«История Соединенных Штатов, Том 3»

both the original nature of the Constitution as not a compact, and also

the might which national sentiment had attained since the War of 1812.

The doctrine of state rights was seen to have gradually lost, over the

greater part of the country, all its old vitality. Nearly every State

Legislature condemned the South Carolina pretensions, Democrats as

hearty in this as Whigs. Jackson's proclamation against them--impressive

and unanswerable--ran thus: "The Constitution of the United States

forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact

between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same

. . . . I consider the power to annul a law of the United States

incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by

the letter of the Constitution, and destructive of the great object for

which it was formed. . . . Our Constitution does not contain the

absurdity of giving power to make laws, and another power to resist

them. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to

say that the United States are not a nation."

Calhoun's Library and Office.

The congressional debates which the nullification question evoked, among

the ablest in our parliamentary history, held the like high national

tenor. Calhoun's idea, though advocated by him with consummate skill,

was shown to be wholly chimerical. The doughty South Carolinian, from

this moment a waning force in American politics, was supported by Hayne

almost alone, the arguments of both melting into air before Webster's

masterful handling of constitutional history and law. Not questioning

the right of revolution, admitting the general government to be one of

"strictly limited," even of "enumerated, specified, and particularized

powers," the Massachusetts orator made it convincingly apparent that the

Calhoun programme could lead to nothing but anarchy. It was seen that

general and state governments emanate from the people with equal

immediacy, and that the language of the clause, "the Constitution and

the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof" are "the

supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any

State to the contrary notwithstanding," means precisely what it says. To

this language little attention had apparently been paid till this time.

CHAPTER V.

MINOR PUBLIC QUESTIONS OF JACKSON'S "REIGN"

[1828]

Andrew Jackson was born March 15, 1767. His parents had come from

Carrick-fergus, Ireland, two years before. He was without any education

worthy the name. As a boy, he went into the War for Independence, and

was for a time a British prisoner. He studied law in North Carolina,

moved west, and began legal practice at Nashville. He was one of the

framers of the Tennessee constitution in 1796. In 1797 he was a senator

from that State, and subsequently he was a judge on its supreme bench.

His exploits in the Creek War, the War of 1812, and the Seminole War are

already familiar. They had brought him so prominently and favorably

before the country that in 1824 his vote, both popular and electoral,

was larger than that of any other candidate. As we have seen, he himself

and multitudes throughout the country thought him wronged by the

election over him of John Quincy Adams. This contributed largely to his

popularity later, and in 1828 he was elected by a popular vote of

647,231, against 509,097 for Adams. Four years later he was reelected

against Clay by a still larger majority. Nor did his popularity to any

extent wane during his double administration, notwithstanding his many

violent and indiscreet acts as President.

Andrew Jackson. From a photograph by Brady.

Much of Jackson's arbitrariness sprung from a foolish whim of his,

taking his election as equivalent to the enactment of all his peculiar

ideas into law. Ours is a government of the people, he said; the people

had spoken in his election, and had willed so and so. Woe to any senator

or representative who opposed! This was, of course, to mistake entirely

the nature of constitutional government.

After all, Jackson was by no means the ignorant and passionate old man,

controlled in everything by Van Buren, that many people, especially in

New England, have been accustomed to think him. Illiterate he certainly

was, though Adams exaggerated in calling him "a barbarian who could not

write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name." He was

never popular in the federalist section of the Union. Yet with all his

mistakes and self-will, often inexcusable, he was one of the most

patriotic and clear-headed men who ever administered a government. If he

resorted to unheard-of methods within the law, very careful was he never

to transgress the law.

The most just criticism of Jackson in his time and later related to the

civil service. It was during his administration that the cry, "turn the

rascals out," first arose, and it is well known that, adopting the

policy of New York and Pennsylvania politicians in vogue since 1800, he

made nearly a clean sweep of his political opponents from the offices at

his disposal. This was the more shameful from being so in contrast with

the policy of preceding presidents. Washington removed but two men from

office, one of these a defaulter; Adams ten, one of these also a

defaulter; Jefferson but thirty-nine; Madison five, three of them

defaulters; and Monroe nine. The younger Adams removed but two, both of

them for cause.

[1830]

Yet of Jackson's procedure in this matter it can be said, in partial

excuse, so bitter had been the opposition to him by officeholders as

well as others, that many removals were undoubtedly indispensable in

order to the efficiency of the public service. It is not at all

necessary for the rank and file of the civil service to be of the same

party with the Chief Magistrate, but it is necessary that they should

not be so utterly opposed to him as to feel bound in conscience to be

working for his defeat.

The fine art of party organization, semi-military in form, has come to

us from Jackson and his workers. Before his time, candidates for high

state offices had usually been nominated by legislative caucuses, and

those for national posts by congressional caucuses. State party

conventions had been held in Pennsylvania and New York. Soon after 1830

such a device for national nominations began to be thought of, and the

history of national party conventions may be said to begin with the

campaign of 1832.

[1832]

Jackson's dearest foe while in office was the United States Bank.

Magnifying the dishonesty which had, as everyone knew, disgraced its

management, he attacked it as a monster, an engine of the moneyed

classes for grinding the face of the poor. Like Jefferson, like Madison

at first, he disbelieved in its constitutionality. In his first message

and continually in his official utterances he inveighed against it as a

public danger, using its funds and patronage for party ends. This made

him unpopular with many who had been his friends, so that in the

campaign of 1832 Clay forced the bank question to the front as one on

which Jackson's attitude would greatly advantage the whig cause. He

accepted Clay's challenge with pleasure, and from this moment gave the

bank no quarter. We may call the contest of this year a pitched battle

between Jackson and the bank.

Roger B. Taney.

[1833]

In 1832 he vetoed a bill for a renewal of its charter, which was to

expire in 1836, and in 1833 he proceeded to break it by removing the

United States deposits which it held. Such removal was by law within the

power of the Secretary of the Treasury. Secretary McLane refused to

execute Jackson's will. He was removed and Duane appointed. Then Duane

was removed and Roger B. Taney appointed, who obeyed the President's

behest. The bank was emptied by checking out the public money as wanted,

at the same time depositing no more, the funds being instead placed in

"pet" state banks, as they were called because of the government favor

thus shown them.

The financial distress rightly or wrongly ascribed to this measure

throughout the country, instead of injuring Jackson, probably, on the

whole, made him still more popular, as showing the power of the bank.

When Congress met in 1833, the Senate passed a vote of censure upon him

for what he had done. Rancorous wranglings and debates pervaded Congress

and the whole land. After persistent effort by Jackson's bosom friend,

Senator Benton, of Missouri, this censure-vote was expunged by the

XXIVth Congress, second session, January 16, 1837. This was before

Jackson left office, and he accounted it the greatest triumph of his

public life.

[1830]

Jackson was somehow fortunate in dealing with foreign nations. It was he

who recovered for American ships that British West Indian trade which

had been so long denied. Negotiations were opened with Great Britain,

which, in 1830, had the result of placing American vessels in the

British West Indian ports at an equal advantage with British vessels

sailing thither from the United States--terms which, through the

contiguity of those islands to us, gave us a trade there better than

that of any other nation. This diplomacy brought the administration much

applause.

When Jackson became President, France was still in our debt on account

of her spoliations upon American commerce after the settlement of 1803.

The matter had been in negotiation ever since 1815, but hitherto in

vain. Jackson took it up with zeal, but with his usual apparent

recklessness. A treaty had been concluded in 1831, as a final settlement

between the two countries, binding France to pay twenty-five million

francs and the United States to pay one and one-half million. The first

instalment from France became due February 2, 1833, but was not paid.

Jackson's message to Congress in 1834, not an instalment having yet been

received, contained a distinct threat of war should not payment begin

forthwith. He also bade Edward Livingston, minister at Paris, in the

same contingency to demand his passports and leave Paris for London.

[1835]

Most public men, even those in his cabinet, thought this action

foolhardy and useless; but Quincy Adams, neither expecting nor receiving

any thanks for it, just as in the Seminole War difficulty, nobly stood

up for the President. A telling speech by him in the House led to its

unanimous resolution, March 2, 1835, that the execution of the treaty

should be insisted on. The French ministry blustered, and for a time

diplomatic relations between the two countries were entirely ruptured.

But France, affecting to see in the message of 1835, though voiced in

precisely the same tone as its predecessor, some apology for the menace

contained in that, began its payments. This money, as also all due from

the other states included in Napoleon's continental system, was paid

during Jackson's administration, a result which brought him and his

party great praise, not more for the money than for the respect and

consideration secured to the United States by insistence upon its

rights. The President's message to Congress in 1835 announced the entire

extinguishment of the public debt--the first and the last time this has

occurred in all our national history.

An important measure touching the hard-money system of our country was

passed in large part through the influence of President Jackson. By the

Mint Law of 1792 our silver dollar was made to contain three hundred and

seventy-one and a quarter grains of fine silver, or four hundred and

sixteen of standard silver. The amount of pure silver in this venerable

coin has remained unchanged ever since; only, in 1837, by a reduction of

the alloy fraction to exactly one-tenth, the total weight of the coin

became what it now is, four hundred and twelve and a half grains,

nine-tenths fine. The same law of 1792 had given the gold dollar just

one-fifteenth the weight of the silver dollar. This proportion, which

Hamilton had arrived at after careful investigation characteristic of

the man, was exactly correct at the time, but within a year, as is now

known, on account of increase in the relative value of gold, the gold

dollar at fifteen to one became more valuable than its silver mate. The

consequence was that the gold brought to the United States mint for

coinage fell off year by year, until some of the years between 1820 and

1830 it had been almost zero. Gold money had nearly ceased to circulate.

[1834-1836]

Jackson resolved to restore the yellow metal to daily use. In this he

was opposed by many Whigs, who, so zealous were they for the United

States Bank, had become paper money men. The so-called Gold Bill was

carried through Congress in 1834, changing the proportion of silver to

gold in our currency from fifteen to one to sixteen to one. It should

have been fifteen and a half to one. Now gold in its turn was

over-valued, so that silver gradually ceased to circulate, as gold had

almost ceased before. This result was made worse after 1848, when there

was a still further appreciation of silver through the discovery of gold

in California and Australia. Silver dollars did not again circulate

freely in the country until 1878, though they were full legal tender

till 1873. Gold, on the other hand, was everywhere seen after 1834,

though not abundant in circulation, owing to the large amounts of paper

money then in use.

In 1836 the President ordered his Secretary of the Treasury to put forth

the famous Specie Circular, declaring that only gold, silver, or land

scrip should be received in payment for public lands. The occasion of

this was that while land sales were very rapidly increasing, the

receipts hitherto had consisted largely in the notes of insolvent banks.

Land speculators would organize a bank, procure for it, if they could,

the favor of being a "pet" bank, issue notes, borrow these as

individuals and buy land with them. The notes were deposited, when they

would borrow them again to buy land with, and so on. As there was little

specie in the West, the circular broke up many a fine plan, and evoked

much ill-feeling. Gold was drawn from the East, where, as many of the

banks had none too much, the drain caused not a few of them to collapse.

The condition of business at this time was generally unsound, and this

westward movement of gold was all that was needed to precipitate a

crisis. A crisis accordingly came on soon after, painfully severe. It is

unfair, however, to arraign Jackson's order as wholly responsible for

the evils which accompanied this monetary cataclysm. It was rather an

occasion than the cause.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FIRST WHIG TRIUMPH

[1837]

Partly Jackson's personal influence, partly his able aides, partly

favoring circumstances had, during his administrations, brought the

Democracy into excellent condition, patriotic, national in general

spirit, with a creed that, however imperfect--close construction being

its integrating idea--was, after all, definite, consistent, and

thoughtful. Yet in 1840 the Democrats, who four years before had chosen

Van Buren by an electoral vote of 170 to 73, had to surrender, with the

same Van Buren for candidate, to the Whigs by a majority of 234

electoral votes to 60; only five States, and but two of them northern,

going for the democratic candidate.

There were several causes for this defeat. Jackson had made many enemies

as well as many friends, some of these within his own party, while the

entire opposition to him was indescribably bitter on account of the

personal element entering into the struggle. The commendably national

spirit of the Whig Party told well in its favor. Upon this point its

attitude proved far more in accord with the best sentiment of the nation

than that of the Democracy, sound as the latter was at the core and

nobly as its chief had behaved in the nullification crisis.

More influential still was the financial predicament into which on

Jackson's retirement his successor and the country were plunged. The

commercial distress which seemed to spring from Jackson's measures was

now first fully realized. Anger and pain from the death of the bank had

not abated. Ardent hatred prevailed toward the "pet" banks, extending to

the party whose darlings they were, while the Specie Circular was held

to have ruined most of the others. The subsequent legislation for

distributing the treasury surplus among the States, by removing the

deposits from the pet banks, destroyed many of these as well. They had

been using this government money for the discount of loans to business

men, and were not in condition instantly to pay it back. Hence the panic

of 1837. First the New York City banks suspended, soon followed by the

others throughout that State, all sustained in their course by an act of

the Legislature. Suspension presently occurred everywhere else. The

financial pressure continued through the entire summer of 1837, banks,

corporations, and business men going to the wall, and all values greatly

sinking. Boston suffered one hundred and sixty-eight business failures

in six months.

Martin Van Buren.

From a photograph by Brady.

One of Van Buren's earliest acts after assuming office was to call an

extra session of Congress for September 4, 1837, to consider the

financial condition of the country. When it convened, an increase of the

whig vote was apparent, though the Democrats were still in the majority.

On the President's recommendation, agitation now began in favor of the

sub-treasury or independent treasury plan, still in use to-day, of

keeping the government moneys. This had been first broached in 1834-35

by Whigs. The Democrats then opposed it; but now they took it up as a

means of counteracting the whig purpose to revive a national bank.

There was soon less need of any such special arrangement, as the

treasury was swiftly running dry. In June of the preceding year, 1836,

both parties concurring, an act had passed providing that after January

1, 1837, all surplus revenue should be distributed to the States in

proportion to their electoral votes. It was meant to be a loan, to be

recalled, however, only by vote of Congress, but it proved a donation.

Twenty-eight millions were thus paid in all, never to return. Such a

disposition of the revenue had now to be stopped and reverse action

instituted. Importers called for time on their revenue bonds, which had

to be allowed, and this checked income. This special session was needed

to authorize an issue of ten millions in treasury notes to tide the

Government over the crisis.

[1840]

Another influence which now worked powerfully against the Democracy was

hostility to slavery. This campaign--it was the first--saw a "Liberty

Party" in the field, with its own candidates, Birney and Earle. The

abolition sentiment, of which more will be said in a subsequent chapter,

was growing day by day, and little as the Whigs could be called an

antislavery party on the whole, their rank and file were very much more

of that mind than those of the opposition. Jackson had ranted wildly

against the despatch of abolition literature through the mails. The

second Seminole War, 1835-42, was waged mainly in deference to

slave-holders, to recover for them their Florida runaways, and, by

removal of the Seminoles beyond the Mississippi, to break up a popular

resort for escaped negroes. The Indians, under Osceola, whose wife, as

daughter to a slave-mother, had been treacherously carried back into

bondage, fought like tigers. After their massacre of Major Dade and his

detachment, Generals Gaines, Jesup, Taylor, Armistead, and Worth

successively marched against them, none but the last-named successful in

subduing them. Over 500 persons had been restored to slavery, each one

costing the Government, as was estimated, at least $80,000 and the lives

of three white soldiers.

General William J. Worth.

[1839]

Van Buren was to the slavocrats even more obsequious than Jackson. His

spirit was shown, among other things, by the Amistad case, in 1839. The

schooner Amistad was sailing between Havana and Puerto Principe with a

cargo of negroes kidnapped in Africa. Under the lead of a bright negro

named Cinque the captives revolted and killed or confined all the crew

but two, whom they commanded to steer the ship for Africa. Instead,

these directed her to the United States coast, where she was seized off

Long Island by a war vessel and brought into New London. The negroes

were, even by Spanish law, not slaves but free men, as Spain had

prohibited the slave trade. Yet when their case was tried before the

district court, Mr. Van Buren spared no effort to procure their release

to the Spanish claimants. He even had a government vessel all ready to

convey the poor victims back to Cuba. The district court having decided

for the blacks, the government attorney appealed to the circuit court,

thence also to the supreme court. Final judgment happily re-affirmed

that the men were free. The supreme court trial was the occasion of one

of John Quincy Adams's most splendid forensic victories, he being the

counsel for the negroes.

The attitude of the administration in this affair greatly injured the

party in the North, the more as it but illustrated a spirit and policy

which had grown characteristic of the party's head. In several instances

previous to this time, when ships conveying slaves from one of the

United States to another, entered the ports of the Bahama Islands

through stress of weather, England had, while freeing them, allowed some

compensation. Now, having emancipated the slaves in her own West Indian

possessions, she declined longer to continue that practice. Her first

refusal touched the slaves on the ship Enterprise, which had put in at

Port Hamilton in 1835. Jackson's administration in vain sought

indemnity, Van Buren, then Secretary of State, designating this business

as "the most immediately pressing" before the English embassy.

[1840]

In the same pro-slavery interest an increasing proportion of the

Democracy, though not Van Buren himself, had come to favor the

annexation of Texas. The southwestern boundary of the United States had

ever since the purchase in Florida in 1819 been recognized as the Sabine

River, west of this lying the then foreign country of Texas. France had

claimed the Rio Grande as Louisiana's western bound, but Mr. Monroe, to

placate the North in the Florida annexation, had receded from this

claim. Texas and Coahuila became a state in the new Mexican republic,

which Spain recognized in 1821; but in 1836 Texas declared itself

independent. It was ill-governed and weighed down with debt, and hence

almost immediately, in 1837, asked membership in the American Union. Its

annexation was bitterly opposed all over the North, so bitterly in fact

that the northern Democrats would not have dared, even had they wished,

to favor the scheme. Yet so strong was the southern influence in the

party by 1840 that the democratic platform that year urged the

"re-annexation" of Texas, the term assuming that as a part of Louisiana

it had always been ours since 1803. This was a fact, but it was now

asseverated by the Democracy for a selfish sectional purpose, and the

cry brought thousands of votes to the Whigs.

It proved good politics for the Whigs in 1840 to pass over Clay and

adopt as their candidate William Henry Harrison. He had indeed been

unsuccessful in 1836, owing to the great popularity of Jackson, all

whose influence went for Van Buren; but now that "Little Van," or

"Matty," as Jackson used to call him, stood alone, Harrison had a better

chance. His political record had been inconspicuous but honorable.

Nothing could be alleged against his character. He was a gentleman of

some ability, while his brilliant military record in 1812, now revived

to the minutest detail, gave him immense popularity. Every surviving

Tippecanoe or Thames veteran stumped his vicinity for the old war-horse.

Many wavering Democrats in the South, especially those of the

nullification stripe, were toled to the whig ticket by the nomination of

John Tyler for Vice-President. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" rang through

the land as the whig watchword for the campaign. During the

electioneering every hamlet was regaled with portrayals of Harrison's

simple farm life at North Bend, where, a log cabin his dwelling, and

hard cider--so one would have supposed--his sole beverage, he had been a

genuine Cincinnatus. "Tippecanoe and Tyler" were therefore elected;

their popular vote numbering 1,275,017, against 1,128,702 polled for Van

Buren.

William Henry Harrison

From a Copy at the Corcoran Art Gallery of a painting by Beard in 1840.

However, this whig success, for a moment so imposing, proved superficial

and brief. Harrison died at the end of his first month in office, and

Tyler, coming in, showed that though training under the whig banner, he

had not renounced a single one of his democratic principles. The Whigs

scorned and soon officially repudiated him During the entire four years

that he held office there was constant deadlock between him and the

slight whig majority in Congress, which gave the Democrats main control

in legislation. The panic of 1837 was forgotten, while the hold of the

Democracy upon the country was so firm that its gains in Congress and

its triumphs in the States once more went steadily on.

CHAPTER VII.

LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE

[1835]

By the census of 1830 the United States had a population of 12,866,020,

the increase having been for the preceding ten years about sufficient to

double the inhabitants in thirty years. There were twenty-four States,

Indiana having been taken into the Union in 1816, Mississippi in 1817,

Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820, and Missouri, the

last, in 1821. Florida, Michigan, and Arkansas were the Territories. The

area, now that Florida had been annexed, was 725,406 square miles.

Comparatively little of the soil of Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, and

Wisconsin had as yet been occupied, though settlements were making on

most of the larger streams. The southwest had at this time filled up

more rapidly than the northwest. In 1830 the centre of population for

the Union was farther south than it has ever been at any other time.

Except in Louisiana and Missouri, not over thirty thousand inhabitants

were to be found west of the Mississippi. The vast outer ranges of the

Louisiana purchase remained a mysterious wilderness. Indianapolis in

1827 contained twenty-five brick houses, sixty frame, and about eighty

log houses; also a court-house, a jail, and three churches. Chicago was

laid out in 1830. Thither in, 1834 went one mail per week, from Niles,

Mich., on horseback. In 1833 it was incorporated as a town, having 175

houses and 550 inhabitants. That year it began publishing a newspaper

and organized two churches. In 1837 it was a city, with 4,170

inhabitants. The Territory of Iowa had in 1836, 10,500 inhabitants; in

1840, 43,000. At this time Wisconsin had 31,000. So early as 1835 Ohio

had nearly or quite 1,000,000 inhabitants. Sixty-five of its towns had

together 125 newspapers. Between 1830 and 1840 Ohio's population rose

from 900,000 to 1,500,000; Michigan's, from 30,000 to 212,000; and the

whole country's, from 13,000,000 to 17,000,000. Before 1840, eight

steamers connected Chicago with Buffalo.

John Tyler

From a photograph by Brady.

By 1840 nearly all the land of the United States this side the

Mississippi had been taken up by settlers. The last districts to be

occupied were Northern Maine, the Adirondack region of New York, a strip

in Western Virginia from the Potomac southward through Kentucky nearly

to the Tennessee line, the Pine Barrens of Georgia, and the extremities

of Michigan and Wisconsin. Beyond the Father of Waters his shores were

mostly occupied, as well as those of his main tributaries, a good way

from their mouths. The Missouri Valley had population as far as Kansas

City. Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa Territory had many settlements at

some distance from the streams. The aggregate population of the country

was 17,069,453, the average density twenty-one and a tenth to the square

mile. The mass of westward immigration was as yet native, since the

great rush from Europe only began about 1847. This was fortunate, as

fixing forever the American stamp upon the institutions of western

States. To compensate each new commonwealth for the non-taxation of the

United States land it contained, it received one township in each

thirty-six as its own for educational purposes, a provision to which is

due the magnificent school system of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa,

Minnesota, and their younger sisters.

Farther east, too, there had, of course, been growth, but it was slower.

In 1827 Hartford had but 6,900 inhabitants; New Haven, 7,100; Newark, N.

J., 6,500, and New Brunswick about the same. The State of New York paid

out, between 1815 and 1825, nearly $90,000 for the destruction of

wolves, showing that its rural population had attained little density.

The entire country had vastly improved in all the elements of

civilization. A national literature had sprung up, crowding out the

reprints of foreign works which had previously ruled the market. Bryant,

Cooper, Dana, Drake, Halleck, and Irving were now re-enforced by writers

like Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Poe, Prescott,

and Whittier. Educational institutions were multiplied and their methods

bettered, The number of newspapers had become enormous. Several

religious journals were established previous to 1830, among them the New

York Observer, which dates from 1820, and the Christian Register, from

1821. Steam printing had been introduced in 1823. The year 1825 saw the

first Sunday paper; it was the New York Sunday Courier. Greeley began

his New York Tribune only in 1841.

Fresh news had begun to be prized, as shown by the competition between

the two great New York sheets, the Journal of Commerce and the Morning

Enquirer, each of which, in 1827, established for this purpose swift

schooner lines and pony expresses. The Journal of Commerce in 1833 put

on a horse express between Philadelphia and New York, with relays of

horses, enabling it to publish congressional news a day earlier than any

of its New York contemporaries. Other papers soon imitated this example,

whereupon the Journal extended its relays to Washington. Mails came to

be more numerous and prompt. More letters were written, and, from 1839,

letters were sent in envelopes. Postage-stamps were not used till 1847.

Most of the principal cities in the country, including Rochester and

Cincinnati, published dailies before 1830. Baltimore and Louisville had

each a public school in 1829. This year witnessed in Boston the

beginning work of the first blind asylum in the country. In Hartford

instruction had already been given to the deaf and dumb since 1817.

A Pony Express.

By the fourth decade of the century the American character had assumed a

good deal of definiteness and greatly interested foreign travellers.

There was, by those who knew what foreign manners were, much foolish

aping of the same. English visitors noted Brother Jonathan's drawl in

talking, his phlegmatic temperament, keen eye, and blistering

inquisitiveness. Jonathan was a rover and a trader, everywhere at home,

everywhere bent upon the main chance. He ate too rapidly, chewed and

smoked tobacco, and spat indecently. He drank too much. During the first

quarter of the century nearly everyone used liquor, and drunkenness was

shamefully common. Every public entertainment, even if religious, set

out provision of free punch. At hotels, brandy was placed upon the

table, free as water to all. The smaller sects often held preaching

services in bar-rooms for lack of better accommodations. On such

occasions the preacher was not infrequently observed, without affront to

anyone, to refresh himself from behind the bar just before announcing

his text.

In 1824 commenced in Boston a temperance movement which accomplished in

this matter the most happy reform. It swept New England, passing thence

to all the other parts of the Union. By the end of 1829 over a thousand

temperance societies were in existence. The distilling and importation

of spirits fell off immensely. It became fashionable not to drink, and

little by little drinking came to be stigmatized as immoral.

By the time of which we now speak, the old habit of expressing

solicitude for the fate of the Union had passed away. Whig like

Democrat--so different from old Federalist-swore by "the people." Every

American believed in America. Travelling abroad, the man from this

country was wont to assume, and if opposed to contend, ill-manneredly

sometimes, that its institutions were far the best in the world. No one

wished a change. The unparalleled prosperity of all contributed to this

satisfaction. Cities and towns came up in a day. Public improvements

were to be seen making in every direction. There was no idle aristocracy

on the one hand, no beggars on the other. Self-respect was universal.

The people held the power. If men attained great wealth, as not a few

did, they usually did not waste it but invested it. Business enterprise

was intense and common. Character entered into credit as an element

along with financial resources. People did not crowd into cities, but

loved and built up the country rather. Laws and penalties were become

more mild. In 1837 a man was flogged at the whipping-post in Providence,

R. I., for horse-stealing, perhaps the last case of the kind in the

country. Prisons were now made clean and healthy, and the idea of

reforming the criminal instead of taking vengeance upon him was

spreading. Reformatories for children had been opened in New York,

Boston, and Philadelphia. There were institutions for homeless children,

for the sick poor, for the insane, and for other unfortunate classes.

By this time the Methodists and Baptists had become extremely strong in

numbers. In 1833 the Massachusetts constitution was altered, abolishing

obligatory contributions for the support of the ministry of the standing

order. Connecticut had made the same change fifteen years before, in its

constitution of 1818. In many localities the newer denominations,

hitherto sects, were more influential than the old one, and in this

abolition of ecclesiastical taxes they had with them Jews, atheists,

deists, agnostics, and heathen.

About 1825 began a period of peculiar religious enthusiasm. Missions to

the heathen were instituted. Revivals were numerous and often shook

whole neighborhoods for weeks and months. About this date Millerism

began to make converts. William Miller, from whom it took its name,

preached far and wide that the world would be destroyed in 1843,

securing multitudes of disciples, who clung to his general belief even

after his prophecy as to the specific date for the final catastrophe was

seen to have failed. Mormonism was also founded, in 1830, and the Book

of Mormon published by Joseph Smith. A church of this order, organized

this year at Manchester, N. Y., removed the next to Kirtland, O., and

thence to Independence, Mo. Driven from here by mob violence, they built

the town of Nauvoo, Ill. Meeting in this place too with what they

regarded persecution, several of their members being prosecuted for

polygamy, they were obliged to migrate to Salt Lake City, where,

however, they were not fully settled until 1848.

As part of the same general stir we may perhaps register the

anti-masonic movement. One William Morgan, a Mason residing in Western

New York, was reported about to expose in a publication the secrets of

that order. The Masons were desirous of preventing this and made several

forcible efforts to that end. Morgan was soon missing, and the exciting

assumption was almost universally made that the Masons had taken him

off. There was much evidence of this; but conviction was found

impossible because, as was alleged, judges, juries, and witnesses were

nearly all Masons. An intense and widespread feeling was developed that

Masonry held itself superior to the laws, was therefore a foe to the

Government and must be destroyed. The Anti-Masons became a mighty

political party. Masons were driven from office. In 1832 anti-masonic

nominations were made for President and Vice-President, which had much

to do with the small vote of Clay in that year. It was this party that

brought to the front politically William H. Seward, Millard Fillmore,

and Thurlow Weed.

Thurlow Weed. From an unpublished Photograph by Disderi, Paris, in 1861.

In the possession of Thurlow Weed Barnes.

In 1833 Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania passed laws

suppressing lotteries, but the gambling mania seemed to transform itself

into a craze for banks. In many parts this was such that actual riots

took place when subscriptions to the stock of banks were opened, the

earliest comers subscribing the whole with the purpose of selling to

others at an advance. To make a bank was thought the great panacea for

every ill that could befall. In this we see that the American people,

bright as they were, could be duped.

Less wonder, then, at the success of the Moon Hoax, perpetrated in 1835.

It was generally known that Sir John Herschel had gone to the Cape of

Good Hope to erect an observatory. One day the New York Sun came out

with what purported to be part of a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal

of Science, giving an account of Herschel's remarkable discoveries. The

moon, so the bogus relation ran, had been found to be inhabited by human

beings with wings. Herschel had seen flocks of them flying about. Their

houses were triangular in form. The telescope had also revealed beavers

in the moon, exhibiting most remarkable intelligence. Pictures of some

of these and of moon scenery accompanied the article. The fraud was so

clever as to deceive learned and unlearned alike. The sham story was

continued through several issues of the Sun, and gave the paper an

enormous sale. As it arrived in the different places, crowds scrambled

for it, nor would those who failed to secure copies disperse until some

one more fortunate had read to them all that the paper said upon the

subject. Several colleges sent professorial deputations to the Sun

office to see the article, and particularly the appendices, which, it

was alleged, had been kept back. Richard Adams Locke was the author of

this ingenious deception, which was not exploded until the arrival of

authentic intelligence from Edinburgh.

Party spirit sometimes ran terribly high. A New York City election in

1834 was the occasion of a riot between men of the two parties,

disturbances continuing several days. Political meetings were broken up,

and the militia had to be called out to enforce order. Citizens armed

themselves, fearing attacks upon banks and business houses. When it was

found that the Whigs were triumphant in the city, deafening salutes were

fired. Philadelphia Whigs celebrated this victory with a grand barbecue,

attended, it was estimated, by fifty thousand people. The death of

Harrison was malignantly ascribed to overeating in Washington, after his

long experience with insufficient diet in the West. Whigs exulted over

Jackson's cabinet difficulties. Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet," the power

behind the throne, gave umbrage to his official advisers. Duff Green,

editor of the United States Telegraph, the President's "organ," was one

member; Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, and Amos Kendall, first of

Massachusetts, then of Kentucky, were others, these three the most

influential. All had long worked, written, and cheered for Old Hickory.

In return he gave them good places at Washington, and now they enjoyed

dropping in at the White House to take a smoke with the grizzly hero and

help him curse the opposition as foes of "the people."

Major Eaton, Old Hickory's first Secretary of War, had married a

beautiful widow, maiden name Peggy O'Neil, of common birth, and much

gossipped about. The female members of other cabinet families refused to

associate with her, the Vice-President's wife leading. Jackson took up

Mrs. Eaton's cause with all knightly zeal. He berated her traducers and

persecutors in long and fierce personal letters. His niece and

housekeeper, Mrs. Donelson, one of the anti-Eatonites, he turned out of

the White House, with her husband, his private secretary. The breach was

serious anyway, and might have been far more so but for the healing

offices of Van Buren, who used all his courtliness and power of place to

help the President bring about the social recognition of Mrs. Eaton. He

called upon her, made parties in her honor, and secured her entree to

the families of the greatest foreign ministers. Mrs. Eaton triumphed,

but the scandal would not down.

When Jackson wrote his foreign message upon the French spoliation

claims, his cabinet were aghast and begged him to soften its tone. Upon

his refusal, it is said, they stole to the printing-office and did it

themselves. But the proofs came back for Jackson's perusal. The lad who

brought them was the late Mr. J. S. Ham, of Providence, R. I. He used to

say that he had never known what profane swearing was till he listened

to General Jackson's comments as those proofs were read.

Jackson and Quincy Adams were personal as well as political foes. When

the President visited Boston, Harvard College bestowed on him the degree

of Doctor of Laws. Adams, one of the overseers, opposed this with all

his might. As "an affectionate child of our Alma Mater, he would not be

present to witness her disgrace in conferring her highest literary

honors upon a barbarian." Subsequently he would refer, with a sneer, to

"Dr. Andrew Jackson." The President's illness at Boston Adams declared

"four-fifths trickery" and the rest mere fatigue. He was like John

Randolph, said Adams, who for forty years was always dying. "He is now

alternately giving out his chronic diarrhoea and making Warren bleed him

for a pleurisy, and posting to Cambridge for a doctorate of laws,

mounting the monument of Bunker's Hill to hear a fulsome address and

receive two cannon-balls from Edward Everett."

To be sure, manifestations of a contrary spirit between the political

parties were not wanting. The entire nation mourned for Madison after

his death in 1836, as it had on the decease of Jefferson and John Adams

both on the same day, July 4, 1826.

A note or two upon costume may not uninterestingly close this chapter.

Enormous bonnets were fashionable about 1830. Ladies also wore Leghorn

hats, with very broad brims rolled up behind, tricked out profusely with

ribbons and artificial flowers. Dress-waists were short and high. Skirts

were short, too, hardly reaching the ankles. Sleeves were of the

leg-of-mutton fashion, very full above the elbows but tightening toward

the wrist. Gentlemen still dressed for the street not so differently

from the revolutionary style. Walking-coats were of broadcloth, blue,

brown, or green, to suit the taste, with gilt buttons. Bottle-green was

a very stylish color for evening coats. Blue and the gilt buttons for

street wear were, however, beginning to be discarded, Daniel Webster

being one of the last to walk abroad in them. The buff waistcoat, white

cambric cravat, and ruffled shirt still held their own. Collars for full

dress were worn high, covering half the cheek, a fashion which persisted

in parts of the country till 1850 or later.

CHAPTER VIII.

INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE BY 1840

[1840]

During the War of 1812 we had in England an industrial spy, whose

campaign there has perhaps accomplished more for the country than all

our armies did. It was Francis C. Lowell, of Boston. Great Britain was

just introducing the power loom. The secret of structure was guarded

with all vigilance, yet Lowell, passing from cotton factory to cotton

factory with Yankee eyes, ears, and wit, came home in 1814, believing,

with good reason, as it proved, that he could set up one of the machines

on American soil. Broad Street in Boston was the scene of his initial

experiments, but the factory to the building of which they led was at

Waltham. It was owned by a company, one of whose members was Nathan

Appleton. Water furnished the motive power. By the autumn of 1814 Lowell

had perfected his looms and placed them in the factory. Spinning

machinery was also built, mounting seventeen hundred spindles. English

cotton-workers did not as yet spin and weave under the same roof, so

that the Lowell Mill at Waltham may, with great probability, be

pronounced the first in the world to carry cloth manufacture

harmoniously through all its several successive steps from the raw stuff

to the finished ware.

From this earliest establishment of the power-loom here, the

cotton-cloth business strode rapidly forward. Fall River, Holyoke,

Lawrence, Lowell, and scores of other thriving towns sprung into being.

Every year new mills were built. In 1831 there were 801; in 1840, 1,240;

in 1850, 1,074. Henceforth, through consolidation, the number of

factories decreased, but the number of spindles grew steadily larger.

This rise of great manufacturing concerns was facilitated by a new order

of corporation laws. There had been corporations in the country before

1830, as the Waltham case shows; but the system had had little

evolution, as incorporation had in each case to proceed from a special

legislative act. In 1837 Connecticut passed a statute making this

unnecessary and enabling a group of persons to become a corporation on

complying with certain simple requirements. New York placed a similar

provision in its constitution of 1846. The Dartmouth College decision of

the United States Supreme Court in 1819, interpreting an act of

incorporation as a contract, which, by the Constitution, no State can

violate, still further humored and aided the corporation system.

From an Old Time-table. (Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide.)

In 1816 the streets of Baltimore were lighted with gas. A gas-light

company was incorporated in New York in 1823. Not till 1836, however,

did the Philadelphia streets have gas lights. The first savings-banks

were established in Philadelphia and Boston in 1816. Baltimore had one

two years later. Portable fire-proof safes were used in 1820. The Lehigh

coal trade flourished this year, and also the manufacture of iron with

coal. The whale fishery, too, was now beginning. The first factory in

Lowell started in 1821. In 1822 there was a copper rolling mill in

Baltimore, the only one then in America, and Paterson, N. J., began the

manufacture of cotton duck. Patent leather was made in the United States

by 1819. In 1824 Amesbury, Mass., had a water-power manufactory of

flannel. The next year the practice of homoeopathy began in America, and

matches of a rude sort were displacing the old tinder-box. The next

year after this Hartford produced axes and other edged tools.

Lithography, of which there had been specimens so early as 1818, was a

Boston business in 1827. Pittsburgh manufactured damask table linen in

1828. The same year saw paper made from straw, and planing machinery in

operation. The insuring of lives began in this country in 1812.

Trial between Peter Cooper's Locomotive "Tom Thumb" and one of Stockton's

and Stokes' Horse Cars. From "History of the First Locomotive in

America."

The first figured muslin woven by the power-loom in America, and perhaps

in the world, was produced at Central Falls, R. I., in 1829. Calico

printing began at Lowell the same year, also the manufacture of cutlery

at Worcester, of sewing-silk at Mansfield, Conn., of galvanized iron in

New York City. With the new decade chloroform was invented, in 1831,

being first used as a medicine, not as an anaesthetic. Reaping machines

were on trial the same year, and three years later machine-made wood

screws were turned out at Providence. About the same time, 1832, pins

were made by machinery, hosiery was woven by a power-loom process, and

Colt perfected his revolver. In 1837 brass clocks were put upon the

American market, and by 1840 extensively exported. Also in 1837 Nashua

was making machinists' tools. By 1839 the manufacture of iron with hard

coal was a pronounced success. In 1840 daguerreotypes began to appear.

Steam fire-engines were seen the next year.

Peter Cooper's Locomotive, 1829.

So early as 1816 the New York and Philadelphia stages made the distance

from city to city between sun and sun. The National Road from Cumberland

was finished to Wheeling in 1820, having been fourteen years in

construction and costing $17,000,000. It was subsequently extended

westward across Ohio and Indiana. It was thirty-five feet wide,

thoroughly macadamized, and had no grade of above five degrees. Over

parts of this road no less than 150 six-horse teams passed daily,

besides four or five four-horse mail and passenger coaches. In Jackson's

time, when for some months there was talk of war with France and extra

measures were thought proper for assuring the loyalty of Louisiana,

swift mail connections were made with the Mississippi by the National

Road. Its entire length was laid out into sections of sixty-three miles

apiece, each with three boys and nine horses, only six hours and

eighteen minutes being allowed for traversing a section, viz., a rate of

about ten miles an hour. Great men and even presidents travelled by the

public coaches of this road, though many of them used their own

carriages. James K. Polk often made the journey from Nashville to

Washington in his private carriage. Keeping down the Cumberland River to

the Ohio, and up this to Wheeling, he would strike into the National

Road eastward to Cumberland, Md. He came thus so late as 1845, to be

inaugurated as President; only at this time he used the new railway from

Cumberland to the Relay House, where he changed to the other new railway

which had already joined Baltimore with Washington.

Obverse and Reverse of a Ticket used in 1838 on the New York & Harlem

Railroad.

The first omnibus made its appearance in New York in 1830, the name

itself originating from the word painted upon this vehicle. The first

street railway was laid two years later. The era of the stage coach was

at this time beginning to end, that of canals and railroads opening. Yet

in the remoter sections of the country the old coach was destined to

hold its place for decades still. Where roads were fair it would not

uncommonly make one hundred miles between early morning and late

evening, as between Boston and Springfield, Springfield and Albany. So

soon as available the canal packet was a much more easy and elegant

means of travel. The Erie Canal was begun in 1817, finished to Rochester

in 1823, the first boat arriving October 8th. The year 1825 carried it

to Buffalo. The Blackstone Canal, between Worcester and Providence, was

opened its whole length in 1828; the next year many others, as the

Chesapeake and Delaware, the Cumberland and Oxford in Maine, the

Farmington in Connecticut, the Oswego, connecting the Erie Canal with

Lake Ontario, also the Delaware and Hudson, one hundred and eight miles

long, from Honesdale, Pa., to Hudson River. The Welland Canal was

completed in 1830.

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1830.

Salt-water transportation had meantime been much facilitated by the use

of steam. It had been thought a great achievement when, in 1817, the

Black Ball line of packet ships between New York and Liverpool was

regularly established, consisting of four vessels of from four hundred

to five hundred tons apiece. But two years later a steamship crossed the

Atlantic to Liverpool from Savannah. It took her twenty-five

days--longer than the time in which the distance often used to be

accomplished under sail. In 1822 there was a regular steamboat between

Norfolk and New York, though no steamboat was owned in Boston till 1828.

The Atlantic was first crossed exclusively by steam-power in 1838, and

the first successful propeller used in 1839. The last-named year also

witnessed the beginning of a permanent express line between Boston and

New York, by the Stonington route. The next year, the Adams Express

Company was founded, doing its first business between these two cities

over the Springfield route, in competition with that by the Stonington.

Old Boston & Worcester Railway Ticket (about 1837).

But all these improvements were soon to be overshadowed by the work of

the railway and locomotive. The first road of rails in America was in

the Lehigh coal district of Pennsylvania. Its date is uncertain, but not

later than 1825. In 1826, October 7th, the second began operation, at

Quincy, Mass., transporting granite from the quarries to tide-water,

about three miles. This experiment attracted great attention, showing

how much heavier loads could be transported over rails than upon common

roads, and with how much greater ease and less expense ordinary weights

could be carried. The same had been demonstrated in England before.

Locomotives were not yet used in either country, but only horse-power.

The conviction spread rapidly that not only highway transportation but

even that by canals would soon be, for all large burdens, either quite

superseded or of secondary importance. In 1827 the Maryland Legislature

chartered a railroad from Baltimore to Wheeling. The projectors, though

regarding it a bold act, promised an average rate between the two cities

of at least four miles per hour. Subscriptions were offered for more

than twice the amount of the stock. The Massachusetts Legislature the

same year appointed commissioners to look out a railway route between

Boston and Hudson River. Also in this year a railway was completed at

Mauch Chunk, Pa., for transporting coal to the landing on the Lehigh.

The descent was by gravity, mules being used to haul back the cars.

In most country parts, the new railway projects encountered great

hostility. Engineers were not infrequently clubbed from the fields as

they sought to survey. Learned articles appeared in the papers arguing

against the need of railways and exhibiting the perils attending them.

When steam came to be used, these scruples were re-enforced by the

alleged danger that the new system of travel would do away with the

market for oats and for horses, and that stage-drivers would seek wages

in vain.

The first trip by a locomotive was in 1828, over the Carbondale and

Honesdale route in Pennsylvania. The engine was of English make, and run

by Mr. Horatio Allen, who had had it built. This was a year before the

first steam railroad was opened in England. July 4, 1828, construction

upon the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was begun. It, like the other early

roads, was built of stone cross-ties, with wooden rails topped with

heavy straps of iron. Such ties were soon replaced by wooden ones, as

less likely to be split by frost, but the wooden rail with its iron

strap might be seen on branch lines, for instance, between Monocacy

Bridge and Frederick City, Md., so late as the Civil War.

The "South Carolina," 1831, and plan of its running gear.