The salary of the president was fixed at 25,000 dollars a year, that of the vice-president at 5,000, those of the heads of departments at 3,500. Six dollars a day, with six dollars for every twenty miles of travelling, were allowed to the representatives, and seven dollars, with the same sum for travelling expenses, in the same ratio, to the members of the Senate. The chief-justice of the Supreme Court was to receive 4,000 dollars, and the associate judges 500 dollars less, per annum.
On the 29th of September, the first session of congress closed. In November, North Carolina ratified the Constitution.
During the recess of congress, the president made a tour through the New England states, omitting, however, Rhode Island, which had not yet given in its adhesion to the Constitution. Everywhere he was received with demonstrations of love and respect. “Men, women and children,” says Jared Sparkes, “people of all ranks, ages, and occupations, assembling from far and near, at the crossings of the roads and other public places where it was known he would pass. Military escorts attended him on the way, and at the principal towns, he was received and entertained by the civil authorities.
“This journey,” continues the same writer, “not only furnished proofs of the attachment of the people, but convinced him of the growing prosperity of the country, and of the favour which the Constitution and the administration of government were gaining in the public mind. He saw with pleasure that the effects of the war had almost disappeared; that agriculture was pursued with activity; that the harvests were abundant, manufactures increasing, the towns flourishing, and commerce becoming daily more extended and profitable. The condition of society, the progress of improvements, the success of industrial enterprise, all gave tokens of order, peace and contentment, and a most cheering promise for the future.”
Journeys of this kind, the great object of which was the becoming better acquainted with the capabilities, as well as the condition of the country, were not uncommon with Washington. Already, in 1784, at the close of the war, he had made a journey of 600 miles, to visit his lands on the Ohio, when the practicability of a great scheme suggested itself to him, viz. that of uniting the East and West, by means of intercommunication between the head waters of the Atlantic streams and the western rivers. He pressed the subject upon the notice of the government of Virginia, the result of which was the formation of two companies, “the Potomac Company,” and “the Kenhawa and James River Company.” Washington thus became the first mover in the great series of internal improvements which took place.
The second session of congress opened on the 6th of January, 1790. Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, brought forward early his report upon the public debt contracted during the war, and which had hung like a mill-stone so long round the neck of government. Taking an able and enlarged view of the advantages of public credit, he recommended that not only the debts of the continental congress, but those of the individual states contracted on behalf of the common cause, should be funded or assumed by the general government, and that provision should be made for paying the interest by taxes imposed on certain articles of luxury, and on spirits distilled in the country. This report led to long discussion; but in conclusion, congress passed an act for the assumption of the states’ debts, and for funding the national debt. Provision for the payment of the foreign debt was made without any difficulty. The debt funded amounted to about 75,000,000 dollars; and it was especially enacted that no certificate should be obtained from a state-creditor, which it could not be ascertained had been issued for the express purposes of compensation, services, or supplies, during the late war. The proceeds of the western lands and the surplus revenue, with the addition of 2,000,000 dollars which the president was authorised to borrow at 5 per cent, constituted a sinking fund to be applied to the reduction of the debt. The effect of these measures upon the country in general was of the most satisfactory kind. The sudden increase of monied capital gave a fresh impulse to commerce and consequently to agriculture.
Shortly after the discussion on the debt commenced in Congress, it was interrupted by petitions from the yearly meeting of the Quakers of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York, advocating the abolition of slavery, and which were followed up by a memorial from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, signed by Benjamin Franklin as president, one of the last public acts of this remarkable man’s life; he died a few weeks afterwards. This subject led to two months’ controversy on the subject of slavery and the slave-trade, the end of which was a report, entered on the journal of the debates, that any state thinking proper to import slaves, could not be prohibited by congress prior to the year 1808, although it had power to prevent their supplying foreigners with slaves, and that they had no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them in any of the states.
In May of this year, Rhode Island acceded to the New Constitution, and thus completed the union of the Thirteen States. About the same time an act was passed for accepting a cession of land from North Carolina, and erecting it into a territorial government, under the title of “the Territory South of the Ohio,” and which was in every respect to stand upon the same basis as the “Territory North West of the Ohio,” with this exception, that slavery was not excluded. This new territory, which forms the present Tennessee, included the late aspiring state of Frankland, and another tract of about 2,000 square miles, which had been settled in 1780 by James Robertson, who, with about forty families, had advanced 300 miles into the wilderness, and there established the town of Nashville on the banks of the Cumberland River; whither, also, he had been followed by many of the officers and soldiers of the revolutionary war, to whom land-bounties had been assigned on the same river. The new territory, for which a governor was presently appointed, was for the greater part in the possession of the Indians at that very time.
Indian wars were the certain result of the advance of the white man into the wilderness, and the frontiers of the more southern states still continued to be the scenes of bloodshed. A war had been carried on for some time between the Creek Indians and Georgia, on the subject of lands said to have been ceded by the Indians to that state, but which they denied. The Creek warriors were well supplied with fire-arms and ammunition, and had the advantage of an able and accomplished chief, a half-breed Indian called, after his father, M‘Gillivray, and who had received an excellent education in Charleston. Under this chief the Creeks carried on a fierce and terrible war, which spread alarm even as far as Savannah. Washington, anxious to bring about a negotiation with these formidable warriors, invited M‘Gillivray to New York; and accompanied by twenty-eight chiefs and warriors, he arrived there, congress being still in session, and was received with every mark of respect and attention. A treaty of peace was entered into; wampum given and tobacco smoked; after which M‘Gillivray having made a speech, and “a shake of peace” between Washington and the chiefs being given, “a song of peace” was raised by the Indians, and the ceremony ended. Peace was established on the frontiers of Georgia, and the lands which the Creeks claimed solemnly guaranteed to them, not much to the satisfaction of the whites.
Thus successful with the Creeks, they were much less so with the western Indians, who encouraged, it was said, by the British in Canada, insisted on making the Ohio their boundary, and infested the banks of the river, attacking the emigrant boats, which descended it, and carrying their ravages far into Kentucky. Pacific overtures having been made in vain by the president to these hostile Indians, General Harmar was sent from Fort Washington, now Cincinnati, with a force of 1,400, to reduce them to terms. He succeeded in destroying the Indian villages and their harvests, but in two engagements near the confluence of the St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s in Indiana, successive detachments of the army were defeated with considerable loss.