On the 12th Washington went out to ride about his large farm and was caught in a storm of rain and hail, but he continued his ride for some hours and took a severe cold which soon developed into acute laryngitis. The physicians bled him twice, and they have been severely criticised for this; but letting blood for almost every ill was common in those days.

Washington was tall and muscular. He wore a No. 13 boot, his hands were large, his hair light brown, his eyes cold gray, and his voice rather weak. He weighed two hundred pounds, could cover twenty-two feet in a single running jump, and was an excellent shot, swordsman, and rider. He was probably the richest of our Presidents thus far. He owned thousands of acres of land in Virginia and at one time twenty thousand acres along the Ohio River. His estate was valued at about half a million dollars, but it consisted of lands, herds, and slaves, and he was at times hard pressed for money. He had to borrow money to take him to New York to be inaugurated President.

The New Capital. The government began its operations in the city of New York, in the spring of 1789; but some months later it moved to Philadelphia, the largest and most important city in the Union, and here it remained for ten years. In the autumn of 1800 the capital was moved to Washington City, and Jefferson was the first President to be inaugurated there. The District of Columbia lay on both sides of the Potomac, and the Maryland side was chosen for the seat of government. The farmers who owned the land deeded it to the commissioners and received in compensation half the unused lots, after the streets, parks, and public building grounds were reserved. Major L'Enfant planned and laid out the city. The corner stone of the Capitol was laid in September, 1793. When the government removed thither, the city was a wilderThere was but one good hotel. The President's house was in an open field, and this, with the unfinished Capitol and a few scattered houses along the unpaved streets, constituted the town. There was no business and no society. The city grew slowly, and eight years after Congress had removed thither, a proposition to return to Philadelphia was seriously considered. But as the nation grew the city improved, and to-day it is pronounced the most beautiful capital city in the world.

ness.

CHAPTER XVIII

JEFFERSON AND THE DEMOCRACY

SCARCELY greater was the Revolution by which the country was wrested from British dominion than was the political revolution of 1800, by which the government passed into the hands of the democracy. And no greater fortune could have come to the young Republic than this political revolution. What the country most needed in 1800 was a national consciousness, and nothing could bring this about so quickly and so well as giving the control of the nation to the party of the masses. The Federal party, however, had done a noble work; it had laid the foundation of nationality — as essential as was the structure of democracy now to be reared upon it. But as a candle sacrifices itself in giving light, so the Federal party had given its life in laying this foundation, such as Jefferson and his party could not have laid- -a foundation which our great government of to-day could not do without.

The America of to-day was not born before 1800. After the Revolution the states had settled back into their old colonial habits, and almost every American ideal up to the end of the century bore the colonial stamp, or that of England or France. Even in politics the chief issues after 1792 were foreign, and not before the dawn of the nineteenth century did there exist a truly American spirit; and not until after the second war with England did the people fully open their eyes to the vast possibilities that lay before them.

A VIEW OF THE PEOPLE

What we have said in a former chapter of colonial life in 1760 will apply for the most part to the present period. We find still a nation of farmers, bad roads, and poor postal service. In 1790 there were but seventy-five post offices in the United States. Many of the comforts and necessities so highly prized by us were unknown at this period. The application of steam power in our great factories,

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377

the railroad, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone, the sewing. machine, the use of gas and electricity for lighting-all have come into use since the close of the eighteenth century. In nothing has our wonderful progress been more striking than in the means of travel, in which for two thousand years the world had made no improvement. To-day one can take a richly furnished sleeping car at Philadelphia in the evening, be rocked to sleep by the rumbling of the train, and wake next morning at Pittsburg, or Buffalo, or Boston. A hundred years ago such journey made in the stagecoach was long and laborious. But the people traveled little in comparison with the endless hurrying to and fro of all classes in our own times; and of those who sought a home in the great valley beyond the mountains few were ever seen again by friends and kindred who remained in the East. The people away from the seacoast lived in log cabins; their diet was salt pork and corn bread three times a day, with game, poultry, vegetables, and fruit occasionally. Life in Drinking was universal among men and youths, and every the West. family kept liquor in the house. While drunkenness in

its worst form was seldom seen, it was not unusual to find almost any one, even the minister, slightly intoxicated. Gambling was also common in many parts of the country; but the moral standard between the sexes was higher than that of any European people.

The Revolution had not been an unmixed blessing. It had brought political independence; but it had shaken society to its depths, and the immediate effect on religion and education was deleterious. The country had not yet broken away from its European leading strings. It had taken but one great step in advance of the Old World-it "had agreed to try the experiment of embracing half a continent in one republican system." And this was in itself a source of boundless inspiration. Here was a vast continent with its untold wealth of minerals and fertility of soil. Here, too, was a free people, a self-governing democracy. No royal dynasties here to oppress the people with arbitrary laws and burdensome taxation; no idle aristocracy or profligate nobility to sap the substance of industry and forever to remind the son of toil of his humble social condition. For such there was no room in this liberty-loving land; for here, barring the one great national evil of slavery, every man

was a master.

There were some signs of the dawn of a new era in various 1 Henry Adams, Vol. I, p. 73.

spheres of activity. Washington had secured neutrality; Whitney with his cotton gin had removed the great obstacle to the industrial development of the South; John Fitch and James Rumsey had shown the practicability of steam navigation, but years were yet to pass before their ideas were to be developed by Fulton and Livingston; Oliver Evans, the "American Watt," had invented a steam engine, but this too was to be laid aside until a phlegmatic public could be roused to a sense of its usefulness; in the world of art West and Copley were making a name for America in foreign lands; in literature President Dwight, Barlow, Freneau, and Brockden Brown had prepared the way for the greater lights, Irving, Bryant, and the galaxy of New England literati to be born within the first decade of the dawning century; manufactories on a small scale were multiplying, and commerce was swelling in volume. But with all this we look in vain in 1800 for the inventive genius, the unwearied energy, the boundless self-confidence and faith in the future that characterizes the America of to-day.

The census of 1800 showed a population of five and a third million,' one fifth of whom were slaves. Virginia still held the first place in population, Pennsylvania the second; but Massachusetts had been outrun by New York, which now held third place, while the old Bay State came fourth. For half a century the increase in population had been a natural increase, for the great tide of immigration that has poured in a steady stream upon our shores for nearly a century had not then made a beginning. Nine tenths of the population were still to be found east of the Alleghanies; but the course of empire had begun to make its way westward, and more than half a million people had already found homes in the great valley of the Mississippi.

Tennessee.

2

Three great roads led from the seaboard to the region beyond the mountains, one from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, another from the valley of the Potomac to the Monongahela, while a third led from Virginia in a southwesterly direction to the land of Tennessee. The largest of the western settlements was that of Kentucky, which contained upward of two hundred thousand inhabitants; the state had been admitted into the Union as the

15,308,483.

2 For thirty years after the adoption of the Constitution the foreign immigration to America averaged about five thousand a year. It was not till after 1840 that the immigrants reached one hundred thousand a year.

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379

fifteenth. South of Kentucky lay the beautiful valley of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Not until after the French War were

permanent settlements made in Tennessee. In 1785 they had grown to many thousands of people, and they sought admission to the Union as the state of Frankland or Franklin. Their effort was not successful, but eleven years later the state entered the Union as Tennessee.

Ohio.

One more new state belongs to this western group that entered the Union at this period. The great stretch of wilderness between Kentucky and Lake Erie, with its wooded hills and fertile valleys, known by the beautiful Indian name of the river that belted it on the south, was the chief prize for which the French and Indian War had been waged. After this war had given the territory to the English and the Revolution had given it to the Americans, various disputes arose concerning the ownership of the soil. Virginia in giving up her uncertain claims retained a large tract, some three and one half million acres, in the south central portion, known as the Fire Lands, while Connecticut took possession of an equal portion in the eastern part on the lake shore, known as the Western Reserve. The first permanent settlement was made by Rufus Putnam, "The Father of Ohio," who, in 1788, settled with some forty families at the mouth of the Muskingum River, founded a town and named it Marietta, in honor of the unfortunate queen of France.

St. Clair's defeat.

But Ohio was not to be won by white men without the most serious conflict with the natives. Two years after the settlement was made by Putnam, General Harmar suffered a defeat at the hands of the Indians of the Northwest, not far from the site of Fort Wayne. President Washington then chose General Arthur St. Clair to lead an army against the Indians. St. Clair was the grandson of a Scotch earl; he had reached America in the midst of the French and Indian War; he was with Amherst at the capture of Louisburg; with Wolfe at the fall of Quebec; and later he served valiantly against his native land in the Revolution. After the war he became governor of the Northwest Territory and commander in chief of the army. He gave the growing village in southwestern Ohio the name of Cincinnati. Washington now chose him to chasten the savage natives of the Wabash Valley. With eighteen hundred

1 Roosevelt's "Winning of the West," Vol. III, p. 144.

2 So called because they were set apart for soldiers and others whose property had suffered by fire during the Revolution.