1830] Improvements in Transportation 385 tion, the improvements already made for the conveyance of passengers between the centers of commerce and government seemed wonderful. In 1800 the stage drawn by horses had taken three days to convey a passenger from Boston to New York. The introduction of the steamboat at all possible points had reduced the time occupied by the journey, now performed partly by stage and partly by steamboat, by one half, — to about thirty-six hours. Boston was then about as far from New York as St. Louis is to-day. 1807. Fulton made his celebrated voyage up the Hudson in the Fulton's Clermont in 1807. The steamboat was immediately in steamboat, great demand, but it was not until Fulton's monopoly was declared unconstitutional that the building and operating of steam vessels became free to all. Before the outbreak of the War of 1812 steamboats were placed on the Western rivers, at once changing the whole problem of emigration and settlement. In 1818 the first steamer appeared on Lake Erie; in 1830 a daily line was running from Buffalo to Detroit. New types of steamers, especially designed for lake and river navigation, were rapidly built, and their use became well-nigh universal. With the improvement in steam navigation, the opportunity for its successful prosecution was greatly enlarged by the opening of canals. Schouler's The most important and successful of these was the Erie The Erie canal, connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson. It will be Canal. remembered that the Hudson and Mohawk rivers form a United natural break in the Appalachian system (p. 11), and this States, break continues westwardly from the head of the Mohawk III, 346. to the Great Lakes. From the southern end of the Appalachian system in Georgia and Alabama, to its eastern and northern end in New England, this is the only opening of low altitude leading westward, and it was entirely suited to the building of a canal. The man who saw this, and whose name should always be remembered in this connection as a benefactor of mankind, was De Witt Clinton. To his energy and ability the building of the canal was due. It was opened in 1825, and at once changed the conditions Railroads. States, IV, of Western life and made New York the great commercial metropolis of the country. Within a year, the cost of conveying a ton of grain from Buffalo to Albany had fallen from one hundred dollars to fifteen dollars; the farmers of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had been brought within reach of the markets of the world. The success of the Erie canal gave rise to the building of canals in all directions, and induced Adams and Clay to recommend schemes of internal improvement which were distasteful to many of their supporters. The most remarkable of the later canals was the Chesapeake and Ohio, designed to connect tide water with the great interior waterways. These early canals were worked by horse power. Many of them were failures, but for a time they played an important part in the development of the country. By 276. Railroads. — On July 4, 1828, three years after the completion of the Erie canal, Charles Carroll of Maryland, the last survivor of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, drove the first spike on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the earliest line designed for the conveyance of both passengers and freight. By 1830 fifteen miles of it were completed. In the beginning, the cars or coaches were drawn by horses, but in 1829 one of Stephenson's locomotives was imported and served as a model until the first type of the American locomotive was evolved. 1832 the Baltimore and Ohio had reached a point seventythree miles from Baltimore, and had been equipped with locomotives capable of making fifteen miles an hour. In 1830 there were twenty-three miles of railroad in operation; building now proceeded rapidly, and by 1840 there were about twenty-three hundred miles in operation, or ready for traffic. Congress (1832) encouraged this work by providing that duties should be refunded on all rails laid down within three years of importation. At the outset, these roads were designed to connect towns already in existence, or the existing water routes; they were intended to replace the stagecoaches. Afterwards the railroads were 1830] Social Changes 387 generally built first, giving the means of settlement to a new section of the country, and then transporting the produce of that region to the existing water communication. In this manner, the interior began to be settled away from the rivers. In the decade 1840-50, five thousand miles of railroad were built; but it was not until after 1850 that the pushing of the railroad into new sections was done with great vigor. Of the thirty lines at first projected, only three, and those short lines, were designed to be built south of the Potomac River. 277. Other Inventions. During this period there was a Inventions. great change in the iron industry, due partly to the demand for iron in railroad building and operating, and partly, perhaps, to the tariff; but more especially to the introduction of anthracite coal for the smelting of iron. The same coal was also used in the furnaces of locomotives. The effect of this adaptation of anthracite to the production of iron was to centralize the iron industry in Pennsylvania. Coal also came into use for heating dwellings, and, coupled with the introduction of illuminating gas for street and house lighting, completely changed urban life in the North. At the close of this period came the introduction of another great invention, the electric telegraph. By 1845, therefore, American life, in the North at least, may be said to have thrown off the colonial guise, which it still wore at Jackson's inauguration, and to have taken on its modern form. - 278. Social Changes. The growth of democratic ideas, Social changes. of which the widening of the suffrage is one of the best tests, had now taken a firm hold on the people; only two Northern states preserved the old property franchise. With the coming in of new economic forces, wealth began to accumulate in fewer hands; corporations began to take the place of individuals; and speculators began to make and lose fortunes by holding Western lands, by manipulating railroad stocks, and by establishing moneyed institutions of one kind or another. Literary and scientific workers. Education. The change which had come over society was especially marked by the sudden outburst of an American literature. Of those who wrote before 1830, Bryant, Irving, and Cooper have made enduring reputations; they were still at work. Between 1830 and 1845, Emerson and Hawthorne, Longfellow and Lowell, Whittier and Holmes, Poe, Prescott, and George Bancroft began their labors; Jared Sparks laid the foundation for the study of American history; Kent, Story, and Wheaton began the publication of law books on scientific foundations; and Asa Gray, Benjamin Peirce, J. D. Dana, Joseph Henry, Silliman, and Louis Agassiz began their scientific investigations and teaching. 279. Education and Religion. The colleges, also, awoke from their eighteenth-century lethargy; but the progress made in the art of teaching was slight, except that science claimed more attention than had formerly been the case. One hopeful sign was the increased resort to the colleges and the interest taken in the higher education by the people. The common-school system spread throughout the new West, and it was greatly stimulated by the wise liberality of the government in devoting one thirty-sixth part of the public lands to that purpose. Unhampered by the traditions which encircled educational institutions in the older settled regions, these Western schools became, many of them, model institutions of their kind. Secondary education also began to assume prominence. To the "grammar" schools, which had now almost disappeared, and the academies, never numerous, were added the high schools. Through these new institutions the urban communities provided by taxation fuller opportunities, especially in the modern subjects, and prolonged the period of public education from two to four years. Beginning in Boston (1821), high schools have spread first to the principal cities and then to all the larger towns, broadening their scope as they have increased in number. Their service in stimulating elementary education and in training, under democratic conditions, the young people from |