FOOTNOTES:
[1] In recent years Georgia has been one of the first states to abandon this bad practice.
[2] I suppose it was this same Mason Weems that was afterward known in Virginia as Parson Weems, of Pohick parish, near Mount Vernon. See Magazine of American History, iii. 465–472; v. 85–90. At first an eccentric preacher, Parson Weems became an itinerant violin-player and book-peddler, and author of that edifying work, The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes equally Honourable to Himself and Exemplary to his Young Countrymen. On the title-page the author describes himself as "formerly rector of Mount Vernon Parish,"—which Bishop Meade calls preposterous. The book is a farrago of absurdities, reminding one, alike in its text and its illustrations, of an overgrown English chap-book of the olden time. It has had an enormous sale, and has very likely contributed more than any other single book toward forming the popular notion of Washington. It seems to have been this fiddling parson that first gave currency to the everlasting story of the cherry-tree and the little hatchet.
[3] History of England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 447.
[4] A very interesting account of these troubles may be found in the first volume of Professor McMaster's History of the People of the United States.
[5] This subject has been treated in a masterly manner by Mr. H.B. Adams, in an essay on Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States, published in the Third Series of the admirable Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Politics. I am indebted to Mr. Adams for many valuable suggestions.
[6] It would be in the highest degree erroneous, however, to suppose that the Constitution of the United States is not, as much as any other, an instance of evolution from precedents. See, in this connection, the very able article by Prof. Alexander Johnston, New Princeton Review, Sept., 1887, pp. 175–190.
[7] The slave-population of the United States, according to the census of 1700, was thus distributed among the states:—
| North. | |
| New Hampshire | 158 |
| Vermont | 17 |
| Massachusetts | — |
| Rhode Island | 952 |
| Connecticut | 2,759 |
| New York | 21,324 |
| New Jersey | 11,423 |
| Pennsylvania | 3,737 |
| ——— | |
| 40,370 | |