Struggle for National Government

Industries.

Indeed, the whole country was almost exclusively agricultural, and, in spite of every effort to encourage manufac tures by State bounties, they formed the meagrest element in the national production. Connecticut, which now teems with manufactures, was just beginning the production of tinware and clocks; Rhode Island and Massachusetts were just beginning to work in cotton from models of jennies and Arkwright ma chinery surreptitiously obtained from England, and other States, beyond local manufactures of paper, glass and iron, were almost entirely agricultural, or were engaged in industries directly de pendent on agriculture.

Population.

There were but five cities in the United States having a population of more than io,000—New York (33,000), Philadelphia (28,500), Boston ( i8,000), Charleston (16,000) and Baltimore (13,000). The revenues of the new Government in 1790 were only $4,000,000; the expenditures, excluding inter est on the public debt, but $1,000,000. It is not easy for the modern American to realize the poverty and weakness of his country at the inauguration of the new Government.

Travel.

Outside the cities communication was slow. One stage a week was enough for the connection between the great cities; and communication elsewhere depended on private con veyance. The western settlements were just beginning to make the question more serious. Enterprising land companies were the moving force which had impelled the passage of the ordinance of 1787; and the first column of their settlers was pouring into Ohio and forming connection with their predecessors in Ken tucky and Tennessee. Marietta and Cincinnati had been founded.

But the intending settlers were obliged to make the journey down the Ohio river from Pittsburgh in bullet-proof flat-boats, for protection against the Indians, and the return trip depended on the use of oars. For more than 20 years these flat-boats were the chief means of river commerce in the West ; and in the longer trips, as to New Orleans the boats were generally broken up at the end and sold for lumber. John Fitch and others were already experimenting on what was soon to be the steamboat ; but the statesman of 1789, looking at the task of keeping under one government a country of such distances, with such difficul ties of communication, naturally felt anxiety as to the future.

Literature.

The comparative isolation of the people every where, the lack of books, the poverty of the schools and news papers, were all influences which worked strongly against any pronounced literary development. Poems, essays and paintings were feeble imitations of European models; history was annalis tic, if anything; and the drama hardly existed. In two points the Americans were strong, and had done good work. Such men as Jonathan Edwards had excelled in various departments of theology, and American preaching had reached a high degree of quality and influence ; and, in the line of politics, the American State papers rank among the very best of their kind. Having

a very clear perception of their political purposes, and having been restricted in study and reading to the great masters of pure and vigorous English, and particularly to the English trans lators of the Bible, the American leaders came to their work with an English style which could hardly have been improved. The writings of Franklin, Washington, the Adamses, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Jay and others show the secret of their strength in every page. Much the same reasons, with the in fluences of democracy, brought oratory, as represented by Patrick Henry, Fisher Ames, John Randolph and others, to a point not very far below the mark afterwards reached by Daniel Webster. The effect of these facts on the subsequent development of the country is not of ten estimated at its full value.

Limits of Settlement.—The cession of the "North-west Territory" by Virginia and New York had been followed by similar cessions by Massachusetts (1785), Connecticut (1786) and South Carolina (1787). North Carolina did not cede Ten nessee until early in 179o, nor Georgia her western claims until 1802. Settlement in all these regions was still very sparse. The centres of western settlement, in Tennessee and Kentucky, had become more firmly established, and a new one, in Ohio, had just been begun. The whole western limits of settlement of the old 13 States had moved much nearer their present boun daries; and the acquisition of the western title, with the liberal policy of organization and government which had been begun, was to have its first clear effects during the first decade of the new government. Almost the only obstacle to its earlier success had been the doubts as to the attitude which the Spanish authori ties, at New Orleans and Madrid, would take towards the new settlements. They had already asserted a claim that the Missis sippi was an exclusively Spanish stream from its mouth up to the Yazoo, and that no American boat should be allowed to sail on this part of it. To the western settler the Alleghenies and bad roads were enough to cut him off from any other way to a market than down the Mississippi; and it was not easy to restrain him from a forcible defiance of the Spanish claim. The northern States were willing to allow the Spanish claim for a period of years in return for a commercial treaty; the southern States and the western settlers protested angrily; and once more the spectre of dissolution appeared, not to be laid again until the new Government had made a treaty with Spain in 1795 securing common navigation of the Mississippi.