A School History of the United States Part 20

%193. Cruel Punishments.%--The humane spirit of our times was largely wanting. The debtor was cast into prison. The pauper might be sold to the highest bidder. The criminal was dragged out into open day and flogged or branded. From ten to nineteen crimes were punishable with death. No such thing as a lunatic asylum, or a deaf and dumb asylum, or a penitentiary existed. The prisons were dreadful places. Men came out of them worse than they went in.

%194. The Condition of the Laborer; of the well to do.%--Men worked harder and for less money then than now. A regular working day was from sunrise to sunset, with an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner.

Sometimes the laborer was fed and lodged by the employer, in which case he was paid four dollars a month in winter and six in summer. Two shillings (30 cents) a day for unskilled labor was thought high wages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %Washington's flute and Miss Custis's harpsichord at Mount Vernon%]

Even the houses of the well to do were much less comfortable places than are such abodes in our day. There were no furnaces, no gas, no bathrooms, no plumbing. Wood was the universal fuel. Coal from Virginia and Rhode Island was little used. All cooking was done in "Dutch ovens,"

or in "out ovens," or in the enormous fireplaces to be found in every household. Wood fuel made sooty chimneys, and sooty chimneys took fire.

In every city, therefore, were men known as "sweeps," whose business it was to clean chimneys.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %Earthenware stove--Moravian%]

[Ill.u.s.tration: %Dutch oven%[1]]

[Footnote 1: The bread, or meat, to be baked was put into the pot, and hot coals were heaped all around the sides and on the lid, which had a rim to keep the coals on it.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: a foot stove]

Washington was a farmer, yet he never in his life beheld a tomato, nor a cauliflower, nor an eggplant, nor a horserake, nor a drill, nor a reaper and binder, nor a threshing machine, nor a barbed wire fence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Kitchen in Washington's headquarters in Morristown, N.J.[1]]

[Footnote 1: This shows a fine specimen of the old-fashioned fireplace.

Notice the andirons, the bellows, the lamp, the spinning wheel, the old Dutch clock, and the kettles hanging on the crane over the logs.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A plow used in 1776]

His land was plowed with a wooden plow partly shod with iron. His seed was sown by hand; his hay was cut with scythes; his grain was reaped with sickles, and threshed on the barn floor with flails in the hands of his slaves.

%195. Negro Slavery.%--No living person under thirty years of age has ever seen a negro slave in our country. When Washington was President there were 700,000 slaves. When the Revolution opened, slavery was permitted by law in every colony. But the feeling against it in the North had always been strong, and when the war ended, the people began the work of abolition. In Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hampshire the const.i.tutions of the states declared that "all men are born free and equal," and that "all men are born equally free," and this was understood to abolish slavery. In Pennsylvania, slavery was abolished in 1780. In Rhode Island and Connecticut gradual abolition laws were pa.s.sed which provided that all children born of slave parents after a certain day should be free at a certain age, and that their children should never be slaves. The Ordinance of 1787 had prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. But in 1790 New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and all the states south of these were slave states. (See map on the next page.)

Though slaves were men and women and children, they had no civil rights whatever. They could be bought and sold, leased, seized for a debt, bequeathed by will, given away. If they made anything, or found anything, or earned anything, it belonged not to them, but to their owners. They were property just as oxen or horses were in the North. It was unlawful to teach them to read or write. They were not allowed to give evidence against a white man, nor to travel in bands of more than seven unless a white man was with them, nor to quit the plantation without leave.

If a planter provided coa.r.s.e food, coa.r.s.e clothes, and a rude shelter for his slaves, if he did not work them more than fifteen hours out of twenty-four in summer, nor more than fourteen in winter, and if he gave them every Sunday to themselves, he did quite as much for their comfort as the law required he should.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP SHOWING THE AREA OF %SLAVE AND FREE SOIL IN 1790%]

If the slave committed any offense, if he stole anything, or refused to work, or ran away, it was lawful to load him with irons, to confine him for any length of time in a cell, and to beat him and whip him till the blood ran in streams from the wounds, and he grew too weak to stand.

Old advertis.e.m.e.nts are still extant in which runaway blacks are described by the scars left upon their bodies by the lash. When such lashings were not prescribed by the court, they were commonly given under the eye of the overseer, or inflicted by the owner himself.

%196. Six Days from Boston to New York.%--Our country was small when Washington was President. The people lived on the seaboard. The towns and cities were not actually very far apart; but the means of travel were so poor, the time consumed in going even fifty miles was so great, that the country was practically immense in extent. Now we step into a beautifully fitted car, heated by steam, lighted by electricity, richly carpeted, and provided with most comfortable seats and beds, and are whirled across the continent from Philadelphia to San Francisco in less time than it took Washington to go from New York to Boston.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old mill at West Falmouth, Ma.s.s.[1]]

[Footnote 1: In many parts of the country where there was no water power, as Cape Cod, Long Island, Nantucket, etc., flour was ground at windmills. The windmill shown in the picture was built in 1787, and is still in use.]

If you had lived in 1791 and started, say, from Boston, to go to Philadelphia to see the President and the great city where independence had been declared, you would very likely have begun by making your will, and bidding good-by to your friends. You would then have gone down to the office of the proprietor of the stagecoach, and secured a seat to New York. As the coach left but twice a week, you would have waited till the day came and would then have presented yourself, at three o'clock in the morning, at the tavern whence the coach started.

The stagecoach was little better than a huge covered box mounted on springs. It had neither gla.s.s windows, nor door, nor steps, nor closed sides. The roof was upheld by ten posts which rose from the body of the vehicle, and the body was commonly breast high. From the top were hung curtains of leather, to be rolled up when the day was fine, and let down and b.u.t.toned when it was rainy and cold. Within were four seats. Without was the baggage. Fourteen pounds of luggage were allowed to be carried free by each pa.s.senger. But if your portmanteau or your bra.s.s-nail-studded hair trunk weighed more, you would have paid for it at the rate per mile that you paid for yourself. Under no circ.u.mstances, however, would you be permitted to take on the journey more than 150 pounds. When the baggage had all been weighed and strapped on the coach, when the horses had been attached, and the waybill, containing the names of the pa.s.sengers, made out, the pa.s.sengers would clamber to their seats through the front of the stage and sit down with their faces toward the driver's seat.

One pair of horses usually dragged the coach eighteen miles, when a fresh pair would be attached, and if all went well, you would be put down about ten at night at some wayside inn or tavern after a journey of forty miles. Cramped and weary, you would eat a frugal supper and hurry off to bed with a notice from the landlord to be ready to start at three the next morning. Then, no matter if it rained or snowed, you would be forced to make ready by the dim light of a horn lantern, unknown now, for another ride of eighteen hours.

If no mishaps occurred, if the coach was not upset by the ruts, if storm or flood did not delay you at Springfield, where the road met the Connecticut, or at Stratford, where it met the Housatonic, each of which had to be crossed on clumsy flatboats, the stage would roll into New York at the end of the sixth day.

%197. Two Days from New York to Philadelphia.%--And here a serious delay was almost certain to occur, for even in the best of weather it was no easy matter to cross the Hudson to New Jersey. When the wind was high and the water rough, or the river full of ice, the boldest did not dare to risk a crossing. Once over the river, you would again go on by coach, and at the end of two more days would reach Philadelphia. In our time one can travel in eight hours the entire distance between Boston and Philadelphia, a distance which Washington could not have traversed in less than eight days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Stagecoach and inn[1]]

[Footnote 1: From a print of 1798.]

%198. The Roads and the Inns.%--The newspapers and the travelers of those days complained bitterly of the roads and the inns. On the best roads the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the pa.s.sengers were often forced to get out and help the driver pull the wheels out of the mud. Breakdowns and upsets were of everyday occurrence. Yet bad as the roads were, the travel was so considerable that very often the inns and taverns even in the large cities could not lodge all who applied unless they slept five or six in a room.

%199. A Steamboat on the Delaware.%--Rude as this means of travel seems to us, the men of 1790 were quite satisfied with it, and absolutely refused to make use of a better one. Had you been in Philadelphia during the summer of 1790 and taken up a copy of _The Pennsylvania Packet_, you could not have failed to notice this advertis.e.m.e.nt of the first successful steamboat in the world:

%The Steam-Boat

Is now ready to take Pa.s.sengers, and is intended to set off from Arch Street Ferry in Philadelphia every _Monday, Wednesday_ and _Friday_, for _Burlington, Bristol, Bordentown_ and _Trenton_, to return on _Tuesdays, Thursdays_ and _Sat.u.r.days_--Price for Pa.s.sengers, 2/6 to Burlington and Bristol, 3/9 to Bordentown, 5/. to Trenton. June 14. tu.th ftf.%

This boat was the invention of John Fitch, and from June to September ran up and down the Delaware; but so few people went on it that he could not pay expenses, and the boat was withdrawn.

%200. To the Great West.%--From Philadelphia went out one of the great highways to what was then the far West, but to what we now know as the valley of the Ohio. The traveler who to-day makes the journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburg is whisked on a railroad car through an endless succession of cities and villages and rich farms, and by great factories and mills and iron works, which in the days of Washington had no existence. He makes the journey easily between sunrise and sunset. In 1790 he could not have made it in twelve days.

%201. Towns beyond the Alleghany Mountains.%--Though the country between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi had been closed to settlement from 1763 to 1776 by the King's proclamation, it was by no means without population in 1790. At Detroit and Kaskaskia and Vincennes were old French settlements, made long before France was driven out of Louisiana. But there were others of later date. The hardy frontiersman of 1763 cared no more for the King's proclamation than he did for the bark of the wolf at his cabin door. The ink with which the doc.u.ment was written had not dried before emigrants from Maryland and Virginia and Pennsylvania were hurrying into the valley of the Monongahela.

In 1769 William Bean crossed the mountains from North Carolina, and, building a cabin on the banks of Watauga Creek, began the settlement of Tennessee. James Robertson and a host of others followed in 1770, and soon the valleys of the Clinch and the Holston were dotted with cabins.

In 1769 Daniel Boone, one of the grandest figures in frontier history, began his exploits in what is now Kentucky, and before 1777 Boonesboro, Harrodsburg, and Lexington were founded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %Model of Fitch's steamboat%[l]]

[Footnote 1: Now in the National Museum, Washington.]

%202. State of Franklin.%--Before the Revolution closed, emigrants under James Robertson and John Donelson planted Nashville and half a dozen other settlements on the c.u.mberland, in middle Tennessee. After the Revolution ended, so many settlers were in eastern Tennessee that they tried to make a new state. North Carolina, following the example of her Northern sisters, ceded to Congress her claim to what is now Tennessee in 1784. But the people on the Watauga no sooner heard, of it than under the lead of John Sevier they organized the state of Franklin, whereupon North Carolina repealed the act of cession and absorbed the new state by making the Franklin officials her officials for the district of Tennessee. In 1789 she again ceded the district, and in May of that year Tennessee became part of the public domain.

%203. Squatters in Ohio.%--The cession to Congress of the land north of the Ohio led to an emigration from Virginia and Kentucky to what is now the state of Ohio. As this territory was to be sold to pay the national debt, Congress was forced to order the squatters away, and when they refused to go, sent troops to burn their cabins, destroy their crops, and drive them across the Ohio. The lawful settlement of the territory began after the Ohio and Scioto companies bought their lands in 1787, and John C. Symmes purchased his in 1788.

%204. Pittsburg in 1790.%--At Pittsburg, then the greatest town in the United States west of the Alleghany Mountains, were some 200 houses, mostly of logs, and 2000 people, a newspaper, and a few rude manufactories. The life of the town was its river trade. Pittsburg was the place where emigrants "fitted out" for the West. A settler intending to go down the Ohio valley with his family and his goods would lay in a stock of powder and ball, buy flour and ham enough to last him for a month, and secure two rude structures which pa.s.sed under the name of boats.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %The first millstones and salt kettle in Ohio%]

%205. A Trip down the Ohio in 1790.%--In the long keel boat he would put his wife, his children, and such travelers as had been waiting at Pittsburg for a chance to go down the river. In the flatboat would be his cattle or his stores. Two dangers beset the voyager on the Ohio. His boat might become entangled in the branches of the trees that overhung the river, or be fired into by the Indians who lurked in the woods. The cabin of the keel boat, therefore, was low, that it might glide under the trees, and the roof and sides were made as nearly bullet-proof as possible. The whole craft was steered by a huge oar mounted on a pivot at the stern.[1]

[Footnote 1: See the boats in the pictures on next page.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Ohio]

%206. Towns along the Ohio.%--As the emigrant in such an ark floated down the river, he would come first to Wheeling, a town of fifty log cabins, and then to Marietta, a town planted in Ohio in 1788 by settlers sent by the Ohio Company. Below Marietta were Belpre and Gallipolis, a settlement made by Frenchmen brought there by the Scioto Company. Yet farther down, on the Kentucky side, were Limestone (now Maysville) and Newport, opposite which some settlers were founding the city of Cincinnati. Once past Cincinnati, all was unbroken wilderness till one reached Louisville in Kentucky, beyond which few emigrants had yet ventured to go.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %Cincinnati in 1802 (Fort Washington)%]