FOOTNOTES:

In the North they areIn the South they arecoolfierysobervoluptuarylaboriousindolentperseveringunsteadyindependentindependentjealous of their own liberties, and just to those of otherszealous for their own liberties, but trampling on those of othersinterestedgenerouschicaningcandidsuperstitious and hypocritical in their religionwithout attachment or pretensions to any religion but that of the heart.

"These characteristics," continues Jefferson, "grow weaker and weaker by graduation from North to South and South to North, insomuch that an observing traveller, without the aid of the quadrant may always know his latitude by the character of the people among whom he finds himself."

"It is in Pennsylvania," Jefferson proceeds in his careful analysis, "that the two characters seem to meet and blend, and form a people free from the extremes both of vice and virtue. Peculiar circumstances have given to New York the character which climate would have given had she been placed on the South instead of the north side of Pennsylvania. Perhaps too other circumstances may have occasioned in Virginia a transplantation of a particular vice foreign to its climate." Jefferson finally concludes: "I think it for their good that the vices of their character should be pointed out to them that they may amend them; for a malady of either body or mind once known is half cured."[868]

A plantation house northwest of Richmond grumblingly admitted a lost traveler, who found his sleeping-room with "filthy beds, swarming with bugs" and cracks in the walls through which the sun shone.[869]The most bizarre contrasts startled the observer—mean cabins, broken windows, no bread, and yet women clad in silk with plumes in their hair.[870]Eight years after our present National Government was established, the food of the people living in the Shenandoah Valley was salt fish, pork, and greens; and the wayfarer could not get fresh meat except at Staunton or Lynchburg,[871]notwithstanding the surrounding forests filled with game or the domestic animals which fed on the fields where the forests had been cleared away.

Most of the houses in which the majority of Virginians then lived were wretched;[872]Jefferson tells us,speaking of the better class of dwellings, that "it is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable." "The poorest people," continues Jefferson, "build huts of logs, laid horizontally in pens, stopping the interstices with mud.... The wealthy are attentive to the raising of vegetables, but very little so to fruits.... The poorer people attend to neither, living principally on ... animal diet."[873]

In general the population subsisted on worse fare than that of the inhabitants of the Valley.[874]Even in that favored region, where religion and morals were more vital than elsewhere in the Commonwealth, each house had a peach brandy still of its own; and it was a man of notable abstemiousness who did not consume daily a large quantity of this spirit. "It is scarcely possible," writes Weld, "to meet with a man who does not begin the day with taking one, two, or more drams as soon as he rises."[875]

Indeed, at this period, heavy drinking appears to have been universal and continuous among all classes throughout the whole country[876]quite as muchas in Virginia. It was a habit that had come down from their forefathers and was so conspicuous, ever-present and peculiar, that every traveler through America, whether native or foreign, mentions it time and again. "The most common vice of the inferior class of the American people is drunkenness," writes La Rochefoucauld in 1797.[877]And Washington eight years earlier denounced "drink which is the source of all evil—and the ruin of half the workmen in this country."[878]Talleyrand, at a farmer's house in the heart of Connecticut, found the daily food to consist of "smoked fish, ham, potatoes, strong beer and brandy."[879]

Court-houses built in the center of a county and often standing entirely alone, without other buildings near them, nevertheless always had attached to them a shanty where liquor was sold.[880]At country taverns which, with a few exceptions, were poorand sometimes vile,[881]whiskey mixed with water was the common drink.[882]About Germantown, Pennsylvania, workingmen received from employers a pint of rum each day as a part of their fare;[883]and in good society men drank an astonishing number of "full bumpers" after dinner, where, already, they had imbibed generously.[884]The incredible quantity of liquor, wine, and beer consumed everywhere and by all classes is the most striking and conspicuous feature of early American life. In addition to the very heavy domestic productions of spirits,[885]there were imported in 1787, according to De Warville, four million gallons of rum, brandy, and other spirits; one million gallons of wine; three million gallons of molasses (principally for the manufacture of rum); as against only one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds of tea.[886]

Everybody, it appears, was more interested in sport and spending than in work and saving. As in colonial days, the popular amusements continued to be horse-racing and cock-fighting; the first the peculiar diversion of the quality; the second that of the baser sort, although men of all conditions of society attended and delighted in both.[887]But the horse-racing and the cock-fighting served the good purpose of bringing the people together; for these and the court days were the only occasions on which they met and exchanged views. The holding of court was an event never neglected by the people; but they assembled then to learn what gossip said and to drink together rather than separately, far more than they came to listen to the oracles from the bench or even the oratory at the bar; and seldom did the care-free company break up without fights, sometimes with the most serious results.[888]

Thus, scattered from Maine to Florida and from the Atlantic to the Alleghanies, with a skirmish line thrown forward almost to the Mississippi, these three and a quarter millions of men, women, and children, did not, for the most part, take kindly to government of any kind. Indeed, only a fraction of them had anything to do with government, for there were no more than seven hundred thousand adult males among them,[889]and of these, in most States, only property-holders had the ballot. The great majority of the people seldom saw a letter or even a newspaper; and the best informed did not know what was going on in a neighboring State, although anxious for the information.

"Of the affairs of Georgia, I know as little as ofthose of Kamskatska," wrote Madison to Jefferson in 1786.[890]But everybody did know that government meant law and regulation, order and mutual obligation, the fulfillment of contracts and the payment of debts. Above all, everybody knew that government meant taxes. And none of these things aroused what one would call frantic enthusiasm when brought home to the individual. Bloated and monstrous individualism grew out of the dank soil of these conditions. The social ideal had hardly begun to sprout; and nourishment for its feeble and languishing seed was sucked by its overgrown rival.

Community consciousness showed itself only in the more thickly peopled districts, and even there it was feeble. Generally speaking and aside from statesmen, merchants, and the veterans of the Revolution, the idea of a National Government had not penetrated the minds of the people. They managed to tolerate State Governments, because they always had lived under some such thing; but a National Government was too far away and fearsome, too alien and forbidding for them to view it with friendliness or understanding. The common man saw little difference between such an enthroned central power and the Royal British Government which had been driven from American shores.

To be sure, not a large part of the half-million men able for the field[891]had taken much of any militant part in expelling British tyranny; but these"chimney-corner patriots," as Washington stingingly described them, were the hottest foes of British despotism—after it had been overthrown. And they were the most savage opponents to setting up any strong government, even though it should be exclusively American.

Such were the economic, social, and educational conditions of the masses and such were their physical surroundings, conveniences, and opportunities between the close of the War for Independence and the setting-up of the present Government. All these facts profoundly affected the thought, conduct, and character of the people; and what the people thought, said, and did, decisively influenced John Marshall's opinion of them and of the government and laws which were best for the country.

During these critical years, Jefferson was in France witnessing government by a decaying, inefficient, and corrupt monarchy and nobility, and considering the state of a people who were without that political liberty enjoyed in America.[892]But the vagaries, the changeableness, the turbulence, the envy toward those who had property, the tendency to repudiate debts, the readiness to credit the grossest slander or to respond to the most fantastic promises, which the newly liberated people in America were then displaying, did not come within Jefferson's vision or experience.

Thus, Marshall and Jefferson, at a time destined to be so important in determining the settled opinions of both, were looking upon opposite sides of the shield. It was a curious and fateful circumstance and it was repeated later under reversed conditions.

FOOTNOTES:[760]Weld, i, 37-38; also, Morris, ii, 393-94.[761]Weld, i, 38.[762]Baily'sJournal(1796-97), 108.[763]Ib., 109-10.[764]Professor Beard, in his exposition of the economic origins of the Constitution, shows that nearly all of the men who framed it were wealthy or allied with property interests and that many of them turned up as holders of Government securities. (Beard:Econ. I. C., chap.v.) As a matter of fact, none but such men could have gone to the Federal Convention at Philadelphia, so great were the difficulties and so heavy the expenses of travel, even if the people had been minded to choose poorer and humbler persons to represent them; at any rate, they did not elect representatives of their own class until the Constitution was to be ratified and then, of course, only to State Conventions which were accessible.[765]Weld, i, 47-48.[766]Johnston to Iredell, Jan. 30, 1790; McRee, ii, 279.[767]"Letters of a Federal Farmer," no. 2; Ford:P. on C., 292.[768]Ib., no. 3, 302.[769]De Warville made a record trip from Boston to New York in less than five days. (De Warville, 122.) But such speed was infrequent.[770]Josiah Quincy's description of his journey from Boston to New York in 1794. (Quincy:Figures of the Past, 47-48.)[771]De Warville, 138-39.[772]Watson, 266.[773]"The road is execrable; one is perpetually mounting and descending and always on the most rugged roads." (Chastellux, 20.)[774]Elliott, ii, 21-22.[775]"In December last, the roads were so intollerably bad that the country people could not bring their forage to market, thoughactually offered the cash on delivery." (Pickering to Hodgdon;Pickering: Pickering, i, 392.)[776]Cooper, 1875-86, as quoted in Hart, iii, 98.[777]Ib.[778]Watson, 270. Along one of the principal roads of New York, as late as 1804, President Dwight discovered only "a few lonely plantations" and he "occasionally found a cottage and heard a distant sound of an axe and of a human voice. All else was grandeur, gloom, and solitude." (Halsey:Old New York Frontier, 384.)[779]Hart, iii, 116.[780]Mag. Western Hist., i, 530.[781]Justice Cushing to Chief Justice Jay, Oct. 23, 1792;Jay: Johnston, iii, 450.[782]Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, 176-77.[783]Washington to Jay, Nov. 19, 1790;Jay: Johnston, iii, 409.[784]Jefferson to Washington, March 27, 1791;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 366.[785]Washington'sDiary: Lossing, Feb. 25, 1791.[786]Washington to Jay, Dec. 13, 1789;Jay: Johnston, iii, 381.[787]Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, March 28, 1790;Works: Ford, vi, 36.[788]Weld, i, 91.[789]Bayard to Rodney, Jan. 5, 1801;Bayard Papers: Donnan, ii, 118.[790]Schoepf, ii, 46.[791]Ib., 78.[792]Ib., 45.[793]Grigsby, i, 26.[794]Weld, i, 170.[795]Watson, 60.[796]Davis, 372.[797]Schoepf, ii, 95.[798]Wilkinson:Memoirs, i, 9-10. The distance which General Wilkinson's mother thought "so far away" was only forty miles.[799]Schoepf, ii, 53.[800]Zachariah Johnson, in Elliott, iii, 647.[801]Journal, H.D. (1790), 13.[802]Madison to Lee, July 7, 1785;Writings: Hunt, ii, 149-51.[803]Ib.[804]Boston was not a "city" in the legal interpretation until 1822.[805]Chastellux, 225. "The difficulty of finding the road in many parts of America is not to be conceived except by those strangers who have travelled in that country. The roads, which are through the woods, not being kept in repair, as soon as one is in bad order, another is made in the same manner, that is, merely by felling trees, and the whole interior parts are so covered that without a compass it is impossible to have the least idea of the course you are steering. The distances, too, are so uncertain as in every county where they are not measured, that no two accounts resemble each other. In the back parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, I have frequently travelled thirty miles for ten, though frequently set right by passengers and negroes." (Ib.Translator's note.)[806]Smyth,Tour of the United States, i, 102-103.[807]Watson, 40. "Towards the close of the day I found myself entangled among swamps amid an utter wilderness, and my horse almost exhausted in my efforts to overtake Harwood. As night closed upon me I was totally bewildered and without a vestige of a road to guide me. Knowing the impossibility of retracing my steps in the dark, through the mazes I had traversed, I felt the necessity of passing the night in this solitary desert ... in no trifling apprehension of falling a prey to wild beasts before morning." (Ib.)[808]Ib.[809]"I waited at Baltimore near a week before I could proceed on my journey the roads being rendered impassable." (Baily'sJournal(1796-97), 107.)[810]Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, 177.[811]Madison to Jefferson, Dec. 21, 1794;Writings: Hunt, vi, 227.[812]Madison to Jefferson, Jan. 26, 1795;ib., 230.[813]"Your favor of July 6 having been addressdto Williamsburg, instead ofOrange C. Ho[u]se, did not come to hand till two days ago." (Madison to Livingston, Aug. 10, 1795;ib., vi, 234.)[814]Lee to Henry, May 28, 1789; Henry, iii, 387.[815]Lee to Henry, Sept. 27, 1789; Henry, iii, 402.[816]Ephraim Douglass to Gen. James Irvine, 1784;Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., i, 50.[817]Madison to Washington, Feb. 15, 1788; and King to Madison, Feb. 6, 1788;Writings: Hunt, v, footnote to p. 100.[818]Madison to Washington, Feb. 11, 1788:Writings: Hunt, v, 99.[819]Madison to Washington, Feb. 15, 1788;ib., 100.[820]The Randolph-Clinton Correspondence; seeinfra, chap. x.[821]Jay to Wolcott, mailed June 23, and received by Wolcott Aug. 16, 1794; Gibbs, i, 157.[822]Ib., 160.[823]Jefferson to Short, Nov. 21, 1789;Works: Ford, vi, 20.[824]So notorious was this practice that important parts of the correspondence of the more prominent politicians and statesmen of the day always were written in cipher. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe appear to have been especially careful to take this precaution. (See Washington's complaint of this tampering with the mails in a letter to Fairfax, June 25, 1786;Writings: Sparks, ix, 175.) Habitual violation of the mails by postmasters continued into the first decades of the nineteenth century.[825]Washington to Lafayette, Feb. 7, 1788;Writings: Ford, xi, 218.[826]Kettell, inEighty Years' Progress, ii, 174.[827]Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., ix, 444.[828]Am. Ant. Soc. Pubs., xxiii, Part ii, 254-330.[829]Goodrich, i, 61.[830]Schoepf, ii, 61; see note,ib.Even this journal died for want of subscribers.[831]SalemGazette, Sept. 13, 1791; Hist. Col., Topsfield (Mass.) Hist. Soc., iii, 10.[832]Washington to Humphreys, Dec. 26, 1786;Writings: Ford, xi, 98-103.[833]Washington to General Knox, Dec. 26, 1786;ib., 103-05.[834]Writings: Smyth, x, 36et seq.This arraignment of the press by America's first journalist was written when Franklin was eighty-three years old and when he was the most honored and beloved man in America, Washington only excepted. It serves not only to illuminate the period of the beginning of our Government, but to measure the vast progress during the century and a quarter since that time.[835]Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Paris, Sept. 25, 1785;Works: Ford, iv, 465.[836]"Country Printer," in Freneau, iii, 60. Freneau thus describes the country editor of that day:—"Three times a week, by nimble geldings drawn,A stage arrives; but scarcely deigns to stop.Unless the driver, far in liquor gone,Has made some business for the black-smith-shop;Then comes this printer's harvest-time of news,Welcome alike from Christians, Turks, or Jews."Each passenger he eyes with curious glance,And, if his phiz be mark'd of courteous kind,To conversation, straight, he makes advance,Hoping, from thence, some paragraph to find,Some odd adventure, something new and rare,To set the town a-gape, and make it stare."All is not Truth ('tis said) that travellers tell—So much the better for this man of news;For hence the country round, that know him well,Will, if he prints some lies, his lies excuse.Earthquakes, and battles, shipwrecks, myriads slain—If false or true—alike to him are gain."Ask you what matter fills his various page?A mere farrago 'tis, of mingled things;Whate'er is done on Madam Terra's stageHe to the knowledge of his townsmen brings:One while, he tells of monarchs run away;And now, of witches drown'd in Buzzard's bay."Some miracles he makes, and some he steals;Half Nature's works are giants in his eyes;Much, very much, in wonderment he deals,—New-Hampshire apples grown to pumpkin size,Pumpkins almost as large as country inns,And ladies bearing, each,—three lovely twins."Freneau was himself a country printer in New Jersey, after editing theNational Gazettein Philadelphia. Thus the above description was from his personal experience and in a town in a thickly settled part, on the main road between New York and Philadelphia.[837]Goodrich, i, 38.[838]A letter from Salem Town about 1786-87; inAmerican Journal of Education, xiii, 738.[839]Van Santvoord:Memoirs of Eliphalet Nott, 19.[840]Davis, 333.[841]"Many cannot read or write, and many that can, know nothing of geography and other branches. The country is too thinly settled to carry out a system of common schools." (Howe, 153, speaking of western Virginia about 1830.)[842]Weld, i, 168. But President Tyler says that the boys Weld saw were grammar-school pupils.[843]Watson, 269.[844]Chastellux, 319-20.[845]De Warville, 126-27.[846]Ib., 145 and 450.[847]Ib., 145. All travelers agree as to the wretched condition of Rhode Island; and that State appears to have acted as badly as it looked. "The ... infamous [scenes] in Rhode Island have done inexpressable injury to the Republican character," etc. (Madison to Pendleton, Feb. 24, 1787;Writings: Hunt, ii, 319.)[848]De Warville, 132.[849]Weld, i, 113.[850]De Warville, 186-87.[851]De Warville, 186 and 332. See La Rochefoucauld's description of this same type of settler as it was several years after De Warville wrote. "The Dwellings of the new settlers ... consist of huts, with roofs and walls which are made of bark and in which the husband, wife and children pass the winter wrapped up in blankets.... Salt pork and beef are the usual food of the new settlers; their drink is water and whiskey." (La Rochefoucauld, i, 293-96.)[852]Freneau, iii, 74.[853]Knox to Washington, Feb. 10, 1788;Writings: Ford, xi, footnote to 229. And seeinfra, chap.VIII.[854]De Warville, 187. In 1797, La Rochefoucauld speaks of "the credulity and ignorance of the half-savage sort of people who inhabit the back settlements." (La Rochefoucauld, i, 293.)[855]"A relaxation is observable among all orders of society. Drunkenness is the prevailing vice, and with few exceptions, the source of all other evils. A spirit, or rather a habit, of equality is diffused among this people as far as it possibly can go.... The inhabitants exhibit to strangers striking instances both of the utmost cleanliness and excessive nastiness," (La Rochefoucauld, i, 125.)During Washington's second term as President, La Rochefoucauld thus describes manners in western Pennsylvania: "They are much surprised at a refusal to sleep with one, two, or more men, in the same bed, or between dirty sheets, or to drink after ten other persons out of the same dirty glass.... Whiskey mixed with water is the common drink in the country." (Ib.)[856]Ib., i, 293-96. Seeinfra, note 4, pp. 281-82.[857]Watson, 266.[858]"You see [in Maryland and Virginia] real misery and apparent luxury insulting each other." (De Warville, 159.)[859]Chastellux, 279, and translator's note.[860]Anburey, ii, 331-32.[861]De Warville, 242.[862]"Soon after entering Virginia, and at a highly respectable house, I was shocked ... at seeing for the first time, young negroes of both sexes, from twelve even to fifteen years old, not only running about the house but absolutely tending table, as naked as they came into the world.... Several young women were at the table, who appeared totally unmoved." (Watson, 33.) Watson's statement may perhaps be questionable; a livelier description, however, was given with embellishments, some years later. (See translator's note to Chastellux, 245; and see Schoepf, ii, 47.)[863]Anburey, ii, 331-32.[864]Ib., 332-33.[865]Weld, i, 192. See Weld's description of "gouging." And see Fithian's interesting account; Fithian, 242-43.[866]Schoepf, ii, 89.[867]Ib., 91-95.[868]Jefferson to Chastellux, Sept. 2, 1785;Thomas Jefferson Correspondence, Bixby Collection: Ford, 12; and see Jefferson to Donald, July 28, 1787; Jefferson'sWritings: Washington, ii, 193, where Jefferson says that the qualities of Virginians are "indolence, extravagance, and infidelity to their engagements."[869]Weld, i, 199.[870]Schoepf, ii, 34. This strange phenomenon was witnessed everywhere, even in a place then so far remote as Maine. "Elegant women come out of log or deal huts [in Maine] all wearing fashionable hats and head dresses with feathers, handsome cloaks and the rest of their dress suitable to this." (La Rochefoucauld, ii, 314.)[871]Ib., 89; and Weld, i, 199, 236. The reports of all travelers as to the want of fresh meat in the Valley are most curious. That region was noted, even in those early days, for its abundance of cattle.[872]Ib., 144.[873]"Notes on Virginia": Jefferson;Works: Ford, iv, 69; and see Weld, i, 114, for similar diet in Pennsylvania.[874]Ib., 183-84.[875]Weld, i, 206. "Sigars and whiskey satisfy these good people who thus spend in a quarter of an hour in the evening, the earnings of a whole day. The landlord of the Inn has also a distillery of whiskey," writes La Rochefoucauld, in 1797, of the mountain people of Virginia. He thus describes the houses and people living in the valley towards Staunton: "The habitations are in this district more numerous than on the other side of the Blue Mountains, but the houses are miserable; mean, small log houses, inhabited by families which swarm with children. There exists here the same appearance of misery as in the back parts of Pennsylvania." (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 173-76.)[876]"It took a good deal of New England rum to launch a 75 ton schooner ... to raise a barn ... or to ordain a regular minister.... Workingmen in the fields, in the woods, in the mills and handling logs and lumber on the river were supplied with regular rations of spirits." (Maine Hist. Soc. Col. (2d Series), vi, 367-68.)The rich people of Boston loved picnic parties in the near-by country, at which was served "Punch, warm and cold, before dinner; excellent beef, Spanish and Bordeaux wines, cover their tables ... Spruce beer, excellent cyder, and Philadelphia porter precede the wines." (De Warville, 58.) This inquiring Frenchman called on Hancock, but found that he had a "marvelous gout which dispenses him from all attentions and forbids the access to his house." (Ib., 66.) As to New England country stores, "you find in the same shop, hats, nails, liquors." (Ib., 127.)[877]La Rochefoucauld, iv, 577.[878]Washington to Green (an employee) March 31, 1789;Writings: Ford, xi, 377.[879]Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, footnote to 181; and see Talleyrand's description of a brandy-drinking bout at this house in which he participated.[880]Schoepf, ii, 47.[881]Watson, 252.[882]Chastellux, 224; see also 243.[883]La Rochefoucauld, iv, 119.[884]Ib., 590.[885]Seeinfra,II, chap.II.[886]De Warville, 262.[887]Watson, 261-62. "The indolence and dissipation of the middling and lower classes of white inhabitants in Virginia are such as to give pain.... Horse-racing, cock-fighting, and boxing-matches are standing amusements, for which they neglect all business." (Ib.; and see Chastellux, 292, translator's note. Also see Chastellux's comments on the economic conditions of the Virginians, 291-93.) For habits of Virginians nearly twenty years after Watson wrote, see La Rochefoucauld, iii, 75-79.[888]"The session assembles here, besides the neighboring judges, lawyers, and parties whose causes are to be tried, numbers of idle people who come less from desire to learn what is going forward than to drink together," says La Rochefoucauld; and see his picturesque description of his arrival at the close of court day at Goochland Court-House. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 126-29.)[889]One man to every five men, women, and children, which is a high estimate.[890]Madison to Jefferson, Aug. 12, 1786;Writings: Hunt, ii, 261.[891]Randolph in the Virginia Constitutional Convention estimated that the colonies could have put four hundred thousand soldiers in the field. (Elliott, iii, 76-77.)[892]It is a curious fact, however, that in his journey through France Jefferson observed no bad conditions, but, on the whole, his careful diary states that he found the people "well clothed and well fed," as Professor Hazen expresses it. For impartial treatment of this subject see Hazen, 1-21.

[760]Weld, i, 37-38; also, Morris, ii, 393-94.

[761]Weld, i, 38.

[762]Baily'sJournal(1796-97), 108.

[763]Ib., 109-10.

[764]Professor Beard, in his exposition of the economic origins of the Constitution, shows that nearly all of the men who framed it were wealthy or allied with property interests and that many of them turned up as holders of Government securities. (Beard:Econ. I. C., chap.v.) As a matter of fact, none but such men could have gone to the Federal Convention at Philadelphia, so great were the difficulties and so heavy the expenses of travel, even if the people had been minded to choose poorer and humbler persons to represent them; at any rate, they did not elect representatives of their own class until the Constitution was to be ratified and then, of course, only to State Conventions which were accessible.

[765]Weld, i, 47-48.

[766]Johnston to Iredell, Jan. 30, 1790; McRee, ii, 279.

[767]"Letters of a Federal Farmer," no. 2; Ford:P. on C., 292.

[768]Ib., no. 3, 302.

[769]De Warville made a record trip from Boston to New York in less than five days. (De Warville, 122.) But such speed was infrequent.

[770]Josiah Quincy's description of his journey from Boston to New York in 1794. (Quincy:Figures of the Past, 47-48.)

[771]De Warville, 138-39.

[772]Watson, 266.

[773]"The road is execrable; one is perpetually mounting and descending and always on the most rugged roads." (Chastellux, 20.)

[774]Elliott, ii, 21-22.

[775]"In December last, the roads were so intollerably bad that the country people could not bring their forage to market, thoughactually offered the cash on delivery." (Pickering to Hodgdon;Pickering: Pickering, i, 392.)

[776]Cooper, 1875-86, as quoted in Hart, iii, 98.

[777]Ib.

[778]Watson, 270. Along one of the principal roads of New York, as late as 1804, President Dwight discovered only "a few lonely plantations" and he "occasionally found a cottage and heard a distant sound of an axe and of a human voice. All else was grandeur, gloom, and solitude." (Halsey:Old New York Frontier, 384.)

[779]Hart, iii, 116.

[780]Mag. Western Hist., i, 530.

[781]Justice Cushing to Chief Justice Jay, Oct. 23, 1792;Jay: Johnston, iii, 450.

[782]Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, 176-77.

[783]Washington to Jay, Nov. 19, 1790;Jay: Johnston, iii, 409.

[784]Jefferson to Washington, March 27, 1791;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 366.

[785]Washington'sDiary: Lossing, Feb. 25, 1791.

[786]Washington to Jay, Dec. 13, 1789;Jay: Johnston, iii, 381.

[787]Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, March 28, 1790;Works: Ford, vi, 36.

[788]Weld, i, 91.

[789]Bayard to Rodney, Jan. 5, 1801;Bayard Papers: Donnan, ii, 118.

[790]Schoepf, ii, 46.

[791]Ib., 78.

[792]Ib., 45.

[793]Grigsby, i, 26.

[794]Weld, i, 170.

[795]Watson, 60.

[796]Davis, 372.

[797]Schoepf, ii, 95.

[798]Wilkinson:Memoirs, i, 9-10. The distance which General Wilkinson's mother thought "so far away" was only forty miles.

[799]Schoepf, ii, 53.

[800]Zachariah Johnson, in Elliott, iii, 647.

[801]Journal, H.D. (1790), 13.

[802]Madison to Lee, July 7, 1785;Writings: Hunt, ii, 149-51.

[803]Ib.

[804]Boston was not a "city" in the legal interpretation until 1822.

[805]Chastellux, 225. "The difficulty of finding the road in many parts of America is not to be conceived except by those strangers who have travelled in that country. The roads, which are through the woods, not being kept in repair, as soon as one is in bad order, another is made in the same manner, that is, merely by felling trees, and the whole interior parts are so covered that without a compass it is impossible to have the least idea of the course you are steering. The distances, too, are so uncertain as in every county where they are not measured, that no two accounts resemble each other. In the back parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, I have frequently travelled thirty miles for ten, though frequently set right by passengers and negroes." (Ib.Translator's note.)

[806]Smyth,Tour of the United States, i, 102-103.

[807]Watson, 40. "Towards the close of the day I found myself entangled among swamps amid an utter wilderness, and my horse almost exhausted in my efforts to overtake Harwood. As night closed upon me I was totally bewildered and without a vestige of a road to guide me. Knowing the impossibility of retracing my steps in the dark, through the mazes I had traversed, I felt the necessity of passing the night in this solitary desert ... in no trifling apprehension of falling a prey to wild beasts before morning." (Ib.)

[808]Ib.

[809]"I waited at Baltimore near a week before I could proceed on my journey the roads being rendered impassable." (Baily'sJournal(1796-97), 107.)

[810]Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, 177.

[811]Madison to Jefferson, Dec. 21, 1794;Writings: Hunt, vi, 227.

[812]Madison to Jefferson, Jan. 26, 1795;ib., 230.

[813]"Your favor of July 6 having been addressdto Williamsburg, instead ofOrange C. Ho[u]se, did not come to hand till two days ago." (Madison to Livingston, Aug. 10, 1795;ib., vi, 234.)

[814]Lee to Henry, May 28, 1789; Henry, iii, 387.

[815]Lee to Henry, Sept. 27, 1789; Henry, iii, 402.

[816]Ephraim Douglass to Gen. James Irvine, 1784;Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., i, 50.

[817]Madison to Washington, Feb. 15, 1788; and King to Madison, Feb. 6, 1788;Writings: Hunt, v, footnote to p. 100.

[818]Madison to Washington, Feb. 11, 1788:Writings: Hunt, v, 99.

[819]Madison to Washington, Feb. 15, 1788;ib., 100.

[820]The Randolph-Clinton Correspondence; seeinfra, chap. x.

[821]Jay to Wolcott, mailed June 23, and received by Wolcott Aug. 16, 1794; Gibbs, i, 157.

[822]Ib., 160.

[823]Jefferson to Short, Nov. 21, 1789;Works: Ford, vi, 20.

[824]So notorious was this practice that important parts of the correspondence of the more prominent politicians and statesmen of the day always were written in cipher. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe appear to have been especially careful to take this precaution. (See Washington's complaint of this tampering with the mails in a letter to Fairfax, June 25, 1786;Writings: Sparks, ix, 175.) Habitual violation of the mails by postmasters continued into the first decades of the nineteenth century.

[825]Washington to Lafayette, Feb. 7, 1788;Writings: Ford, xi, 218.

[826]Kettell, inEighty Years' Progress, ii, 174.

[827]Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., ix, 444.

[828]Am. Ant. Soc. Pubs., xxiii, Part ii, 254-330.

[829]Goodrich, i, 61.

[830]Schoepf, ii, 61; see note,ib.Even this journal died for want of subscribers.

[831]SalemGazette, Sept. 13, 1791; Hist. Col., Topsfield (Mass.) Hist. Soc., iii, 10.

[832]Washington to Humphreys, Dec. 26, 1786;Writings: Ford, xi, 98-103.

[833]Washington to General Knox, Dec. 26, 1786;ib., 103-05.

[834]Writings: Smyth, x, 36et seq.This arraignment of the press by America's first journalist was written when Franklin was eighty-three years old and when he was the most honored and beloved man in America, Washington only excepted. It serves not only to illuminate the period of the beginning of our Government, but to measure the vast progress during the century and a quarter since that time.

[835]Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Paris, Sept. 25, 1785;Works: Ford, iv, 465.

[836]"Country Printer," in Freneau, iii, 60. Freneau thus describes the country editor of that day:—"Three times a week, by nimble geldings drawn,A stage arrives; but scarcely deigns to stop.Unless the driver, far in liquor gone,Has made some business for the black-smith-shop;Then comes this printer's harvest-time of news,Welcome alike from Christians, Turks, or Jews."Each passenger he eyes with curious glance,And, if his phiz be mark'd of courteous kind,To conversation, straight, he makes advance,Hoping, from thence, some paragraph to find,Some odd adventure, something new and rare,To set the town a-gape, and make it stare."All is not Truth ('tis said) that travellers tell—So much the better for this man of news;For hence the country round, that know him well,Will, if he prints some lies, his lies excuse.Earthquakes, and battles, shipwrecks, myriads slain—If false or true—alike to him are gain."Ask you what matter fills his various page?A mere farrago 'tis, of mingled things;Whate'er is done on Madam Terra's stageHe to the knowledge of his townsmen brings:One while, he tells of monarchs run away;And now, of witches drown'd in Buzzard's bay."Some miracles he makes, and some he steals;Half Nature's works are giants in his eyes;Much, very much, in wonderment he deals,—New-Hampshire apples grown to pumpkin size,Pumpkins almost as large as country inns,And ladies bearing, each,—three lovely twins."Freneau was himself a country printer in New Jersey, after editing theNational Gazettein Philadelphia. Thus the above description was from his personal experience and in a town in a thickly settled part, on the main road between New York and Philadelphia.

[836]"Country Printer," in Freneau, iii, 60. Freneau thus describes the country editor of that day:—

"Three times a week, by nimble geldings drawn,A stage arrives; but scarcely deigns to stop.Unless the driver, far in liquor gone,Has made some business for the black-smith-shop;Then comes this printer's harvest-time of news,Welcome alike from Christians, Turks, or Jews."Each passenger he eyes with curious glance,And, if his phiz be mark'd of courteous kind,To conversation, straight, he makes advance,Hoping, from thence, some paragraph to find,Some odd adventure, something new and rare,To set the town a-gape, and make it stare."All is not Truth ('tis said) that travellers tell—So much the better for this man of news;For hence the country round, that know him well,Will, if he prints some lies, his lies excuse.Earthquakes, and battles, shipwrecks, myriads slain—If false or true—alike to him are gain."Ask you what matter fills his various page?A mere farrago 'tis, of mingled things;Whate'er is done on Madam Terra's stageHe to the knowledge of his townsmen brings:One while, he tells of monarchs run away;And now, of witches drown'd in Buzzard's bay."Some miracles he makes, and some he steals;Half Nature's works are giants in his eyes;Much, very much, in wonderment he deals,—New-Hampshire apples grown to pumpkin size,Pumpkins almost as large as country inns,And ladies bearing, each,—three lovely twins."

Freneau was himself a country printer in New Jersey, after editing theNational Gazettein Philadelphia. Thus the above description was from his personal experience and in a town in a thickly settled part, on the main road between New York and Philadelphia.

[837]Goodrich, i, 38.

[838]A letter from Salem Town about 1786-87; inAmerican Journal of Education, xiii, 738.

[839]Van Santvoord:Memoirs of Eliphalet Nott, 19.

[840]Davis, 333.

[841]"Many cannot read or write, and many that can, know nothing of geography and other branches. The country is too thinly settled to carry out a system of common schools." (Howe, 153, speaking of western Virginia about 1830.)

[842]Weld, i, 168. But President Tyler says that the boys Weld saw were grammar-school pupils.

[843]Watson, 269.

[844]Chastellux, 319-20.

[845]De Warville, 126-27.

[846]Ib., 145 and 450.

[847]Ib., 145. All travelers agree as to the wretched condition of Rhode Island; and that State appears to have acted as badly as it looked. "The ... infamous [scenes] in Rhode Island have done inexpressable injury to the Republican character," etc. (Madison to Pendleton, Feb. 24, 1787;Writings: Hunt, ii, 319.)

[848]De Warville, 132.

[849]Weld, i, 113.

[850]De Warville, 186-87.

[851]De Warville, 186 and 332. See La Rochefoucauld's description of this same type of settler as it was several years after De Warville wrote. "The Dwellings of the new settlers ... consist of huts, with roofs and walls which are made of bark and in which the husband, wife and children pass the winter wrapped up in blankets.... Salt pork and beef are the usual food of the new settlers; their drink is water and whiskey." (La Rochefoucauld, i, 293-96.)

[852]Freneau, iii, 74.

[853]Knox to Washington, Feb. 10, 1788;Writings: Ford, xi, footnote to 229. And seeinfra, chap.VIII.

[854]De Warville, 187. In 1797, La Rochefoucauld speaks of "the credulity and ignorance of the half-savage sort of people who inhabit the back settlements." (La Rochefoucauld, i, 293.)

[855]"A relaxation is observable among all orders of society. Drunkenness is the prevailing vice, and with few exceptions, the source of all other evils. A spirit, or rather a habit, of equality is diffused among this people as far as it possibly can go.... The inhabitants exhibit to strangers striking instances both of the utmost cleanliness and excessive nastiness," (La Rochefoucauld, i, 125.)During Washington's second term as President, La Rochefoucauld thus describes manners in western Pennsylvania: "They are much surprised at a refusal to sleep with one, two, or more men, in the same bed, or between dirty sheets, or to drink after ten other persons out of the same dirty glass.... Whiskey mixed with water is the common drink in the country." (Ib.)

During Washington's second term as President, La Rochefoucauld thus describes manners in western Pennsylvania: "They are much surprised at a refusal to sleep with one, two, or more men, in the same bed, or between dirty sheets, or to drink after ten other persons out of the same dirty glass.... Whiskey mixed with water is the common drink in the country." (Ib.)

[856]Ib., i, 293-96. Seeinfra, note 4, pp. 281-82.

[857]Watson, 266.

[858]"You see [in Maryland and Virginia] real misery and apparent luxury insulting each other." (De Warville, 159.)

[859]Chastellux, 279, and translator's note.

[860]Anburey, ii, 331-32.

[861]De Warville, 242.

[862]"Soon after entering Virginia, and at a highly respectable house, I was shocked ... at seeing for the first time, young negroes of both sexes, from twelve even to fifteen years old, not only running about the house but absolutely tending table, as naked as they came into the world.... Several young women were at the table, who appeared totally unmoved." (Watson, 33.) Watson's statement may perhaps be questionable; a livelier description, however, was given with embellishments, some years later. (See translator's note to Chastellux, 245; and see Schoepf, ii, 47.)

[863]Anburey, ii, 331-32.

[864]Ib., 332-33.

[865]Weld, i, 192. See Weld's description of "gouging." And see Fithian's interesting account; Fithian, 242-43.

[866]Schoepf, ii, 89.

[867]Ib., 91-95.

[868]Jefferson to Chastellux, Sept. 2, 1785;Thomas Jefferson Correspondence, Bixby Collection: Ford, 12; and see Jefferson to Donald, July 28, 1787; Jefferson'sWritings: Washington, ii, 193, where Jefferson says that the qualities of Virginians are "indolence, extravagance, and infidelity to their engagements."

[869]Weld, i, 199.

[870]Schoepf, ii, 34. This strange phenomenon was witnessed everywhere, even in a place then so far remote as Maine. "Elegant women come out of log or deal huts [in Maine] all wearing fashionable hats and head dresses with feathers, handsome cloaks and the rest of their dress suitable to this." (La Rochefoucauld, ii, 314.)

[871]Ib., 89; and Weld, i, 199, 236. The reports of all travelers as to the want of fresh meat in the Valley are most curious. That region was noted, even in those early days, for its abundance of cattle.

[872]Ib., 144.

[873]"Notes on Virginia": Jefferson;Works: Ford, iv, 69; and see Weld, i, 114, for similar diet in Pennsylvania.

[874]Ib., 183-84.

[875]Weld, i, 206. "Sigars and whiskey satisfy these good people who thus spend in a quarter of an hour in the evening, the earnings of a whole day. The landlord of the Inn has also a distillery of whiskey," writes La Rochefoucauld, in 1797, of the mountain people of Virginia. He thus describes the houses and people living in the valley towards Staunton: "The habitations are in this district more numerous than on the other side of the Blue Mountains, but the houses are miserable; mean, small log houses, inhabited by families which swarm with children. There exists here the same appearance of misery as in the back parts of Pennsylvania." (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 173-76.)

[876]"It took a good deal of New England rum to launch a 75 ton schooner ... to raise a barn ... or to ordain a regular minister.... Workingmen in the fields, in the woods, in the mills and handling logs and lumber on the river were supplied with regular rations of spirits." (Maine Hist. Soc. Col. (2d Series), vi, 367-68.)The rich people of Boston loved picnic parties in the near-by country, at which was served "Punch, warm and cold, before dinner; excellent beef, Spanish and Bordeaux wines, cover their tables ... Spruce beer, excellent cyder, and Philadelphia porter precede the wines." (De Warville, 58.) This inquiring Frenchman called on Hancock, but found that he had a "marvelous gout which dispenses him from all attentions and forbids the access to his house." (Ib., 66.) As to New England country stores, "you find in the same shop, hats, nails, liquors." (Ib., 127.)

The rich people of Boston loved picnic parties in the near-by country, at which was served "Punch, warm and cold, before dinner; excellent beef, Spanish and Bordeaux wines, cover their tables ... Spruce beer, excellent cyder, and Philadelphia porter precede the wines." (De Warville, 58.) This inquiring Frenchman called on Hancock, but found that he had a "marvelous gout which dispenses him from all attentions and forbids the access to his house." (Ib., 66.) As to New England country stores, "you find in the same shop, hats, nails, liquors." (Ib., 127.)

[877]La Rochefoucauld, iv, 577.

[878]Washington to Green (an employee) March 31, 1789;Writings: Ford, xi, 377.

[879]Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, footnote to 181; and see Talleyrand's description of a brandy-drinking bout at this house in which he participated.

[880]Schoepf, ii, 47.

[881]Watson, 252.

[882]Chastellux, 224; see also 243.

[883]La Rochefoucauld, iv, 119.

[884]Ib., 590.

[885]Seeinfra,II, chap.II.

[886]De Warville, 262.

[887]Watson, 261-62. "The indolence and dissipation of the middling and lower classes of white inhabitants in Virginia are such as to give pain.... Horse-racing, cock-fighting, and boxing-matches are standing amusements, for which they neglect all business." (Ib.; and see Chastellux, 292, translator's note. Also see Chastellux's comments on the economic conditions of the Virginians, 291-93.) For habits of Virginians nearly twenty years after Watson wrote, see La Rochefoucauld, iii, 75-79.

[888]"The session assembles here, besides the neighboring judges, lawyers, and parties whose causes are to be tried, numbers of idle people who come less from desire to learn what is going forward than to drink together," says La Rochefoucauld; and see his picturesque description of his arrival at the close of court day at Goochland Court-House. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 126-29.)

[889]One man to every five men, women, and children, which is a high estimate.

[890]Madison to Jefferson, Aug. 12, 1786;Writings: Hunt, ii, 261.

[891]Randolph in the Virginia Constitutional Convention estimated that the colonies could have put four hundred thousand soldiers in the field. (Elliott, iii, 76-77.)

[892]It is a curious fact, however, that in his journey through France Jefferson observed no bad conditions, but, on the whole, his careful diary states that he found the people "well clothed and well fed," as Professor Hazen expresses it. For impartial treatment of this subject see Hazen, 1-21.

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