Life in America One Hundred Years Ago
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BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hcnrg W, Sage 1891 (\.a^oc3i ir[xi]'t HAKE ^19-44 i/^y: ^^9^6 •is&'-nsisrww JB r.y) fi V"' AOG 2, 4 jyyi; Ujir Cornell University Library E 165.H94 Life in America one hundred years ago, 3 1924 028 667 453 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028667453 HENRY CARROLL From an original in the possession of Mrs. Edwin F. Sweet, of Grand Rapids LIFE IN AMERICA ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO BY GAILLARD HUNT, Litt.D.,LL.D. ILLUSTRATED HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXIV E.V. © A,2 ^ o t COPYRIGHT 19 14 BY HARPE R a BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED OCTOBER. 1914 TO RIDGELY HUNT MY ELDEST BROTHER AND KINDEST FRIEND I DEDICATE THIS BOOK AS A TOKEN OF MY AFFECTION AND GRATITUDE CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE Preface ix I. Peace i II. A New Order 8 III. The Land 15 IV. The People 19 V. Ourselves as Others Saw Us 27 VI. As We Saw Ourselves 34 VII. A Man's Body at Auction 39 VIII. Coach and Sloop 48 IX. Turbans and Pantaloons 58 X. Women 73 XI. Plays and Songs 85 > XII. Common People 98 XIII. The Sunshine of Humor 107 XIV. "Religion, or the Duty We Owe to Our Creator" 114 XV. Webster's Speller 124 XVI. Reading and Writing 139 XVII. Pirates and Debtors 153 XVIII. Vice 171 XIX. The Wicked 188 XX. The Poor and Sick 194 XXI. Doctors 201 XXII. Cooks . 215 XXIII. Discontent 228 XXIV. Excrescences 239 XXV. The Government 248 XXVI. The President 259 XXVII. Patriotism 273 Bibliography 280 Index 289 ILLUSTRATIONS Henry Carroll Frontispiece The Octagon House Facing p. 4 View of New York Bay from the Battery, 1822 . 30 From a Booking-list 48 Boston Exchange Coffee-house 50 Waterloo Inn. The First Stage from Baltimore TO Washington 54 The Capitol in 1814 60 The White House in 1814. South Front . 60 Afternoon Dress 64 Walking-dress 64 Promenade Dress 64 Evening Dress 64 Wall Street, Corner of Broad Street, Showing Custom-house, First Presbyterian and Trinity Churches 68 City Hotel, Broadway, New York, 1812 .... 70 A View of Charleston 72 View of City Hall, Park Theater, and Chatham Street, 1822 90 Joel Barlow 142 Noah Webster 142 The City Prison, or Bridewell, West Side City Hall 168 The Debtors' Prison, Subsequently the Hall of Records 168 Edward Livingston, Author of the Criminal Code FOR Louisiana 190 Mrs. James Madison 268 James Madison 268 PREFACE THIS book was written at the request of the Committee of One Hundred to celebrate one hundred years of peace between Great Britain and the United States at the city of Washington, and is a contribution to that celebration. It is a sketch, drawn in outline, of Hfe and manners in the United States in the year when peace was made with Great Britain, and this nation started upon a career of separate, independent national development. I have suggested some of the causes of the development, and have portrayed the character of the people in a gen- eral way. I hope I have been able to communicate some of the atmosphere of the time to my narrative. It was an invigorating atmosphere, full of life and in- spiration to those who breathed it. We must beHeve that it was, for if it had not been we should not now rank among the great nations. While I write these lines the minds of all Americans are occupied with fearftil thoughts of the war in Europe. The ebb and flow of the tide of battle are watched anxiously from day to day, and we are won- dering helplessly what will be the eventual outcome. We are conscious that changes in civilization, the nature of which human knowledge and human expe- rience cannot foretell, are now preparing. At this ix PREFACE period of dreadful uncertainty in the Etiropean out- look our minds may turn with satisfaction to the con- templation of that time, one hundred years ago, when England and the United States made a treaty which recited that they wished to be at peace with one another. The progress of the spirit of peace be- tween the two nations during the century which has ensued is a fact which we can accept with fuU knowl- edge that it has been of benefit to mankind. Yet it has grown with the strength of the nations. They are of more equal strength now than they were when the peace was first made. Nor has the friendship been due to absence of rivalry and to separation from each other. On the contrary, we are rivals in every branch of human effort, and the whole length of a boundary of each touches a boundary of the other. Yet so amicable have the relations between Canada and the United States been for the past century that it re- quires an effort of memory to recall any differences that have arisen. One can walk across the boundary line without realizing that he has passed from domes- tic to foreign territory, except as he is reminded of it by the existence of a custom-house. The most popu- lous portions of the United States and Canada are separated by the Great Lakes, and the traveler may sail them from end to end and see no sign to suggest that they are not a highway reserved exclusively for peaceful voyaging. Unfriendly feelings must have a starved existence when all the outward signs are of amity and good-will. The treaty of peace of 1815 had a far-reaching consequence in that simple agree- ment made on April 28, 181 7, by Richard Rush, act- PREFACE ing for the American government, and Charles Bagot, acting for Great Britain, which recites that each gov- ernment may have only one small vessel, with one smaU cannon upon it, on each lake, and that "All other armed vessels on these lakes shall be forth- with dismantled, and no other vessels of war shall be there built or armed." Gaillard Hunt. Washington, D. C, October q, 1914. LIFE IN AMERICA ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO LIFE IN AMERICA ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO PEACE THE treaty of peace which terminated the second war between the United States and Great Britain was signed at Ghent by the American and British envoys on December 24, 1814; and on the 26th Henry Carroll, one of the secretaries to the American envoys, started for Washington with a copy of the treaty, going by way of England, where he met the British sloop of war Favorite, on which he sailed from Plymouth for New York, January 2,1815. On the same ship with him was Anthony St. Jno. Baker, secretary to the British negotiators, also carrying a copy of the treaty and clothed with authority to ratify it with the American government. To insure safe delivery of the precious document a second messenger had been sent by the American envoys on a ship bound for Chesa- peake Bay, but he arrived two days after Mr. Carroll, and consequently brought no news. The Favorite was spoken off Sandy Hook on Friday evening, LIFE IN AMERICA ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO February loth, by the British ship Tenedos, having been thirty-eight days in crossing. She came up the Bay the following day, and Carroll landed at the Battery at eight o'clock on Saturday evening and went directly to the City Hotel on Broadway near Cedar Street. The news which he carried swept before him, and within twenty minutes after he had landed lower Broadway was illuminated, and men paraded up and down the street with lighted candles in their hands, shouting that peace had come. At noon of Sunday Carroll left New York by post-chaise for Washington. He passed through Philadelphia just twelve hours later and reached Washington shortly after dark on Tuesday. This was fast travel- ing, for the distance was two hundred and ten miles by the road he took. When the treaty was ratified a few days later a copy was sent to New York by express, going from Washington to Philadelphia in fourteen hours and from Philadelphia to New York in nine hours, making twenty-three hoius for the whole distance ; but this was by relays, and was considered a notable feat. As late as Sunday, February 12 th, there was no inkling in Washington that Carroll had reached American shores, nor of the news he bore; but on Monday evening a rumor of the facts was abroad and threw the city into a tremor of excitement. It had come by express from Baltimore, and there was doubt of its truth, for people feared lest it might be a report started by speculators in stocks. Early the following evening, however, Mr. Carroll's post-chaise, drawn by fotir horses, came lumbering through Bladensburg, PEACE on past the ruined Capitol and down Pennsylvania Avenue, following for this part of the journey the same road that Ross and Cockbum's men had traveled when they had entered and sacked the city the summer before. It was a clear, cold night, but Pennsylvania Avenue was deep with mud, for it had been raining all the previous week. So the chaise plunged and splashed on in the darkness, tmtil it came to the house where Carroll's chief, James Monroe, the Secretary of State, lived.