A School History of the United States Part 21

%207. Cotton Planting.%--The South, in 1790, was on the eve of a great industrial revolution. The products of the states south of Virginia had been tar, pitch, resin, lumber, rice, and indigo. But in the years following the peace the indigo plants had been destroyed year after year by an insect. As the plant was not a native of our country, but was brought from the West Indies, it became necessary either to import more seed plants, or to raise some other staple. Many chose the latter course, and about 1787 began to grow cotton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %Farmers' Castle (Belpre) in 1791%]

%208. Whitney and the Cotton Gin.%--The experiment succeeded, but a serious difficulty arose. The cotton plant has pods which when ripe split open and show a white woolly substance attached to seeds. Before the cotton could be used, these seeds must be picked out, and as the labor of cleaning was very great, only a small quant.i.ty could be sent to market. It happened, however, that a young man from Ma.s.sachusetts, named Eli Whitney, was then living in Georgia, and he, seeing the need of a machine to clean cotton, invented the cotton gin.[1] Till then, a negro slave could not clean two pounds of cotton in a day. With the gin the same slave in the same time could remove the seeds from a hundred pounds. This solved the difficulty, and gave to the United States another staple even greater in value than tobacco. In 1792 one hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds of cotton were exported to Europe; in 1795, after the gin was invented, six million pounds were sent out of the country. In 1894 no less than 4275 million pounds were raised and either consumed or exported. Of all the marvelous inventions of our countrymen, this produced the very greatest consequences. It made cotton planting profitable; it brought immense wealth to the people of the South every year; it covered New England with cotton mills; and by making slave labor profitable it did more than anything else to fasten slavery on the United States for seventy years, and finally to bring on the Civil War, the most terrible struggle of modern times.

[Footnote 1: The word "gin" is a contraction of "engine."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: %The cotton gin% _A_. Whitney's original gin. _B_. A later form.]

SUMMARY

1. When Was.h.i.+ngton was inaugurated, the United States consisted of eleven states, with a population of about 3,380,000.

2. These people lived not far from the Atlantic coast. Few cities existed; not one had 50,000 inhabitants. Even the largest was without many conveniences which we consider necessaries.

3. Travel was slow and difficult, and though a steamboat had been invented and used, it was too far ahead of the times to succeed.

4. West of the Alleghany Mountains a few settlements had been made between 1763 and 1783. But it was after 1783, when streams of emigrants poured over the mountains, that settlement really began.

6. In the South cotton was just beginning to be cultivated; there all labor was done by slaves. In the North slavery was dying out, and in five of the states had been abolished.

State of the Country in 1790

- _On the Seaboard._ The population. {Number.

{Distribution.

{Movement west.

The cities {Size.

{Absence of many conveniences known to us.

{Newspapers and magazines.

Communication between states. {Bad roads. Slow travel.

{The post offices.

{The stagecoaches. The inns.

{The early steamboat.

- _In the Ohio Valley._ {Population. Squatters.

{Pittsburg in 1790.

{A trip down the Ohio.

{Towns in the valley.

- _In the South._ {Slavery.

{Cotton planting.

{Whitney and the cotton gin.

CHAPTER XV

THE RISE OF PARTIES

%209. Organizing the New Government.%--he President having been inaugurated, and the new government fairly established, it became the duty of Congress to enact such laws as were needed immediately. The first act pa.s.sed by Congress in 1789 was therefore a tariff act laying duties on goods, wares, and merchandise imported into the United States.

Customhouses were then established and customs districts marked out, and ports of entry and ports of delivery designated; provision was made for the support of lighthouses and beacons; the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the territories was slightly changed and reenacted; the departments of State, War, and Treasury were established; and a call was made on the Secretary of the Treasury to report a plan for payment of the old Continental debt.

%210. The United States Courts.%--The Const.i.tution declares that the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. Acting under this power, Congress made provision for a Supreme Court, consisting of a Chief Justice and five a.s.sociate Justices, and marked out the United States into circuits and districts.

The circuits were three in number. In the first were the Eastern States; in the second, the Middle States; and in the third, the Southern States.

To each were a.s.signed two Justices of the Supreme Court, whose business it was to go to some city in each state in the circuit, and there, with the district judge of that state, hold a circuit court. The district courts were thirteen in number, one being established in each state.[1]

Was.h.i.+ngton appointed John Jay the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

[Footnote 1: For later changes, see Andrews's _Manual of the Const.i.tution,_ p. 183.]

%211. The Secretaries.%--During the management of affairs by the Continental Congress three great executive departments had gradually grown up and been placed in charge of three men, called the "Superintendent of Finance," the "Secretary of the United States for the Department of Foreign Affairs," and the "Secretary of War." These the Const.i.tution recognized in the expression "princ.i.p.al officer in each of the executive departments." Congress by law now continued the departments and placed them in charge of a Secretary of the Treasury, a Secretary of State, and a Secretary of War. Was.h.i.+ngton filled the offices promptly, making Alexander Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury, Thomas Jefferson Secretary of State, and General Henry Knox Secretary of War.

%212. The "Cabinet."%--It has long been the custom for the President to gather his secretaries about him on certain days in each week for the purpose of discussing public measures. To these gatherings has been given the name "Cabinet meetings," while the secretaries have come to be called "Cabinet officers." The Const.i.tution, however, never intended to give the President a body of advisers. Indeed, a proposition to provide him with a council was voted down in the const.i.tutional convention. But Was.h.i.+ngton at once began to consult the Chief Justice, the Vice President, his three secretaries, and the Attorney-general on matters of importance. At first he asked their opinions individually and in writing, but toward the end of his first term he convened a general meeting of the heads of departments, and by so doing set a custom out of which, in time, the "Cabinet" has grown.

%213. The Origin of the National Debt.%--As soon as Hamilton was made Secretary of the Treasury, it became his duty, in accordance with an order from Congress, to prepare a plan for the payment of the debts contracted by the Continental Congress. When that body was unexpectedly called on, in May, 1775, to conduct the war, it had nothing with which to pay expenses, and was forced to use all sorts of means to raise money.

[Ill.u.s.trations: Continental money]

%214. Paper Money.%--The first resort was the issue, during 1775 and 1776, of six batches of Continental "bills of credit," amounting in all to $36,000,000. These "bills" were rudely engraved bits of paper, stating on their face that "This bill ent.i.tles the bearer to receive ---- Spanish milled dollars, or the value thereof in gold or silver."

They were issued in sums of various denominations, from one sixth of a dollar up, and were to be redeemed by the states. The amount a.s.signed each state for redemption was in proportion to the supposed number of its inhabitants.

%215. Loan-office Certificates.%--In 1776 Congress tried another means. It opened a loan office in each state and called on patriotic people to come forward and loan it money, receiving in return pieces of paper called "loan-office certificates." Interest was to be paid on these; but after a while Congress, having no money with which to pay interest, was forced to resort to another form of paper, called "interest indents."

%216. The Congress Lottery.%--The loan office having failed to bring in as much money as was needed, Congress, toward the close of 1776, was driven to seek some other way, and resorted to a lottery. A certain number of tickets were sold, after which a drawing took place, and all who drew prizes were given certificates payable at the end of five years.

%217. More Bills of Credit.%--But the sale of tickets went off so slowly that Congress had to go back to the issue of bills of credit. In 1777, therefore, the printing press was again put to work, and issues were made in rapid succession, till more than $200,000,000 in Continental paper were in circulation.

%218. The "New Tenor".%--Then the Continental bills ceased to circulate, and in March, 1780, Congress called in the old money and offered to exchange it for a new issue, giving one dollar of the new paper money, or "new tenor," for forty dollars of the old. But the attempt to restore credit by such means was a failure, and by the end of the year 1781 all paper money ceased to circulate.

%219. Certificates.%--Long before this time officials had been forced to pay debts contracted in the name of Congress with other kinds of paper, called certificates, and known as treasury, commissary, quartermaster, marine, and hospital certificates, according to the department issuing them. To these must be added the "final settlements,"

or certificates given to the soldiers at the end of the war in payment of their services.

%220. Foreign Debt.%--Besides the debt thus contracted at home, Congress had borrowed a great sum in Europe.

%221. The National Debt in 1790.%--Thus the debt contracted by the Continental Congress consisted of two parts. 1. The foreign debt, due to France, Holland, and Spain, and amounting, Hamilton found, to $11,700,000. 2. The domestic or home debt, of $42,000,000. But the states had also fallen into debt because of their exertions in the war.

Just how great the state debts were could not be determined, but they were estimated to be $21,500,000.

%222. a.s.sumption and Funding.%--For the redemption of this debt Hamilton prepared two measures,--the funding, or, as we should say, the bonding, of the foreign and Continental debt, and the a.s.suming and funding of the state debts. This was done, and Congress ordered stock bearing interest to be issued in exchange for the old debts, and so established our national debt, which in 1790 amounted to $75,000,000.

%223. The National Capital.%--Funding the state debts was strongly opposed by many congressmen, and was not carried till a bargain was made by which it was agreed that if enough members from Virginia and Pennsylvania would support the measure to secure its pa.s.sage through the House of Representatives, the national government should be removed from New York to Philadelphia for ten years, and after that to a city to be built on the Potomac. This was faithfully carried out, and in the summer of 1790 the government offices were removed to Philadelphia, where they remained till the summer of 1800, when they were removed to Was.h.i.+ngton in the District of Columbia.

%224. The Bank of the United States.%--The troublesome questions of funding and a.s.sumption thus disposed of, Congress called on Hamilton for a report on the further support of public credit, and when it met in the session of 1790-91, received a plan for a great National Bank, with a capital of $10,000,000. The United States was to raise $2,000,000; the rest was to be subscribed for by the people. The bank was to keep the public revenues, was to aid the government in making payments all over the country. To do this, power was given to the parent bank (which must be at Philadelphia) to establish branches in the chief cities and towns, and to issue bank bills which should be received all over the United States for public lands, taxes, duties, postage, and in payment of any debt due the government. Great opposition was made; but the charter was granted for twenty years, and in 1791 the Bank of the United States began business.

The effect of these two measures, funding the debt and establis.h.i.+ng a bank, was immediate. Confidence and credit were restored. Money that the people had long been hiding away was brought out and invested in all sorts of new enterprises, such as banks, ca.n.a.l companies, manufacturing companies, and turnpike companies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The first Bank of the United States]