SUMMARY

1.  When Washington was inaugurated, the United States consisted of eleven states, with a population of about 3,380,000.

2.  These people lived not far from the Atlantic coast.  Few cities existed; not one had 50,000 inhabitants.  Even the largest was without many conveniences which we consider necessaries.

3.  Travel was slow and difficult, and though a steamboat had been invented and used, it was too far ahead of the times to succeed.

4.  West of the Alleghany Mountains a few settlements had been made between 1763 and 1783.  But it was after 1783, when streams of emigrants poured over the mountains, that settlement really began.

6.  In the South cotton was just beginning to be cultivated; there all labor was done by slaves.  In the North slavery was dying out, and in five of the states had been abolished.

State of the Country in 1790

- On the Seaboard.
The population. {Number. 
                {Distribution. 
                {Movement west. 
The cities {Size. 
                {Absence of many conveniences known to us. 
                {Newspapers and magazines. 
Communication between states. {Bad roads.  Slow travel. 
                              {The post offices. 
                              {The stagecoaches.  The inns. 
                              {The early steamboat.

- In the Ohio Valley. {Population.  Squatters. 
                              {Pittsburg in 1790. 
                              {A trip down the Ohio. 
                              {Towns in the valley.

- In the South. {Slavery. 
                              {Cotton planting. 
                              {Whitney and the cotton gin.

CHAPTER XV

THE RISE OF PARTIES

%209.  Organizing the New Government.%—­he President having been inaugurated, and the new government fairly established, it became the duty of Congress to enact such laws as were needed immediately.  The first act passed by Congress in 1789 was therefore a tariff act laying duties on goods, wares, and merchandise imported into the United States.  Customhouses were then established and customs districts marked out, and ports of entry and ports of delivery designated; provision was made for the support of lighthouses and beacons; the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the territories was slightly changed and reenacted; the departments of State, War, and Treasury were established; and a call was made on the Secretary of the Treasury to report a plan for payment of the old Continental debt.