A School History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

%195. Negro Slavery.%—No living person under thirty years of age has ever seen a negro slave in our country. When Washington was President there were 700,000 slaves. When the Revolution opened, slavery was permitted by law in every colony. But the feeling against it in the North had always been strong, and when the war ended, the people began the work of abolition. In Massachusetts and New Hampshire the constitutions of the states declared that "all men are born free and equal," and that "all men are born equally free," and this was understood to abolish slavery. In Pennsylvania, slavery was abolished in 1780. In Rhode Island and Connecticut gradual abolition laws were passed which provided that all children born of slave parents after a certain day should be free at a certain age, and that their children should never be slaves. The Ordinance of 1787 had prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. But in 1790 New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and all the states south of these were slave states. (See map on the next page.)

Though slaves were men and women and children, they had no civil rights whatever. They could be bought and sold, leased, seized for a debt, bequeathed by will, given away. If they made anything, or found anything, or earned anything, it belonged not to them, but to their owners. They were property just as oxen or horses were in the North. It was unlawful to teach them to read or write. They were not allowed to give evidence against a white man, nor to travel in bands of more than seven unless a white man was with them, nor to quit the plantation without leave.

If a planter provided coarse food, coarse clothes, and a rude shelter for his slaves, if he did not work them more than fifteen hours out of twenty-four in summer, nor more than fourteen in winter, and if he gave them every Sunday to themselves, he did quite as much for their comfort as the law required he should.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE AREA OF %SLAVE AND FREE SOIL IN 1790%]

If the slave committed any offense, if he stole anything, or refused to work, or ran away, it was lawful to load him with irons, to confine him for any length of time in a cell, and to beat him and whip him till the blood ran in streams from the wounds, and he grew too weak to stand. Old advertisements are still extant in which runaway blacks are described by the scars left upon their bodies by the lash. When such lashings were not prescribed by the court, they were commonly given under the eye of the overseer, or inflicted by the owner himself.

%196. Six Days from Boston to New York.%—Our country was small when Washington was President. The people lived on the seaboard. The towns and cities were not actually very far apart; but the means of travel were so poor, the time consumed in going even fifty miles was so great, that the country was practically immense in extent. Now we step into a beautifully fitted car, heated by steam, lighted by electricity, richly carpeted, and provided with most comfortable seats and beds, and are whirled across the continent from Philadelphia to San Francisco in less time than it took Washington to go from New York to Boston.

[Illustration: Old mill at West Falmouth, Mass.[1]

[Footnote 1: In many parts of the country where there was no water power, as Cape Cod, Long Island, Nantucket, etc., flour was ground at windmills. The windmill shown in the picture was built in 1787, and is still in use.]

If you had lived in 1791 and started, say, from Boston, to go to Philadelphia to see the President and the great city where independence had been declared, you would very likely have begun by making your will, and bidding good-by to your friends. You would then have gone down to the office of the proprietor of the stagecoach, and secured a seat to New York. As the coach left but twice a week, you would have waited till the day came and would then have presented yourself, at three o'clock in the morning, at the tavern whence the coach started.

The stagecoach was little better than a huge covered box mounted on springs. It had neither glass windows, nor door, nor steps, nor closed sides. The roof was upheld by ten posts which rose from the body of the vehicle, and the body was commonly breast high. From the top were hung curtains of leather, to be rolled up when the day was fine, and let down and buttoned when it was rainy and cold. Within were four seats. Without was the baggage. Fourteen pounds of luggage were allowed to be carried free by each passenger. But if your portmanteau or your brass-nail-studded hair trunk weighed more, you would have paid for it at the rate per mile that you paid for yourself. Under no circumstances, however, would you be permitted to take on the journey more than 150 pounds. When the baggage had all been weighed and strapped on the coach, when the horses had been attached, and the waybill, containing the names of the passengers, made out, the passengers would clamber to their seats through the front of the stage and sit down with their faces toward the driver's seat.