Rhode Island, 34 to 32; this being the last State to ratify, and the result being secured by a change of one vote under the instructions of a town-meeting in the little village of Middletown, too small, even at this day, to have a post-office. By a chance thus narrow was the United States born into a nation. The contest, as Washington wrote to Lee, was "not so much for glory as existence."

And as thus finally created the nation was neither English nor French, but American. It was in very essential features a new departure. It is common to say that the French Revolution brought with it French political theories in the United States. Edmund Burke wrote that the colonists were "not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles," yet there is a prevalent impression that the influence of France converted this English feeling into a French habit of mind, and that the desire to legislate on the abstract rights of man came from that side of the English Channel. But Jefferson had never been in France, nor under any strong French influence, when he, as the Rev. Ezra Stiles said, "poured the soul of a continent into the monumental Act of Independence;" and Franklin had made but flying visits to Paris when he wrote in England, about 1770, those striking sentences, under the name of "Some Good Whig Principles," which form the best compendium of what is called Jeffersonian Democracy: "The all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another, and the poor man has an equal right, but more need, to have representatives in the legislature than the rich one." What are sometimes reproachfully called "transcendental politics"-political action, that is, based on an abstract theoryarose spontaneously in that age; the Constitution was based on them; and in urging them America probably influenced France more than France affected America. There is now a reaction. against them, and perhaps it is as well that these oscillations of the pendulum should take place; but I am not one of those who

believe that the people of the United States will ever outgrow the Declaration of Independence.

One of the most momentous acts of the Continental Congress had been to receive from the State of Virginia the gift of a vast unsettled territory north-west of the Ohio, and to apply to this wide realm the guarantee of freedom from slavery. This safeguard was but the fulfilment of a condition suggested by Timothy Pickering, when, in 1783, General Rufus Putnam and nearly three hundred army officers had proposed to form a new State in that very region of the Ohio. They sent in a memorial to Congress asking for a grant of land. Washington heartily endorsed the project, but nothing came of it. North Carolina

soon after made a cession of land to the United States, and then revoked it; but the people on the ceded territory declared themselves for a time to be a separate State, under the name of Franklin. Virginia, through Thomas Jefferson, finally delivered a deed on March 1, 1784, by which she ceded to the United States all her territory north-west of the Ohio. The great gift was accepted, and a plan of government was adopted, into which Jefferson tried to introduce an antislavery ordinance, but he was defeated by a single vote. Again, in 1785, Rufus King, of Massachusetts, seconded by William Ellery, of Rhode Island, proposed to revive Jefferson's rejected clause, but again it failed, being smothered by a committee. It was not till July 13, 1787, that the statute passed by which slavery was forever prohibited in the territory of the North-west, this being moved by Nathan Dane as an amendment to an ordinance already adopted—which he himself had framed-and being passed by a vote of every State present in the Congress, eight in all. Under this statute the Ohio Company-organized in Boston the year before as the final outcome of Rufus Putnam's proposed colony of officersbought from the government five or six millions of acres, and entered on the first great movement of emigration west of the Ohio. The report creating the colony provided for public

schools, for religious institutions, and for a university. The land was to be paid for in United States certificates of debt, and its price in specie was between, eight and nine cents an acre. The settlers were almost wholly men who had served in the army, and were used to organization and discipline. The Indian title to the lands of the proposed settlement had been re

[From the steel engraving by F. O'C. Darley in Irving's "Washington," by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons.]

leased by treaty. It was hailed by all as a great step in the national existence, although it was really a far greater step than any one yet dreamed. No colony in America," wrote Washington, "was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum."

It had been provided that the new constitution should go

into effect when nine States had ratified it. That period having arrived, Congress fixed the first Wednesday in January, 1789, for the choice of Presidential electors, and the first Wednesday in March for the date when the new government should go into power. On March 4, 1789, the Continental Congress ceased to exist, but it was several weeks before either House of the new Congress was organized. On April 6th the organization of the two Houses was complete, the electoral votes were counted; and on April 21st John Adams took his seat as Vice-president in the chair of the Senate. On the 30th of April the streets around the old "Federal Hall" in New York City were so densely crowded that it seemed, in the vivid phrase of an eye-witness, "as if one might literally walk on the heads of the people." On the balcony of the hall was a table covered with crimson velvet, upon which lay a Bible on a crimson cushion. Out upon the balcony came, with his accustomed dignity, the man whose generalship, whose patience, whose self-denial, had achieved and then preserved the liberties of the nation; the man who, greater than Cæsar, had held a kingly crown within reach, and had refused it. Washington stood a moment amid the shouts of the people, then bowed, and took the oath, administered by Chancellor Livingston. At this moment a flag was raised upon the cupola of the hall; a discharge of artillery followed, and the assembled people again filled the air with their shouting. Thus simple was the ceremonial which announced that a nation was born.

HE

TH

year 1789 saw a new nation in its cradle in the city of New York. Liberty was born, but had yet to learn how to go alone. Political precedents were still to be established, social customs to be formed anew. New York City, the first seat of national government, had warmly welcomed Washington, though the State of New York had not voted for him; and now that he was in office, men and women waited with eager interest to see what kind of political and social life would surround him. The city then contained nearly thirty-three thousand people. It had long been more cosmopolitan than any other in the colonies, but it had also been longer occupied by the British, and had been more lately under the influence of loyal traditions and royal officials. This influence the languid sway of the "confederation” had hardly dispelled. What condition of things would the newly organized republic establish?

It was a period of much social display. Class distinctions still prevailed strongly, for the French Revolution had not yet followed the American Revolution to sweep them away. Employers were still called masters; gentlemen still wore velvets, damasks, knee-breeches, silk stockings, silver buckles, ruffled shirts, voluminous cravats, scarlet cloaks. The Revolution had