Condition of the United States at the Close of the Revolution--New
England Injured and New York Benefited Commercially by the Struggle--
Luxury of City Life--Americans an Agricultural People--The Farmer's
Home--Difficulty in Traveling--Contrast Between North and South--Southern
Aristocracy--Northern Great Families--White Servitude--The Western
Frontier--Karly Settlers West of the Mountains--A Hardy Population--
Disappearance of the Colonial French--The Ordinance of 1787--Flood of
Emigration Beyond the Ohio.
Peace with Great Britain left the United States free and independent, but
burdened with the expenses of the war, and agitated by the problems which
independence presented. The soldiers of the Continental Army went back to
their firesides and their fields, and trade began to show signs of
revival. New England's commercial interests had received a serious blow
from the Revolution, while New York city, occupied by the British
throughout the war, the headquarters of the royal forces with their
lavish expenditures, and its commerce protected and convoyed by the
British fleet, was benefited instead of injured by the struggle. The
merchants of New York, whether attached or not at heart to the royalist
cause, put business before patriotism, while the flag of St. George
floated over their city, and urged the British to severer measures
against the "rebels" in order that New York's mercantile interests might
be promoted and safeguarded.[1] Apart from natural advantages, next in
importance to the Erie Canal as a cause of New York's leading commercial
position is the fact that the British were in possession of the city
during the Revolution.
[1] A number of years ago the Hon. William M. Evarts delivered
a speech before the New York Chamber of Commerce in which he
congratulated that body on its patriotism "during the Revolution."
Having been allowed to examine the records of the Chamber for the
revolutionary period, I wrote an article which appeared over my
initials in the New York _Sun_ pointing out that the Chamber, as
shown by its own records, had been ultra-loyal, instead of
patriotic.--_H. M._
There was considerable luxury in city life then as now. "By Revolutionary
times love of dress everywhere prevailed throughout the State of New
York," says Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, "a love of dress which caused great
extravagance and was noted by all travelers."[2] "If there is a town on
the American continent," said the Chevalier de Crevecoeur, "where English
luxury displayed its follies it is in New York." Philadelphia was not far
behind New York in extravagance, notwithstanding Quaker traditions, while
Boston, rich in solid wealth, was more conservative in displaying it, and
retained in appearance at least something of Puritan simplicity.
[2] Costumes of Colonial Times.
The urban residents of those days were, however, insignificant in numbers
as compared with the total population. The Americans were an agricultural
people, and they were a self-dependent people. The articles of clothing
needed in the farmer's home were manufactured in the home; the tailor
went around from house to house making into suits the cloth which the
family had woven; the school teacher "boarded around" as an equivalent
for salary that might otherwise have been paid in worthless currency, and
the simple requirements of rural existence were supplied in a large
degree by trade and barter without the use of what passed as money. The
farmer's cottage stood upon a level sward of green. The kitchen was the
living-room, and there the family spent their time when not out at work
or retired to rest. It was the largest apartment in the house, and its
great fire-place, with a ruddy back-log and pine knots flaming and
sparkling on the iron-dogs, offered a most cheerful welcome on a New
England winter's night. The baking oven, heated with fine-split dry wood,
cooked the frugal but savory meal, which was served up on a solid
old-fashioned table, around which the household gathered, first giving
thanks to the Giver of all. When not busied with other duties, the
housewife pressed with measured round the treadles of the loom, as she
twilled the web she was weaving; and as the shades of evening descended
the sonorous hum of the spinning-wheel gave token to the young man on
courtship intent that the daughter of the house was at home. From the
kitchen a door opened into the best room, a cheerless sort of place only
thrown open on special occasions, and not to compare in comfort with the
kitchen, its high-backed settle and its genial fire, whose glowing ashes
seemed to reflect the warmer glow of loving eyes. Other doors from the
kitchen opened into sleeping-rooms, although in the larger houses the
family usually slept upstairs. The well was used for cooling purposes as
well as water supply, and the old oaken bucket suspended from the
well-sweep by means of a slender pole, invited the passing stranger to
quaff nature's wholesome beverage. Wheeled vehicles were not often seen
in the rural districts, horses being commonly used for locomotion. The
difficulty of traveling discouraged intercourse between different
communities, and a journey from Boston to New York, taking a week by
stage-coach, and three or four days by sailing vessel, was a more
momentous undertaking than a voyage to Europe now. Few traveled for
pleasure. Few took any active interest in public affairs beyond their own
neighborhood, or at most their own State, and the bond of the
confederation rested loosely on communities now no longer united by the
apprehension of common danger.
* * *
Between the North and the South the contrast was already ominous of
future strife. The Southern planter lived like an aristocrat surrounded
by servants and slaves, dispensing hospitality according to his means
after the fashion of the British nobility. Cotton had not yet poured the
gold of England into the lap of the South, but tobacco held its own as a
substantial basis of wealth. In the North, on the other hand, the tiller
of the soil was usually its owner, assisted sometimes by indentured
servants or slaves, but never himself above the toil which he exacted
from others. The North, too, had its great families, descendants of
patroons and others who had received large grants of land and enjoyed
exceptional privileges, and were now growing in wealth with the
increasing value of their property; but the aristocratic Northern
families were gradually losing political power and influence, and sinking
toward the level of the people; whereas in the South the aristocratic
element was arrogating more and more the control of State affairs, and
the representation of Southern States in the councils of the nation. In
the North also equality was promoted by the potent influence of the
Revolution in breaking up the system of servile white labor. Master and
man were summoned for the defence of their country; they fought, they
suffered and endured together the same privations for a common cause.
Distinctions of class were obliterated by the blood that flowed freely
for the freedom of all, and what remained of ancient aristocratic
prejudice was yet more thoroughly undermined by the example of the great
social upheaval in France. Nevertheless the system of white servitude was
not entirely abolished until long after the close of the eighteenth
century, immigrants to this country frequently selling themselves as
"redemptioners" to pay the cost of their passage. The limits of this form
of service seldom exceeded seven years. No taint was apparently attached
to it, and many a worthy family had a "redemptioner" for its first
American ancestor.
* * *
Looking to the western frontier just after the Revolution, and in
particular the forks of the Ohio, we see a population very different in
character from that of the older settlements. The peace-loving Quaker
clung to the eastern counties, where life and property were secured from
raid and reprisal, and formed his ideas of the Indian character and
deserts from the red men, who, either Christianized or demoralized,
preferred the grudging charity of civilization to the rude and frugal
spoils of the chase, or the blood-stained rapine of war. This specimen of
Indian was usually so harmless, in some instances perhaps so deserving,
that the well-meaning Quaker learned to receive with discredit the
stories of horror from the frontier, and discouraged with his voice and
influence every step toward the subjection of the hostile Indian and his
European allies. Emigrants were forbidden, under stern penalties, to
encroach on the Indian domain, and petitions from invaded settlements for
arms and assistance, were met with cold indifference or positive refusal.
The men and women who, in face of such discouragement, cast their lot
beyond the mountains, must have been a hardy set indeed, and made of
stuff not likely to yield in a wrestle with wild nature and wilder
humanity.
The early inhabitants of that frontier region were of sturdy Scotch and
Irish stock. The troublous political times in their native countries
doubtless had much to do with their emigration hither. The star of the
Stuart line had set never to rise again, and its bright and hopeless
flicker, in the days of '45, was extinguished in the blood of Scotland's
noblest sons. But while order reigned, content was far from prevailing,
and many a brave heart sought, on the distant shore of America, to forget
the anguish of the past in the building of a prosperous future. With a
final sigh for "Lochaber No More," the Highlander turned his gaze from
the lochs and glens of his fathers, and crossed the ocean to that new
land of promise where every man might be a laird, and a farm might be had
for the asking, where no Culloden would remind him of the fate of his
kindred, and his children could grow up far from the barbarous laws that
crushed out the spirit of the ancient clans. Along the banks of the
Monongahela those Scotch and Irish settlers built their rude cabins under
the guns of Fort Pitt, guarded--strange irony of fate--from a savage
enemy by the very flag which flaunted oppression in their native Britain
and Ireland. That they learned to love their adopted land who can
question? A Virginian cavalier, accustomed to the graces and _politesse_
of a slave-owning aristocracy, saw fit to sneer at their humble abodes,
and their lack of the finer accessories of civilization, forgetting that a
cabin is more often than a palace the cradle of the purest patriotism, and
that as true American hearts beat in those huts in the wilderness as in
the courtly precincts of Richmond.
But the "poor mechanics and laborers" exercised a tremendous influence on
the destinies of the young, and as yet disunited republic. They were
freemen. Pittsburg, the outpost of civilization, had no slave within
sight of its redoubts, and the spirit of freedom which hovered there,
found rest and refreshment for its broader flight toward the great
northwest. The decision of 1780, which saved Pittsburg to Pennsylvania,
preserved it as a stronghold of freedom and of free labor, and now it far
surpasses in industry, wealth and population the then slave-labor capital
of the Old Dominion.
It is an interesting fact that the colonial French left no impress on the
site where they made such a gallant stand for New France. They have
vanished as completely as the Indian. In Detroit, in St. Louis, French
ancestry can be traced in families of high position and honorable
lineage. Such families are to those cities what the Knickerbockers are to
New York. They give a gracious flavor to society; they are a link between
the dim and heroic past and the dashing, eager, practical present; they
add a dreamy fascination to the social landscape, like the lingering haze
of morning illumined by the rays of the sun fast mounting to zenith.
Where Duquesne stood, neither track nor mark remains of the volatile,
daring and glory-loving race whose lily flag greeted the bearers of brave
Beaujeu's remains from the fatal field of Braddock. No authentic trace
has been discovered even of the fortifications which they erected, and
Fort Duquesne is known only by its tragic place in American history.
The ordinance of 1787, creating the Northwestern Territory, and throwing
it open for settlement, at once induced a large emigration to the lands
beyond the Ohio. Descendants of the Puritans mingled in the pioneer
throng with rangers from Virginia and backwoodsmen from Pennsylvania. The
frontiersman in hunting-shirt and moccasins blazed a path for the New
Englander in broadcloth coat, velvet collar, bell-crowned hat and heavy
boots. These emigrants all possessed valuable qualities for the building
up of new States, and they all displayed in the trials which immediately
beset them the courage which had carried the nation successfully through
the war for independence. They were entering upon a vast and fertile
domain which the aboriginal possessors, notwithstanding treaties, did not
propose to abandon, and which was the scene of sanguinary conflict before
it was finally surrendered.