1790

 

__________ 

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” 

George Washington, January 8, 1790.

__________ 

Tariffs and tennis shoes.

 

ACCORDING to the Census of 1790, the historian Benjamin Andrews notes, there were 4,280 whites living northwest of the Ohio River, a thousand at Vincennes, a thousand on the lands of the Ohio Company, 1,300 on the Symmes Purchase. (2/269) 

The Indians numbered between 20,000 and 40,000 north of the Ohio; “Settlers agreed in denouncing them as treacherous, intractable, blood-thirsty and faithless.” Andrews refers to them as “various hordes of savages” (2/271-272) 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: For an explanation of the numbering system used in my blog posts, see my bibliography, posted separately. As for example, Book 2, above, pages 271-272, a U.S. history in several volumes, by Andrews. It was published in 1925.

 

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NOTE TO TEACHERS: I sometimes gave the reading below to my classes. It depended on how much time I had: 

BEN FRANKLIN dies at age 84 in 1790. Daniel Boone is 56, nine years older than Thomas Jefferson. Beethoven is 30. John Chapman (later known as “Johnny Appleseed”) is sixteen. Thomas Lincoln is twelve. Four years earlier an Indian nearly killed him in a raid on the family’s Kentucky home. Had he died we would have had no Abraham Lincoln, his future son. 

The United States government is small. President George Washington employs just 350 workers across all departments. 

The U.S. Army had only 900 men. 

Silver and gold coins were hard to come by; Spanish, French, English, and even German coins circulated widely. One German coin was the “thaller.” From this we have our word for “dollar.” Land was selling for $1 per acre at that time – but the average worker made less than that every day. 

Ninety percent of Americans made a living by farming.

 

Most people in 1790 traveled by foot or on horseback. Mail from Maine took twenty days to reach Georgia. Only a push to build canals offered hope for improved transportation. John Fitch had operated a steam-powered ferry in Philadelphia the previous summer, but customers were scarce, and he went broke. He would soon combine alcohol and opium and carry himself to an early grave. Travel on Sunday was still forbidden in Massachusetts and Connecticut, except for those headed to church. 

Noah Webster was preparing to launch his career as author of spelling books and the first American dictionary. 

A free black man, Benjamin Banneker, a scientist and architect, was helping to lay out a design for Washington D.C. (The site for the new city had been chosen but was still a wilderness.) 

Eli Whitney was teaching school – for $7 per month. He had not turned attention to inventing and would not patent the cotton gin till 1794. (Suddenly, his gin would make slavery profitable.) 

Slavery was said to be dying. (Soon, because of Whitney, it wouldn’t be.) Congress banned slavery north of the Ohio River under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had all passed laws to end slavery, based on the point at which slaves reached certain birthdays. Massachusetts had no slaves. Vermont had sixteen remaining. 

Horse and foot races were popular forms of entertainment. Dancing, music (supplied by local musicians or family members), conversation, walking, sailing, shooting at a mark and chess helped people pass the time. In the North riding in sleighs was popular during winter. Hunting and fishing were common. Frontier entertainment included “rough and tumble” fighting. Two men battled till one gave up. There were almost no rules. Kicking was legal. So were biting, tearing and gouging. It was not uncommon for opponents to gouge out [dig out] eyes or bite off noses or ears. A traveler through America noted that young men and “even little boys, at or under twelve years of age” like to go to bars. 

Dueling was still in fashion.

 

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“Superficial,” “affected,” and “simpering.” 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS returns home after three years in France. He describes the girls of this country as “superficial,” “affected,” and “simpering,” with little interest in anything but dancing and talking scandal, in which, he wrote his mother, “they have attained great perfection.”

 

Young John Quincy admitted there were plenty of appealing girls, but “like a beautiful apple that is insipid to the taste.” (45/59)

 

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THE TIME-LIFE EDITORS say, in their American history series, “West is the widest-stretching word in the American language.”

 

Frontier life was a leveler: “Hardship, coarse food and rough clothes reduced life for everyone – the idler and the worker, the judge and the lawbreaker – to a common denominator. The roads were blazed trails. Cash hardly existed; payment was made in hemp, hides, pork or ginned cotton.”

 

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WRITING IN 1927, Hendrik Van Loon describes the life of the pioneers. City folk in Philadelphia and Boston might turn up their noses at the hard existence. 

But the frontiersman was not at all conscious of his hard lot. To be sure, life was not easy. The stumps were obstinate – the mosquitoes were more dangerous than wolves – there were two darn many stones all over the world – cows and sheep had a fool habit of catching diseases which no veterinary could cure. But as for loneliness no. Loneliness in the old fashioned sense of the word he did not know, for his community was based upon something the world had never yet seen in which for lack of a better expression I would like to call “organized isolation.”

 

The western pioneer was undoubtedly isolated in the strict sense of the word which means “to place oneself apart from the rest of the world.” But so many thousands of like-minded people had done exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment, and had also placed themselves “apart from the rest of the world” and had joined him in his voyage beyond the Appalachian Mountains that the deserts ceased to be lonely and the woods lost the terror of their mysterious silence. (124/308)

 

Pittsburgh was the “largest” western settlement with 376 souls. Marietta, the first town in Ohio, was two years old.

NOTE TO TEACHERS: It might work to ask students what the Native Americans would think about this behavior by the pioneers.

 

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THE FIRST U.S. Census revealed that the population of the new nation was 4,000,000. One fifth of the people were slaves. 

Philadelphia was the biggest city with 42,000 people. 

Boston was a city of less than 20,000. Streets were almost completely unlighted. A police force barely existed. Harvard College graduated forty students per year. Yale – in New Haven, Connecticut – had thirty graduates every spring. 

Cities were small; services were scarce. New York had one big problem. “Want of good water greatly inconvenienced the citizens, as there was no aqueduct yet, and wells were few. Most houses supplied themselves by casks from a pump on what is now Pearl Street.” (2/204)

 

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March 26: By an act of Congress, American citizenship is extended to the children of American citizens living abroad.

 

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THE JUDICIARY was organized with John Jay as Chief Justice and five associates. There was one district court in every state, one in Maine, another in Kentucky. 

“Originally the Attorney-General was little but an honorary officer. He kept his practice, had no public income but his fees, and resided where he pleased.” (2/212)

 

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Two parties explained. 

FEDERALISTS: “…they proposed so to enforce regard for the national authority and laws and obedience to them, that within its sphere the nation should be absolutely and beyond question paramount to the State.” “…this party developed a haughtiness and a lack of republican spirit amounting in some cases to deficient patriotism.” The party included “business men and the wealthy and leisurely classes, who, without intending to be selfish, were governed in political sympathy and action mainly by their own interests.” (2/215-216) 

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANS: “…they prized the individual State as still the main pillar of our political fabric.” (2/217) 

“Another issue divided the parties, that between the strict and the freer interpretation of the Constitution.” 

The question dividing them was this: In matters relating to the powers of the general Government, ought any unclear utterance of the Constitution to be so explained as to enlarge those powers, or so as to confine them to the narrowest possible sphere? Each of the two tendencies in construction has in turn brought violence to our fundamental law, but the sentiment of nationality and the logic of events have favored liberality rather than narrowness in interpreting the parchment. When in charge of the government, even strict constructionists have not been able to carry out their theory. Thus Jefferson, to purchase Louisiana, was obliged, from his point of view, to transcend constitutional warrant. (2/218) 

 

Tariffs. 

“Several motives, however, induced resort to a restrictive policy which, beginning with 1789, and for years expected to be temporary, has been pursued with little deviation ever since.” (tariffs) 

Rates were made low, averaging until 1808, only 11 ¼ per cent. As a consequence the revenues were large.

 

The movers of this first tariff, especially Hamilton, also wished by means of it to make the central Government felt as a positive power throughout the land.  (2/221)

 

“A stronger consideration still was to retaliate against England. In spite of America’s political independence the old country was determined to retain for her merchant marine its former monopoly here.”  “There was no way to meet this selfish policy but to show that it was a game which we too could play.”  (2/221) 

“Hamilton proposed, and Congress voted, an excise on spirits, from nine to twenty-five cents a gallon if from grain, from eleven to thirty if from imported material, as molasses.” In Pennsylvania, “A meeting in Washington County voted to regard as an enemy any person taking office under the excise law. September 6, 1791, a revenue officer was tarred and feathered.” “Whippings and even murders resulted. At last there was a veritable reign of terror.” (2/227-228)

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: Clearly, the matter of tariffs has new resonance in 2024, as I edit my materials. A good example: Ask your students to see if anyone has American made tennis shoes, or shoes generally. The labels are usually found on the bottom of the tongues. By the time I retired from teaching in 2008, there were no U.S. made shoes left. 

What would a tariff mean to students today? What other items do they own that they know are foreign-made? 

I used to tell my students that you can tax anything, with “sin taxes” always more popular: that is taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. Less popular: taxes on gasoline. It can be fun to ask students what they’d tax, if they were in charge – and what they wouldn’t. Another good example: Florida is happy to add a tax to all hotel bills. 

Ask students why voters in Florida might support this.

Above, we see Virginia, with the largest population, has 12.6 times as many people as Delaware, with the fewest. Adjusting for the 3/5th’s rule, however, Virginia’s population, considered for representation in Congress is only 630,004, and Delaware’s population falls slightly, to 55,739. 

That makes Virginia’s population a little more than 11 times that of the smallest state. In the first U.S. House of Representatives, then, 

 

Representatives by State (1789-1791):

 

Virginia                              11

Massachusetts                    8

Pennsylvania                      8

Maryland                           6

New York                           6

Connecticut                       5

North Carolina                  5

South Carolina                   5

New Jersey                        4

New Hampshire                 3

Georgia                              2

Delaware                            1

Rhode Island                      1

 

Total:                                 65

 

(I did not know until checking, that several states originally elected members of the House on an at-large basis.)

 

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August 9: The Columbia, captained by Robert Gray, returns to Boston from a three-year voyage, having circumnavigated the globe. 

According to Oscar Handlin, Gray had 

news that furs, which brought so high a price in the river marts of Canton, could be acquired for trifling trinkets along the coast of Oregon. This discovery effected a revolution in Boston’s economic prospects; by 1792 a new triangular traffic was well established. Carrying cargoes of copper, cloth, iron and clothes, ships left the city each autumn, arriving at the Columbia River the following spring. There they remained from eighteen to twenty months, bargaining for furs. Then they were off across the Pacific, generally stopping at the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) for sandalwood, or at California to make illicit deals with the Spaniards. In Canton, they disposed of their stock, and, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, returned with Chinese teas, textiles, and porcelain. Bostonians rushed into this enormously profitable trade so quickly that among the Chinooks and other West Coast Indians “Boston-men” soon became synonymous with Americans. (21/4)

 

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October 19-22: The following section is quoted from The Great Republic by Charles Morris, written in 1898. 

Returning to the history of Washington’s presidency, mention must be made of the troubles with the western Indians, who, as has been stated, fought relentlessly against the advance of civilization into their hunting grounds. Between 1783 and 1790, 1,500 persons were killed by the red men near the Ohio. It being clear that peace could not be secured except by a thorough chastisement of the Indians, Congress gave General Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, authority to call for 500 militia from Pennsylvania and a thousand from Kentucky, to which were added 400 regulars. Under General Harmar they marched against the Indian villages.

 

In the campaign the Indians outgeneraled Harmar, who, after inflicting some damage, was defeated and lost 200 men in killed and wounded. The defeat encouraged the savages, who became more aggressive than ever. 

Wikipedia has a detailed description of the fighting that led to Harmar’s defeat, with a toll, for Harmar of 262 men killed, 102 wounded. Little Turtle, head of an alliance of native tribes, suffered, at most, 150 killed and wounded.