OUR COUNTRY IN 1789
THE STATES.--When Washington became President, the thirteen original
states of the Union [1] were in many respects very unlike the same states
in our day. In some the executive was called president; in others
governor. In some he had a veto; in others he had not. In some there was
no senate. To be a voter in those days a man had to have an estate worth a
certain sum of money, [2] or a specified annual income, or own a certain
number of acres. [3]
Moreover, to be eligible as governor or a member of a state legislature a
man had to own more property than was needed to qualify him to vote. In
many states it was further required that officeholders should be
Protestants, or at least Christians, or should believe in the existence of
God.
The adoption of the Constitution made necessary certain acts of
legislation by the states. They could issue no more bills of credit;
provision therefore had to be made for the redemption of those
outstanding. They could lay no duties on imports; such as had laid import
duties had to repeal their laws and abolish their customhouses. All
lighthouses, beacons, buoys, maintained by individual states were
surrendered to the United States, and in other ways the states had to
adjust themselves to the new government.
[Illustration: CONTINENTAL PAPER MONEY.]
THE NATIONAL DEBT.--Each of the states was in debt for money and supplies
used in the war; and over the whole country hung a great debt contracted
by the old Congress. Part of this national debt was represented by bills
of credit, loan-office certificates, lottery certificates, and many other
sorts of promises to pay, which had become almost worthless. This was
strictly true of the bills of credit or paper money issued in great
quantities by the Continental Congress. [4] Besides this domestic debt
owed to the people at home, there was a foreign debt, for Congress had
borrowed a little money from Spain and a great deal from France and
Holland. On this debt interest was due, for Congress had not been able to
pay even that.
THE MONEY OF THE COUNTRY.--The Continental bills having long ceased to
circulate, the currency of the country consisted of paper money issued by
individual states, and the gold, silver, and copper coins of foreign
countries. These passed by such names as the Joe or Johannes, the
doubloon, pistole, moidore, guinea, crown, dollar, shilling, sixpence,
pistareen, penny. A common coin was the Spanish milled dollar, which
passed at different ratings in different parts of the country. [5]
Congress in 1786 adopted the dollar as a unit, divided it into the half,
quarter, dime, half dime, cent, and half cent, and ordered some coppers to
be minted; but very few were made by the contractor.
[Illustration: SETTLED AREA IN 1790.]
POPULATION.--Just how many people dwelt in our country before 1790 can
only be guessed at. In that year they were counted for the first time, and
it was then ascertained that they numbered 3,929,000 (in the thirteen
states) of whom 700,000 were slaves. All save about 200,000 dwelt along
the seaboard, east of the mountains; and nearly half were between
Chesapeake Bay and Florida.
The most populous state was Virginia; after her, next in order were
Massachusetts (including Maine), Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and New
York.
The most populous city was Philadelphia, after which came New York,
Boston, Charleston, and Baltimore.
LIFE IN THE CITIES.--What passed for thriving cities in those days were
collections of a thousand or two houses, very few of which made any
pretension to architectural beauty, ranged along narrow streets, none of
which were sewered, and few of which were paved or lighted even on nights
when the moon did not shine. During daylight a few constables kept order.
At night small parties of men called the night watch walked the streets.
Each citizen was required to serve his turn on the watch or find a
substitute or pay a fine. He had to be a fireman and keep in his house
near the front door a certain number of leather fire buckets with which at
the clanging of the courthouse or market bell he would run to the burning
building and take his place in the line which passed the full buckets from
the nearest pump to the engine, or in the line which passed the empty
buckets from the engine back to the pump. Water for household use or for
putting out fires came from private wells or from the town pumps. There
were no city water works.
[Illustration: EARLY FIRE ENGINE.]
Lack of good and abundant water, lack of proper drainage, ignorance of the
laws of health, filthy, unpaved streets, spread diseases of the worst
sort. Smallpox was common. Yellow fever in the great cities was of almost
annual occurrence, and often raged with the violence of a plague.
LACK OF CONVENIENCES.--Few appliances which increase comfort, or promote
health, or save time or labor, were in use. Not even in the homes of the
rich were there cook stoves or furnaces or open grates for burning
anthracite coal, or a bath room, or a gas jet. Lamps and candles afforded
light by night. The warming pan, the foot stove (p. 97), and the four-
posted bedstead (p. 76), with curtains to be drawn when the nights were
cold, were still essentials. The boy was fortunate who did not have to
break the ice in his water pail morning after morning in winter. Clocks
and watches were luxuries for the rich. The sundial was yet in use, and
when the flight of time was to be noted in hours or parts, people resorted
to the hour glass. Many a minister used one on Sundays to time his
preaching by, and many a housewife to time her cooking. [6]
[Illustration: HOUR GLASS. In Essex Hall, Salem.]
No city had yet reached such size as to make street cars or cabs or
omnibuses necessary. Time was less valuable than in our day. The merchant
kept his own books, wrote all business letters with a quill pen, and
waited for the ink to dry or sprinkled it with sand. There were no
envelopes, no postage stamps, no letter boxes in the streets, no
collection of the mails. The letter written, the paper was carefully
folded, sealed with wax or a wafer, addressed, and carried to the post
office, where postage was paid in money at rates which would now seem
extortionate. A single sheet of paper was a single letter, and two sheets
a double letter on which double postage was paid. Three mails a week
between Philadelphia and New York, and two a week between New York and
Boston, were thought ample. The post offices in the country towns
consisted generally of a drawer or a few boxes in a store.
[Illustration: QUILLS AS SOLD FOR MAKING PENS. In Essex Hall, Salem.]
NEWSPAPERS could not be sent by mail, and there were few to send. Though
the first newspaper in the colonies was printed in Boston as early as
1704, the first daily newspaper in our country was issued in Philadelphia
in 1784. Illustrated newspapers, trade journals, scientific weeklies,
illustrated magazines, [7] were unknown. Such newspapers as existed in
1789 were published most of them once a week, and a few twice, and were
printed by presses worked by hand; and no paper anywhere in our country
was issued on Sunday or sold for as little as a penny.
BOOKS.--In no city in 1790 could there have been found an art gallery, a
free museum of natural history, a school or institute of any sort where
instruction in the arts and sciences was given. There were many good
private libraries, but hardly any that were open to public use. Books were
mostly imported from Great Britain, or such as were sure of a ready sale
were reprinted by some American publisher when enough subscribers were
obtained to pay the cost. Of native authors very few had produced anything
which is now read save by the curious. [8]
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.--In education great progress had been made. There
were as yet no normal schools, no high schools, no manual training
schools, and, save in New England, no approach to the free common school
of to-day. There were private, parish, and charity schools and academies
in all the states. In many of these a small number of children of the
poor, under certain conditions, might receive instruction in reading,
writing, and arithmetic. But as yet the states did not have the money with
which to establish a great system of free common schools.
[Illustration: AN OLD-TIME PRIVATE CARRIAGE.]
Money in aid of academies and colleges was often raised by lotteries.
Indeed, every one of the eight oldest colleges of that day had received
such help. [9] In each of these the classes were smaller, the course of
instruction much simpler, and the graduates much younger than to-day. In
no country of that time were the rich and well-to-do better educated than
in the United States, [10] and it is safe to say that in none was primary
education--reading, writing, and arithmetic--more diffused among the
people. [11]
TRAVEL.--To travel from one city to another in 1789 required at least as
many days as it now does hours. [12] The stagecoach, horseback, or private
conveyances were the common means of land travel. The roads were bad and
the large rivers unbridged, and in stormy weather or in winter the delays
at the ferries were often very long. Breakdowns and upsets were common,
and in rainy weather a traveler by stagecoach was fortunate if he did not
have to help the driver pull the wheels out of the mud. [13]
THE INNS AND TAVERNS, sometimes called coffeehouses or ordinaries, at
which travelers lodged, were designated by pictured signs or emblems hung
before the door, and were given names which had no relation to their uses,
as the Indian Head, the Crooked Billet, the Green Dragon, the Plow and
Harrow. In these taverns dances or balls were held, and sometimes public
meetings. To those in the country came sleigh-ride parties. From them the
stagecoaches departed, and before their doors auctions were often held,
and in the great room within were posted public notices of all sorts.
[Illustration: SIGN OF THE INDIAN HEAD TAVERN, NEAR CONCORD, MASS. Now in
the possession of the Concord Antiquarian Society.]
THE SHOPS were designated in much the same way as the inns, not by street
numbers but by signs; as the Lock and Key, the Lion and the Glove, the
Bell in Hand, the Golden Ball, the Three Doves. One shop is described as
near a certain bake-house, another as close by the townhouse, another as
opposite a judge's dwelling. The shop was usually the front room of a
little house. In the rear or overhead lived the tradesman, his family, and
his apprentice.
METHODS OF BUSINESS.--For his wares the tradesman took cash when he could
get it, gave short credit with good security when he had to, and often was
forced to resort to barter. Thus paper makers took rags for paper, brush
makers exchanged brushes for hog's bristles, and a general shopkeeper took
grain, wood, cheese, butter, in exchange for dry goods and clothing.
Few of the modern methods of extending business, of seeking customers, of
making the public aware of what the merchant had for sale, existed, even
in a rude state. There were no commercial travelers, no means of
widespread advertising. When an advertisement had been inserted in a
newspaper whose circulation was not fifteen hundred copies, when a
handbill had been posted in the markets and the coffeehouses, the means of
reaching the public were exhausted.
THE WORKINGMAN.--What was true of the merchant was true of men in every
walk in life. Their opportunities were few, their labor was hard, their
comforts of life were far inferior to what is now within their reach. In
every great city to-day are men, women, and boys engaged in a hundred
trades, professions, and occupations unknown in 1790. The great
corporations, mills, factories, mines, railroads, the steamboats, rapid
transit, the telegraph, the telephone, the typewriter, the sewing machine,
the automobile, the postal delivery service, the police and fire
departments, the banks and trust companies, the department stores, and
scores of other inventions and business institutions of great cities, now
giving employment to millions of human beings, have been created since
1790.
The working day was from sunrise to sunset, with one hour for breakfast
and another for dinner. Wages were about a third what they are now, and
were less when the days were short than when they were long. The
redemptioner was still in demand in the Middle States. In the South almost
all labor was done by slaves.
SLAVERY.--In the North slavery was on the decline. While still under the
crown, Virginia and several other colonies had attempted to check slavery
by forbidding the importation of more slaves, but their laws for this
purpose were disallowed by the king. After 1776 the states were free to do
as they pleased in the matter, and many of them stopped the importation of
slaves. Moreover, before Congress shut slavery out of the Northwest
Territory, the New England states and Pennsylvania had either abolished
slavery outright or provided for its extinction by gradual abolition laws.
[14]
INDUSTRIES.--In New England the people lived on their own farms, which
they cultivated with their own hands and with the help of their children,
or engaged in codfishing, whaling, lumbering, shipbuilding, and commerce.
They built ships and sold them abroad, or used them to carry away the
products of New England to the South, to the ports of France, Spain,
Russia, Sweden, the West Indies, and even to China. To the West Indies
went horses, cattle, lumber, salt fish, and mules; and from them came
sugar, molasses, coffee, indigo, wines. From Sweden and Russia came iron,
hemp, and duck.
The Middle States produced much grain and flour. New York had lost much of
her fur trade because of the British control of the frontier posts; but
her exports of flour, grain, lumber, leather, and what not, in 1791, were
valued at nearly $3,000,000. The people of Pennsylvania made lumber,
linen, flour, paper, iron; built ships; carried on a prosperous commerce
with foreign lands and a good fur trade with the Indians.
[Illustration: TRADING CANOE.]
In Maryland and Virginia the staple crop was still tobacco, but they also
produced much grain and flour. North Carolina produced tar, pitch, resin,
turpentine, and lumber. Some rice and tobacco were raised. Great herds of
cattle and hogs ran wild. In South Carolina rice was the most important
crop. Indigo, once an important product, had declined since the
Revolution, and cotton was only just beginning to be grown for export.
From the back country came tar, pitch, turpentine, and beaver, deer, and
bear skins for export.
THE FUR TRADE.--The region of the Great Lakes, where the British still
held the forts on the American side of the boundary, was the chief seat of
the fur trade. Goods for Indian use were brought from England to Montreal
and Quebec, and carried in canoes to Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Mackinaw,
Sault Ste. Marie (map, p. 194), and thence scattered over the Northwest.
[15]
SUMMARY
1. In 1789 the states had governments less democratic than at present; in
general only property owners could vote and hold office.
2. The states were all in debt, and Congress had incurred besides a large
national debt.
3. The population was less than 4,000,000, mostly on the Atlantic
seaboard.
4. Cities were few and small, without street cars, pavements, water works,
gas or electric lights, public libraries or museums, letter carriers, or
paid firemen. Everywhere many of the common conveniences of modern life
were unknown.
5. Travel was slow and tiresome, because there were no railroads,
steamboats, or automobiles.
6. Occupations were far fewer than now, wages lower, and hours of labor
longer. Slavery had been abolished, or was being gradually stopped, in New
England and Pennsylvania, but existed in all the other states; and in the
South nearly all the labor was done by slaves.
7. New Englanders were engaged in farming, fishing, lumbering, and
commerce; the Middle States produced much wheat and flour, and also
lumber; the South chiefly tobacco, rice, and tar, pitch, and turpentine.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The states ratified the Constitution 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. Massachusetts.... 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
[2] In New Jersey any "person" having a freehold (real estate owned
outright or for life) worth £50 might vote. In New York each voter had to
have a freehold of £20, or pay 40 shillings house rent and his taxes. In
Massachusetts he had to have an estate of £60, or an income of £3 from his
estate.
[3] In Maryland 50 acres; in South Carolina 50 acres or a town lot; in
Georgia £10 of taxable property.
[4] When Congress was forced to assume the conduct of the war, money was
needed to pay the troops. But the Congress then had no authority to tax
either the colonies or the people, so (in 1775-81) it issued bills of
credit, or Continental money, of various denominations. A loan office was
also established in each state, and the people were asked to loan Congress
money and receive in return loan-office certificates bearing interest and
payable in three years. But little money came from this source; and the
people refused to take the bills of credit at their face value. The states
then made them legal tender, that is, made them lawful money for the
payment of debts. But as they became more and more plentiful, prices of
everything paid for in Continental money rose higher and higher. From an
old bill of January, 1781, it appears that in Philadelphia a pair of boots
cost $600 in paper dollars; six yards of chintz, $900; eight yards of
binding, $400; a skein of silk, $10; and butter, $20 a pound. In Boston at
the same time sugar was $10 a pound; beef, $8; and flour, $1575 a barrel.
To say of anything that it was "not worth a continental" was to say that
it was utterly worthless.
[5] In New England it was valued at six shillings; in New York at eight;
in Pennsylvania at seven and six pence; in South Carolina and Georgia at
four shillings and eight pence.
[6] The hour glass consisted of two small glass bulbs joined by a small
glass tube. In one bulb was as much fine sand as in the course of an hour
could run through the tube into the other bulb. At auctions when ships or
real estate were for sale it was common to measure time by burning an inch
or more of candle; that is, the bidding would go on till a certain length
of candle was consumed.
[7] The _Massachusetts Magazine_ was illustrated with occasional
engravings of cities and scenery; but it was not what we know as an
illustrated magazine. Read a description of the newspapers of this time in
McMaster's _History of the People of the U. S._, Vol. I, pp. 35-38.
[8] Franklin is still the most popular of colonial writers. His
autobiography, his _Way to Wealth_, and many of his essays are still
republished and widely read. The poetry of Philip Freneau, of John
Trumbull, and Francis Hopkinson is still read by many; but it was in
political writing that our countrymen excelled. No people have ever
produced a finer body of political literature than that called forth by
the Revolution. Read McMaster's _History of the People of the U. S._,
Vol. I, pp. 74-80.
[9] Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Columbia,
Brown, and Dartmouth. In a lottery "drawn" in 1797 for the benefit of
Brown University, 9000 tickets were sold at $6 each--a total of $54,000.
Of this, $8000 was kept by the university, and $46,000 distributed in 3328
prizes--2000 at $9 each, 1000 at $12 each, and the rest from $20 to $4000.
[10] In the convention which framed the Constitution twenty of the fifty-
five men were college graduates. Five were graduates of Princeton, three
of Harvard, three of Yale, three of William and Mary, two of Pennsylvania,
one of King's (now Columbia), and one each of Oxford, Edinburgh, and
Glasgow.
[11] The writings of men who were not college graduates--Washington,
Franklin, Dickinson, and many others--speak well for the character of the
early schools.
[12] The journey from Boston to New York by land consumed six days, but
may now be made in less than six hours. New York was a two days' journey
from Philadelphia, but the distance may now be traversed in two hours.
[13] One pair of horses usually dragged the stage eighteen miles, when a
fresh team was put on, and if no accident happened, the traveler would
reach an inn about ten at night. After a frugal meal he would betake
himself to bed, for at three the next morning, even if it rained or
snowed, he had to make ready, by the light of a horn lantern or a farthing
candle, for another ride of eighteen hours.
[14] In 1777 Vermont forbade the slavery of men and women. In 1780
Pennsylvania passed a gradual abolition act. Massachusetts by her
constitution declared "All men are born free and equal," which her courts
held prohibited slavery. New Hampshire in her constitution made a similar
declaration with a like result. In 1784 Connecticut and Rhode Island
adopted gradual abolition laws, providing that children born of a slave
parent after a certain date should be free when they reached a certain
age, and that their children were never to be slaves. These were states
where slaves had never been much in demand, and where the industries of
the people did not depend on slave labor.
[15] The departure of a fleet of canoes from Quebec or Montreal was a fine
sight. The trading canoe of bark was forty-five feet long, and carried
four tons of goods. The crew of eight men, with their hats gaudy with
plumes and tinsel, their brilliant handkerchiefs tied around their
throats, their bright-colored shirts, flaming belts, and gayly worked
moccasins, formed a picture that can not be described. When the axes,
powder, shot, dry goods, and provisions were packed in the canoes, when
each voyager had hung his votive offering in the chapel of his patron
saint, a boatman of experience stepped into the bow and another into the
stern of each canoe, the crew took places between them, and at the word
the fleet glided up the St. Lawrence on its way to the Ottawa, and thence
on to Sault Ste. Marie, to Grand Portage (near the northeast corner of
what is now Minnesota), or to Mackinaw.