Evidently the chief increase in wealth consisted in the growth of manufactures, but after the prostration of the manufacturing interest in 1816 no plausible estimate of their true value could be made, unless the bank discounts measured their progress. The result of the whole inquiry, though vague, suggested that wealth had increased in Massachusetts more rapidly than population, and had possibly gained seventy or eighty per cent in sixteen years;[155] but in spite of this increase the State was in a pitiable situation. Neither steamboats, canals, nor roads could help it. Thousands of its citizens migrated to New York and Ohio, beyond the possibility of future advantage to the land they left. Manufactures were prostrate. Shipping was driven from the carrying trade. Taxation weighed far more heavily than ever before. A load of obloquy rested on the State on account of its war policy and the Hartford Convention. The national government treated it with severity, and refused to pay for the Massachusetts militia called into service by the President during the war, because the governor had refused to place them under national officers.
The condition of Massachusetts and Maine was a picture of New England. Democratic Rhode Island suffered equally with Federalist Connecticut. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont showed growth, but the chief possibility of replacing lost strength lay in immigration. During the European wars, no considerable number of immigrants were able to reach the United States; but immediately after the return of peace, emigration from Europe to America began on a scale as alarming to European governments as the movement to western New York and Ohio was alarming to the seaboard States of the Union. During the year 1817 twenty-two thousand immigrants were reported as entering the United States.[156] Twelve or fourteen thousand were probably Irish; four thousand were German. More than two thousand arrived in Boston, while about seven thousand landed in New York and the same number in Philadelphia. The greater part probably remained near where they landed, and in some degree supplied the loss of natives who went west. The rapid growth of the northern cities of the sea-coast began again only with the flood of immigration.
Although the three southern States of New England were the severest sufferers, the Virginia group—comprising Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina—escaped little better. In twenty years their white population increased nineteen and five tenths per cent, while that of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island increased eighteen per cent. The wealth of Southern States consisted largely in slaves; and the negro population of the Virginia group increased about twenty-five per cent in numbers during the sixteen years from 1800 to 1816. The exports of domestic produce increased about forty per cent in value, comparing the average of 1801–1805 with that of 1815–1816. The net revenue collected in Virginia increased nearly seventy per cent, comparing the year 1815 with the average of the five years 1800–1804; while that collected in North Carolina more than doubled.
Measured by these standards, the growth of wealth in the Virginia group of States was not less rapid than in Massachusetts, and the same conclusion was established by other methods. In 1816 Virginia contained two State banks, with branches, which returned for January 1 a capital stock of $4,590,000, with a note circulation of $6,000,000, and deposits approaching $2,500,000. Their discounts amounted to $7,768,000 in January, 1816, and were contracted to $6,128,000 in the following month of November.[157] Although Virginia used only half the banking capital and credits required by Massachusetts, the rate of increase was equally rapid, and the tendency toward banking was decided. In 1817 the legislature created two new banks, one for the valley of Virginia, the other for western Virginia, with a capital stock of $600,000, and branches with capital stock of $100,000 for each. Between 1800 and 1817, banking capital exceeding five million dollars was created in Virginia, where none had existed before.
If the estimates made by Timothy Pitkin, the best statistician of the time, were correct, the returns for direct taxes showed a greater increase of wealth in Virginia than in Massachusetts.[158] The valuation of Virginia for 1799 was $71,000,000; that of 1815 was $165,000,000. The valuation of North Carolina in 1799 was $30,000,000; that of 1815 was $51,000,000. Maryland was estimated at $32,000,000 in 1799, at $106,000,000 in 1815. The average increase for the three States was in the ratio of one hundred to two hundred and forty, while that for Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut was nearer one hundred to one hundred and seventy-five. The normal increase for the Union was in the ratio of one hundred to two hundred and sixty-three.
The result obtained from the estimates for direct taxes was affected by a doubt in regard to the correctness of the valuation of 1799, which was believed to have been too low in the Southern States; but the general conclusion could not be doubted that the Virginia group of States increased steadily in wealth. The rapidity of increase was concealed by an equally rapid impoverishment of the old tobacco-planting aristocracy, whose complaints drowned argument. As the lands of the ancient families became exhausted, the families themselves fell into poverty, or emigrated to the richer Ohio valley. Their decline or departure gave rise to many regrets and alarms. With the impressions thus created, the people associated the want of economical machinery as a cause of their backwardness, and became clamorous for roads, canals, and banks. The revolution in their ideas between 1800 and 1816 was complete.
The North Carolinians were first to denounce their old habits of indifference, and to declare their State in danger of ruin on that account. A committee of the State legislature reported Nov. 30, 1815, that vigorous measures for self-protection could no longer be postponed:[159]—
“With an extent of territory sufficient to maintain more than ten millions of inhabitants, ... we can only boast of a population something less than six hundred thousand, and it is but too obvious that this population under the present state of things already approaches its maximum. Within twenty-five years past more than two hundred thousand of our inhabitants have removed to the waters of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mobile; and it is mortifying to witness the fact that thousands of our wealthy and respectable citizens are annually moving to the West, ... and that thousands of our poorer citizens follow them, being literally driven away by the prospect of poverty. In this state of things our agriculture is at a stand.”
The Virginians showed an equally strong sense of their perils. Twelve months after the North Carolina legislature took the matter in hand, a committee of the Virginia legislature in December, 1816, discussed the same topic and reached the same conclusion.[160] Although something had been done by corporations to open canals on the Potomac, the James River, and to the Dismal Swamp, the State of Virginia had in sixteen years made little advance in material welfare. While New England had built turnpikes wherever a profit could be expected, in Virginia, said the committee, “the turnpike-roads of the Commonwealth, except a few short passes of particular mountains and a road recently begun from Fredericksburg to the Blue Ridge, are confined principally to the county of Loudon, the adjacent counties of Fairfax, Fauquier, and Frederick, and to the vicinity of the seat of government.” In other respects the situation was worse.
“While many other States,” said the committee,[161] “have been advancing in wealth and numbers with a rapidity which has astonished themselves, the ancient Dominion and elder sister of the Union has remained stationary. A very large proportion of her western territory is yet unimproved, while a considerable part of her eastern has receded from its former opulence. How many sad spectacles do her low-lands present of wasted and deserted fields, of dwellings abandoned by their proprietors, of churches in ruins! The genius of her ancient hospitality, benumbed by the cold touch of penury, spreads his scanty hoard in naked halls, or seeks a coarser but more plenteous repast in the lonely cabins of the West. The fathers of the land are gone where another outlet to the ocean turns their thoughts from the place of their nativity, and their affections from the haunts of their youth.”