American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  It was with relief as well as pride that the President of the United States could write to Gouverneur Morris, on October 13, 1789, that the “national government is organized.…

  Two days later, the President left on a formal tour of the “Eastern” states—Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. He had “hope of perfectly reestablishing my health,” he wrote Jefferson, which a “series of indispositions”—mainly anthrax—“has much impaired.” How a trip into the New England states, in a carriage jolting over rocky roads and disgorging its passengers at every large river and quagmire, could restore haleness only a military man and plantation rider could understand. Actually, Washington had other reasons for his journey: he wanted to make a show of federal authority and leadership among people who had not yet fully accepted the new Constitution; and he was curious about agriculture and manufacturing and the “face of the Country.” Accompanied by Hamilton, Knox, and Jay for some distance out of the city, he continued with his retinue of two secretaries and six servants.

  It was rainy, that first day, and the road was rough and stony as the party proceeded through New Rochelle and Mamaroneck, but Washington was impressed by the droves of fine beef cattle and the flocks of sheep on the way to the New York market, the Indian corn and pumpkins lying yet ungathered in the fields, and widow Haviland’s “neat and decent Inn” in Rye, where they put up for the night. But next day, crossing over into Connecticut, he was even more taken by the superb landscapes on the road from Stamford to Norwalk and Fairfield, though saddened by “the Destructive evidences of British cruelty”—burned-out houses with gaunt-chimneys still standing. He noted that vessels of seventy-five tons or so could make their way up rivers to many of the towns through which he passed. The ports served mainly a coastal and West Indian trade, as local farmers bartered their grain and meat for imported articles.

  Washington took the lower road into New Haven and hence missed the usual delegation braced to greet him with flowery speeches of welcome, but he found a bustling town with several Episcopalian and Congregational churches, a number of manufactories, and Yale College, then numbering 120 students. Among those welcoming him were members of the small elite who ran the town, merchants, clerics, and college faculty, but this Federalist political leadership was already beginning to meet opposition. At the bottom of the social ladder was a body of slaves—over four hundred in New Haven County—who worked mainly in fields and households but also helped in lumbering, whaling, and fishing. The slave trade, but not slavery, had been abolished in Connecticut. President Ezra Stiles of Yale would found an antislavery society the year after Washington’s visit.

  Daily the Virginia planter noted the quality of the crops, the nature of the roads, the number of bushels of wheat or corn the farmers were getting from their acres, the gristmills and sawmills, the quality of the food and beds in the taverns. In Wallingford he was fascinated to “see the white Mulberry growing, raised from the seed, to feed the silkworm,” he wrote in his diary. “We also saw samples of lustring”—a glossy, heavy silk—“(exceeding good) which had been manufactured from the Cocoon raised in this Town, and silk thread very fine. This, except the weaving, is the work of private families, without interference with other business, and is likely to turn out a beneficial amusement.”

  Hartford had furnished Washington with his inaugural suit, and the President was eager to see Colonel Wadsworth’s “Woolen Manufactory.” Escorted by the colonel himself, he found a lively establishment that, after years of coping with untutored workers, inadequate machinery, and heavy mortgages, was now producing 5,000 yards of woolen goods a year at $5 a yard. Washington had been trying to encourage Americans to buy clothes made in the United States, but he had to admit that domestic “Broadcloths” were not of the best quality, though good enough, as were the “Cassimeres” and serges. Indeed, he purchased a suit of broadcloth to be sent to him in New York. Hartford also had cotton and paper mills, and a glass factory that had fallen on hard times and whose losses had to be made up through a lottery.

  Hugging the western bank of the Connecticut River, and moving across the state border into Massachusetts, the President proceeded through more rain into Springfield, a town in many ways like Hartford. While dinner was being readied at the famous tavern of Zeno Parsons, Washington toured the federal arsenal—probably the same one that Shays’s men had attacked less than two years before. He found the brick powder magazine in good repair and the powder dry.

  The next morning he headed along another rocky road, through forests of pine and oak, to Palmer and Spencer and Worcester. Isaac Jenks’s tavern in Spencer, which Washington noted down as a “pretty good Tavern,” was fairly typical of the inns in which Washington stayed; it charged 14p for tea, cider, punch, lodgings, and a dinner of roast beef, vegetables, and tankards of ale. Washington found the supper “only passable,” but “one could scarcely complain.”

  Through his carriage window, Washington constantly studied the unfolding countryside. He had noted a “great equality in the People” as he passed through Connecticut and the Connecticut Valley. “Few or no opulent men—and no poor….” The land was generally more stony and sandy as he traveled east through Massachusetts. Rocky and hilly and infertile indeed was much of New England land, resulting in steady migration to more fructuous country to the west. Parents and children labored in the fields from dawn to dusk during the long spring and summer days. The small farm, a historian observed, was an unsurpassed school for boyhood but an intellectual prison for manhood.

  Welcoming escorts multiplied as Washington and his party passed through Worcester and neared Boston. Doubtless he expected the usual protocol as he entered that metropolis, but he could hardly have anticipated the mock comedy that ensued. Both the town fathers of Boston and the state authorities of Massachusetts—the latter headed by the redoubtable lieutenant governor, old Sam Adams—were at hand at the Boston line to greet the President. An unseemly quarrel broke out between city and state as to who held the right to offer the welcome. While the President waited, mounted officials crowded in around him, endangering children who were to take part in the ceremony; only after Washington climbed upon his horse and threatened to ride off did the state officials give way to the local.

  Worse was to come. Washington had declined John Hancock’s invitation to stay at the Governor’s House on the ground that he had resolved on leaving New York not to put private individuals to any trouble; and he had declined to review the state militia on the ground that he should not establish even the faintest precedent of a President reviewing a state’s troops. Whether out of personal pique or out of his own anti-Federalist proclivities, Governor Hancock, pleading an attack of the gout, failed to call on the President after Washington was settled in his lodgings. The President, in turn, promptly canceled his earlier acceptance of Hancock’s invitation to dine, and settled down to dinner in his own lodgings with John Adams. President or governor had to yield, and it was the governor. Next day four husky men carried Hancock, swathed in bandages, and profuse with apologies, across Washington’s threshold.

  Behind these seemingly trivial episodes lay momentous conflicts over the respective powers and status of the federal and state governments, and behind those conflicts lay even deeper issues of principle and power. It was not surprising that a contest between state and local officials, and a showdown between national and state officials, should take place in Boston, for in no city in the nation had passions run so high, or memories of past battles continued more unclouded. With its many newspapers, its associations of tradesmen, its numerous churches, its humane societies, its great number of factories making dozens of products, Boston sustained a vigorous political culture. And Boston could boast of Harvard, next door in Cambridge. Founded in 1636, Harvard had more than sixty years’ lead over Yale (1701) and more than a century over Brown (1764) and Dartmouth (1769). College curricula had broadened after the Revolution to include extensive studies in the natural and physical sciences, m
odern foreign languages, law, rudimentary social science, and even a premedical program for future doctors.

  North of Boston was one of the most developed stretches on the American coast. After a final, exhausting tour of a cotton duck mill, a playing card factory (“63,000 pr. of Cards in a year,” Washington noted), and huge French gunships in Boston Harbor, Washington struck out north over the famous bridge in Charlestown. Rapidly, he moved through Lynn, which claimed to turn out 175,000 pairs of shoes a year; through Marblehead, where eight hundred men and boys and over a hundred vessels were engaged in fishing; through Salem, already a historic town, now exporting fish and lumber in the East India trade; to Beverly. In this last town the President visited John and George Cabot’s cotton manufactory and studied for some time the precision machinery that could spin eighty-four threads at a time, double and twist threads for particular cloths, wind cotton from the spindles and prepare it for the warp, and turn out what seemed to the President to be superior cotton goods. He made no mention of the Beverly labor force in his diary; in Boston he had noted that “girls of Character” along with “daughters of decayed families” worked ten hours a day on a piece-rate basis. Some girls turned the wheels for twenty-eight looms, while others were spinning with both hands, the flax fastened to their waists.

  Soon Washington was off again, to Newburyport, in the northeastern corner of Massachusetts, and to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, twenty miles beyond. Both these towns were noted for shipbuilding. New England shipbuilders bragged that their vessels, while smaller than English or European, sailed faster, beat well to the windward, could hug the shores better, and were generally safer. But the Yankees admitted that they had sold a lot of ships, especially before the Revolution, that had not been constructed of seasoned timber. Hemp, cordage, sailcloth, fittings, and much else were often imported from Europe. The problem in both cases, shipbuilders contended, was capital. Thus New Hampshire had iron ore and ironworks, but they were not sufficiently developed. Builders knew that they should season their timber, as the English did, but they could not afford to store it for long months before use. Portsmouth had taverns, ropeworks, a sawmill—but no bank.

  After a boat ride around the Portsmouth anchorage, a brief stop in Kittery, Maine—his farthest point north—and more entertainment, receptions, and addresses, the President started back toward New York. He was weary of travel, and the return trip seemed long and trying—especially because of the New England ban on Sunday travel—but there were some diversions. In Andover he visited a small private school and in Lexington he viewed the Green, “the spot on which the first blood was spilt in the dispute with Great Britain, on the 19th of April, 1775.” The President could observe interesting contrasts in the Andover and Lexington schools. Phillips Academy of Andover had opened in 1778 in a “rehabilitated carpenter’s shop.” Its several dozen students boarded with local families, paid a modest entrance fee, and studied such an array of “the Liberal Arts, Sciences, or Languages as opportunity and ability may hereafter admit.” Lexington had a “free school,” but not altogether free; pupils had to pay a small charge and furnish two feet of wood annually for the fire. There was a separate “Dame’s School” for girls, who had far less educational opportunity than boys. New England was still the only region that could claim anything resembling a public school system. Massachusetts had just established a district-by-district school system, but sparsely settled areas were ill served. Teaching consisted mainly of memorization, recitation, and repetition.

  On Friday, November 13, 1789, Washington was back in New York, where he found Martha and the rest of the family well. There was a towering pile of mail.

  THE NEW YORKERS

  The national government had begun its life in a noble building surrounded by stir and squalor.

  Federal Hall was the hub of government. Even in 1789 this was already a historic place. Built as City Hall at the start of the century, it had housed New York’s Revolutionary government until the British Navy arrived off Staten Island. It was here that the Provincial Congress had met, and here that General Washington had made a famous speech in which he assured New Yorkers worried about a military dictatorship that he and his soldiers would “rejoice with you in that happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty” would enable the soldiers to return to their private stations. The Confederation Congress had met in this hall, and now the first Congress of the United States occupied its remodeled rooms. Each house had its chamber. The representatives met in a spacious octagonal room with fireplaces and large windows, under Ionic columns and pilasters. Their chairs and desks ranged semicircularly facing the Speaker’s chair. The Senate chamber was smaller, and superbly carpeted and marbled.

  Outside pounded the beat of people’s daily lives and work. In the area of Broad and Wall streets, the day would start with the cry of “Milk, ho! Milk, ho!” from milkmen or milkmaids who brought their produce by boat from Long Island or New Jersey and now carried it in two buckets hanging from a yoke. Then there might come chimney sweeps calling out “Sweep, ho! Sweep ho!” After that might appear knife grinders, lamp menders, orange girls, ragmen, wood vendors, all with their distinctive cries. Hogs rooted through the garbage-clogged gutters, cows wandered up and down Broadway, horses’ hooves clattered on the cobbled streets. People bustled out of boardinghouses and into taverns and groceries, into the shops of tailors, cobblers, tobacconists, wigmakers, haberdashers, hatters, attorneys. Sometimes the racket was so great that it drowned out the debate in Congress and forced the closing of windows in Federal Hall.

  At the close of their deliberations each day, senators and representatives threaded their way through the clamorous streets to coffeehouses, taverns, and boardinghouses. Turning left down Wall Street would take the hungry lawmaker past the Bank of New York to Tontine’s, where he would find food and drink and also encounter brokers trading in securities and in loaf sugar, Jamaica rum, and other commodities. Or he could stroll down Broad Street—as wide as its name suggested—to Fraunces’ Tavern and then on to Battery Park and South Ferry. More often he would turn west from Federal Hall and head toward the newly rebuilt Trinity Church and then move north on Broadway toward Maiden Lane and the theater and recreation districts. Along the way he had a choice of taverns to stop by for newspapers, gossip, and travelers’ reports from Philadelphia and Boston.

  Packed into this area of barely one-half square mile was the political leadership of the young nation and the financial center of much of the Northeast. The most celebrated leader, George Washington, lived and worked at 39 Broadway; after ten months at his Cherry Street house, he decided to move to a more commodious and convenient mansion downtown. While professing to disdain “the glare which hovers around the external trappings of elevated office,” he continued to work hard and with relish at establishing the presence of the presidency.

  A formal procession by the President to Federal Hall to address Congress was a sight to behold: two uniformed military aides on prancing white horses, then Washington’s magnificent coach-and-six, followed by another aide and then by carriages containing the Chief Justice and cabinet members. Afternoons, when his work was done and the weather seemed fine, Washington promenaded on the Battery along with other notables. His Friday-evening receptions were rather stiff and formal, but his social dinners were the talk of the town—especially the one at which a lady’s ostrich plumes caught fire from a chandelier and were rescued by an aide-decamp. On social occasions the President would enter dressed in black velvet and satin, his diamond knee buckles gleaming, his wig well powdered, a military hat on his head, and a dress sword hanging at his side.

  Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton lived at 58 Wall Street at about this time, Secretary of State Jefferson on Maiden Lane, Secretary of War and Mrs. Knox on lower Broadway, where Attorney General Randolph and his wife also resided. The John Jays, who were second only to the Washingtons as social arbiters of the federal capital, had a three-story dwelling farther north on Broadway. The cabinet
members worked at home or in law offices; there was no central executive headquarters. John and Abigail Adams continued to enjoy their Richmond Hill mansion on the southeast corner of Varick and Charlton streets, amid old oaks and flowering shrubs. Most of the government clerks, copiers, attorneys, customs house employees, and military officers, along with congressmen with lesser social connections, lived in rented rooms and boardinghouses throughout southern Manhattan.

  Sundays the President set an example for his Administration officials by worshipping at Trinity Church, once it had been restored after a devastating fire. While Trinity was being rebuilt the President attended St. Paul’s Chapel, farther up Broadway, where he had a pew. Samuel Provoost, bishop of New York and chaplain of Congress, conducted special services at the church. Trinity had a political history: “pro-Tory” leaders had tried to keep control of the church after the Revolution, but their Loyalist rector had been ousted by patriots, who then installed Provoost.

  New Yorkers also worshipped at Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, and German Calvinist Reformed churches. Quakers were a small but influential sect. During English rule Catholics had worshipped secretly in a Jesuit father’s home, but after the Revolution, buoyed by the repeal of anti-Catholic measures, Father William O’Brien raised funds in Mexico and elsewhere to build St. Peter’s Church. Jews too had suffered disabilities during the colonial period, and many had fled to Philadelphia during the British occupation, but now they were returning and building a small but enduring congregation under the leadership of Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas.

  Taverns, groggeries, and porterhouses—over four hundred in the whole city—vastly outnumbered the churches, but these were far more than tippling havens. They served as public meeting houses, polling places, club and society headquarters, centers for news about ships, foreign events, commodity prices. Taverns catered to all tastes, prices, and classes. Some were the scenes of formal entertainments and public celebrations, attended by the fashionable; the City Tavern, on Broadway, was respectable enough to house court sessions. Others offered—illegally—games of cards and dice, billiard tables, shuffleboards, and cockfighting. Some hotels and taverns provided board and lodging for eight dollars a week.