[497] Niles proposed a new bank to be called "THE RAGBANK OF THE UNIVERSE," main office at "_Lottery-ville_," and branches at "_Hookstown_," "_Owl Creek_," "_Botany Bay_," and "_Twisters-burg_."
Directors were to be empowered also "to put offices on wheels, on ship-board, or in balloons"; stock to be "one thousand million of old shirts." (Niles, XIV, 227.)
[498] Dewey, 144.
[499] _Ib._ 153-54.
[500] Flint"s Letters, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, IX, 136; and see "Report of the Committee on the Currency," New York, _supra_, 184.
[501] Tyler: _Tyler_, I, 302; Niles, XI, 130.
[502] Niles, XI, 128.
[503] _Ib._ IV, 109; Collins: _Historical Sketches of Kentucky_, 88.
These were in addition to the branches of the Bank of Kentucky and of the Bank of the United States. Including them, the number of chartered banks in that State was fifty-eight by the close of 1818. Of the towns where new banks were established during that year, Burksville had 106 inhabitants; Barboursville, 55; Hopkinsville, 131; Greenville, 75; thirteen others had fewer than 500 inhabitants. The "capital" of the banks in such places was never less than $100,000, but that at Glasgow, with 244 inhabitants, had a capital of $200,000, and several other villages were similarly favored. For full list see Niles, XIV, 109.
[504] Flint"s Letters, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, IX, 133.
[505] Niles, XVII, 85.
[506] John Woods"s Two Years" Residence, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, X, 236.
[507] Flint"s Letters, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, IX, 133-34.
[508] _Ib._ 136.
[509] Niles, XIV, 162.
[510] Woods"s Two Years" Residence, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, X, 274-78: and Flint"s Letters, _ib._ IX, 69.
In southwestern Indiana, in 1818, Faux "saw nothing ... but miserable log holes, and a mean ville of eight or ten huts or cabins, sadly neglected farms, and indolent, dirty, sickly, wild-looking inhabitants."
(Faux"s Journal, Nov. 1, 1818, _ib._ XI, 213-14.) He describes Kentucky houses as "miserable holes, having one room only," where "all cook, eat, sleep, breed, and die, males and females, all together." (_Ib._ 185, and see 202.)
[511] For shocking and almost unbelievable conditions of living among the settlers see Faux"s Journal, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, XI, 226, 231, 252-53, 268-69.
[512] "We landed for some whiskey; for our men would do nothing without." (Woods"s Two Years" Residence, _ib._ X, 245, 317.) "Excessive drinking seems the all-pervading, easily-besetting sin." (Faux"s Journal, Nov. 3, 1818, _ib._ XI, 213.) This continued for many years and was as marked in the East as in the West. (See Marryat, 2d Series, 37-41.)
There was, however, a large and ever-increasing number who hearkened to those wonderful men, the circuit-riding preachers, who did so much to build up moral and religious America. Most people belonged to some church, and at the camp meetings and revivals, mult.i.tudes received conviction.
The student should carefully read the _Autobiography of Peter Cartwright_, edited by W. P. Strickland. This book is an invaluable historical source and is highly interesting. See also Schermerhorn and Mills: _A Correct View of that part of the United States which lies west of the Allegany Mountains, with regard to Religion and Morals._ _Great Revival in the West_, by Catharine C. Cleveland, is a careful and trustworthy account of religious conditions before the War of 1812. It has a complete bibliography.
[513] Flint"s Letters, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, 153; also Schermerhorn and Mills, 17-18.
[514] "Nature is the agriculturist here [near Princeton, Ind.]; speculation instead of cultivation, is the order of the day amongst men." (Thomas Hulme"s Journal, E. W. T.: Thwaites, X, 62; see Faux"s Journal, _ib._ XI, 227.)
[515] Faux"s Journal, _ib._ 216, 236, 242-43.
[516] _Ib._ 214.
[517] See vol. I, chap, VII, of this work.
[518] Flint"s Letters, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, IX, 87; Woods"s Two Years Residence, _ib._ X, 255. "I saw a man this day ... his nose bitten off close down to its root, in a fight with a nose-loving neighbour."
(Faux"s Journal, _ib._ XI, 222; and see Strickland, 24-25.)
[519] The reports of American conditions by British travelers, although from unsympathetic pens and much exaggerated, were substantially true.
Thus Europe, and especially the United Kingdom, conceived for Americans that profound contempt which was to endure for generations.
"Such is the land of Jonathan," declared the _Edinburgh Review_ in an a.n.a.lysis in 1820 (x.x.xIII, 78-80) of a book ent.i.tled _Statistical Annals of the United States_, by Adam Seybert. "He must not ... allow himself to be dazzled by that galaxy of epithets by which his orators and newspaper scribblers endeavour to persuade their supporters that they are the greatest, the most refined, the most enlightened, and the most moral people upon earth.... They have hitherto given no indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or character....
"During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the Sciences, for the Arts, for Literature, or even for statesman-like studies of Politics or Political Economy.... In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they a.n.a.lyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans?--what have they done in the mathematics...? under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a Slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?"
[520] Nevertheless, these very settlers had qualities of sound, clean citizenship; and beneath their roughness and crudity were n.o.ble aspirations. For a sympathetic and scholarly treatment of this phase of the subject see Pease: _Frontier State_, I, 69.
[521] Faux"s Journal, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, XI, 246.
[522] Randolph to Quincy, Aug. 16, 1812, _Quincy_: Quincy, 270.
[523] Marryat, 2d Series, 1.
[524] See vol. I, chap, VII, of this work.
[525] Marryat, 1st Series, 15.
[526] Marryat, 2d Series, 176.
[527] Woods"s Two Years" Residence, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, X, 325.
[528] Niles, XIV, 2.
[529] See McMaster, IV, 287. This continued even after the people had at last become suspicious of unlicensed banks. In 1820, at Bloomington, Ohio, a hamlet of "ten houses ... in the edge of the prairie ... a [bank] company was formed, plates engraved, and the bank notes brought to the spot." Failing to secure a charter, the adventurers sold their outfit at auction, fict.i.tious names were signed to the notes, which were then put into fraudulent circulation. (Flint"s Letters, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, IX, 310.)
[530] _Ib._ 130-31.
[531] Faux"s Journal, Oct. 11, 1818, _E. W. T_.: Thwaites, XI, 171. Faux says that even in Cincinnati itself the bank bills of that town could be exchanged at stores "only 30 or 40 per centum below par, or United States" paper."
[532] Flint"s Letters, _E. W. T_. Thwaites, IX, 132-36.
[533] In Baltimore Cohens"s "lottery and exchange office" issued a list of nearly seventy banks, with rates of prices on their notes. The circular gave notice that the quotations were good for one day only.
(Niles, XIV, 396.) At the same time G. & R. Waite, with offices in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, issued a list covering the country from Connecticut to Ohio and Kentucky. (_Ib._ 415.) The rates as given by this firm differed greatly from those published by Cohens.
[534] _Ib._ X, 80.
[535] Sumner: _Jackson_, 229.
[536] Flint"s Letters, _E. W. T._: Thwaites, IX, 219.
[537] Niles, XV, 60.