STATE OF THE COUNTRY FROM 1840 TO 1860
POPULATION.--In the twenty years which had elapsed since 1840 the
population of our country had risen to over 31,000,000. In New York alone
there were, in 1860, about as many people as lived in the whole United
States in 1789.
Not a little of this increase of population was due to the stream of
immigrants which had been pouring into the country. From a few thousand in
1820, the number who came each year rose gradually to about 100,000 in the
year 1842, and then went down again. But famine in Ireland and hard times
in Germany started another great wave of immigration, which rose higher
and higher till (1854) more than 400,000 people arrived in one year. Then
once more the wave subsided, and in 1861 less than 90,000 came.
[Illustration: SETTLED AREA IN 1860.]
NEW STATES AND TERRITORIES.--Though population was still moving westward,
few of our countrymen, before the gold craze of 1849, had crossed the
Missouri. Those who did, went generally to Oregon, which was organized as
a territory in 1848 and admitted into the Union as a state in 1859. By
that time California (1850) and Minnesota (1858) had also been admitted,
so that the Union in 1860 consisted of thirty-three states and five
territories. Eighteen states were free, and fifteen slave-holding. The
five territories were New Mexico, Utah, Washington (1853), Kansas, and
Nebraska (small map, p. 394).
CITY LIFE.--About one sixth of the population in 1860 lived in cities, of
which there were about 140 of 8000 or more people each. Most of them were
ugly, dirty, badly built, and poorly governed. The older ones, however,
were much improved. The street pump had given way to water works; gas and
plumbing were in general use; many cities had uniformed police; [1] but
the work of fighting fires was done by volunteer fire departments. Street
cars (drawn by horses) now ran in all the chief cities, omnibuses were in
general use, and in New York city the great Central Park, the first of its
kind in the country, had been laid out. Illustrated magazines, and weekly
papers, Sunday newspapers, and trade journals had been established, and in
some cities graded schools had been introduced. [2]
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.--In the country the district school for boys and
girls was gradually being improved. The larger cities of the North now had
high schools as well as common schools, and in a few instances separate
high schools for girls. Between 1840 and 1860 eighty-two sectarian and
twenty non-sectarian colleges were founded, and the Naval Academy at
Annapolis was opened. Not even the largest college in 1860 had 800
students, and in but one (University of Iowa, 1856) were women admitted to
all departments.
LITERATURE.--Public libraries were now to be found not only in the great
cities, but in most of the large towns, and in such libraries were
collections of poetry, essays, novels, and histories written by American
authors. Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Poe, Bryant, and Whittier among
poets; Hawthorne, Irving, Cooper, Simms, and Poe among writers of fiction;
Emerson and Lowell among essayists, were read and admired abroad as well
as at home. Prescott, who had lately (1859) died, had left behind him
histories of Spain in the Old World and in the New; Parkman was just
beginning his story of the French in America; Motley had published his
_Rise of the Dutch Republic_, and part of his _History of the United
Netherlands_; Hildreth had completed one _History of the United States_,
and Bancroft was still at work on another.
Near these men of the first rank stood many writers popular in their day.
The novels of Kennedy, and the poetry of Drake, Halleck, and Willis are
not yet forgotten.
OCCUPATIONS.--In the Eastern states the people were engaged chiefly in
fishing, commerce, and manufacturing; in the Middle states in farming,
commerce, manufacturing, and mining. To the great coal and iron mines of
Pennsylvania were (1859) added the oil fields. That petroleum existed in
that state had long been known; but it was not till Drake drilled a well
near Titusville (in northwestern Pennsylvania) and struck oil that enough
was obtained to make it marketable. Down the Ohio there was a great trade
in bituminous coal, and the union of the coal, iron, and oil trades was
already making Pittsburg a great city. In the South little change had
taken place. Cotton, tobacco, sugar, and the products of the pine forests
were still the chief sources of wealth; mills and factories hardly
existed. The West had not only its immense farms, but also the iron mines
of upper Michigan, the lead mines of the upper Mississippi and in
Missouri, the copper mines of the Lake Superior country, and the lumber
industry of Michigan and Wisconsin. Through the lakes passed a great
commerce. California was the great gold-mining state; but gold and silver
had just been discovered near Pikes Peak, and in what is now Nevada.
THE MORMONS.--Utah territory in 1860 contained forty thousand white
people, nearly all Mormons. These people, as we have seen, when driven
from Missouri, built the city called Nauvoo in Illinois. Their leaders now
introduced the practice of polygamy, and in various ways opposed the state
authorities. In 1844 they came to blows with the state; the leaders were
arrested, and while in jail Joseph Smith and his brother were murdered by
a mob. Brigham Young then became head of the church, and in the winter of
1846 the Mormons, driven from Nauvoo, crossed the Mississippi and began a
long march westward over the plains to Great Salt Lake, then in Mexico.
There they settled down, and when the war with Mexico ended, they were
again in the United States. When Utah was made a territory in 1850,
Brigham Young was appointed its first governor. [3]
[Illustration: FORT UNION, BUILT IN 1829 BY THE AMERICAN FUR COMPANY.]
THE FAR WEST.--Before 1850 each new state added to the Union had bordered
an some older state; but now California and Oregon were separated from the
other states by wide stretches of wilderness. The Rocky Mountain highland
and the Great Plains, however, were not entirely uninhabited. Over them
wandered bands of Indians mounted on fleet ponies; white hunters and
trappers, some trapping for themselves, some for the great fur companies;
and immense herds of buffalo, [4] and in the south herds of wild horses.
The streams still abounded with beaver. Game was everywhere, deer, elk,
antelope, bears, wild turkeys, prairie chickens, and on the streams wild
ducks and geese. Here and there were villages of savage and merciless
Indians, and the forts or trading posts of the trappers. Every year bands
of emigrants crossed the plains and the mountains, bound to Utah,
California, or Oregon.
PROPOSED RAILROAD TO THE PACIFIC.--In 1842 John C. Fremont, with Kit
Carson as guide, began a series of explorations which finally extended
from the Columbia to the Colorado, and from the Missouri to California and
Oregon (map, p. 314). [5] Men then began to urge seriously the plan of a
railroad across the continent to some point on the Pacific. In 1845 Asa
Whitney [6] applied to Congress for a grant of a strip of land from some
point on Lake Michigan to Puget Sound, and came again with like appeals in
1846 and 1848. By that time the Mexican cession had been acquired, and
this with the discovery of gold in California gave the idea such
importance that (in 1853) money was finally voted by Congress for the
survey of several routes. Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of War, ordered
five routes to be surveyed and (in 1855) recommended the most southerly;
and the Senate passed a bill to charter three roads. [7] Jealousy among
the states prevented the passage of the bill by the House. In 1860 the
platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties declared for such a
railroad.
MECHANICAL IMPROVEMENT.--During the period 1840-60 mechanical improvement
was more remarkable than in earlier periods. The first iron-front building
was erected, the first steam fire engine used, wire rope manufactured, a
grain drill invented, Hoe's printing press with revolving type cylinders
introduced, and six inventions or discoveries of universal benefit to
mankind were given to the world. They were the electric telegraph, the
sewing machine, the improved harvester, vulcanized rubber, the photograph,
and anaesthesia.
[Illustration: MORSE AND HIS FIRST TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT.]
THE TELEGRAPH.--Seven years of struggle enabled Samuel F. B. Morse, helped
by Alfred Vail, to make the electric telegraph a success, [8] and in 1844,
with the aid of a small appropriation by Congress, Morse built a telegraph
line from Baltimore to Washington. [9] Further aid was asked from Congress
and refused. [10] The Magnetic Telegraph Company was then started. New
York and Baltimore were connected in 1846, and in ten years some forty
companies were in operation in the most populous states.
[Illustration: HOWE'S FIRST SEWING MACHINE.]
THE SEWING MACHINE; THE HARVESTER.--A man named Hunt invented the
lockstitch sewing machine in 1834; but it was not successful, and some
time elapsed before his idea was taken up by Elias Howe, who after several
years of experiment (1846) made a practical machine. People were slow to
use it, but by 1850 he had so aroused the interest of inventors that seven
rivals were in the field, and to their joint labors we owe one of the most
useful inventions of the century. From the household the sewing machine
passed into use in factories (1862), and to-day gives employment to
hundreds of thousands of people.
[Illustration: EARLY HARVESTER. From an old print.]
What the sewing machine is to the home and the factory, that is the reaper
to the farm. After many years of experiment Cyrus McCormick invented a
practical reaper and (1840) sought to put it on the market, but several
more years passed before success was assured. To-day, greatly improved and
perfected, it is in use the world over, and has made possible the great
grain fields, not only of our own middle West and Northwest, but of
Argentina, Australia, and Russia.
VULCANIZED RUBBER; PHOTOGRAPHY; ANAESTHESIA.--The early attempts to use
India rubber for shoes, coats, caps, and wagon covers failed because in
warm weather the rubber softened and emitted an offensive smell. To
overcome this Goodyear labored year after year to discover a method of
hardening or, as it is called, vulcanizing rubber. Even when the discovery
was made and patented, several years passed before he was sure of the
process. In 1844 he succeeded and gave to the world a most useful
invention.
[Illustration: A DAGUERREOTYPE, IN METAL CASE, 1843.]
In 1839 a Frenchman named Daguerre patented a method of taking pictures by
exposing to sunlight a copper plate treated with certain chemicals. The
exposure for each picture was some twenty minutes. An American, Dr. John
W. Draper, so improved the method that pictures were taken of persons in a
much shorter time, and photography was fairly started.
Greater yet was the discovery that by breathing sulphuric ether a person
can become insensible to pain and then recover consciousness. The glory of
the discovery has been claimed for Dr. Morton and Dr. Jackson, who used it
in 1846. Laughing gas (nitrous oxide) was used as an ansesthetic before
this time by Dr. Wells of Hartford.
TRANSPORTATION IMPROVED.--In the country east of the Mississippi some
thirty thousand miles of railroad had been built, and direct communication
opened from the North and East to Chicago (1853) and New Orleans (1859).
For the growth of railroads between 1850 and 1861 study the maps on pp.
331, 353. [11] At first the lines between distant cities were composed of
many connecting but independent roads. Thus between Albany and Buffalo
there were ten such little roads; but in 1853 they were consolidated and
became the New York Central, and the era of the great trunk lines was
fairly opened.
On the ocean, steamship service between the Old World and the New was so
improved that steamships passed from Liverpool to New York in less than
twelve days.
Better means of transportation were of benefit, not merely to the traveler
and the merchant, but to the people generally. Letters could be carried
faster and more cheaply, so the rate of postage on a single letter was
reduced (1851) from five or ten cents to three cents, [12] and before 1860
express service covered every important line of transportation.
THE ATLANTIC CABLE.--The success of the telegraph on land suggested a bold
attempt to lay wires across the bed of the ocean, and in 1854 Cyrus W.
Field of New York was asked to aid in the laying of a cable from St. Johns
to Cape Ray, Newfoundland. But Field went further and formed a company to
join Newfoundland and Ireland by cable, and after two failures succeeded
(1858). During three weeks all went well and some four hundred messages
were sent; then the cable ceased to work, and eight years passed before
another was laid. Since then many telegraph cables have been laid across
the Atlantic; but it was not till 1903 that the first was laid across the
Pacific.
FOREIGN RELATIONS.--We have seen how during this period our country was
expanded by the annexation of Texas (1845) and by two cessions of
territory from Mexico (1848 and 1853). But this was not enough to satisfy
the South, and attempts were made to buy Cuba. Polk (1848) offered Spain
$100,000,000 for it. Filibusters tried to capture it (in 1851), and Pierce
(1853) urged its annexation. With this end in view our ministers to Great
Britain, France, and Spain met at Ostend in Belgium in 1854 and issued
what was called the Ostend Manifesto. This set forth that Cuba must be
annexed to protect slavery, and if Spain would not sell for a fair price,
"then by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it
from Spain if we possess the power." Buchanan also (1858) urged the
purchase of Cuba; but in vain.
CHINA AND JAPAN.--More pleasing to recall are our relations with China and
Japan. Our flag was first seen in China in 1784, when the trading vessel
_Empress of China_ reached Canton. Washington (1790) appointed a consul to
reside in that city, the only one in China, then open to foreign trade;
but no minister from the United States was sent to China till Caleb
Gushing went in 1844. By him our first treaty was negotiated with China,
under which five ports were opened to American trade and two very
important concessions secured: (1) American citizens charged with any
criminal act were to be tried and punished only by the American consul.
(2) All privileges which China might give to any other nation were
likewise to be given to the United States.
At that time Japan was a "hermit nation." In 1853, however, Commodore M.
C. Perry went to that country with a fleet, and sent to the emperor a
message expressing the wish of the United States to enter into trade
relations with Japan. Then he sailed away; but returned in 1854 and made a
treaty (the first entered into by Japan) which resulted in opening that
country to the United States. Other nations followed, and Japan was thus
opened to trade with the civilized world.
SUMMARY
1. Between 1840 and 1860 the population increased from 17,000,000 to
31,000,000.
2. During this period millions of immigrants had come.
3. As population continued to move westward new states and territories
were formed.
4. In one of these new territories, Utah, were the Mormons who had been
driven from Illinois.
5. The rise of a new state on the Pacific coast revived the old demand for
a railroad across the plains, and surveys were ordered.
6. East of the Mississippi thousands of miles of railroads were built, and
the East, the West, and the far South were connected.
7. This period is marked by many great inventions and discoveries,
including the telegraph, the sewing machine, and the reaper.
8. It was in this period that trade relations were begun with China and
Japan.
[Illustration: MODERN HARVESTER.]
FOOTNOTES
[1] All the large cities were so poorly governed, however, that they were
often the scenes of serious riots, political, labor, race, and even
religious.
[2] An unfriendly picture of the United States in 1842 is Dickens's
_American Notes_, a book well worth reading.
[3] Several non-Mormon officials were sent to Utah, but they were not
allowed to exercise any authority, and were driven out. The Mormons formed
the state of Deseret and applied for admission into the Union. Congress
paid no attention to the appeal, and (1857) Buchanan appointed a new
governor and sent troops to Utah to uphold the Federal authority. Young
forbade them to enter the territory, and dispatched an armed force that
captured some of their supplies. In the spring of 1858 the President
offered pardon "to all who will submit themselves to the just authority of
the Federal Government," and Young and his followers did so.
[4] An interesting account of the buffalo is given in A. C. Laut's The
Story of the Trapper_, pp. 65-80. Herds of a hundred thousand were common.
As many as a million buffalo robes were sent east each year in the
thirties and forties.
[5] John C. Fremont was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1813, and in 1842
was Lieutenant of Engineers, United States Army. In 1842 he went up the
Platte River and through the South Pass. The next year he passed southward
to Great Salt Lake, then northwestward to the Columbia, then southward
through Oregon to California, and back by Great Salt Lake to South Pass in
1844. In 1845 he crossed what is now Nebraska and Utah, and reached the
vicinity of Monterey in California. The Mexican authorities ordered him
away; but he remained in California and helped to win the country during
the war with Mexico. Later, he was senator from California, Republican
candidate for President in 1856, and an army general during the Civil War.
[6] Whitney asked for a strip sixty miles wide. So much of the land as was
not needed for railroad purposes was to be sold and the money used to
build the road. During 1847-49 his plan was approved by the legislatures
of seventeen states, and by mass meetings of citizens or Boards of Trade
in seventeen cities.
[7] One from the west border of Texas to California; another from the west
border of Missouri to California; and a third from the west border of
Wisconsin to the Pacific in Oregon or Washington.
[8] In 1842 Morse laid the first submarine telegraph in the world, from
Governors Island in New York harbor to New York city. It consisted of a
wire wound with string and coated with tar, pitch, and india rubber, to
prevent the electric current running off into the water. It was laid on
October 18, and the next morning, while messages were being received, the
anchor of a vessel caught and destroyed the wire.
[9] The wire was at first put in a lead tube and laid in a furrow plowed
in the earth. This failed; so the wire was strung on poles. One end was in
the Pratt St. Depot, Baltimore, and the other in the Supreme Court Chamber
at Washington. The first words sent, after the completion of the line,
were "What hath God wrought." Two days later the Democratic convention
(which nominated Polk for President) met at Baltimore, and its proceedings
were reported hourly to Washington by telegraph.
[10] Morse offered to sell his patent to the government, but the
Postmaster General reported that the telegraph was merely an interesting
experiment and could never have a practical value, so the offer was not
accepted.
[11] The use of vast sums of money in building so many railroads, together
with overtrading and reckless speculation, brought on a business panic in
1857. Factories were closed, banks failed, thousands of men and women were
thrown out of employment, and for two years the country suffered from hard
times.
[12] It was not till 1883 that the rate was reduced to two cents. Before
the introduction of the postage stamp, letters were sent to the post
offices, and when the postage had been paid, they were marked "Paid" by
the officials. When the mails increased in volume in the large cities,
this way of doing business consumed so much time that the postmasters at
St. Louis and New York sold stamps to be affixed to letters as evidence
that the postage had been paid. The convenience was so great that public
opinion forced Congress to authorize the post office department to furnish
stamps and require the people to use them (1847).
[Illustration: MAP OF EASTERN UNITED STATES IN 1861.]