A School History of the United States by John Bach McMaster

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The same was true of New York state. As the canal grew nearer and nearer
completion, the people from other states came in and settled in the
towns and villages along the route, bought farms, and so improved the
country that the value of the land along the canal increased
$100,000,000.

A rage for canals now spread over the country. Many were talked of, but
never started. Many were started, but never finished. Such as had been
begun were hurried to completion. Before 1830 there were 1343 miles of
canal open to use in the United States.

%316. The Pennsylvania Highway to the West.%--In Pennsylvania the
opening of the Erie Canal caused great excitement. And well it might;
for freight could now be sent by sailing vessels from Philadelphia to
Albany, and then by canal to Buffalo, and on by the Lake Erie and
Chautauqua route to Pittsburg, for one third what it cost to go
overland. It seemed as if New York by one stroke had taken away the
Western commerce of Philadelphia, and ruined the prosperity of such
inland towns of Pennsylvania as lay along the highway to the West. The
demand for roads and canals at state expense was now listened to, and
in 1826 ground was broken at Harrisburg for a system of canals to join
Philadelphia and Pittsburg. But in 1832 the horse-power railroad came
into use, and when finished, the system was part railroad and
part canal.

%317. The Baltimore Route to the West.%--This energy on the part of
Pennsylvania alarmed the people of Baltimore. Unless their city was to
yield its Western trade to Philadelphia they too must have a speedy and
cheap route to the West. In 1827, therefore, a great public meeting was
held at Baltimore to consider the wisdom of building a railroad from
Baltimore to some point on the Ohio River. The meeting decided that it
must be done, and on July 4, 1828, the work of construction was begun.
In 1830 the road was opened as far as Ellicotts Mills, a distance of
fifteen miles. The cars were drawn by horses.

The early railroads, as the word implies, were roads made of wooden
rails, or railed roads, over which heavy loads were drawn by horses. The
very first were private affairs, and not intended for carrying
passengers.[1]

[Footnote 1: The first was used in 1807 at Boston to carry earth from a
hilltop to a street that was being graded. The second was built near
Philadelphia in 1810, and ran from a stone quarry to a dock. It was in
use twenty-eight years. The third was built in 1826, and extended from
the granite quarries at Quincy, Mass., to the Neponset River, a distance
of three miles. The fourth was from the coal mines of Mauchchunk, Pa.,
to the Lehigh River, nine miles. The fifth was constructed in 1828 by
the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company to carry coal from the mines to
the canal.]

%318. Public Railroads.%--In 1825 John Stevens, who for ten years
past had been advocating steam railroads, built a circular road at
Hoboken to demonstrate the possibility of using such means of
locomotion. In 1823 Pennsylvania chartered a company to build a railroad
from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna. But it was not till 1827, when the
East was earnestly seeking for a rapid and cheap means of transportation
to the West, that railroads of great length and for public use were
undertaken. In that year the people of Massachusetts were so excited
over the opening of the Erie Canal that the legislature appointed a
commission and an engineer to select a line for a railroad to join
Boston and Albany.

At this time there was no such thing as a steam locomotive in use in the
United States. The first ever used here for practical purposes was built
in England and brought to New York city in 1829, and in August of that
year made a trial trip on the rails of the Delaware and Hudson Canal
Company. The experiment was a failure; and for several years horses were
the only motive power in use on the railroads. In 1830, however, the
South Carolina Railroad having finished six miles of its road, had a
locomotive built in New York city, and in January, 1831, placed it on
the tracks at Charleston. Another followed in February, and the era of
locomotive railroading in our country began.

%319. The Portage Railroad.%--As yet the locomotive was a rude
machine. It could not go faster than fifteen miles an hour, nor climb a
steep hill. Where such an obstacle was met with, either the road went
around it, or the locomotive was taken off and the cars were let down or
pulled up the hill on an inclined plane by means of a rope and
stationary engine.[1] When Pennsylvania began her railroad over the
Alleghany Mountains, therefore, she used the inclined-plane system on a
great scale, so that in its time the Portage Railroad, as it was called,
was the most remarkable piece of railroading in the world.

[Footnote 1: Such an inclined plane existed at Albany, where passengers
were pulled up to the top of the hill. Another was at Belmont on the
Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, and another on the Paterson and Hudson
road near Paterson.]

The Pennsylvania line to the West consisted of a horse railroad from
Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna River; of a canal out the
Juniata valley to Hollidaysburg on the eastern slope of the Alleghany
Mountains, where the Portage Railroad began, and the cars were raised to
the summit of the mountains by a series of inclined planes and levels,
and then by the same means let down the western slope to Johnstown; and
then of another canal from Johnstown to Pittsburg.

[Illustration: Inclined plane at Belmont in 1835]

As originally planned, the state was to build the railroad and canal,
just as it built turnpikes. No cars, no motive power of any sort, except
at the inclined planes, were to be supplied. Anybody could use it who
paid two cents a mile for each passenger, and $4.92 for each car sent
over the rails. At first, therefore, firms and corporations engaged in
the transportation business owned their own cars, their own horses,
employed their own drivers, and charged such rates as the state tolls
and sharp competition would allow. The result was dire confusion. The
road was a single-track affair, with turnouts to enable cars coming in
opposite directions to pass each other. But the drivers were an unruly
set, paid no attention to turnouts, and would meet face to face on the
track, just as if no turnouts existed. A fight or a block was sure to
follow, and somebody was forced to go back. To avoid this, the road was
double-tracked in 1834, when, for the first time, two locomotives
dragging long trains of cars ran over the line from Lancaster to
Philadelphia. As the engine went faster than the horses, it soon became
apparent that both could not use the road at the same time; and after
1836 steam became the sole motive power, and the locomotive was
furnished by the state, which now charged for hauling the cars.[1]

[Footnote 1: On the early railroads see Brown's _History of the First
Locomotives in America._]

[Illustration: The first railroad train in New Jersey (1831)]

The puffing little locomotive bore little resemblance to its beautiful
and powerful successors. No cab sheltered the engineer, no brake checked
the speed, wood was the only fuel, and the tall smokestack belched forth
smoke and red-hot cinders. But this was nothing to what happened when
the train came to a bridge. Such structures were then protected by
roofing them and boarding the sides almost to the eaves. But the roof
was always too low to allow the smokestack to go under. The stack,
therefore, was jointed, and when passing through a bridge the upper half
was dropped down and the whole train in consequence was enveloped in a
cloud of smoke and burning cinders, while the passengers covered their
eyes, mouths, and noses.

%320. Railroads in 1835.%--In 1835 there were twenty-two railroads in
operation in the United States. Two were west of the Alleghanies, and
not one was 140 miles long. For a while the cars ran on "strap rails"
made of wooden beams or stringers laid on stone blocks and protected on
the top surface, where the car wheel rested, by long strips or straps
of iron spiked on. The spikes would often work loose, and, as the car
passed over, the strap would curl up and come through the bottom of the
car, making what was called a snake head. It was some time before the
all-iron rail came into use, and even then it was a small affair
compared with the huge rails that are used at present.

%321. Mechanical Inventions.%--The introduction of the steamboat and
the railroad, the great development of manufactures, the growth of the
West, and the immense opportunity for doing business which these
conditions offered, led to all sorts of demands for labor-saving and
time-saving machinery. Another very marked characteristic of the period
1825-1840, therefore, is the display of the inventive genius of the
people. Articles which a few years before were made by hand now began to
be made by machinery.

Before 1825 every farmer in the country threshed his grain with a flail,
or by driving cattle over it, or by means of a large wooden roller
covered with pegs. After 1825 these rude devices began to be supplanted
by the threshing machine. Till 1826 no axes, hatchets, chisels, planes,
or other edge tools were made in this country. In 1826 their manufacture
was begun, and in the following year there was opened the first hardware
store for the sale of American-made hardware.

The use of anthracite coal had become so general that the wood stove was
beginning to be displaced by the hard-coal stove, and in 1827 fire
bricks were first made in the United States. It was at about this time
that paper was first made of hay and straw; that boards were first
planed by machine; that bricks were first made by machinery; that
penknives and pocketknives were first manufactured in America; that
Fairbanks invented the platform weighing scales; that chloroform was
discovered; that Morse invented the recording telegraph; that a man in
New York city, named Hunt, made and sold the first lock-stitch sewing
machine ever seen in the world; that pens and horseshoes were made by
machine; that the reaping machine was given its first public trial (in
Ohio); and that Colt invented the revolver.

%322. Condition of the Cities.%--Yet another characteristic of the
period was the great change which came over the cities and towns. The
development of canal and railroad transportation had thrown many of the
old highways into disuse, had made old towns and villages decline in
population, and had caused new towns to spring up and flourish.
Everybody now wanted to live near a railroad or a canal. The rapid
increase in manufactures had led to the occupation of the fine
water-power sites, and to the creation of many such manufacturing towns
as Lowell (in Massachusetts) and Cohoes (in New York). The rise of so
many new kinds of business, of so many corporations, mills, and
factories, caused a rush of people to the cities, which now began to
grow rapidly in size.

[Illustration: New York in 1830 (St. Paul's Chapel, on Broadway)]

This made a change in city government necessary. The constable and the
watchman with his rattle had to give place to the modern policeman. The
old dingy oil lamps, lighted only when the moon did not shine, gave
place to gas. The cities were now so full of clerks, workingmen,
mechanics, and other people who had to live far away from the places
where they were employed, that a cheap means of transportation about the
streets became necessary. Accordingly, in 1830, an omnibus line was
started in New York.[1] It succeeded so well that in 1832 the first
street horse-car line in America was operated in New York city.

[Footnote 1: Many did not know what the word "Omnibus" painted along the
top of the stages meant. Some thought it was the name of the man who
owned them. It is, of course, a Latin word, and means "for all"; that
is, the stages were public conveyances for the use of all.]

%323. The Owenite Communities.%--The efforts thus made everywhere and
in every way to increase the comforts and conveniences of mankind turned
the years 1820-1840 into a period of reform. Anything new was eagerly
taken up. When, therefore, a Welshman named Robert Owen came over to
this country, and introduced what he considered a social reform, numbers
of people in the West became his followers. Owen believed that most of
the hardships of life came from the fact that some men secured more
property and made more money than others. He believed that people should
live together in communities in which the farms, the houses, the cattle,
the products of the soil, should be owned not by individual men, but by
the whole community. He held that there should be absolute social
equality, and that no matter what sort of work a man did, whether
skilled or unskilled, it should be considered just as valuable as the
work of any other man.

All this was very alluring, and in a little while Owenite communities
were started in Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and New York,
only to end in failure.[2]

[Footnote 2: Noyes's _History of American Socialism._]

%324. The Mormons.%--But there was a social movement started at this
time which still exists. In 1827, at Palmyra, in New York, a young man
named Joseph Smith announced that he had received a new bible from an
angel of the Lord. It was written, he said, on golden plates, which he
claimed to have read by the aid of two wonderful stones; and in 1830 he
gave to the world _The Book of Mormon_.

After the book appeared, Smith and a few others organized a church. Many
at once began to believe in the new religion. But the West seemed so
much better a field that in 1831 Smith and his followers started for
Ohio, and at Kirtland established a Mormon community. There the Mormons
lived for several years, and then went to Missouri, whence they were
expelled, partly because they were an antislavery people. In 1840 they
settled on the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois and built the town
of Nauvoo. At Nauvoo they remained till 1846, when, having adopted
polygamy, they were driven off by the people of Illinois, and, led by
Brigham Young, marched to Council Bluffs, in Iowa. There they stopped to
look about them for a safe place of abode, and finally, in 1847, left
Council Bluffs for Great Salt Lake, then in the dominions of Mexico.[1]

[Footnote 1: Kennedy's _Early Days of Mormonism_.]

SUMMARY

1. The rise of the new states in the West, and the appearance of the
steamboat on the Mississippi, were the causes of a great revival of
public interest in internal improvements.

2. The first to build a great western highway was New York state, which,
between 1817 and 1825, built the Erie Canal.

3. This cut down the cost of moving freight to the West, led to
settlement along the banks of the canal, and made New York city the
metropolis of the country.

4. It was during this period, 1815-1830, that many inventions,
discoveries, and improvements were made in the arts and sciences.

5. The railroad was introduced, and the steam locomotive successfully
used.

6. The cities grew, and in New York the omnibus and the street car began
to be used.

The movement of population into the West.--The formation of new states
there.--The rise of manufactures in the East.--The fine market the West
offers for the products and importations of the Eastern States.

* * * * *

Lead to great rivalry between the Atlantic seaboard cities for Western
trade.

* * * * *

This rivalry leads to the development of three routes to the West.

_The New York Route._

1807. Steamboats on the Hudson.
1817-25. Erie Canal
1818. Steamboats on the Lakes.
Chautauqua Lake and Allegheny valley.
Effect of Erie Canal.

_The Pennsylvania Route._

Old Conestoga wagons.
Effect of Erie Canal.
1827. Pennsylvania state canals and railroads.
The Portage Railroad.

_The Baltimore Route._

1828. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad commenced.

* * * * *

The expansion of the country.--The development of the steamboat, the
railroad, and manufactures, and the increased opportunities for
doing business.

* * * * *

Lead to demand for labor-saving and time-saving machinery.

Hard-coal grate and stove.
Fire bricks.
Paper made from straw.
Brick-making machine.
Planing machine.
Platform scales.
Reaping machine.
Colt's revolver.
Sewing machine (Hunt).
Steel pens.
Threshing machine.
Telegraph (electric).
Steam printing press.
Matches, etc., etc.

CHAPTER XXIII

POLITICS FROM 1824 TO 1845

%325. New Political Institutions.%--Of the political leaders of
Washington's time few were left in 1825. The men who then conducted
affairs had almost all been born since the Revolution, or were children
at the time.[1] The same is true of the mass of the people. They too had
been born since the Revolution, and, growing up under different
conditions, held ideas very different from the men who went before them.
They were more democratic and much less aristocratic, more humane, more
practical. They abolished the old and cruel punishments, such as
branding the cheeks and foreheads of criminals with letters, cutting off
their ears, putting them in the pillory and the stocks; they partly
abolished imprisonment for debt; they established free schools,
reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries. They amended their state
constitutions or made new ones, and extended the right to vote, and
introduced new political institutions, some of which were of doubtful
value, but are still used.

[Footnote 1: John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson were born in 1767;
Henry Clay, in 1777; John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren,
and Thomas H. Benton, in 1782.]

%326. Political Proscription; the Gerrymander.%--One of these was the
custom of turning men out of public office because they did not belong
to the party in power, or did not "work" for the election of the
successful candidate. As early as 1792 this vicious practice was in use
in Pennsylvania, and a few years later was introduced in New York by De
Witt Clinton. Jefferson resorted to it when he became President, but it
was not till 1820 that it was firmly established by Congress. In that
year William H. Crawford, who was Secretary of the Treasury and a
presidential candidate, secured the passage of a "tenure of office" act,
limiting the term of collectors of revenue, and a host of other
officials, to four years, and thus made the appointments to these places
rewards for political service.

Another institution dating from this time is the gerrymander. In 1812,
when Elbridge Gerry was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, his
party, finding that at the next election they would lose the
governorship and the House of Representatives, decided to hold the
Senate by marking out new senatorial districts. In doing this they drew
the lines in such wise that districts where there were large Federalist
majorities were cut in two, and the parts annexed to other districts,
where there were yet larger Republican majorities.

[Illustration]

The story is told that a map of the Essex senatorial district was
hanging on the office wall of the editor of the _Columbian Centinel_,
when a famous artist named Stuart entered. Struck by the peculiar
outline of the towns forming the district, he added a head, wings, and
claws with his pencil, and turning to the editor, said: "There, that
will do for a salamander." "Better say a Gerrymander," returned the
editor, alluding to Elbridge Gerry, the Republican governor who had
signed the districting act. However this may be, it is certain that the
name "gerrymander" was applied to the odious law in the columns of the
_Centinel_, that it came rapidly into use, and has remained in our
political nomenclature ever since. Indeed, a huge cut of the monster was
prepared, and the next year was scattered as a broadside over the
commonwealth, and so aroused the people that in the spring of 1813,
despite the gerrymander, the Federalists recovered control of the
Senate, and repealed the law. But the example was set, and was quickly
imitated in New Jersey, New York, and Maryland. This established the
institution, and it has been used over and over again to this day.

%327. The Third-term Tradition.%--Another political custom which had
grown to have the force of law was that of never electing a President to
three terms. There is nothing in the Constitution to prevent a President
serving any number of terms; but, as we have seen, when Washington
finished his second he declined another, and when Jefferson (in
1807-1808) was asked by the legislatures of several states to accept a
third term, he declined, and very seriously advised the people never to
elect any man President more than twice.[1] The example so set was
followed by Madison and Monroe and had thus by 1824 become an
established usage.

[Footnote 1: McMaster's _With the Fathers,_ pp. 64-70.]

%328. New Political Issues.%--The most important change of all was
the rise of new political issues. We have seen how the financial
questions which divided the people in 1790-1792 and gave rise to the
Federalist and Republican parties, were replaced during the wars between
England and France by the question, "Shall the United States be
neutral?" It was not until the end of our second war with Great Britain
that we were again free to attend to our home affairs.

During the long embargo and the war, manufactures had arisen, and one
question now became, "Shall home manufactures be encouraged?" With the
rapid settlement of the Mississippi valley and the demand for roads,
canals, and river improvements by which trade might be carried on with
the West, there arose a second political question: "Shall these internal
improvements be made at government expense?"

Now the people of the different sections of the country were not of one
mind on these questions. The Middle States and Kentucky and some parts
of New England wanted manufactures encouraged. In the West and the
Middle States people were in favor of internal improvements at the cost
of the government. In the South Atlantic States, where tobacco and
cotton and rice were raised and shipped (especially the cotton) to
England, people cared nothing for manufactures, nothing for internal
improvements.

%329. Presidential Candidates in 1824.%--This diversity of opinion on
questions of vital importance had much to do with the breaking up of the
Republican party into sectional factions after 1820. The ambition of
leaders in these sections helped on the disruption, so that between 1821
and 1824 four men, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Henry Clay of
Kentucky, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, John C. Calhoun of South
Carolina, were nominated for President by state legislatures or state
nominating conventions, by mass meeting or by gatherings of men who had
assembled for other purposes but seized the occasion to indorse or
propose a candidate. A fifth, William H. Crawford, was nominated by the
congressional caucus, which then acted for the last time in our history.

Before election day this list was reduced to four: Calhoun had become
the candidate of all factions for the vice presidency.

[Illustration: John Quincy Adams]

%330. Adams elected by the House of Representatives.%--The
Constitution provides that no man is chosen President by the electors
who does not receive a majority of their votes. In 1824 Jackson received
ninety-nine; Adams, eighty-four; Crawford, forty-one; and Clay,
thirty-seven. There was, therefore, no election, and it became the duty
of the House of Representatives to make a choice. But according to the
Constitution only the three highest could come before the House. This
left out Clay, who was Speaker and who had great influence. His friends
would not vote for Jackson on any account, nor for Crawford, the
caucus candidate. Adams they liked, because he believed in internal
improvements at government expense and a protective tariff. Adams
accordingly was elected President. Calhoun had been elected Vice
President by the electoral college.

[Illustration: The United States July 4, 1826]

The election of John Quincy Adams was a matter of intense disappointment
to the friends of Jackson. In the heat of party passion and the
bitterness of their disappointment they declared that it was the result
of a bargain between Adams and Clay. Clay, they said, was to induce his
friends in the House of Representatives to vote for Adams, in return for
which Adams was to make Clay Secretary of State. No such bargain was
ever made. But when Adams did appoint Clay Secretary of State, Jackson
and his followers were fully convinced of the contrary[1].

[Footnote 1: Parton's _Life of Jackson_, Chap. 10; Schurz's _Life of
Clay_, Vol. I., pp. 203-258]

As a consequence, the legislature of Tennessee at once renominated
Jackson for the presidency, and he became the people's candidate and
drew about him not only the men who voted for him in 1824, but those
also who had voted for Crawford, who was paralyzed and no longer a
candidate. They called themselves "Jackson men," or Democratic
Republicans.

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