A Brief History of the United States Part 28

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

We shall see what came of this a few years later.

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

especially European nations. Washington died at Mount Vernon, December 14, 1799.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIX

GROWTH OF THE COUNTRY, 1789-1805

PROSPERITY.--Twelve years had now elapsed since the meeting at New York of the first Congress under the Const.i.tution, and they had been years of great prosperity.

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

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TERRY CLOCK.]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: MODEL OF WHITNEY'S COTTON GIN. In the National Museum, Washington.]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: MODEL OF FITCH'S STEAMBOAT. In the National Museum, Washington.]

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

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

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

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

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

INDIANA TERRITORY.--After Wayne's treaty with the Indians, five years brought so many people into the Northwest Territory that in 1800 the western part was cut off and made the separate territory of Indiana. [7]

Not 6,000 white people then lived in all its vast area.

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

PUBLIC LAND ON CREDIT.--The same year (1800) in which Congress created the territory of Indiana, it changed the manner of selling the public lands.

Hitherto the buyer had been obliged to pay cash. After 1800 he might buy on credit, paying one quarter annually. The effect of this was to bring settlers into the West in such numbers that the state of Ohio was admitted in 1803, and the territory of Michigan formed in 1805. [8]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SETTLED AREA IN 1810.]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE UNITED STATES, 1805.]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CABILDO, CITY HALL OF NEW ORLEANS.]

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

THE BOUNDARIES OF LOUISIANA.--The splendid territory thus acquired had never been given definite bounds. But resting on the discoveries and explorations of Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle, Louisiana was understood to extend westward to the Rio Grande and the Rocky Mountains, and northward to the sources of the rivers that flowed into the Mississippi.

Whether the purchase included West Florida was doubtful, but we claimed it, so that our claim extended eastward to the Perdido River.

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

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRANDING IRON USED BY LEWIS.]

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

REFORMS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.--When the Republican party came into power in 1801, it was pledged to make reforms "to put the ship of state,"

as Jefferson said, "on the Republican tack." About a third of the important Federalist office-holders were accordingly removed from office, the annual speech at the opening of Congress was abolished, and the written message introduced--a custom followed ever since by our Presidents. Internal taxes were repealed, the army was reduced, [14] the cost of government lessened, and millions of dollars set aside annually for the payment of the national debt.

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