A School History of the United States Part 19

4. These cessions were followed by others from Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut; and from them all, Congress formed the public domain to be sold to pay the debt.

5. The sale of this land led to the land ordinance of 1785 and the ordinance of 1787, for the government of the domain and the new political organism called the territory.

6. The defects of the Articles made revision necessary, and produced such distress that two conventions were called to consider the state of the country. That at Annapolis attempted nothing. That at Philadelphia framed the Const.i.tution of the United States.

7. The Const.i.tution was then pa.s.sed to the Continental Congress, which sent it to the legislatures of the states to be by them referred to conventions elected by the people for acceptance or rejection.

8. Eleven having ratified, Congress in 1788 fixed a day in 1789 (which happened to be March 4), when the First Congress under the Const.i.tution was to a.s.semble.

9. The date of the first presidential election was also fixed, and George Washington was made our first President.

/1776. New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode The Colonies adopt Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Const.i.tutions and -- Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North become States. Carolina, South Carolina.

1777. New York, Georgia.

1780. Ma.s.sachusetts.

/Framed by Congress 1776-1777.

Adopted by the states 1777-1781.

Articles of In force March 1, 1781.

Confederation -- Kind of government.

Defects. Result of the defects.

Trade convention at Annapolis.

Const.i.tutional convention called.

/Proceedings of the convention.

The three compromises.

Const.i.tution of Sources of the Const.i.tution.

the United States.- Original features.

Derived features.

Ratification by the states.

The Const.i.tution in force.

/Land claims of seven states.

Demands for the surrender of the western territory. The Territories. -- The cessions by the states. --The Public Ordinance of 1785. Domain.

Ordinance of 1787. Territorial government created./

The President. /Manner of electing.

Inauguration of Washington.

The Congress. /Organization of the First under the Const.i.tution.

/The Supreme Court The Judiciary. -- The Circuit Court The District Court

/Secretary of State The Secretaries. -- Secretary of Treasury Secretary of War The Attorney-general.

Origin of the "Cabinet."

CHAPTER XIV

OUR COUNTRY IN 1790

%185. The States.%--What sort of a country, and what sort of people, was Washington thus chosen to rule over? When, he was elected, the Union was composed of eleven states, for neither Rhode Island nor North Carolina had accepted the Const.i.tution.[1] Vermont had never been a member of the Union, because the Continental Congress would not recognize her as a state.

[Footnote 1: The states ratified the Const.i.tution on the dates given below: 1. Delaware Dec. 7, 1787 2. Pennsylvania Dec. 12, 1787 3. New Jersey Dec. 18, 1787 4. Georgia Jan. 2, 1788 5. Connecticut Jan. 9, 1788 6. Ma.s.sachusetts Feb. 7, 1788 7. Maryland April 28, 1788 8. South Carolina May 23, 1788 9. New Hampshire June 21, 1788 10. Virginia June 26, 1788 11. New York July 26, 1788 12. North Carolina Nov. 21, 1789 13. Rhode Island May 29, 1790]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The %UNITED STATES% March 4, 1789]

%186. Only a Part inhabited.%--Three fourths of our country was then uninhabited by white men, and almost all the people lived near the seaboard. Had a line been drawn along what was then the frontier, it would (as the map on p. 177 shows) have run along the sh.o.r.e of Maine, across New Hampshire and Vermont to Lake Champlain, then south to the Mohawk valley, then down the Hudson River, and southwestward across Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, then south along the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Altamaha River in Georgia, and by it to the sea. How many people lived here was never known till 1790. The Const.i.tution of the United States requires that the people shall be counted once in each ten years, in order that it may be determined how many representatives each state shall have in the House of Representatives; and for this purpose Congress ordered the first census to be taken in 1790. It then appeared that, excluding Indians, there were living in the eleven United States 3,380,000 human beings, or less than half the number of people who now live in the single state of New York.

%187. How the People were scattered.%--More were in the Southern than in the Eastern States. Virginia, then the most populous, contained one fifth. Pennsylvania had a ninth, while in the five states of Maryland, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia were almost one half of the English-speaking people of the United States. These were the planting states, and, populous as they were, they had but two cities--Baltimore and Charleston. Savannah, Wilmington, Alexandria, Norfolk, and Richmond were small towns. Not one had 8000 people in it. Indeed, the inhabitants of the six largest cities of the country (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and Salem) taken together were but 131,000.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES FIRST CENSUS, 1790/]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Boston in 1790[1]]

[Footnote 1: From the _Ma.s.sachusetts Magazine_, November, 1790.]

%188. The Cities.%--And how different these cities were from those of our day! What a strange world Washington would find himself in if he could come back and walk along the streets of the great city which now stands on the banks of the Potomac and bears his name! He never in his life saw a flagstone sidewalk, nor an asphalted street, nor a pane of gla.s.s six feet square. He never heard a factory whistle; he never saw a building ten stories high, nor an elevator, nor a gas jet, nor an electric light; he never saw a hot-air furnace, nor entered a room warmed by steam.

In the windows of shop after shop would be scores of articles familiar enough to us, but so unknown to him that he could not even name them. He never saw a sewing machine, nor a revolver, nor a rubber coat, nor a rubber shoe, nor a steel pen, nor a piece of blotting paper, nor an envelope, nor a postage stamp, nor a typewriter. He never struck a match, nor sent a telegram, nor spoke through a telephone, nor touched an electric bell. He never saw a railroad, though he had seen a rude form of steamboat. He never saw a horse car, nor an omnibus, nor a trolley car, nor a ferryboat. Fancy him boarding a street car to take a ride. He would probably pay his fare with a "nickel." But the "nickel"

is a coin he never saw. Fancy him trying to understand the advertis.e.m.e.nts that would meet his eye as he took his seat! Fancy him staring from the window at a fence bright with theatrical posters, or at a man rushing by on a bicycle!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Philadelphia in 1800 (Arch Street)]

%189. Newspapers and Magazines.%--A boy enters the car with half a dozen daily newspapers all printed in the same city. In Washington's day there were but four daily papers in the United States! On the news counter of a hotel, one sees twenty ill.u.s.trated papers, and fifty monthly magazines. In his day there was no ill.u.s.trated paper, no scientific periodical, no trade journal, and no such ill.u.s.trated magazines as _Harper's, Scribner's_, the _Century, St. Nicholas_. All the printing done in the country was done on presses worked by hand.

To-day the Hoe octuple press can print 96,000 eight-page newspapers an hour. To print this number on the hand press shown in the picture would have taken so long that when the last newspaper was printed the first would have been three months old!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Franklin press]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A fire bucket [1]]

[Footnote 1: Original in the Pennsylvania Historical Society.]

%190. The Fire Service.%--the ambulance, the steam fire engine, the hose cart, the hook and ladder company, the police patrol, the police officer on the street corner, the letter carrier gathering the mail, the district messenger boy, the express company, the delivery wagon of the stores, have all come in since Washington died. In his day the law required every householder in the city to be a fireman. His name might not appear on the rolls of any of the fire companies, he might not help to drag through the streets the lumbering tank which served as a fire engine, but he must have in his hall, or beneath the stairs, or hanging up behind his shop door, at least one leathern bucket inscribed with his name, and a huge bag of canvas or of duck. Then, if he were aroused at the dead of night by the cry of fire and the clanging of every church bell in the town, he seized this bucket and his bag, and, while his wife put a lighted candle in the window to illuminate the street, set off for the fire. The smoke or the flame was his guide, for the custom of indicating the place by a number of strokes on a bell had not yet come in. When at last he arrived at the scene he found there no idle spectators. Every one was busy. Some hurried into the building and filled their sacks with such movable goods as came nearest to hand. Some joined the line that stretched away to the water, and helped to pa.s.s the full buckets to those who stood by the fire. Others took posts in a second line, down which the empty buckets were hastened to the pump. The house would often be half consumed when the shouting made known that the engine had come. It was merely a pump mounted over a tank. Into the tank the water from the buckets was poured, and it was pumped thence by the efforts of a dozen men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fire engine of 1800[1]]

[Footnote 1: From an old cut]

%191. The Post Office.%--Washington sees a great wagon or a white trolley car marked United States Mail, and on inquiry is told that the money now spent by the government each year for the support of the post offices would have more than paid the national debt when he was President. He hears with amazement that there are now 75,000 post offices, and recalls that in 1790 there were but seventy-five. He picks up from the sidewalk a piece of paper with a little pink something on the corner. He is told that the portrait on it is his own, that it is a postage stamp, that it costs two cents, and will carry a letter to San Francisco, a city he never heard of, and, if the person to whom it is addressed cannot be found, will bring the letter back to the sender, a distance of over 5000 miles. In his day a letter was a single sheet of paper, no matter how large or small, and the postage on it was determined not by weight, but by distance, and might be anything from six to twenty-five cents.

At that time postage must always be prepaid, and as the post office must support itself, letters were not sent from the country towns till enough postage had been deposited at the post office to pay the expense of sending them. Newspapers and books could not be sent by mail.

%192. The Franchise.%--Taking the country through, the condition of the people was by no means so happy as ours. They had government of the people, but it was not by the people nor for the people. Everywhere the right to vote and to hold office was greatly restricted. The voter must have an estate worth a certain sum, or a specified number of acres, or an annual income of so many dollars. But the right to vote did not carry with it the right to hold office. More property was required for office holding than for voting, and there were besides certain religious restrictions. In New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, the governor, the members of the legislature, and the chief officers of state must be Protestants. In Ma.s.sachusetts and Maryland they must be Christians. All these restrictions were long since swept away.