle for life would be much

more hopeful than if we continued dependent upon foreign lands for

military supplies.

II. Funding the Debt.--In the first years after they had set up their

new constitution the people of this country staggered under a terrible

financial load. Besides the current expenses of Government, there were:

1, the federal debt due abroad, over thirteen million dollars, including

arrears; 2, the federal debt held at home, about forty-two and one-half

million; 3, the state revolutionary debts, aggregating nearly

twenty-five million. Each of these sums was largely made up of unpaid

interest.

The foreign debt Congress unanimously determined to pay in full. In

respect to the domestic federal debt two opinions prevailed. Hamilton

was for liquidating this also to the last copper. But these securities

had mostly changed hands since issue, so that dollar for dollar payment

would not advantage original holders but only speculators. As soon as

Hamilton's recommendation became public this class of paper rose from

about fifteen cents per dollar to fifty cents, and enterprising New York

firms hurried their couriers, relay horses, and swift packets to remote

parts of the Union to buy it up. Madison, supported by a strong party,

proposed, therefore, to pay only original debtors at par, allowing

secondary holders barely the highest market value previous to the

opening of the question in Congress. He was overruled, however, and this

part of the debt, too, was ordered paid according to its literal terms.

Even the motion that the United States should assume and discharge the

state debts finally prevailed, though against most violent and resolute

opposition. This came especially from Virginia, who had gone far in the

payment of her own war debt, and thought it unjust to have to help the

delinquent States. Her objection was strengthened by the fact that most

of the debt was owned in the North. The victory was secured by what is

now termed a "deal," northern votes being promised in favor of a

southern location for the national capital, in return for enough

southern votes to pass the bill assuming state debts.

These gigantic measures had origin in the mind of Hamilton. To many they

appeared and appear today like a grand government job. But they worked

well, laying the foundation of our national credit. Interest arrears and

back installments of the foreign debt were to be paid at once with the

proceeds of a fresh loan, supplemented by income from customs and

tonnage. The remaining debt was to be refunded. Federal stocks shot up

in value, moneyed interests became attached to the Government, and the

nation began to be looked to as a more reliable bulwark of sound finance

than any of the States.

Alexander Hamilton.

From a painting by John Trumbull in the Trumbull Gallery at Yale College.

III. The Excise.--Unexpectedly productive as the tariff had proved,

public income still fell short of what these vast operations required.

Direct taxation or a higher tariff being out of the question, Hamilton

proposed, and Congress voted, an excise on spirits, from nine to

twenty-five cents a gallon if from grain, from eleven to thirty if from

imported material, as molasses. Excise was a hated form of tax, and this

measure awakened great opposition in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,

and New England, and most of all in Pennsylvania, in whose western

counties distilling was the staple industry.

Here, far from the seats of power, even the state government had

asserted itself little. The general Government was defied. A meeting in

Washington County voted to regard as an enemy any person taking office

under the excise law. September 6, 1791, a revenue officer was tarred

and feathered. Other such cases followed. Secret societies were formed

to oppose the law. Whippings and even murders resulted. At last there

was a veritable reign of terror. The President proceeded slowly but with

firmness, accounting this a good opportunity vividly to reveal to the

people the might of the new Government. Militia and volunteers were

called out, who arrived in the rebellious districts in November, 1794.

Happily, their presence sufficed. The opposition faded away before them,

not a shot being fired on either side.

Illicit Distillers warned of the Approach of Revenue Officers.

IV. The Bank.--The Secretary of the Treasury pleaded for a United States

Bank as not only profitable to Government but indispensable to the

proper administration of the national finances. Congress acquiesced, yet

with so violent hostility on the part of many that before approving the

Charter Act Washington required the written opinions of his official

advisers. Jefferson powerfully opposed such an institution as

unconstitutional, his acute argument being the arsenal whence close

constructionists have gotten their weapons ever since. Randolph sided

with Jefferson, Knox with Hamilton. The President at last signed,

agreeing with Hamilton in the view that Congress, being the agent of a

sovereignty, is not, within any sphere of action constitutionally open

to it, shut up to specific or enumerated modes of attaining its ends,

but has choice among all those that nations customarily use. The Supreme

Court has proceeded on this doctrine ever since. The bank proved vastly

advantageous. Three-fourths of every private subscription to its stock

had to be in government paper, which raised this to par, while it

naturally became the interest of all stockholders to maintain and

increase the stability and credit of the Government.

CHAPTER IV.

RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND

[1793]

In 1789 France adopted a constitution. Provoked at this, the friends of

absolute monarchy withdrew from France, and incited the other powers of

Europe to interpose in effort to restore to Louis XVI. his lost power.

The result was that Louis lost his head as well as his power, and that

France became a republic. War with all Europe followed, which elevated

that matchless military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte, first to the head of

France's armies, then to her throne, to be toppled thence in 1814,

partly by his own indiscretions, partly by the forces combined against

him.

From the beginning to the end of this revolutionary period abroad,

European politics determined American politics, home as well as foreign,

causing dangerous embarrassment and complications. War having in

February, 1793, been declared by England and France against each other,

what attitude the United States should assume toward each became a

pressing question. Washington's proclamation of neutrality, April 22,

1793, in effect, though not so meant, annulled our treaty of 1778 with

France, which bound us to certain armed services to that monarchy in

case of a rupture between her and England. Washington's paper alleged

that "the duty and interests of the United States" required

impartiality, and assumed "to declare the disposition of the United

States to observe" this.

"The proclamation," wrote Jefferson, "was in truth a most unfortunate

error. It wounds the popular feelings by a seeming indifference to the

cause of liberty. And it seems to violate the form and spirit of the

Constitution by making the executive magistrate the organ of the

'disposition' 'the duty' and 'the interest' of the nation in relation to

war and peace--subjects appropriated to other departments of  the

Government."

"On one side," says Mr. Rives, in his "Life of Madison," "the people saw

a power which had but lately carried war and desolation, fire and sword,

through their own country, and, since the peace, had not ceased to act

toward them in the old spirit of unkindness, jealousy, arrogance, and

injustice; on the other an ally who had rendered them the most generous

assistance in war, had evinced the most cordial dispositions for a

liberal and mutually beneficial intercourse in peace, and was now set

upon by an unholy league of the monarchical powers of Europe, to

overwhelm and destroy her, for her desire to establish institutions

congenial to those of America."

The more sagacious opponents of the administration believed true policy

as well as true honesty to demand rigid and pronounced adherence to the

letter of the French treaty. They were convinced from the outset that

France would vanquish her enemies, and that close alliance with her was

the sure and the only sure way to coerce either Great Britain to justice

or Spain to a reasonable attitude touching the navigation of the

Mississippi; while by offending France, they argued, we should be forced

to wrestle single-handed with England first, then with victorious

France, meantime securing no concession whatever from Spain.

This was a shrewd forecast of the actual event. The Federalists,

destitute of idealism, proved to have been overawed by the prestige of

England and to have underestimated the might which freedom would impart

to the French people. After Napoleon's great campaign of 1796-97, Pitt

seeks peace, which the French Directory feels able to decline. In 1802

the Peace of Amiens is actually concluded, upon terms dictated by

France. Had we been still in France's friendship, the two republics

might have compelled England's abandonment of that course which evoked

the war of 1812. As it was, ignored by England, to whom, as detailed

below, we cringed in consenting to Jay's treaty, we were left to

encounter the French navy alone, escaping open and serious war with

France only by a readiness to negotiate which all but compromised our

dignity. The Mississippi we had at last to open with money.

The federalist leaning toward Great Britain probably did not, to so

great an extent as was then alleged and widely believed, spring from

monarchical feeling. It was due rather to old memories, as pleasant as

they were tenacious, that would not be dissociated from England; to the

individualistic tendencies of republicanism, alarming to many; and to

conservative habits of political thinking, the dread of innovation and

of theory. The returned Tories had indeed all become Federalists, which

fact, with many others, lent to this attitude the appearance of

deficient patriotism, of sycophancy toward our old foe and persecutor.

Great Britain had refused to surrender the western posts according to

the peace treaty of 1783, unjustly pleading in excuse the treatment of

loyalists by our States. Not only the presence but the active influence

of the garrisons at these posts encouraged Indian hostilities. England

had also seized French goods in American (neutral) vessels, though in

passage to the United States, and treated as belligerent all American

ships plying between France and her West Indian colonies, on the ground

that this commerce had been opened to them only by the pressure of war.

The English naval officers were instructed to regard bread-stuffs as

contraband if bound for France, even though owned by neutrals and in

neutral ships; such cargoes, however, to be paid for by England, or

released on bonds being given to land them elsewhere than in France. In

this practice England followed France's example, except that she

actually paid for the cargoes, while France only promised.

John Jay.

From a painting by S. F. B. Morse in the Yale College Collection.

[1795]

Worst of all, Britain claimed and acted upon the right to press into her

naval service British-born seamen found anywhere outside the territory

of a foreign State, halting our ships on the high seas for this purpose,

often leaving them half-manned, and sometimes recklessly and cruelly

impressing native-born Americans--an outrageous policy which ended in

the war of 1812. The ignorance and injustice of the English admiralty

courts aggravated most of these abuses.

Genet's proceedings, spoken of in the next chapter, which partly public

sentiment, partly lack of army and navy, made it impossible for our

Government to prevent, enraged Great Britain to the verge of war. After

the British orders in council of November 6, 1793, intended to destroy

all neutral commerce with the French colonies, and Congress's

counter-stroke of an embargo the following March, war was positively

imminent. The President resolved to send Jay to England as envoy

extraordinary, to make one more effort for an understanding.

The treaty negotiated by this gentleman, and ratified June 24,  1795

(excepting Article XII., on the French West India trade), was doubtless

the most favorable that could have been secured under the circumstances;

yet it satisfied no one and was humiliating in the extreme. The western

posts were indeed to be vacated by June 1, 1796, though without

indemnity for the past, but a British right of search and impressment

was implicitly recognized, the French West Indian trade not rendered

secure, and arbitrary liberty accorded to Great Britain in defining

contraband. Opposition to ratification was bitter and nearly universal.

The friends of France were jubilant. Jay was burned in effigy,

Washington himself attacked. The utmost that Hamilton in his powerful

"Letters of Camillus" could show was that the treaty seemed preferable

to war. Plainly we had then little to hope and much to fear from war

with Great Britain, yet even vast numbers of Federalists denounced the

pact as a base surrender to the nation's ancient tyrant, and wished an

appeal to arms.

Fisher Ames's eloquence decided the House for the treaty. An invalid,

with but a span of life before him, he spoke as from the tomb. "There

is, I believe," so ran his peroration, "no member who will not think his

chance to be a witness of the consequences (should the treaty fail of

ratification) greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to

reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders,

to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as

my hold on life is, may outlive the Government and Constitution of my

country!"

It was the most delicate crisis of  Washington's presidency, and no

other American then alive, being in his place, could have passed through

it successfully. After the fury gradually subsided, men for a long time

acquiesced rather than believed in the step which had been taken. In the

end the treaty proved solidly advantageous, rather through

circumstances, however, than by its intrinsic excellence.

CHAPTER V.

RELATIONS WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

[1793]

At its beginning all Americans hailed the Revolution in France with

joy, but its terrible excesses, when they appeared, produced here the

same effect as in England, of alienating everyone conservatively

inclined. This included the mass of the Federalist party. On the

contrary, most of the Republicans, now more numerous, now less,

actuated partly by true insight into the struggle, and partly by the

magic of the words "revolution" and "republic," favored the

revolutionists with a devotion which even the Reign of Terror in France

scarcely shook. It was in consequence of this attitude on its part that

the party came to be dubbed "democratic-republican" instead of

"republican," the compound title itself giving way after about 1810 to

simple "democratic."

John Adams

From a copy by Jane Stuart, about 1874, of a painting by her father,

Gilbert Stuart, about 1800--in possession of Henry Adams.

Hostility to England, the memory of France's aid to us in our hour of

need, the doctrine of "the rights of man," then so much in vogue, the

known sympathies of Jefferson and Madison, who were already popular,

and, alas, a mean wish to hamper the administration, all helped to swell

the ranks of those who swung their hats for France. A far deeper motive

with the more thoughtful was the belief that neutrality violated our

treaty of 1778 with France, a conclusion at present beyond question.

Politically our policy may have been wise, morally it was wrong.

The administration, at least its honored head, was doubtless innocent of

any intentional injustice; and it could certainly urge a great deal in

justification of its course. The form and the aims of the French

Government had changed since the treaty originated, involving a state of

things which that instrument had not contemplated.  France herself

defied international law and compact, revolutionizing and incorporating

Holland and Geneva, and assaulting our commerce. And war with England

then threatened our ruin. Yet the pleading of these considerations in

that so trying hour, even had they been wholly pertinent, could not but

seem to Frenchmen treason to the cause of liberty. As to many

Federalists, trucklers to England, such a charge would have been true.

France was not slow to reciprocate in the matter of grievances. In fact,

so early as May, 1793, before the proclamation of neutrality could have

been heard of in that country, orders had been issued there, wholly

repugnant to the treaty (which had ordained that neutral ships could

carry what goods they pleased--free ships, free goods), to capture and

condemn English merchandise on American vessels. Provisions owned by

Americans and en route to England were also to be forfeited as

contraband. Even the most reasonable French officials seemed bent on

treating our country as a dependency of France.

We see this in the actions of Genet, the first envoy to America from the

French constitutional monarchy, accredited hither by a ministry of

high-minded Republicans while Louis XVI. still sat upon his throne.

Genet arrived in Charleston in 1793, before our neutrality had been

proclaimed. Immediately, before presenting his credentials to our

Government, he set about fitting out privateers, manning them with

Americans, and sending them to prey upon British ships, some of which

they captured in American waters. All this was in utter derogation of

the treaty, which only guaranteed shelter to bona fide French vessels.

Under a law of the French National Convention, Genet assumed to erect

the French consulates in this country into so many admiralty courts for

the trial of British prizes. We could not have allowed this without

decidedly violating international law at least in spirit. He also

devised and partly arranged expeditions of Americans, to start, one from

Georgia to invade Florida, another from Kentucky to capture New Orleans,

both as means of weakening Spain, which up to this time and for several

years later was France's foe.

[1795]

But Genet's worst gall came out in his conduct toward Washington. Him he

insulted, challenging his motives and his authority for his acts and

threatening to appeal from him to the people. He tried to bully and

browbeat the whole cabinet as if they had been so many boys. So

ludicrous did he make himself by such useless bluster, that his friends,

at first numerous and many of them influential, gave him the cold

shoulder, and the ardor for France greatly cooled. At length Washington

effected his removal, the more easily, it would seem, as he was not

radical enough for the Jacobins, who had now succeeded to the helm in

France. The officious Frenchman did not return to his own country, but

settled down in New York, marrying a daughter of Governor Clinton. He

was succeeded by Adet.

George Clinton.

From a painting by Ezra Ames.

Upon learning that the United States had ratified Jay's treaty, France

went insane with rage. A declaration of war by us could not have angered

her more. Adet was called home and the alliance with America declared at

an end. Barras dismissed Mr. Monroe, our minister, in a contemptuous

speech, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, sent as Monroe's successor, was

not only not received but ordered from the land. New and worse decrees

went forth against American commerce. Our ships were confiscated for

carrying English goods though not contraband. Arbitrary and unheard-of

tests of neutrality were trumped up, wholly contrary to the treaty,

which indeed was now denounced. American sailors found serving, though

compelled, on British armed vessels, were to be condemned as pirates.

[1797]

These brutal measures, coupled with Napoleon's increasing power, begot

in America the belief, even among Republicans, that France's struggle

was no longer for liberty but for conquest. The insolence of the French

Government waxed insufferable. President Adams, to a special session of

the Vth Congress, on May 19, 1797, announced the insult to the nation in

the person of Pinckney, and urged preparation for war. A goodly loan, a

direct tax, and a provisional army, Washington again leader, were

readily voted. Our Navy Department was created at this time. The navy

was increased, and several captures were made of French vessels guilty

of outrage. Adams, however, to make a last overture for peace,

despatched John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry to the aid of Pinckney, the

three to knock once more at France's doors for a becoming admission. In

vain. The only effect was a new chapter of French mendacity and

insolence, furthering America's wish and preparations for war.

Napoleon's recent Italian victories, terrifying Europe, had puffed up

France with pride. Talleyrand assumed to arraign us as criminals, and

what was worse, pressed us, through his agents, to buy his country's

forgiveness with gold. "You must pay money," our envoys were told, and

"a good deal of it, too."

John Marshall.

All this was duly made known at Philadelphia, and the President assured

Congress that no terms were obtainable from France "compatible with the

safety, honor, and general interest of the nation." The opposition

thought this an exaggeration, and called for the despatches, expecting

refusal or abridgment. The President sent every word.

Elbridge Gerry

Confusion seized the Republicans. Federalists were again in the

ascendant, the VIth Congress being much more strongly federalist than

the Vth. For once proud, reserved John Adams was popular, and

anti-French feeling irresistible. "Millions for defence but not a cent

for tribute," echoed through the land. Hosts of Republicans went over to

the administration side. Patriotism became a passion. Each night at the

theatre rose a universal call for the "President's March" [Footnote: The

music was that of our "Hail Columbia."] and "Yankee Doodle," the

audience rising, cheering, swinging hats and canes, and roaring

"encore." The black cockade, American, on all hands supplanted the

tricolor cockade worn by the "Gallomaniacs;" and bands of "Associated

Youth," organizing in every town and city, deluged the President with

patriotic addresses.

Seeing that we could not be bullied and that the friends of France here

were Americans first; ashamed, on their publication, of the indignities

which he had offered our envoys, and after all not wishing war with what

he saw to be potentially another naval power like England, the sly

Talleyrand neatly receded from his arrogant demands, and expressed a

desire to negotiate.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DECLINE OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY

[1797]

The heat of the nation's wrath evoked by this conflict with France

betrayed the Federalists in Congress into some pieces of tyrannical

legislation. These were especially directed against refugees from

France, lest they should attempt to reenact here the bloody drama just

played out there. Combinations were alleged, without proof, to exist

between American and French democrats, dangerous to the stability of

this Government.

A new naturalization act was passed, requiring of an immigrant, as

prerequisite to citizenship, fourteen years of residence instead of the

five heretofore sufficient. Next came three alien acts, empowering the

President, at his discretion, without trial or even a statement of his

reasons, to banish foreigners from the land; any who should return

unbidden being liable to imprisonment for three years, and cut off from

the possibility of citizenship forever. A "sedition act" followed, to

fine in the sum of $5,000 each and to imprison for five years any

persons stirring up sedition, combining to oppose governmental measures,

resisting United States law, or putting forth "any false, scandalous, or

malicious writings" against Congress, the President, or the Government.

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, intended

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

Total

$53,600

For custom, eleven per cent

5,896

Grands Total

$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.

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