The Constitution as a Resort for Shoppers in Civil Rights.—Every Kind of Article to be found either for Ordinary or Exceptional Use.—The Fringe called Preamble; its Thread, Texture, and Quality.—Counterfeit Patterns and Simulations easily detected.—Piles of heavy Cloths for the Country’s Winter Use in War, Financial Storms, etc.—Executive and Legislative Ready-made Clothing.—Judicial White Goods.—Hosiery for Congressional Understandings, swift or slow.—A Variety of Miscellaneous Wares; Contrivances for catching People with Colored Skins; Habeas Corpus Non-Suspenders; Muzzles for violent or hungry Congressmen; Handsome Checks on the Treasury; Specimens of tender Gold and Silver; Militia Uniforms; Padlocks for securing Houses against Searches; Jury-Boxes, Trial Balances, and other Goods.—The Sumner Patent.—The latest Novelty to prevent Electoral Black-and-White Suits from being stripped off.—State-Rights Dresses, and strong Federal Out-Fits.—Messrs. Calhoun, J. Davis, Webster, Clay, etc.—The Manufacture of bright Buttons, called “Coins.”—The Fifteenth Amendment.—Doubtful Packages.—Paper Money as a Substitute for real Money.—Unauthorized Use of the Constitutional Bazaar.—Seekers of Goods never made.—Nicholas Biddle and his Gold Suit.—Everybody suited at the Federal Store.—Of excessively sharp and dense-headed Shoppers.—How Articles are mistaken.—Water-proof Goods for River and Harbor Dredging and for Lighting Coasts.—Of long Selvedges, or Railroad Strips, and their wonderful Elasticity.—Rights and Lefts.

What Stewart’s New York emporium is to shoppers for goods, the Constitution of the United States is to shoppers for civil and political rights. There one may find whatever he is in quest of, and may very often see things, beautiful in texture, color, and quality, which he would never require, even if he lived as long as his long-winded ancestor Methuselah. On his very first entrance, he will stop to look at that very handsome fringe, “the preamble,” woven together in such exquisite tissue-work. As he examines it, he will note the quality of the material, the even strands “more perfect union,” “justice,” “domestic tranquillity,” “common defence,” “general welfare,” “blessings of liberty,” braided together by the deft, expert, and strong fingers of the people of the United States “for themselves” and “their posterity,”—a bit of domestic hand-weaving which has now lasted over fourscore years, and is still bright in color, and, although much handled and tumbled about, just as good as new. Patterns have been taken from it, and cheap imitations attempted; but these latter are just as easy of detection as cottonized linen, dyed hair, or carminized blushes.

There, too, one finds readily and in abundance heavy cloths for the country’s wear through the wintry storms of financial distress, foreign wars, or domestic insurrection; ready-made clothing for legislative and executive use; white linen goods for the judges, as stainless as snow, although not quite as cheap; a great variety of under-garments to fit the powers of Congress, and a large assortment of hosiery to encase with restrictive woof its rapid understandings.

As one advances, he finds a miscellaneous collection of rights; patent contrivances to give people in one State the same expansion, weight, and solidity as in another; admirably adjusted devices for catching persons with colored skins, when attempting to run off with them over boundary lines,—a device ingeniously stamped “labor-saving machines,”—an article in great demand between 1850 and 1861 in the southern portion of the Union. On the same counter lie habeas corpus non-suspenders, a strap occasionally called for by passionate judges and choleric magistrates; tacks, which can only be driven in all over the surface of America up to the same point; muzzles over legislative bills and hungry congressmen, to prevent them from pecking at the estates of people politically decapitated, and from whetting up the keen edge of ex post facto laws; handsome checks on the treasury; good bills of lading, current in all the ports of the Union, if at any time introduced in any one of them; specimens of gold and silver, made very tender in all the States, especially during a time of plenty, and before a war; and a large variety of odd gear, to prevent people from getting into, or, if in, out of, trouble.

Proceeding to the rear of our Constitutional bazaar, the shopper will find the very latest styles and modes of civil rights; pieces adapted to dress and re-dress pulpits and printing-presses; militia uniforms; arms without quarterings; padlocks to secure houses from being entered and searched; devices to keep property from being taken for public use without proper payment; jury-boxes and trial balances.

But the very latest article added to this great emporium is a curious contrivance, said to have been invented by a Down-Easter named Sumner, for preventing one man, even if he be draped in a mourning skin, from being owned by another man. Of course it would strike any one but an American as a very needless article, especially out of place among staple goods, and one which ought never to be called for in a country which takes such pains and pride to claim and proclaim that other invention of a man down South, called Jefferson, whereby one man is made equal to every other man. Still, it is well known that the Sumner unclasping machine is a very useful one, and well supplies a need long felt.

Attempts are now made, as we write, to introduce into public use another article, called the Fifteenth Amendment, and to put upon it the Constitutional patent-mark, an article which is calculated to hinder any evilly disposed person from stripping off from another at election time,—a period when a certain strange rabies seizes Americans and makes them inclined to tear each other and their clothing,—their electoral vestments, or voting suits, especially if they do not suit them. The new pattern is black and white, and although it has had as yet a checkered fate,—some preferring it all white, some all black, others white with a leaden-colored border,—it is thought by shrewd buyers that the novelty will soon come into general use. These last-named goods are far from being fashionable at the South.

One of the most surprising characteristics of our fashionable Constitutional shopping-place is, that everybody finds here just the article to suit his taste, judgment, and even his fancy, whimsical as it may be. If Mr. J. C. Calhoun or Mr. J. Davis wants a complete outfit for States rights, he walks in, and has no difficulty in finding it just to his liking, and in a considerable variety of shades and materials. He puts his hand on one of the new styles marked “Article X,” and is confirmed in his choice by reading upon the label the manufacturer’s description: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” He turns around, and, traversing other departments, discovers sundry other articles of like style to match these. He also lights upon more gauzy, thin, or fine-spun, fleecier goods to throw around the exposed shoulders of the States.

On the other hand, if Mr. D. Webster or Mr. H. Clay desires a thorough suit for the central Federal figure of Uncle Samuel, he is shown directly to the sections where he can procure quantities of them; hats to cover banking brains; coats and vests to put over the inner works, to aid digestion and promote internal improvement; pants, hosiery, and boots to keep up our Uncle’s advancing strides over mountains, plains, and rivers. Such customers are, of course, walked up directly to section eight, and there are shown in a large box ample and well-made garments of the desired description. On the top of this box the fabricators have put this explanation: “To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.”

It was supposed by many of the original members of the firm, who got up this grand Constitutional bazaar, that Uncle Sam’s concern had the exclusive right to make those bright, popular buttons called “coin,” or “money”; but it was discovered in a very short time that there was an elastic provision in the articles of copartnership, which allowed the individual members of the firm to manufacture, each on his own account, these shining disks, and even to invent and put forth for sale paper substitutes, which at length became so much in vogue as to drive the metallic article, at times, wholly out of the market. Paper collars have not had a livelier run, nor damper shrinkages than these.

Statements are often put forth by people sitting on benches and having a grave, sometimes a grave-clothes air, doubting the right of the Federal store to stamp exclusively and to put out for its own particular profit, a variety of things, kept there in well-locked sections; it being claimed that the composing members have a concurrent power to make, stamp, and vend the same goods. On some of these points the discussion is still going on, and as the partners are a jealous, sharp set, it is not likely soon to terminate.

Much trouble has arisen in regard to a large number of bills of credit which have been issued by, and are still outstanding against, the large Federal concern. Some have questioned their power to manufacture this kind of paper and make it equal to hard coin. Others have doubted the legality of the step which the firm took in making this paper good for certain purposes, and not receivable as pay for certain kinds of debts due to the house, arguing that if coin was better than paper, then the paper could not justly be made an equivalent; and if no better, then that paper ought in all cases to be received as well by the firm as by others. After much argument before them, however, that popular court, the ballot, gave a verdict against those who so reasoned, and rendered a decree that, if there were no other good reasons, the arguments pro interesse suo and ad necessitatem, especially when impelled by the motor of war, were too convincing to be set aside, and so legalized the discrimination.

Very many people make an unauthorized use of the bazaar. They go in for articles so absurd, so trifling, or so unusual, that all the clerks laugh outright, as soon as the inquiries are made. Some people, especially members of Congress, candidates for office, small lawyers, raised by short hand-levers up towards a large occasion, which they find it difficult to reach, when talking of the things themselves, their own pockets, or their chances of offices and places, assert, when told that such things do not exist, that they can find them in the old Constitutional store.

Accordingly, they post thither, and make themselves ridiculous or disagreeable, by tumbling over and soiling the goods that lie there in honest piles, to find their peculiar article. Some of these shoppers last mentioned are very keen-eyed, gifted with those optics spoken of by Hudibras, which see

and fancy that they see, in their mind’s eye, patterns of what they are after, when in truth the patterns are not at all similar. If the goods found are speckled, checked, spotted, or figured, and the sample which they have brought has any specks, checks, spots, or figures in it, bearing the most general resemblance, but readily distinguishable from the goods inspected by any the most careless observer, if disinterested, they hasten away and proclaim very loudly that the same goods, of precisely the same material, color, make, and style, are found in heaps in the Constitutional shop. There is nothing so sharp as such eyes, except the single eye to the public good.

So, on the other hand, obtuse, dense-headed observers, unaccustomed to make distinctions, rush to the Constitutional with confused or ill-defined recollections of the patterns or styles they want, and buy and bring away packages of goods which, when exposed to a clear light, are at once seen to be wholly dissimilar. As in large stores, some people become confused by the variety, and select at random, or in a perplexed glamour, articles to match pieces at home either in color, texture, or quality, and assent with a mixed mind to the adroit suggestions of the salesman; so in the various sections into which our Constitutional store is divided up, many good people, even deacons, vestry-men, the annual subscriber to missionary papers, and systematic charity bestowers, become, in the shifting cross-lights of commentaries, and remarks of story-tellers and others, as confused and astray in their notions, and lose their own not over-strong heads as completely as congressmen at an evening session, or the President during the closing hours of the last night of the congressional barbecue.

There is no store so much talked about all over the United States as this Constitutional one; and there are no goods so generally used or so popular as those which are either actually obtained there, or fancied to be in it for sale. Nicholas Biddle once got a gold-colored suit there which he wore in and around the vaults of the United States Bank, in Philadelphia, from 1816 to 1836; but General Jackson, for various reasons, some of which were very peculiar and of a hickory color, others as sound as oak, took such a dislike to it, that he finally persuaded the people that it was a very poor suit, and, in fact, never came from the Constitutional store, but was a deceptive imitation of goods there.

Many persons have gone to the Federal store, to procure water-proof constitutional goods, to wear in dredging rivers and harbors, in laying down watery ways across States, and when at work on the coast, or exposed to the chilling winds from State capitols. Others insist upon purchasing there, also, long selvedges, or narrow, iron-colored strips, which some declare to be very excellent material for binding States; while others assert that it is only calculated for hemming them in uncomfortably. Some of these strips have a very elastic element in them, and can be made to stretch in parallel lines from Washington to the farthest border of the Union. The bands, or bindings, which they use, are also wonderfully elastic, and can be multiplied like stars to the bewildering gaze of an enthusiastic drinker.

On the whole, it may be said, that while this great American store contains piles of invaluable goods, it is supposed by intelligent persons to hold more rights than were ever left to men.

How the Thirteen Colonial Children crept into their New Bed.—The Upholstering described.—Why Rhode Island was last in.—Who tucked her up.—Washington as Superintendent, and John Adams as First Assistant.—The Family low in Credit.—Amount of their Indebtedness compared with ours.—Washington’s Inaugural.—His Exemption, from Office Beggars, Committees, Pugilistic M. C.’s, boring Place-Seekers, enterprising Donors, etc.—Washington as a Spirit.—His Capacity to select a Cabinet.—Who they were.—Of Henry Knox.—The Chief Justice and Attorney-General.—Amendments to a perfect Constitution.—The Supreme Court as a Sound, Seaworthy Tribunal.—Why States cannot be sued by Individuals.—How Governments get around paying Interest on Principle.—Streaks of the Millennium.—Of the Public Debt.—Discrimination among Creditors.—Misfortune of being a Cisatlantic Holder of American Bonds.—Alexander Hamilton’s Notions.—Washington’s Receptions and Dinner-Parties.—The Political Color of the President’s Silver Spoons and Window Curtains.—The Honeymoon of the new Government disturbed.—Ganderous Long-bills splash Washington.—The French Revolution and its Conundrums.—How answered by Washington and the Federals; how by Jefferson and the Anti-Federals.—The Census Act procures names without Owners.—The Naturalization Laws and their Pat-riot Products.—Polls and Polling-Places.—A Sinking Fund that did not sink.—How Vermont made the Thirteen States old.—An Indian War.—Cincinnati begins.—Kentucky starts.—Mistakes about Bourbon.—Washington’s second Term.—What Genet did, and how he was done for.—Helpful Americans.—The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.—The Year of Treaties; how they enlarged while they tied us.—Tennessee the Sixteenth State.—Nashville gets warm.—Washington’s Farewell, and its cheap Imitations.—The Shades of Office.—Who crept in and who stepped into the Sunshine.

The thirteen colonial children, emancipated from parental mis-government in 1783, tired of sleeping together in the same old, rickety confederate bed, which had been hastily put together in 1777, and whose cords they found so small and hard as to cut through the thin mattress above, and so weak as to creak and threaten to go down under them, whenever they stirred or even spoke above a whisper, at last, in 1789, obtained a new first-class constitutional bedstead. It was wide and roomy, with even, strong springs, and was easy to get in and out of, as well as very comely in shape, and well polished externally.

This new article was, however, not decided upon by all the thirteen immediately. It was spoken for in 1787, and, during that and the next year, eleven signified their preference for it over the old tumble-down rumbly. Little Rhody was the baby in the old family, and, fearing to be overlaid and perhaps smothered by her larger bedfellows, did not crawl under the sheets of the newly upholstered bed until 1790; and not until New York and Virginia had agreed to be content with a fixed amount of bedclothing, instead of claiming, for themselves, that large Western comforter, those earth-colored strips, of the empire pattern, extending to the Pacific side of the bed, and large enough to cut up into a dozen good-sized State counterpanes.

It was not necessary that this youngster,—nor yet North Carolina, who got in the year before,—should consent, in order to complete the change of arrangements from the old Confederate to the new Constitutional system; but as it was an affectionate and generous-hearted family, there was a general desire to conciliate all the members. And so when little Rhody got in and curled up, she was joyfully tucked in by that good old faithful American “help,” Washington, a great favorite, who had been so long in the family that he was loved by every one, and so generous and right-minded that, although several of the other domestics, such as Major John Armstrong and others, who had worked on very low wages with him through the war, proposed to him to take the house himself as proprietor, he indignantly refused so to use or abuse the affectionate trust of the household.

Washington was, however, unanimously chosen Chief Superintendent, and our short, stout, resolute acquaintance, John Adams, whom we met at the top of the hill, July 4, 1776, was made his first assistant.

The family now set up housekeeping. Like most families in the United States, they were at the outset poor. They were especially low in credit; for in consequence of the issue by the Continental Congresses, during the war, of about $300,000,000 of paper money, its value had so depreciated that it became of little use except to line trunks or to patch up chambers as ruinous as itself. They were also greatly in debt, owing at home and abroad $79,463,476,—a debt which, instead of being paid off or even reduced, grew, in spite of every economy, good judgment, and excellent management, for the next seventeen years, and was not fully discharged until 1824. This debt amounted to about nineteen dollars per head for every man, woman, and child of all colors in the United States at that period. Still, they were not in circumstances as discouraging as are we, their descendants, eighty years later; for, estimating our population now at thirty-eight millions, each man, woman and child now owns a right to pay as his share of the national debt, sixty-eight dollars, besides a large, comfortable sum for State, county, city, and town indebtedness, which never figured themselves upon the purses or imaginations of our golden-aged ancestors. This latter ownership is so much the more wonderful as it represents shares in obligations, not wrought from outlays of blood or money in the country’s service, but blood and money sucked by corporate and private straws from our ever-troubled and ever-bubbling public treasuries.

Washington, after a laborious journey, reached New York, and, on the 30th of April, 1789, took the oath of office as President, on the spot now covered by the United States Treasury in Wall Street. The bulls and bears of that day,—mere calves and cubs,—not strengthened by the pushing horns and large squeezing powers which have added such force to their descendants, might have heard, in the intervals of their rough play, the solid, honest, heart-felt words of his Inaugural, in which, among other things, he uttered those now strange, old-fashioned wishes and expectations, that “all employed in the administration of the Government would execute faithfully and with success the functions allotted to their charge.”

No crowds of patriotic office-seekers stepped over the sills of the new President. Quires and tons of papers, now quadrienially rolled into the Presidential warehouse, containing uncounted autographic testimonials to the transcendent abilities and spotless purity of at least one man in thirty of our entire population for suffering places, were then left to the innocent uses of book-keepers and book-makers. We search in vain for any records of enterprising committees, State or county, pressing upon the uninformed intelligence of the first office appointer the names of persons, otherwise left in native obscurity, for Cabinet seats and responsible missions, which might possibly in thoughtless liberality turn the drippings of their high eaves into their own hungry pails. So far as our examination has discovered, there were no old battered political hulks, their rigging split by the gales of speculation or the contrary winds of local indignation, which put into the Presidential port in stress of weather.

Gentlemen waited to be sent for, and did not bore through Washington’s bedroom wall to present handsome reminders of services to be yet gratefully performed, or to leave their photographs and a solar microscope, in order that he might by the latter descry something in the former and in their originals.

Could that modest, slow-minded chief be now permitted, through the conjury of a medium, to sit by the side of his successors, during the honeymoon of their official marriages to the state, and see the procession of great men for whom offices wait pass by with their directories of certificates to high intellectual power and eminent fitness for—everything official, he would certainly divide his surprise between two great convictions,—the scandalous waste to which unclaimed virtue runs in this prodigal land, and the terrible contrasts between all the past performances of the ins and the easy, liberal promises of the outs.

President Washington had no difficulty, even unaided by pugilistic M. C.’s or other metallic “rings,” in selecting gentlemen to fill the three newly created executive departments of Foreign Affairs, Treasury, and War. Thomas Jefferson, forty-six years old, was requested to assist in managing our foreign relations and friends. Alexander Hamilton, in his thirty-second year, was solicited to pump something into that very dry cistern, the treasury. To the red-leaved portfolio of war was summoned General Henry Knox,—the Sherman of the Revolution. It was thought that the man who had, in times of Revolutionary discontent, wisely allayed the complaints of an army whose courage in the field he could nobly stimulate, and who had stroked the right way the rising fur of a disbanded soldiery, could deal justly with the approaching pension lists, and would fairly adjust the burdens of the seven lean years of war, to and through the many rank and good years which now appeared in the visions of our American Pharaohs. The new Secretary felt, in taking his place on the war bench, that he was summoned to a sort of military coroner’s inquest on the dead body of the late Revolution, which had served well in active duty, but which, like every such thing in our hurrying country,—old people, worn-out utensils, and other ex-useful machines,—was considered a respectable encumbrance.

To the post of chief justice of the newly created Supreme Court President Washington nominated John Jay, and for Attorney-General, Edmund Randolph of Virginia. It is to be noted that the President, Secretary of State, and Attorney-General were all from the same State,—the greatest Cabinet-making, State-bureau manufactory in the Union. If Connecticut, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina sent any delegates to the President to remonstrate against the appointment of two gentlemen from the same State, the reporters of that time have shunned the bare mention of it.

Nothing on earth, not even in the United States, is perfect; and in the United States especially things most perfect are always in order to be amended. Within the very first year of the ratification of the Constitution, ten amendments were proposed and carried, making it an old knife with new blades, and finishing it up into what some people, with great novelty, proclaim it to be, the most perfect instrument ever invented.

The keel of the Supreme Court was laid in 1789; and the vessel, launched, well officered, and manned, provided with new spars, anchors, and compass, was despatched from port to ride the turbulent seas of maritime strife and constitutional conflict, and to override laws and treaties which drift athwart the path of the Constitution. By and in it States could originally be pursued; but after submitting for about fifty years to the chase of individual plaintiffs, the States, headed by Georgia, roused to a sovereign indignation and ruffled pride by being compelled to answer for grievances inflicted by themselves on Indians, negroes, white persons, and such trash, procured the passage of a jealous amendment, relieving them from such embarrassments. Beautiful is the theory that States can do no wrong to their own citizens. Millennarian is the assumption that they are so ready to spring to their loads of duty, that no judicial whip, with a snapper of judgment and execution, is necessary to quicken their slackening consciences. As a beautiful corollary from these delightful premises, is the most comfortable practice of governments not to pay interest on claims against themselves, however hoar with age; for the government assumes to itself the virtue of being always ready, as the fons et origo justitæ, to pay, and is presumably always pressing its offers to pay upon its creditors.

At certain points we now touch the millennium.

At the next session of Congress, in 1790, Hamilton presented a report on that subject which, like the poor, is always with us,—the public debt. Of course every one thought that it was right to pay the creditors who were fortunate enough to live in Europe, who had, at whatever discount, taken our promises; but a great many people with caoutchouc principles doubted whether men silly enough to be born on this side the Atlantic had as good a right to be paid; just as some discriminate between their autographs affixed to notes held by their friends,—leaving such to the mercy of blood,—and those held by strangers, which they despatch from unpleasant remembrances by payment. Hamilton recognized no such thin, veneering logic over parts of the public chest; and he was honestly supported by Congress and their makers.

Philadelphia was made the national capital for the rest of the century; and here, for the coming seven years, Washington’s weekly receptions on Tuesdays, and his dinner-parties on Thursdays, created a stir among the disciples of Penn, and caused much green-looking ink to be shed from cavilling pens all through the country. Like congregations which look with a keen-edged criticism upon the social movements of their clergymen, the people thus early began to peer into the green-room of the President’s mansion, to count the silver spoons, to feel of the window-curtains, and to compare their silken qualities favorably with their own hangings, and the qualities of the Presidential tenant, as thereby affected, unfavorably with their own. A democratic people prefer to occupy the green-room themselves.

The honeymoon of our newly wedded constitutional government was not all roseate. Through the press a wonderful amount of good advice and double-tongued compliment as already given to the old gentleman, who was not likely to forget all the peccadillos he had, and to wonder why he had been restrained from the easy commission of others which he had not committed.

The French Revolution had now begun its series of bloody conundrums; and, not content with posing its European circle of listeners with perplexing questions, crossed the Atlantic, and thrust upon the administration and demanded immediate answers to some very bothering acrostics and puzzles. The grand riddle which they prided themselves upon, and required to be first answered, might be stated in the rule-of-three form thus: If France, with a population of seventeen millions, assisted America to gain her independence from 1778 to 1783, what aid should America, with a population of 3,927,827, give, in 1790, to the Constituent Assembly, assuming to act for France, against the monarchical adherents of Louis XVI. and the turbulent guillotining mob, struggling up into fierce, resentful power under Robespierre, Danton, and Desmoulins? This riddle was differently guessed by the leading members of our government. Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Jay, now recognized as the leaders of a party for the first time called the Federal, put in the ready, safe, and wise answer, “None”; while Jefferson and Randolph, in the government, and Madison, Gallatin, and young Edward Livingston, out of it,—now the heads of the anti-Federal party,—spelled out from their general love of liberty and sympathy for those struggling against monarchical power, without regard to international rights or home duties, the response, “All that we can.”

Of course much could be said on each side, and of course much was said; for the Boston “News-Letter” had now a very vivacious following all over the thirteen States, many of which barked in chorus, even at the majestic figure of Washington. Very hard names, too, and even imputations of felonious attempts upon the person of Liberty herself, facetiously assumed by party zeal to be impersonated in the last uppermost French faction, were hissed out against the grand old chief of the nation by those long-billed, ganderous persons, who, in the warm days of politics, paddle around in dirty pools and splash, with noisy uproar, the black ooze upon the cleanest and purest who pass by.

Thus even the golden age had ugly quartz and soiling dirt interspecking it.

Congress, during the same session of 1790, passed the first act for counting the people of the United States,—an enumeration which, being paid for in certain years by the number of names taken, has sometimes resulted in “counting one’s chickens before they were hatched,”—the census-paper containing more names than owners of them.

A law was also passed setting in motion that large machine for manufacturing voters, commonly called a Naturalization Act, whereby a singular pat-riot paving is turned out, by which our polling-places are McIrishized with some very curious bricks, and our polls sometimes are made to suffer by brickbats.

A fund was likewise established for sinking the national debt; but like the Irishman’s cork contrivance, put on to enable him to drown himself, the sinking fund, in practice under the statute device, became so buoyant that for several years the debt floated upwards instead of downwards.

The year 1791 was signalized by the birth of Vermont, as a State, into the Union,—a family event which at once added many venerable years and an historic solidity to the original members, who thenceforward became “The Old Thirteen.” A national bank was also ushered into existence, and was carefully wet-nursed by Hamilton, the government lending it $2,000,000, or one fifth of its capital,—a very comfortable christening present.

An Indian war which had broken out the preceding year within the present limits of Ohio,—as if to remind the country of its old irritating eruptions,—raged with some violence through 1791, reddening in spots into a rash and producing some congestion of officers at military head-quarters. General St. Clair, marching northwards with two thousand men, from Fort Washington, the future Cincinnati, then consisting of a rude stockade surrounded by a few wattled huts, and containing not exceeding thirty white settlers, the oldest not having been there three years, penetrated a district then obscure, but now even called Dark County, where he was disagreeably surprised by a party of Indians, and lost nearly three fourths of his troops. The war of course became chronic, lingering along until 1795, when it was finally got under by General Anthony Wayne, the old stormer of Stony Point.

Kentucky, wrought out of a small Boone settlement, in 1769, came forward in 1792, and was welcomed as the fifteenth State. Some wavy-notioned people imagine that her Bourbon, reinforcing her courage and spirits, emboldened her to make this early application; but this is a mistake which sober history is glad to correct.

Washington, although annoyed by the ganderous long-bills for his steady adherence to the neutrality of his country between the raging factions that were now quarrelling over the sanguinary conundrums, put forth by the civil war in France, finally consented, against his own wishes, to become a candidate for re-election as President. His consent was unanimously decreed to be the popular wish by the electoral colleges. John Adams, less fortunate than his chief, was content, however, with seventy-seven votes out of one hundred and twenty-seven, the other fifty being given to the Democratic candidate, George Clinton of New York.

About a month after the second inauguration of Washington, in 1793, that lively little Frenchman, Edmond Charles Genet, somewhat excited by the revolutionary dance about the scaffold of Louis XVI., and the rather wild scenes around the revolutionary tribunal in Paris, capered over on a visit to the people of this country, and landed at Charleston, South Carolina. Although commissioned by the French Convention, now the subject of its bloody master Robespierre, as a Minister to our government, Monsieur Genet took upon his arrival a sudden fancy to aquatic sports, and despatched on his own hook several cruisers to fish in the troubled waters of the Atlantic for any English, Spanish, or Dutch flying-fish that could be caught. The old American Squire did not at all relish this international fishing-party, which proposed to use American lines, hooks, sinkers, and bait for the benefit of French packers. Kindly but firmly he requested M. Genet’s forwarders to order him back again. There have always been Americans, born with magnifying spectacles fastened firmly on their noses, by which every form of freedom, individual or national, spelt out to them a clear license to help any party, fraction, or entirety of a people fighting, or claiming to fight, against the old governing power. “Wherever you see a crown, hit it,” is their one motto. In April, 1793, this class had many representatives, who thought that the French gentleman and his fishing-parties were all right.

In 1794 a Whiskey Rebellion arose, not in Kentucky nor among the Bourbonites, but in Pennsylvania. This insurrection defied for some time the cautionary, expostulating, and well-sealed proclamations of the President; but when the sharp military drum-beat, backed by fifteen thousand militia, with well-set bayonets, was heard in the western part of the State, its leaders and their weak followers reeled back into quiet and submission. Nothing so much shows the simplicity of that golden age of the Republic as this resistance to a whiskey tax. In our more debased but keener times, people distil much comfort from a heavy tax—far heavier than that of 1794—through taps and tubes placed in the obnoxious article, which is led off and around so circuitously and ingeniously as hardly to know where it is going, until all of a sudden it falls plump in large coin within the well-adjusted pockets of the non-complaining manufacturer. Instead of getting up insurrections in Pennsylvania against the high excise, he now forms combinations at Washington to raise it higher.

The year 1795 was the era of treaties,—establishing diplomatic lines to England,—which ever since the peace of 1783 had been uneasily bobbing up and down, neither fishing nor cutting bait; to Spain, whose American possessions of Florida and Louisiana were thereby staked and roped off from our greedy boundaries; to the dark Dey of Algiers, whose corsairs were thus enmeshed in the silken nets; and, finally, to the Northwestern Indian tribes, who, as usual, gave us a large piece of territory for a little piping peace with hot embers on the top. Through the Spanish treaty flowed, and ever since has continued to flow for us, the wide-elbowed Mississippi. The exertion of signing it exhausted the power of Spain in North America; for five years later she had not vitality enough to hold either of these possessions against Napoleon, and the orange and sugar States fell out of her ever-relaxing hand into the clutching and restless fingers of France. In 1796, Tennessee, making the sixteenth State, was welcomed into the household. Its capital, Nashville, settled in 1779, contained only a few cabins; but the folds of the Cumberland warmed them rapidly into life.

Washington, then sixty-four years of age, announced in September, 1796, his intention to retire to the sunshine of private life. His farewell was the blessing of a ripe sage upon a sorrowing people. It was none the less genuine, rich, and good, because comically imitated by a few of his successors. Even Andrew Johnson’s did not belittle it.

Several gentlemen, it was discovered, had a fancy to try the official shades which the great American was so glad to quit. Of course Virginia supposed that the rotation in the office should, like charity, begin at home. Such, too, was the opinion of sixty-eight electors; but as seventy-one disagreed with them, the short, stout, well-grained “column of Congress” was transferred, for the four followingfollowing years, into the executive post.

Modern Photographic Albums like Ancient Roman Simulacra.—The Pleasure of looking at the Likenesses of Friends.—The Portraits of our Fore-Fathers.—Our dear old Great-Grandfather George Washington.—His one hundred and twenty-eight Original Portraits.—His unique Character; of the same Size all the Way up.—His Manners and Characteristics.—How the Eighteenth Century, so long mated, refused to survive him.—Our Great-Grand and good Mother Martha Washington.—The Resemblance between her and a Bowl of ripe Strawberries and Cream.—Her Pride.—What Qualities were corseted in her Bosom.—Our favorite Uncle, Benjamin Franklin.—How the Sky got into his Face and how it stays charged.—Looks like an hereditary Director of all the Estates.—A born Trustee.—What an idea Burns might have got of him in 1774, and how expressed it.—Of our Aunt, Mrs. James Madison; and what a fine Lady she was.—Her careful Dress and Manners.—Impressive but patronizing.—How Time forgot her, and the Years ran on un-notched.—The forty Years she acted as Presidentess.—Patrick Henry described in Dress, Person, shooting Game, and taking Audiences.—Our dear Visitor, General Lafayette; his Difficulties in reaching us; his noble Bride; his Embarkation at a Spanish Port; his Labors here; his two subsequent Visits, and how he survived Hand-shaking and Kissing.—About John Jay and his Wife Sallie Livingston.—How they lived and what he became.—Glances at Israel Putnam and his expressive Face; at Nathaniel Greene and his square, Quaker Character; at the Telescopic Eyes of Francis Marion, with a Dash at his soldierly Qualities.—The Effigies of the Wise Men—General Sketches of our Heroes and Heroines.—A Heart Delineation of the Mothers, Wives, and Sisters of the Men of the Revolution.

Cold indeed must be the heart, colder than any which pendulates in the readers of this History, that does not warm up pleasantly when carried by its owner into what is wisely called in the country “the living-room,” and there obeying the electrical summons of the eye, wanders with it lovingly through the pages of a family photographic album.

The elder Romans had a chamber, placed in the innermost part of the house, devoted to the images of the departed members of the family; images named after, but not always likenesses of, those who had led the way in the family history. So great was their reverence for these, so intimate the relation maintained with them, that, on the departure or return of any of the household, these silent figures were saluted with the same affection as the living.

The family photographic album is the modern chamber in which are kept our simulacra. Enter it as often as we may, scan as often as we choose its portraitures, we never survey with indifference, and rarely without better and tenderer feelings, these mute, dear faces.

Just as dear, just as touching to our national feelings, sensibilities, and emulous gratitude, just as instructive to head and heart, are the cherished and beloved features of our national forefathers. Turn we then a few leaves with interest, perchance with profit.

An instinctive delicacy places the elders at the head of the procession.

Of course the very first in the book, as in our hearts, is the dear, good face of our great-great-great-grandfather, George Washington. How well we all know it. One hundred and twenty-eight original portraits were taken of him, between 1770, when he was thirty-eight years old, and 1796, when he was sixty-four, by various painters, from the elder Peale to Sharpless. The statue of Houdon, ordered by Virginia in 1785, and finished in 1788, perpetuates in marble, to its visitors at Richmond, as its engraved copies have made familiar to all, the full-length majestic figure and port of the wise, thoughtful, and careful General. Yet numerous as are the likenesses, multiplied by various art processes, and scattered through parlors, bedrooms, sheds, cabins, and books, we instantly recognize and instinctively love the noble features of our dear old grandfather. Very grave he is, very sedate, as if he was thinking how it was best to settle in life some of his large household. His thoughts seem so earnest and weighty that we cannot interrupt them. Good and humane as is the face, we cannot bounce in, leap upon his high knees, pull lovingly his long hair, and then scamper away with a sense of unspoken forgiveness in our thumping hearts. O no! There is an awe in his presence, benevolent as it is, a width of responsibility in his thought-beaming face, which stills and hushes us. Very reserved and calm, seldom volunteering a remark, never a laugh, for mere entertainment, he makes ordinary conversation appear like empty chattering. Yet ever gracious is he, ever gentle, well-bred, and self-contained. His reticence is not sour, but thoughtful, his silence the waiting upon a large utterance. Intent and earnest after something he always seems. Even in his relaxation from formal work, and when least occupied, he seems like a good fisherman sitting on the bank, carefully watching the float, and fixed upon securing the nibbles.

A noble face! just the frontispiece to a great History, the preface to an Encyclopædia of Moral Philosophy and Political Rights, the trunk of a large genealogical tree, the grandfather of a large, proud family.

Stories we have of his boyhood; but they do not strike or stick to us as accounts of a boy. Even when cutting down the cherry-tree, and then scorning the boy’s ordinary deception in regard to the author of the deed; when mastering the blooded horse, at the expense of the animal’s life, and then hastening to avow to his stern but just mother his exclusive agency in the fatal conquest,—he seems the same calm, staid, mature impersonation of heroic Truth, as when he stalks with longer strides through a nation’s history.

Some naturalists tell us that the trunk of the tree does not lose its bulk as it grows upward; but that, if we measure the tapering trunk and its outspreading branches, we shall find that together they form the same size and weight throughout. So Washington, if viewed in sections, appears of equal size, dimensions, and compacted force in each. As a boy wise, grave, and truthful; large in frame, of unusual strength, but gentle in its use; from books learning little, from men much, from out-door life its large, fresh, wholesome, healthy activity, and wide breadths of suggestion. As a young man unweariedly industrious, unmistakably honest, impressing all with his oak-like qualities; carefully and perfectly accomplishing whatever he undertook, whether engaged in surveying a farm, keeping a journal, or supplying by study and observation deficiencies in education which his own good, well-balanced sense had discovered; loving honestly, and honestly describing in verse his heart affection for his “lowland beauty.” As an officer, at twenty-three, self-reliant because consciously well disciplined, vigilant, careful, yet as personally brave as the impulsive and unrestrained; confided with missions to the hostile French settlements on the Ohio, and saving, by his knowledge of savage life and habits, by his sagacity, self-command, and tact, the remnants of Braddock’s army.

As a statesman well rounded in intelligence, well poised in judgment, who so well comprehended, weighed, and settled the new questions of colonial rights as to draw from Patrick Henry the eulogy “that for solid information and sound judgment he was the greatest man on the floor” of the Continental Congress, and from that Congress itself its emphatic practical indorsement by his election as commander-in-chief.

As a general, managing small resources and means so as to secure the best results and completest ends; sparing of the lives of his soldiers as of the members of his family, yet venturing his own when an emergency made his great figure in front the pledge of success; refusing all pay and emoluments; keeping a minute and conscientious account of his expenses, and hastening at the close of the war to place his regimentals at the opening door of Peace. As a President marching abreast of new duties and obligations, thoroughly comprehending, and, by a wise forbearance and clear-hearted charity, mastering the struggling, passionate forces of new-born and grand ambitions, State rivalries, and material competitions, and so calming, adjusting, regulating, yet re-enforcing them by healthy elements,—not by compromise of principle, but by high conscientious impartiality, and just, equiposed authority,—as to receive the converging approval and accordant praise of good men of all shades of opinion.

Dear, good old grandfather! no wonder that the eighteenth century hastened to follow thee; no wonder that, wedded to thee so long and lovingly, it cared not to survive the separation, and within a fortnight gathered itself into the same tomb, more loved for the presence than life divided from thee.

On the next page of our album is our great-great-grand and good mother Mrs. Martha Washington. We love so much to look at her sweet, handsome face, full of a large, generous, grandmotherly nature as a wide and deep bowl heaped with ripe strawberries laughing through unstinted masses of rich yellow, unwatered cream. We feel at once that there is amply enough to go round the largest old-fashioned family, and no fear, if visitors come in, of its not holding out, or of a scarcity for the kitchen. She was called Lady Washington, because they could not help it; for she was a lady.

Of course our grandmother was proud; not vain, nor boastful, but with pride of character, the pride that stiffens virtue into well-doing, makes life gracious, and fences in goodness from stray gossips, and self-constituted censors who stray from their own disordered homes into their neighbor’s well-regulated households.

Never were higher, truer, more valuable qualities, principles, and habits corseted in a female bosom than lived in hers.

The next page is thumb-worn and greased by frequent handling; for Uncle Benjamin Franklin is a deserved favorite with the family. We should have liked to live with him, or if the house, as was natural, was too full for that, to have made long visits at his mansion. His is a right royal, good face, is it not? He looks as if he was always in love with a whole school of well-behaved, sweet-mannered children, and was about to take out from his capacious pockets, with a sly, benevolent surprise, a large assorted lot of presents. His face beams with a broad, heavenly tranced-ness, as if it had taken toll from his sky-tapping kite, and had become charged with positive celestial electricity. He looks as if he might have been chosen the executor of all the estates in the Union; and as if half the pangs of death were abstracted from those who were to leave their children and property to his honest, wise, and efficient care. He seems like a born trustee for schools, an hereditary director of charities,—one nominated in every village and town to every responsible place, and elected unanimously.

In his broadly balanced characteristics there is, too, a latent, reserved force, which makes us fancy that he might, when commissioner to England, in 1774, have paid a visit to Burns in Scotland and suggested to him, as advice to others, those shrewd lines:—