7. The people of western Pennsylvania resisted the excise tax on whisky, but their insurrection was easily suppressed by a force of militia.

8. Differences on questions of domestic and foreign policy had resulted in the growth of the Federalist and Republican parties, but party organization was imperfect. In 1796 Adams (Federalist) was elected President, and Jefferson (Republican) Vice President.

9. The British treaty and the election of Adams gave offense to the French government, which made insulting demands upon our commissioners sent to that country. A brief naval war in the French West Indies was ended by a treaty made by a new French government in 1800.

10. The passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts brought out protests against them in what are called the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-99, one of which claimed the right of a state to nullify an act of Congress which it deemed unconstitutional.

11. In the next presidential election (1800) the Republicans were successful; but as Jefferson and Burr had each the same number of votes, the House of Representatives had to decide which should be President and which Vice President. After a long contest Jefferson was given the higher office, as the Republicans had wished.

CHAPTER XIX

GROWTH OF THE COUNTRY, 1789-1805

Prosperity. Twelve years had now elapsed since the meeting at New York of the first Congress under the Constitution, and they had been years of great prosperity.

When Washington took the oath of office, each state regulated its trade with foreign countries and with its neighbors in its own way, and issued its own paper money, which it made legal tender. Agriculture was in a primitive stage, very little cotton was grown, mining was but little practiced, manufacture had not passed the household stage, transportation was slow and costly, and in all the states but three banks had been chartered.1

With the establishment of a strong and vigorous government under the new Constitution, and the passage of the muchneeded laws we have mentioned, these conditions began to pass away. Now that the people had a government that could raise revenue, pay its debts, regulate trade with foreign nations and between the states, enforce its laws, and provide a uniform currency, confidence returned. Men felt safe to engage in business, and as a consequence trade and commerce revived, and money long unused was brought out and invested. Banks were incorporated and their stock quickly purchased. Manufacturing companies were organized and mills and factories started; a score of canals were planned and the building of several was begun ; 2 turnpike companies

1 Read "Town and Country Life in 1800," Chap. xii in McMaster's History of the People of the U. S., Vol. II.

2 The Middlesex from Boston to Lowell; the Dismal Swamp in Virginia ; the Santee in South Carolina.

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were chartered; lotteries were authorized to raise money for all sorts of public improvements, schools, churches, wharves, factories, and bridges; and speculation in stock and Western land became a rage.

New Industries.

A Terry clock.

It was during the decade 1790-1800 that Slater built the first mill for working cotton yarn; 2 that Eli Terry began the manufacture of clocks as a business; that sewing thread was first made in our country (at Pawtucket, R. I.); that Jacob Perkins began to make nails by machine; that the first broom was made from broom corn; that the first carpet mill and the first cotton mill were started; that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin; and that the first steamboat went up and down the Delaware.

The Cotton Gin. Before 1790 the products of the states south of Virginia were tar, pitch, lumber, rice, and indigo. But the destruction of the indigo plants

by insects year after year suggested the cultivation of some

1 In those days lotteries for public purposes were not thought wrong. The Continental Congress and many state legislatures used them to raise revenue. Congress authorized one to secure money with which to improve Washington city. Faneuil Hall in Boston and Independence Hall in Philadelphia were aided by lotteries. Private lotteries had been forbidden by many of the colonies. But the states continued to authorize lotteries for public purposes till after 1830, when one by one they forbade all lotteries.

2 Parliament in 1774 forbade any one to take away from England any drawing or model of any machine used in the manufacture of cotton goods. No such machines were allowed in our country in colonial times. In 1787, however, the Massachusetts legislature voted six tickets in the State Land Lottery to two Scotchmen named Burr to help them build a spinning jenny. About the same time £200 was given to a man named Somers to help him construct a machine. The models thus built were put in the Statehouse at Boston for anybody to copy who wished, and mills were soon started at Worcester, Beverly, and Providence. But it was not till 1790, when Samuel Slater came to America, that the great English machines were introduced. Slater was familiar with them and made his from memory.

such experiments in our country before 1790.2 But in that

year John Fitch put a steamboat on the Delaware and during four months ran it regularly from Philadelphia to Trenton. He was ahead of his time and for lack of support was forced to give up the enterprise.

1 Eli Whitney was born in 1765, and while still a lad showed great skill in making and handling tools. After graduating from Yale College, he went to reside in the family of General Greene, who had been given a plantation by Georgia. While he was making the first cotton gin, planters came long distances to see it, and before it was finished and patented some one broke into the building where it was and stole it. In 1794 he received a patent, but he was unable to enforce his rights. After a few years, South Carolina bought his right for that state, and North Carolina levied a tax on cotton gins for his benefit. But the sum he received was very small.

2 James Rumsey, as early as 1785, had experimented with a steamboat on the Potomac, and about the same time John Fitch built one in Pennsylvania, and succeeded so well that in 1786 and in 1787 one of his boats made trial trips on the Delaware. Later in 1787 Rumsey ran a steamboat on the Potomac at the rate of four miles an hour.

MOM. BRIEF - 15

The New West. In the western country ten years had wrought a great change. Good times in the commercial states and the Indian war in the West had done much to keep population out of the Northwest Territory from 1790 to 1795. But from the South population had moved steadily over the mountains into the region south of the Ohio River. The new state of Kentucky (admitted in 1792) grew rapidly in population.

North Carolina, after ratifying the Constitution, again ceded her Western territory, and out of this and the narrow strip ceded by South Carolina, Congress (1790) made the "Territory of the United States south of the river Ohio." But population came in such numbers that in 1796 the North Carolina cession was admitted as the state of Tennessee.

In the far South, after Spain accepted the boundary of 31°, Congress established the territory of Mississippi (1798), consisting of most of the southern half of the present states of Mississippi and Alabama. Four years later Georgia accepted her present boundaries, and the territory of Mississippi was then enlarged so as to include all the Western lands ceded by South Carolina and Georgia (map, p. 242).

Cleveland. Jay's treaty, by providing for the surrender of the forts along the Great Lakes, opened that region to settlement, and in 1796 Moses Cleaveland led a New England colony across New York and on the shore of Lake Erie laid out the town which now bears his name. Others followed, and by 1800 there were thirty-two settlements in the Connecticut Reserve.

Detroit. The chief town of the Northwest was Detroit., Wayne, who saw it in 1796, described it as a crowded mass of oneand two-story buildings separated by streets so narrow that two wagons could scarcely pass. Around the town was a stockade of high pickets with bastions and cannon at proper distances, and within the stockade "a kind of citadel." The only entrances were through two gates defended by blockhouses at either end of a street along the river. Every night from sunset to sunrise the gates were shut, and during this time no Indian was allowed to remain in the town.