The independence of the United States caused the severance of many European bonds, and this reacted on American life. Government officials, ministers of religion, lawyers, physicians, managers of English investments in the colonies, and many other classes of leading men in colonial life had been largely drawn from England, and this influx now ceased, except for a number of influential English and Irish journalists. America was thrown more than ever before on itself for its leaders and for its ideals. There resulted an intensifying of distinctively American traits and a corresponding loss of cosmopolitanism.
Three other notable influences ought to be mentioned,
(1) Democracy had received a wonderful impetus. The influence of the "well-born" was lessened, and that of the "filthy democrats" was increased. Political life thus became cruder and more passionate, while inequalities began to disappear and the educative function of self-government was stimulated.
(2) Our dependence on English constitutional liberty was modified. In the struggles of the colonists against their governors, and in the revolutionary debates as well, the appeal had always been to the chartered rights of Englishmen. Now the rights of man became the ideal, and precedent played a smaller role in public discussions. Americans were full of a notion that they were intrusted with ideals different from, and better than, those of other nations. They believed themselves pioneers in political philosophy.
(3) American private law began to separate itself from English statute and precedent. The common law continued to be observed; but a body of American statutes and decisions could not but give the content of the law a strong tendency towards those distinctive forms which at the end of a century are easily recognized as American products.
Confidence in the future of his country was a supreme trait of an American in 1789. To immense physical resources there was added in his mind great human capacity to develop them. To utilize fertile lands, to build up manufactures, to construct means of transportation, to develop the organization of commerce, and to take care of public and private credit seemed to him the things first needed in our social progress. Next to these he placed what he would have called the ornaments of life — education, religion, art, literature, science, municipal comforts, and many other things which have become important in modern society. To the former group of forces, therefore, the men who saw Washington and Adams in the presidency, gave most of their attention. It was a day of material development.
In 1790, when the first census was taken, the population was 3,929,214, and in 1800 it was 5,308,483. About one-fifth of each number were blacks, and about half of the total was found on either side of the Potomac. The increase of population in this first census period was due chiefly to births; for immigration had been cut off by the Revolution, and although many efforts were made to attract it again with the return of peace, the estimated annual immigration was not more than four thousand persons, and it was not considerable till after the War of 1812. The outbreak of general war in Europe in 1793 was enough to account for this state of affairs.
About ninety-five percent, of the inhabitants lived in villages or the open country. The Atlantic coast region was one vast stretch of forests and farms. On the river-banks near the coast, and in the south in particular, much of the land had been cleared for cultivation; in the interior the cleared patches were smaller. Everywhere the inhabitants were looking for the best lands — for river "low-ground" for the great farmers, creek "low-ground" for the medium farmers, and the meadows which lay between the upland hills for the small farmers.
The land which it did not pay to clear was left to the dominion of the forest. In the broad flat plains of Virginia and the Carolinas, where rivers and their tributaries are less abundant than in the narrow plain of the north, the forest had been but slightly subdued. Great stretches of pine land frowned on the traveller, where the cultivation of cotton was destined soon to work many changes. Through these great forests the roads were few and badly constructed. The people who lived in the clearings along them were too poor to build good roads, and the infrequent trips they made to the world beyond them did not justify the necessary outlay. Their lives were isolated, natural, and free. They were poorly educated, ignorant of the problems of the world, and fiercely democratic. These people far outnumbered the wealthy farmers along the rivers. They were the backbone of the democracy of the country.
The great planters of the south dominated the communities in which they lived; they were most numerous along the coasts where the lands were richest. They were people of education, and their ideals were broader than those of the men of the interior. Many of them were Republicans on philosophical grounds and because they favored France; but the majority were Federalists. All of them, whatever their politics, were aristocrats in their social ideals.
In the middle states the medium class and small farmers constituted the mass of the population. They were less isolated than the dwellers in the interior parts of the south, for the forest had yielded more of itself to the aggression of the settler. Distances from the large seaports were not so great, and roads were tolerable. Education was somewhat more advanced, churches were more numerous, ideals were less provincial.
In New England the forest had disappeared to a much larger extent, chiefly because of the lumber and ship-building industries. Villages were grouped along the edges of the bays, sounds, and various small streams; and around them lay the little farms upon which, with much labor, the food of the community was raised. The country was thickly settled compared with other sections, roads were better, houses were more attractively built, and the educational spirit was more generally developed than anywhere else in the country.
Towns were placed chiefly on the sea-coast and at the heads of navigation of the rivers. Commerce was their only support; for the days of the manufacturing towns had not yet come. The larger places attracted the foreign commerce. The smaller towns looked to the larger ones, sending thither the products which they had gathered from the surrounding communities and distributing the imported goods which they received from the seaports.
Most of the towns were north of the Potomac. In 1790 Richmond, the largest town in Virginia, numbered 3761; and Norfolk, Petersburg, and Alexandria were the only other towns in the state with a population of two thousand or more. In North Carolina not a town of that size existed. In South Carolina, Charleston had a population of about fifteen thousand, and was the centre of a large trade in rice and slaves. It was a residence town for most of the wealthy eastern planters, and because of this and its large commercial interests it was strongly Federal. Savannah was still a small place. The interior of Georgia was undeveloped, but with the cultivation of cotton came a great impulse to progress, which soon gave the state's best seaport a flourishing trade.
The northern cities in 1790 were led by Philadelphia with a population of forty-two thousand. It was a wealthy centre of business, and drew its sustenance from the rich farming region of central and eastern Pennsylvania. The great demand for American grain while the European nations were struggling in war gave a remarkable stimulus to the commerce of Philadelphia. The fact that it was the home of the United States Bank made it a financial centre; and all combined to give it a rapid growth, so that in 1800 its population was seventy thousand. New York, next in size, rose from thirty-two thousand in 1790 to sixty thousand in 1800. This rapid progress indicates the state of development in the interior of New York state.
For a long time this region was held back from the grasp of the settler through an unwillingness to dispossess the Iroquois; but that difficulty was now overcome. Great land companies acquired the central parts of the state, immigrants were turning thither, and their wants were supplied by the city, finely placed at the mouth of the Hudson. Boston, long one of the most remarkable of colonial cities, showed signs of lagging. Its population increased from eighteen thousand in 1790 to twenty-five thousand in 1800. This is accounted for partly because of the restrictions brought about by the Revolution, and partly because it had no such monopoly of trade in its neighborhood as Philadelphia and New York. Its opportunity came when it became the fiscal centre of New England manufacturing; but the day for that had not yet arrived. One of the remarkable features of town development in the period was the growth of Baltimore. Long a sleepy colonial community, it had suddenly awakened to great activity. Its population in 1790 was thirteen thousand; and in 1800, through the development of the Susquehannah Valley, it had reached twenty-six thousand five hundred. In size and in trade it then surpassed Boston.
The largest state of all was Virginia, with a population in 1790 of 747,000. After her came Pennsylvania with 434,000, North Carolina with 393,000, Massachusetts with 378,000, and New York with 340,000. Virginia's preponderating size had very much to do with her large influence in the Revolution and in the struggle for the adoption of the Constitution; she lacked only eighty thousand of having, in 1790, as many inhabitants as all the New England states which joined in the adoption of the Constitution. The financial policy of Hamilton combined the commercial states in behalf of their own interests. Virginia was left out of this movement, and it bore hard on her spirit to see the sceptre of power taken from her hand. Placed in opposition, she became the leader of a combination of agricultural states which at length managed to get control of the government and to rule it for many years with as little regard for the interests of commerce as their opponents had felt with regard to agriculture.
The transportation of heavy articles was confined chiefly to water-routes. At the head of navigation on each river a small town would be found, whence roads ran into the interior. A few of them stretched away to and beyond the Alleghanies into the western wilderness. The advantages of water - transportation turned the attention of the men of progress to building canals, of which few were fairly begun by the end of the century.
Travellers usually went by stagecoach. Where the country was thickly settled they might travel as rapidly as in the rural sections of Europe. From Bangor to Baltimore they could make four miles an hour. South of the latter point the roads were bad and conveyances were uncertain. The coaches were merely large wagons, with high sides and canopies supported by upright beams. If rain fell, heavy curtains of leather were hung up, much to the discomfort of the occupants who must steam within the coach till the rain ceased.
From a day's jolting in such a vehicle one came at length to an inn. If he were fastidious enough to ask for a room to himself he was received with astonishment. He soon learned to consider himself fortunate if he had a bed to himself. Many of the inns had large rooms with from six to ten beds in them. European travellers generally complained loudly of the fare at the inns, where fried bacon and corn bread were served daily. These conditions have survived till the present in the most isolated portions of the country. At long intervals good inns were encountered, and most of them were in New England, but in the larger towns accommoda-tions were better. Here the tavern was giving way to the modern hotel, modelled after European es-tablishments. Travellers from abroad found them convenient and comfortable, and to the Americans they seemed splendid.
The manner of life was hearty and natural. People of means lived in comfortable houses; poor people occupied the rude structures which had characterized frontier life in the seventeenth century. The planters of the south sought to reproduce the life of English country gentlemen, and the wealthy merchants of the north imitated the manners they had seen or heard about in London and Paris. The old colonial usages were preserved by those who had the means; but the sudden accumulation of wealth in the towns brought many new families into prominence, and manners were a little less formal.
In New England, Puritan morals ruled social intercourse. Life was regular and recreation was simple. Sleighing, riding, dancing, shooting at a mark,
draughts, and such innocent amusements were considered proper. The boys played football, quoits,
and cricket, and everybody skated in season. The
theatre was not allowed in Boston till 1793.
In the south, amusements were more unrestrained. Horse-racing had long been a favorite sport and cock-fighting was general. It was at this time that the famous stud "Diomed" was imported into Virginia; his offspring became famous on many a track in that and adjoining states. One of them was Andrew Jackson's famous "Truxton," long the king of the Tennessee turf. To own a champion race-horse was to give a man as much renown in his community as to win the Derby in England. Charleston was a famous centre for horse-racing. Its "Jockey Club" was a leading social organization. The habit of living away from their plantations brought many wealthy and refined people to the town. Nowhere else in the south was there so much wealth and good breeding.
The most universal phase of thought at this period was religion. In New England and among the masses of the middle and southern states it was the supreme authority in conduct; but many of the planters of the south and some of the more intelligent classes elsewhere had accepted the ideas of French scepticism. In the villages of New England the Congregational minister was still the most influential person. He ruled the conduct of the town, censored its manners, and did not hesitate to interfere in its politics. Thomas Jefferson, whom the orthodox freely denounced as an infidel, had much reason to complain of the political activity of the New England ministry. Unitarianism, however, was beginning to undermine its domination, and the trend of society towards wealthy classes was working for the progress of the Episcopal church.
In the south the latter church, on the contrary, was losing ground; it was disliked because it had been the established church in several colonies, because many of its ministers had proved themselves Tories in the Revolution, and because it was in close alliance with the aristocracy. It had but recently reorganized itself on an American basis, it had lost much from the defection of the planters to scepticism, and it was in severe straits in many southern communities. Other churches in the south were striving to adapt themselves to new conditions and to recover from the disorganization which followed the war.
At this favorable juncture there appeared in the country a new church which was destined to have a powerful influence on religion there. The followers of Wesley had hardly got a foothold in the United States before the Revolution interrupted their progress. But in 1784 they organized a separate American body with authority from their founder. They appealed to the vast middle class of people; they caught the wasting fragments of other bodies; they gave a democratic fire to their preaching; they endured all manner of hardship in order to penetrate the vast upland forest region of the south and west; and thus they laid the foundations of a great movement which has exerted a powerful influence on the life of America. This success was largely due to the activity of Bishop Francis Asbury, a man whose perseverance, zeal, and devotion have suggested a comparison with another Francis who carried light to the dark places of the earth during the Middle Ages.
The period from 1789 to 1801 was not characterized by intellectual progress. Education made little advance, and literature was all but dead. The after-effects of war and the tendency for all energies to run into physical recuperation were the chief causes. In 1800 the Harvard faculty consisted of the president, three professors, and four tutors. In 1797, Bishop Madison, whose vacant parishes had caused him to suspend his episcopal functions and become president of William and Mary College, was teaching a group of barefooted boys. In literature the group known as "the Hartford Wits" were most distinguished. Perhaps the best poetry of the day was Freneau's.
The most significant social movement of the period was the extension of the frontier beyond the mountains, which began before the Revolution, but after 1789 it proceeded rapidly. In 1790 the total population of Kentucky, Tennessee, and the northwest was 109,000; in 1800 it was 377,000. Two roads led settlers from the east thither — one through western Pennsylvania by wagon to Pittsburg and thence by flat-boat down the Ohio, the other by wagon-road through southwestern Virginia to the Holston Valley and thence down the Tennessee River.
The Ohio was already bordered with towns. From Pittsburg floating westward one came to Wheeling, Marietta, Belpre, Gallipolis, Limestone, Columbia, Newport, Cincinnati, and Louisville. Farther down on the Mississippi were New Madrid and Natchez. Louisville had once been important because Fort Jefferson, which was placed here, afforded protection against the Indians; but the march of settlement had removed all danger from that source, and the chief significance of the place arose from the fact that it was placed at the rapids of the Ohio. Cincinnati, on the north side of the river, looked out into hostile territory, till Wayne's victory in 1794 removed that danger.
In 1795 came the treaty with Spain, by which the navigation of the Mississippi was secured. Nothing now stood in the way of the dreams of the westerners. Whatever might trouble the east, they had the simple task of developing the vast country which was opened to them. The confidence and tumultuous joy with which they proceeded marked the future character of the people. Never did American frontier shift more quickly and happily into civilized communities than in the rich plains on each side of the Ohio. The creation of three states and three territories between 1789 and 1800 marked the future lines of national development. In 1791, Vermont was admitted into the Union, and in 1792, Kentucky. In 1796, Tennessee knocked at the door, but the moment was inopportune for her ambition. A close presidential election was about to be decided, and it was pretty certain that she would vote with the Republicans. The Federalists, therefore, challenged her right to become a state. For several weeks they kept her outside, but on the last day of the session they relented and she was admitted. In 1798 the region between Tennessee and Florida was set apart as a territory. The lower part of it was still claimed by Georgia, but negotiations were about to be begun by which that matter was adjusted in 1802; and in 1800 a second act of Congress created a legislature and otherwise completed the government of Mississippi territory. In 1800 the old Northwest Territory was divided preparatory to the admission of Ohio, and the immense western portion was called Indiana.