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[ Present State of the Savages of North America ] [ The United States Today ]The United States Today
If I were to see the United States again today, I would no longer recognize it: there where I left forests, I would find plowed fields; there where I cleared a trail for myself through the brush, I would travel on highways. The Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio no longer flow in solitude; great three-masted vessels sail up them and more than 200 steamships animate their shores. At Natchez, instead of Céluta's hut, there rises a charming city of about 5,000 inhabitants. Today Chactas could be a member of Congress, and travel to Atala's country along two different routes, one of which leads to St. Stephen on the Tombigbee, and the other to Natchitoches; a road book would place the number of relays at eleven: Washington, Franklin, Homochitt,"' etc.
Alabama and Tennessee are divided, the first into 33 counties containing 21 cities and the second into 51 counties containing 48 cities. Some of these cities, such as Cahawba, capital of Alabama, preserve their savage names; but they are surrounded by other cities differently named-there are in Muskogee, Seminole, Cherokee, and Chickasaw country cities called Athens, Marathon, Carthage, Memphis, Sparta, Florence, and Hampden, and counties of Columbia and Marengo: the glory of all the countries has placed names in this same wilderness where I met Father Aubrv and the humble Atala.
Kentucky boasts a Versailles; a county called Bourbon has: Paris as its capital. All the exiles who have withdrawn W America have taken with them the memory of their homeland.'
Falsi Simoentis ad undam
Libabat cineri Andromache
The United States offers then in its breast, under the protection, of liberty, an image and a remembrance of most of the' famous places of ancient and modern Europe, just as in the garden in the Roman countryside Hadrian had caused the different monuments of his empire to be represented.
It is to be noted that there are almost no counties that do not have a city, a village, or a hamlet of Washington, touching unanimity of a people's thanks.
The Ohio now waters four states: Kentucky, Ohio itself, Indiana, and Illinois. Thirty representatives and eight senators are sent to Congress by these four states. Virginia and Tennessee touch the Ohio at two points; it numbers along its banks 191 counties and 208 cities. A canal that is being dug at the portage around its rapids and that will be finished in three years, will make the river navigable for large vessels as far as Pittsburgh.
Thirty-three highways leave Washington, as once the Roman roads started from Rome, and separate to reach the four corners of the United States. Thus you can go from Washington to Dover, in Delaware; from Washington to Providence, in Rhode Island; from Washington to Robbinstown, in the territory of Maine, frontier of the British states to the north; from Washington to Concord; from Washington to Montpelier, in Connecticut [sic]; from Washington to Albany, and from there to Montreal and Quebec; from Washington to Havre de Sackets, on Lake Ontario; from Washington to the falls and fort of Niagara; from Washington, by Pittsburgh, to the straights and Michilimackinac, on Lake Erie [sic]; from Washington, by Saint Louis on the Mississippi, to Council Bluffs on the Missouri; from Washington to New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi; from Washington to Natchez; from Washington to Charlestown, to Savannah and Saint Augustine, forming in all an internal road system of 25,747 miles.
One can see by the places these roads link that they pass through places, which although formerly wild are now cultivated and inhabited. On a great number of these roads the post houses are established; public conveyances take you from one place to another at moderate prices. You take the diligence for Ohio or for Niagara Falls, as in my time you took a guide or an Indian interpreter. Byways branch off from the principal highways and are likewise provided with means of transportation. These means are almost always double, for since there are lakes and rivers everywhere, you can also travel by rowboat, sailboat, or steamboat.
Vessels of this latter type make regular trips from Boston and New York to New Orleans; they are likewise established on the Canadian lakes-Ontario, Erie, Michigan, and Chainplain-those lakes where 30 years ago there were scarcely to be seen a few Indian canoes, and where now battleships contend with one another.
Steamboats in the United States serve not only the needs of commerce and travelers, but they are also used for the defense of the country. Some of them, of enormous size, placed at the mouths of rivers and armed with cannons and boiling water, resemble at once modern citadels and fortresses of the middle ages.
To the 25,747 miles of main roads must be added the extent of 419 local roads, and 58,137 miles of water routes. Canals augment the number of these latter routes: the Middlesex canal joins the port of Boston with the Merrimack river; the Champlain canal causes that lake to communicate with the Canadian seas; the famous Erie or New York canal now unites Lake Erie with the Atlantic;` the Santee, Chesapeake, and Albemarle canals are due to the states of Carolina and Virginia; and since long rivers, flowing in different directions have sources close to one another, nothing is simpler than to join them to one another. Five roads are already known to go to the Pacific Ocean; only one of these roads passes through Spanish Territory.
A law of Congress of the session of 1821 to 1825 orders the establishment of a military post in Oregon. The Americans, who have a settlement on the Columbia, thus penetrate to the great Ocean between English, Russian, and Spanish America by a zone of land about six degrees wide.
There is however a natural boundary to colonization. The timberline stops at the west and north of the Missouri, at the edge of immense steppes which do not afford a single tree and which seem to refuse cultivation, although grass grows there abundantly. This green Arabia serves as a passage for the settlers who go in wagons to the Rocky Mountains and New Mexico; it separates the United States of the Atlantic from the
United States of the Southern Sea, as those deserts in the Old World separate fertile regions. An American has proposed to open at his own expense a great railroad from Saint Louis on the Mississippi to the mouth of the Columbia for a concession of land ten miles wide to be given him by Congress on both sides of the railroad; this gigantic bargain was not accepted.
In the year 1789 there were only 75 post houses in the United States; now there are more than 5,000.
From 1790 to 1795 these houses were increased from 75 to 453- in 1800 there were 903; in 1805 they rose to 1,558; in 181~, 2,300; in 1815, 3,000; in 1817, 3,459; in 1820, 4,030; in 1825, about 5,500.
Letters and dispatches are transported by post wagons, which do about 150 miles a day, and by foot and horse couriers.
A great postal route extends from Anson in the state of Maine, by Washington, to Nashville in the state of Tennessee: distance, 1,448 miles. Another line joins Highgate in the state of Vermont with St. Mary in Georgia: distance, 1,369 miles. Post relays are established from Washington to Pittsburgh: 226 miles; they will soon be established as far as Saint Louis on the Mississippi, by way of Vincennes, and to Nashville, by way of Lexington, Kentucky. The inns are good and clean, and sometimes excellent.
Offices for the sale of public lands are open in the states of Ohio and Indiana, in the Michigan, Missouri, and Arkansas 'territories, in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. It is believed that there remain more than 150 million acres of land suitable for cultivation, without counting the land of the great forests. These 150 million acres are valued at about 1,500 million dollars, if one evaluates them at a flat 10 dollars per acre rate and calculates the dollar at only 3 francs -an extremely conservative calculation in all ways.
There are in the northern states 25 military posts, and 22 in the southern states.
In 1790, the population of the United States was 3,929,326; in 1800, it was 5,305,666; in 1810, 7,239,903; in 1820, 9,609,827. Included in this population must be counted 1,531,436 slaves.
In 1790, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri did not have enough settlers to be counted. Kentucky alone in 1800 had 73,677, and Tennessee 33,691. Ohio, without inhabitants in 1790, numbered 45,365 in 1800; 230,760 in 1810, and 581,434 in 1820; Alabama, from 1810 to 1820, rose from 10,000 inhabitants to 127,901.
Thus the population of the United States has grown from decade to decade, from 1790 to 1820, in the proportion of 35 individuals per 100. Six years have already passed of the ten that will be completed in 1830, time at which it is assumed that the population of the United States will be about 12,875,000, Ohio's part will be 850,000 inhabitants, and Kentucky's 7501000.
If the population continues to double every 25 years, in 1855 the United States will have a population of 25,750,000; and 25 years later, that is in 1880, this population will rise to more than 50,000,000.
In 1821, the exports of local and foreign products from the United States rose to the sum of $64,974,382; public revenue in the same year rose to $14,264,000; the excess of receipts over expenses was $3,334,826. In the same year, the national debt was reduced to $89,2041236.
The army at times has been increased to 100,000 men; 11 battleships, 9 frigates, 50 warships of different sizes make up the navy of the United States.
It is unnecessary to speak of the constitutions of the different states; it suffices to know that they are all free.
There is no dominant religion; but each citizen is obliged to practice a Christian denomination; the Catholic religion is making considerable progress in the western states.
Supposing, as I believe is the case, that the statistical résumés published in the United States are exaggerated by national pride, even so the general prosperity would still be worthy of all our admiration.
To complete this surprising tableau, one must picture cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Savannah, and New Orleans illuminated at night, filled with horses and carriages, offering all the enjoyment of luxury which thousands of vessels introduce into their ports; one must picture those Canadian lakes, once so solitary, now covered with frigates, corvettes, cutters, barks, and steamships, which pass the canoes and boats of the Indians as the great ships and the galleys do the pinks, sloops, and caïques in the waters of the Bosphorus. Churches and houses embellished with Greek columns rise in the midst of the forests, on the edge of these rivers which were the ancient ornament of the wilderness. Add to that vast colleges, observatories established for science in the domain of savage ignorance, all religions, all opinions living in peace, working in concert to improve mankind and to develop mankind's intelligence: such are the prodigious feats of liberty.
The Abbé Raynal had proposed a prize for the solution to this question: "What will be the influence of the discovery of the New World on the Old World?"
The writers lost themselves in calculations relative to the exportation and importation of metals, the depopulation of Spain, the growth of commerce, the perfecting of navies: no one, as far as I know, sought the influence of the discovery of America on Europe in the establishment of the American republics. They still saw only the old monarchies just about as they were, society stationary, human spirit neither advancing nor retreating; they had not the least idea of the revolution which in the space of forty years took place in men's minds.
The most precious of the treasures that America held in her breast was liberty; each people is called upon to draw from this inexhaustable mine. The discovery of the representative republic in the United States is one of the greatest political events in the world. That event has proved, as I have said elsewhere, that there are two types of practical liberty. One belongs to the infancy of nations; it is the daughter of manners and virtue-it is that of the first Greeks, the first Romans, and that of the savages of America. The other is born out of the old age of nations; it is the daughter of enlightenment and reason-it is this liberty of the United States which replaces the liberty of the Indian. Happy land which in the space of less than three centuries has passed from the one liberty to the other almost without effort, and that by a battle lasting no more than eight years!
Will America preserve her second kind of liberty? Will not the United States divide? Can we not see already the seeds of that division? Has not a representative of Virginia already defended the thesis of the old Greek and Roman liberty with the system of slavery, against a representative of Massachusetts who defended the cause of modern liberty without slaves, such as Christianity has made it?
The western states, extending more and more, too far away from the Atlantic states, will they not want a separate government?
Finally, are Americans perfect men? Do they not have their vices as do other men? Are they morally superior to the English from whom they draw their origin? This foreign immigration that constantly flows into their population from all parts of Europe, will it not at length destroy the homogeneity of their race? Will not the mercantile spirit dominate them? Will not self-interest begin to be the dominant national fault?
Once again it must be sadly said that the establishment of the republics of Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Buenos Aires is a danger for the United States. When it had before it only the colonies of a transatlantic kingdom, no war was probable. Now will not rivalries rise up among the old republics of North America and the new republics of Spanish America? Will not the latter forbid alliances with European powers? If on both sides they had recourse to arms, if the military spirit took hold of the United States, a great captain could arise. Glory loves a crown; soldiers are only brilliant makers of chains, and liberty is not certain to preserve her patrimony under the guidance of victory.
Whatever the future, liberty will never entirely disappear from America; and it is here that we must point out one of the great advantages of liberty, daughter of enlightenment, over liberty, daughter of manners.
Liberty, daughter of manners, disappears where her principle is altered, and it is of the nature of manners to deteriorate with time. Liberty, daughter of manners, begins before despotism in the days of obscurity and poverty; she finally is lost in the centuries of brilliance and luxury. Liberty, daughter of enlightenment, shines after the ages of oppression and corruption; she walks with the principle that preserves and renews her; the enlightenment of which she is the effect, far from weakening with time, as do the manners that give birth to the first liberty, the enlightenment, I say, fortifies itself rather with time; thus it does not abandon the liberty it has produced; always in the company of that liberty, it is at the same time the generative virtue and the inexhaustible source of liberty.
Finally, the United States has another safeguard: its population occupies only an eighteenth of its territory. America still inhabits solitude; for a long time yet her wilderness will be her manners, and her enlightenment will be her liberty.
I would like to be able to say as much for the Spanish Republics of America. They enjoy independence; they are separated from Europe: it is an accomplished fact, an immense fact no doubt in its results, but a fact that does not immediately and necessarily lead to liberty.