[829] Goodrich, i, 61.
[830] Schoepf, ii, 61; see note, _ib._ Even this journal died for want of subscribers.
[831] Salem _Gazette_, Sept. 13, 1791; Hist. Col., Topsfield (Ma.s.s.) Hist. Soc., iii, 10.
[832] Washington to Humphreys, Dec. 26, 1786; _Writings_: Ford, xi, 98-103.
[833] Washington to General Knox, Dec. 26, 1786; _ib._, 103-05.
[834] _Writings_: Smyth, x, 36 _et seq._ This arraignment of the press by America"s first journalist was written when Franklin was eighty-three years old and when he was the most honored and beloved man in America, Washington only excepted. It serves not only to illuminate the period of the beginning of our Government, but to measure the vast progress during the century and a quarter since that time.
[835] Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Paris, Sept. 25, 1785; _Works_: Ford, iv, 465.
[836] "Country Printer," in Freneau, iii, 60. Freneau thus describes the country editor of that day:--
"Three times a week, by nimble geldings drawn, A stage arrives; but scarcely deigns to stop.
Unless the driver, far in liquor gone, Has made some business for the black-smith-shop; Then comes this printer"s harvest-time of news, Welcome alike from Christians, Turks, or Jews.
"Each pa.s.senger he eyes with curious glance, And, if his phiz be mark"d of courteous kind, To conversation, straight, he makes advance, Hoping, from thence, some paragraph to find, Some odd adventure, something new and rare, To set the town a-gape, and make it stare.
"All is not Truth ("tis said) that travellers tell-- So much the better for this man of news; For hence the country round, that know him well, Will, if he prints some lies, his lies excuse.
Earthquakes, and battles, shipwrecks, myriads slain-- If false or true--alike to him are gain.
"Ask you what matter fills his various page?
A mere farrago "tis, of mingled things; Whate"er is done on Madam Terra"s stage He to the knowledge of his townsmen brings: One while, he tells of monarchs run away; And now, of witches drown"d in Buzzard"s bay.
"Some miracles he makes, and some he steals; Half Nature"s works are giants in his eyes; Much, very much, in wonderment he deals,-- New-Hampshire apples grown to pumpkin size, Pumpkins almost as large as country inns, And ladies bearing, each,--three lovely twins."
Freneau was himself a country printer in New Jersey, after editing the _National Gazette_ in Philadelphia. Thus the above description was from his personal experience and in a town in a thickly settled part, on the main road between New York and Philadelphia.
[837] Goodrich, i, 38.
[838] A letter from Salem Town about 1786-87; in _American Journal of Education_, xiii, 738.
[839] Van Santvoord: _Memoirs of Eliphalet Nott_, 19.
[840] Davis, 333.
[841] "Many cannot read or write, and many that can, know nothing of geography and other branches. The country is too thinly settled to carry out a system of common schools." (Howe, 153, speaking of western Virginia about 1830.)
[842] Weld, i, 168. But President Tyler says that the boys Weld saw were grammar-school pupils.
[843] Watson, 269.
[844] Chastellux, 319-20.
[845] De Warville, 126-27.
[846] _Ib._, 145 and 450.
[847] _Ib._, 145. All travelers agree as to the wretched condition of Rhode Island; and that State appears to have acted as badly as it looked. "The ... infamous [scenes] in Rhode Island have done inexpressable injury to the Republican character," etc. (Madison to Pendleton, Feb. 24, 1787; _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 319.)
[848] De Warville, 132.
[849] Weld, i, 113.
[850] De Warville, 186-87.
[851] De Warville, 186 and 332. See La Rochefoucauld"s description of this same type of settler as it was several years after De Warville wrote. "The Dwellings of the new settlers ... consist of huts, with roofs and walls which are made of bark and in which the husband, wife and children pa.s.s the winter wrapped up in blankets.... Salt pork and beef are the usual food of the new settlers; their drink is water and whiskey." (La Rochefoucauld, i, 293-96.)
[852] Freneau, iii, 74.
[853] Knox to Washington, Feb. 10, 1788; _Writings_: Ford, xi, footnote to 229. And see _infra_, chap. VIII.
[854] De Warville, 187. In 1797, La Rochefoucauld speaks of "the credulity and ignorance of the half-savage sort of people who inhabit the back settlements." (La Rochefoucauld, i, 293.)
[855] "A relaxation is observable among all orders of society.
Drunkenness is the prevailing vice, and with few exceptions, the source of all other evils. A spirit, or rather a habit, of equality is diffused among this people as far as it possibly can go.... The inhabitants exhibit to strangers striking instances both of the utmost cleanliness and excessive nastiness," (La Rochefoucauld, i, 125.)
During Washington"s second term as President, La Rochefoucauld thus describes manners in western Pennsylvania: "They are much surprised at a refusal to sleep with one, two, or more men, in the same bed, or between dirty sheets, or to drink after ten other persons out of the same dirty gla.s.s.... Whiskey mixed with water is the common drink in the country."
(_Ib._)
[856] _Ib._, i, 293-96. See _infra_, note 4, pp. 281-82.
[857] Watson, 266.
[858] "You see [in Maryland and Virginia] real misery and apparent luxury insulting each other." (De Warville, 159.)
[859] Chastellux, 279, and translator"s note.
[860] Anburey, ii, 331-32.
[861] De Warville, 242.
[862] "Soon after entering Virginia, and at a highly respectable house, I was shocked ... at seeing for the first time, young negroes of both s.e.xes, from twelve even to fifteen years old, not only running about the house but absolutely tending table, as naked as they came into the world.... Several young women were at the table, who appeared totally unmoved." (Watson, 33.) Watson"s statement may perhaps be questionable; a livelier description, however, was given with embellishments, some years later. (See translator"s note to Chastellux, 245; and see Schoepf, ii, 47.)
[863] Anburey, ii, 331-32.
[864] _Ib._, 332-33.
[865] Weld, i, 192. See Weld"s description of "gouging." And see Fithian"s interesting account; Fithian, 242-43.
[866] Schoepf, ii, 89.
[867] _Ib._, 91-95.
[868] Jefferson to Chastellux, Sept. 2, 1785; _Thomas Jefferson Correspondence_, Bixby Collection: Ford, 12; and see Jefferson to Donald, July 28, 1787; Jefferson"s _Writings_: Washington, ii, 193, where Jefferson says that the qualities of Virginians are "indolence, extravagance, and infidelity to their engagements."