Condition of the United States at the Close of the Revolution—New England Injured and New York Benefited Commercially by the Struggle— Luxury of City Life—Americans an Agricultural People—The Farmer's Home—Difficulty in Traveling—Contrast Between North and South—Southern Aristocracy—Northern Great Families—White Servitude—The Western Frontier—Karly Settlers West of the Mountains—A Hardy Population— Disappearance of the Colonial French—The Ordinance of 1787—Flood of Emigration Beyond the Ohio.
Peace with Great Britain left the United States free and independent, but burdened with the expenses of the war, and agitated by the problems which independence presented. The soldiers of the Continental Army went back to their firesides and their fields, and trade began to show signs of revival. New England's commercial interests had received a serious blow from the Revolution, while New York city, occupied by the British throughout the war, the headquarters of the royal forces with their lavish expenditures, and its commerce protected and convoyed by the British fleet, was benefited instead of injured by the struggle. The merchants of New York, whether attached or not at heart to the royalist cause, put business before patriotism, while the flag of St. George floated over their city, and urged the British to severer measures against the "rebels" in order that New York's mercantile interests might be promoted and safeguarded.[1] ] Apart from natural advantages, next in importance to the Erie Canal as a cause of New York's leading commercial position is the fact that the British were in possession of the city during the Revolution.
There was considerable luxury in city life then as now. "By Revolutionary times love of dress everywhere prevailed throughout the State of New York," says Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, "a love of dress which caused great extravagance and was noted by all travelers."[2] ] "If there is a town on the American continent," said the Chevalier de Crevecœur, "where English luxury displayed its follies it is in New York." Philadelphia was not far behind New York in extravagance, notwithstanding Quaker traditions, while Boston, rich in solid wealth, was more conservative in displaying it, and retained in appearance at least something of Puritan simplicity.
The urban residents of those days were, however, insignificant in numbers as compared with the total population. The Americans were an agricultural people, and they were a self-dependent people. The articles of clothing needed in the farmer's home were manufactured in the home; the tailor went around from house to house making into suits the cloth which the family had woven; the school teacher "boarded around" as an equivalent for salary that might otherwise have been paid in worthless currency, and the simple requirements of rural existence were supplied in a large degree by trade and barter without the use of what passed as money. The farmer's cottage stood upon a level sward of green. The kitchen was the living-room, and there the family spent their time when not out at work or retired to rest. It was the largest apartment in the house, and its great fire-place, with a ruddy back-log and pine knots flaming and sparkling on the iron-dogs, offered a most cheerful welcome on a New England winter's night. The baking oven, heated with fine-split dry wood, cooked the frugal but savory meal, which was served up on a solid old-fashioned table, around which the household gathered, first giving thanks to the Giver of all. When not busied with other duties, the housewife pressed with measured round the treadles of the loom, as she twilled the web she was weaving; and as the shades of evening descended the sonorous hum of the spinning-wheel gave token to the young man on courtship intent that the daughter of the house was at home. From the kitchen a door opened into the best room, a cheerless sort of place only thrown open on special occasions, and not to compare in comfort with the kitchen, its high-backed settle and its genial fire, whose glowing ashes seemed to reflect the warmer glow of loving eyes. Other doors from the kitchen opened into sleeping-rooms, although in the larger houses the family usually slept upstairs. The well was used for cooling purposes as well as water supply, and the old oaken bucket suspended from the well-sweep by means of a slender pole, invited the passing stranger to quaff nature's wholesome beverage. Wheeled vehicles were not often seen in the rural districts, horses being commonly used for locomotion. The difficulty of traveling discouraged intercourse between different communities, and a journey from Boston to New York, taking a week by stage-coach, and three or four days by sailing vessel, was a more momentous undertaking than a voyage to Europe now. Few traveled for pleasure. Few took any active interest in public affairs beyond their own neighborhood, or at most their own State, and the bond of the confederation rested loosely on communities now no longer united by the apprehension of common danger.
Between the North and the South the contrast was already ominous of future strife. The Southern planter lived like an aristocrat surrounded by servants and slaves, dispensing hospitality according to his means after the fashion of the British nobility. Cotton had not yet poured the gold of England into the lap of the South, but tobacco held its own as a substantial basis of wealth. In the North, on the other hand, the tiller of the soil was usually its owner, assisted sometimes by indentured servants or slaves, but never himself above the toil which he exacted from others. The North, too, had its great families, descendants of patroons and others who had received large grants of land and enjoyed exceptional privileges, and were now growing in wealth with the increasing value of their property; but the aristocratic Northern families were gradually losing political power and influence, and sinking toward the level of the people; whereas in the South the aristocratic element was arrogating more and more the control of State affairs, and the representation of Southern States in the councils of the nation. In the North also equality was promoted by the potent influence of the Revolution in breaking up the system of servile white labor. Master and man were summoned for the defence of their country; they fought, they suffered and endured together the same privations for a common cause. Distinctions of class were obliterated by the blood that flowed freely for the freedom of all, and what remained of ancient aristocratic prejudice was yet more thoroughly undermined by the example of the great social upheaval in France. Nevertheless the system of white servitude was not entirely abolished until long after the close of the eighteenth century, immigrants to this country frequently selling themselves as "redemptioners" to pay the cost of their passage. The limits of this form of service seldom exceeded seven years. No taint was apparently attached to it, and many a worthy family had a "redemptioner" for its first American ancestor.
Looking to the western frontier just after the Revolution, and in particular the forks of the Ohio, we see a population very different in character from that of the older settlements. The peace-loving Quaker clung to the eastern counties, where life and property were secured from raid and reprisal, and formed his ideas of the Indian character and deserts from the red men, who, either Christianized or demoralized, preferred the grudging charity of civilization to the rude and frugal spoils of the chase, or the blood-stained rapine of war. This specimen of Indian was usually so harmless, in some instances perhaps so deserving, that the well-meaning Quaker learned to receive with discredit the stories of horror from the frontier, and discouraged with his voice and influence every step toward the subjection of the hostile Indian and his European allies. Emigrants were forbidden, under stern penalties, to encroach on the Indian domain, and petitions from invaded settlements for arms and assistance, were met with cold indifference or positive refusal. The men and women who, in face of such discouragement, cast their lot beyond the mountains, must have been a hardy set indeed, and made of stuff not likely to yield in a wrestle with wild nature and wilder humanity.
The early inhabitants of that frontier region were of sturdy Scotch and Irish stock. The troublous political times in their native countries doubtless had much to do with their emigration hither. The star of the Stuart line had set never to rise again, and its bright and hopeless flicker, in the days of '45, was extinguished in the blood of Scotland's noblest sons. But while order reigned, content was far from prevailing, and many a brave heart sought, on the distant shore of America, to forget the anguish of the past in the building of a prosperous future. With a final sigh for "Lochaber No More," the Highlander turned his gaze from the lochs and glens of his fathers, and crossed the ocean to that new land of promise where every man might be a laird, and a farm might be had for the asking, where no Culloden would remind him of the fate of his kindred, and his children could grow up far from the barbarous laws that crushed out the spirit of the ancient clans. Along the banks of the Monongahela those Scotch and Irish settlers built their rude cabins under the guns of Fort Pitt, guarded—strange irony of fate—from a savage enemy by the very flag which flaunted oppression in their native Britain and Ireland. That they learned to love their adopted land who can question? A Virginian cavalier, accustomed to the graces and politesse of a slave-owning aristocracy, saw fit to sneer at their humble abodes, and their lack of the finer accessories of civilization, forgetting that a cabin is more often than a palace the cradle of the purest patriotism, and that as true American hearts beat in those huts in the wilderness as in the courtly precincts of Richmond.