The Nation in a Nutshell Part 3

[Sidenote: Thomas Jefferson.]

[Sidenote: Franklin.]

All this must have pa.s.sed through the mind of each deputy as the ill.u.s.trious committee of five stood before Hanc.o.c.k, at the President's desk. Foremost among them was Thomas Jefferson, the tallest, youngest, and ablest of the five; their chairman, and the author of the great doc.u.ment which he held in his hand. In his thirty-fourth year, Jefferson was then a fine specimen of the Virginian gentry, his tall form clad loosely in the small-clothes of the period, his bright red hair, unpowdered, gathered carelessly behind with a ribbon, his light blue eyes clear and calm, and his lips parted in a placid and confident smile. Next to him, side by side, stood Franklin and John Adams, sons of Ma.s.sachusetts--the one risen from the printer's case, the other a prosperous country lawyer, descended from the good Puritan stock of John Alden. Franklin was already beyond three score and ten; his gray hair hung in long locks to his shoulders; his snuff-colored coat reached to his knees; his large, pleasant face must have encouraged the others on that fateful day, so did it shine with trust in the cause and confidence in its success.

[Sidenote: Roger Sherman.]

Pugnacity and determination were revealed in the short thick-set figure of John Adams; the round bald head, the firm mouth, the set eyes of the Braintree patriot, gave the idea that he was grimly and terribly in earnest. Square-headed old Roger Sherman was another figure well worth studying; a man, like the others, with the air of being rather resolved on, than resigned to, the step which was being made, and seriously prepared to take all consequences. And, to complete the group, there was the polished and scholarly Livingston of New York, almost a fop in dress and toilet, a model of elegance and fine courtesy, who, though serving as one of the committee, was absent when the Declaration was signed. The signing did not take place for several weeks after its adoption.

[Sidenote: The Declaration proclaimed.]

[Sidenote: British exasperation.]

Jefferson read the Declaration to the Congress, and it was accepted, with a few alterations, by the votes of the deputies of twelve of the colonies. New York alone abstained from voting. The bell of the State House rang out the tidings; the Declaration was read to a surging, excited crowd in the square; it was sent off in all directions by fleet messengers, and read at the head of each brigade of the Continental army; and the colonies now knew that the fight was to go on to the bitter end. Thenceforth there was no thought of patching a compromise with the mother country, or of returning to the old allegiance to the British crown. On the side of England, national pride and royal obstinacy urged forward every preparation to continue the struggle; and the voices of Chatham, Burke, and Fox were drowned amid the storm of exasperation which the Declaration had caused. A price was set upon the heads of Hanc.o.c.k and Samuel Adams, and Hessians were purchased to fill the insufficient corps of the red-coats.

[Sidenote: Consequences of the Declaration.]

Now the colonies were the United States, with a flag common to all, the symbol of a united nationality. Seldom has a written paper so moved the world. In our own history, the only doc.u.ment that can compare with it, in its momentous results, was the emanc.i.p.ation charter of Abraham Lincoln. Both required a courage that was nothing less than heroic: but the proclaimers of the Declaration of Independence risked life, family, property; engaged in an irreconcilable conflict against enormous odds; defied the greatest naval power in the world, and the richest nation, in pursuit, not of the material gain to be derived from the abrogation of a tax, but of national liberties which they were determined to secure at every hazard. The Declaration, indeed, was needed to combine the action of the patriots, and to give them a definite and certain purpose. It was the bond that pledged them to harmony, and which confined them to the alternative of "liberty or death."

VI. SOCIETY IN 1776.

[Sidenote: American Society.]

Despite the numerous biographies, histories, narratives, diaries, and volumes of correspondence concerning the revolutionary epoch, which fill many shelves of our larger libraries, it is not easy to reproduce in imagination the state of American society as it was a hundred years ago.

In order to do so we must exclude from the mind many objects and ideas which have been familiar to us all our lives. We must subtract all of material improvements, of changes in the method of doing things, of new directions and wide divergencies in the current of thought and knowledge that have come about in the interval. We must strip the modern home, for instance, of appliances without which it is difficult to conjure up a picture of comfort, much less of luxury. We must forget railways, and the telegraph, and every other use of that still mysterious agent, electricity. We must put out of our minds all notion of great cities, of long lines of elegant shops, blocks of n.o.ble residences, s.p.a.cious parks adorned by every refinement of the gardening art, public buildings capped with stately dome and graceful turret and sculptured front; all notion of the later growth of recreation, the theatre and the concert hall, the lecture platform, the brilliant holiday festival, the sea excursion, the gay and attractive summer resort with its big hotels and its countless luxuries. We must return in imagination, in short, to a social condition but few remnants of which are still to be found in remote corners of the country; the relics of which still visible to the eye are rare and precious, and dwindling away day by day; and the life and spirit of which have ceased with the broadened, gift-laden civilization which has replaced the old primitive simplicity, and made a powerful, teeming, and restless nation out of scattered villages and colonies struggling to exist.

[Sidenote: Old-time Mansions.]

Still, there was a very distinct advance in culture, elegance, comfort, and luxury, beyond the condition of the colonies in the previous century. Those who remember the stately Hanc.o.c.k House, on the top of Beacon Hill in Boston, and compare its exterior and interior with still extant edifices which were residences of the wealthier colonists of two hundred years ago, may gather some idea of the far more lavish adornment and elegance of the period in which Hanc.o.c.k lived. We may well believe that when Washington drove through the streets of Philadelphia in a state coach, "of which the body was in the shape of a hemisphere, cream-colored, bordered with flowers round the panels, and ornamented with figures representing cupids, and supporting festoons," he presented a very different appearance from that of the early Puritan governors and Virginian squires; and could we have peeped into the square, solid drawing-room in which, as President, he held his receptions, aided by the matronly grace and dignity of Mrs. Washington, the scene would be far gayer and more imposing than William Penn's house would have displayed, or the company of the richest Dutch "patroon" of New York could have presented in the seventeenth century.

[Sidenote: Old Furniture.]

Yet, had we gone over the mansion, in how many things would we, used to the minute refinements of this later age, have judged it wanting!

Instead of gas, there would be candles, and not of the best quality, everywhere. Instead of stoves and furnaces with coal, we should have been fain to comfort ourselves with the cheerful blaze and genial glow, but scant and capricious warmth, of the wood logs, burning in the big open fireplaces. Lace curtains and moquette carpets would be nowhere apparent. The furniture, though here and there richly carved and bountifully upholstered, would be wanting in variety and the luxurious ease of that which we now enjoy.

[Sidenote: The Tables of 1776.]

At table we should have missed the thousand refinements and inventions of French and native cooking which now lend variety to our sustenance.

The food would have been substantial and heavy and little various; the English simplicity, probably, of barons of beef and shoulders of mutton, and cold bread, and big plum puddings, with a relish of fruits. Were we in fancy to journey from New York to Philadelphia or Boston, we should be forced to rumble slowly over bad roads, through interminable forests and by desert sea-coasts, in heavy and rudely jolting vehicles, and be several days upon the trip.

[Sidenote: Travelling in the Olden Time.]

[Sidenote: The Wealthier Cla.s.ses.]

It is a striking fact that people in the days of Washington travelled not a whit more rapidly than people in the days of Moses or of Homer.

The chariot-rider of the Olympic games attained a speed which was, perhaps, never equalled in Europe or America until the first railway-train sped between Liverpool and Manchester, in 1830. In 1776, the Americans were still mainly confined to the original occupations of the early colonists, farming, trade, hunting, and fishing. Manufactories there were not as yet; Lawrence and Lowell. Pittsburg, and the great industrial New York towns, were still in the womb of the future.

In almost every household throughout the land the old-fashioned spinning-wheel was humming under the pressure of matronly and maidenly feet, by which the homespun garments of the time were made. While the less well-to-do and laboring cla.s.ses were content with clothing spun and knitted at their own firesides, the wealthier people arrayed themselves with far more ostentation than they do at this day. Silks and satins came hither by ship-loads from France to supply the luxury of costume which was then in vogue. The difference between the costumes of that day and of this was especially marked in the attire of gentlemen. Now there is much greater plainness and uniformity. When Washington held his levees, he was generally dressed "in black velvet, with white or pearl-colored waistcoat, yellow gloves, and silver knee and shoe-buckles." "His hair was powdered and gathered in a silk bag behind.

He carried a c.o.c.ked hat in his hand, and wore a long sword with a scabbard of polished white leather." The display of dress was not less marked in other officials, and in men of high social rank. The judges of the Supreme Court wore scarlet robes faced with velvet. "If a gentleman went abroad, he appeared in his wig, white stock, white satin embroidered vest, black satin small-clothes, with white silk stockings, and a fine broadcloth or velvet coat; if at home, a velvet cap, sometimes with a fine linen one under it, took the place of the wig; while a gown, frequently of colored damask lined with silk, was subst.i.tuted for the coat, and the feet were covered with leather slippers of some fancy color." All men shaved their beards clean; a man who appeared in the streets wearing hair on any part of his face was stared at, and very likely laughed at.

[Sidenote: Old-time Attire.]

[Sidenote: Wigs and Queues.]

All the great gentlemen wore wigs; most of the country farmers contented themselves with tying their hair in a queue behind, sprinkling it with powder when they went to church on a Sunday. As for the ladies, those in the best society were even more elaborate in their toilets than those of to-day. On the dressing of the hair, especially, much time and money were spent. It was raised high upon the head and powdered thick; "the hair dressers," says Higginson, "were kept so busy on the day of any fashionable entertainment, that ladies sometimes had to employ their services at four or five in the morning, and had to sit upright all the rest of the day, in order to avoid disturbing the head-dress."

[Sidenote: Amus.e.m.e.nts.]

Although our ancestors did not possess the variety of amus.e.m.e.nts which now exists, their life was far from a humdrum one. Theatres were tabooed, but were beginning to hold their ground here and there, though not, we may be sure, in New England. There were, however, private theatricals and charades, which became at one period very much in vogue in the aristocratic houses of New York and Philadelphia. Concerts were often held, and in the country many old-time English festivals, such as May Day, were kept up. The most frequent and fashionable amus.e.m.e.nts of that time were b.a.l.l.s and parties. We hear of the gentlemen and dames going to "routs" in their sedan chairs, much as they did in the old country: arriving at eight--they kept better hours than our modern fashionable people--they would dance the staid and stately minuet and the gayer contra-dance, to the music mainly of fiddles, till midnight, and then separate, horrified at the lateness of the hour.

[Sidenote: Imitations of the English.]

Indeed, we are able to see in the habits of the American upper cla.s.ses a distinct imitation of London fashions, despite the quarrel with the British. The whole etiquette of patrician society was based upon that of the English court, just as the law administered in the courts was borrowed from that dispensed at Westminster. It is interesting to note that "gentlemen took snuff in those days almost universally: and a great deal of expense and variety were often lavished upon a snuff-box. To take snuff with one another was as much a matter of courtesy as the lifting of the hat."

[Sidenote: Wine and Profanity.]

The days of prevalent cigar-smoking and tobacco-chewing had not come.

The use of wine and ardent spirits was regarded with less reprobation in the old society than in the new; profanity, too, was indulged in much more freely by men of standing and moral profession than now. Thus we can recognize, in these and in many other things, a progress in morals, and in greater refinement both of thought, manners, and language, as well as in the material enginery of civilization.

VII. THE REVOLUTION.

[Sidenote: Washington as Commander-in-chief.]

George Washington had been a.s.signed to the command-in-chief of the colonial troops, just before the Battle of Bunker Hill. Thus, at the very start, wisdom ruled the counsels and Providence guided the action of our forefathers. The military abilities and lofty patriotism of Washington could scarcely have been foreseen at the first in all their breadth and scope; yet he was already known as a soldier of tried courage and of prudent conduct, and as a Virginia gentleman of conspicuous social and private virtues.

[Sidenote: Continental Generals.]

Washington a.s.sumed the chief direction of the Continental forces, under the famous old elm which still stands, but a few steps from Harvard College, in Old Cambridge, on the third day of July, 1775. At the same time of his appointment, four major-generals--Artemus Ward, Israel Putnam, Philip Schuyler, and Charles Lee--were designated. The princ.i.p.al troops of the colonies were at this time gathered in an irregular cordon around Boston. Their position was almost unchanged from that which they had occupied before the Battle of Bunker Hill; for the British were unable to follow up the success which they had achieved on that occasion.

[Sidenote: The Continental Forces.]

The general-in-chief, on inspecting his forces, saw how ill disciplined and ill supplied they were. They had but little clothing, a scant supply of arms, and still less ammunition. Washington's first task was by no means the least difficult of those which lay before him. It was to create an army out of a brave but heterogeneous mult.i.tude of patriots.

It was to collect arms and supplies; to keep vigilant watch on the British in Boston; to fortify and defend the surrounding circle; and prepare to meet and drive out the pent-up foe.

At last, after preparations extending through nearly eight months, Boston was attacked by batteries from Dorchester Heights, and on the 17th of March, 1776, Howe evacuated the town, and the first decisive struggle of the seven years' contest had been decided in favor of the Americans.

[Sidenote: First Campaign.]

The scene is now transferred further south. Charleston had, it is true, already been attacked, but without favorable results to the English; on the other hand, Arnold and Montgomery had vainly essayed to a.s.sail British power in the Canadas. New York was the objective point of those who had now come to be regarded as the invaders of our soil. Its splendid harbor and its central position afforded a good standpoint. The concentration of the troops of Howe, which had evacuated Boston, the war ships commanded by his brother, Lord Howe, and the forces under Clinton, which had been occupied in futile operations in the South, enabled the British to force Washington out of New York, and to occupy it themselves.

[Sidenote: Numerical Force of the Contestants.]

The whole British force engaged in this enterprise was scarcely less than twenty-five thousand men; the American force did not exceed twelve thousand; and the contrast in discipline and equipment still further increased this inequality of strength. Then came the retreat across New Jersey, succeeded by one of the most brilliant strokes of the war. This was the midnight and midwinter crossing of the Delaware by the American general and his troops, the forced march upon Trenton through the snow and cold, and the surprise and utter defeat of the Hessians at that place on Christmas morning.