Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1885 — HISTORICAL [ARTICLE]

HISTORICAL

Origin of the Xotiopal Song. ‘•Hail Columbia’*—HoW People Traveled in 1800. George Washington Libeled." How Fires Were Put Out in the “ Good Old Times”— Low Wages, Etc, [From McMaster's new “History of the People of the United States."] ORIGIN OF “HAIL COLUMBIA” (1798). Thousands of men who despised John Adams, who detested the Federalists, who loathed the influence Great Britain had in Federal affairs, now (in 1798), turned to support the Government with vigor. Their hearts were still warm toward France. But they could not suffer even %o old and dear an ally to heap up insult on their native land. Such an outburst of patriotism had never before been seen. It began at Philadelphia, and spread thence as fast as the post-riders could carry the news. Night after night at the theater, pit, boxes, and gallery joined in one mighty shout for the “President’s March,” for “Yankee Doodle,” or for the stirring music of “Stony Point.” While the airs were being played, the wildest excitement prevailed. The audience, rose to their feet, stood upon the seats, waved hats and walking-sticks, sang, cheered, and, when the piece was finished, demanded that they should be played over and over again. Then a band of hardy Republicans in some part of the gallery or pit would call for “Ca Ira,” or the “Marseillaise” hymn, till their cries were drowned amid a storm of hisses and groans. Not to be outdone, the

Republicans thereupon bribed the musicians to play no Federal tunes. The first night they refused, a storm of indignation was raised in the theater, and they gave way. The next night they stood firm, and were well pelted for their pains. The Federalists were highly indignant The theater, said they, more than any other place, brings men of all classes together. The managers should therefore pay some heed to public feeling in the selection of the music. The present is no time to grate the public ear with those Gallic mur-der-shouts, “Ca Ira” and the “Carmagnole.” The enthusiastic clamor with which the “President’s March” had been called for, and the deafening applause with which it had been greeted, should have taught them this. Is it ..... the purpose of a theater company to please or to insult the public? The action of pelting the fiddler and smashing the fiddle is greatly to be condemned. The firm and dignified conduct of leaving the theater and keeping away till the managers solemnly promise that the “President’s March” shall be the first tune played in the house, is much to be preferred. The theater, the Republicans protested, was a public house, and the managers would do well to keep this in mind- If, however, they were determined to make it the resort of the British faction, then let them look to that faction for support. Every earnest Republican and true patriot would keep away. This, was the rejoinder, is greatly to be wished. Men of sense for the time when the Jacobins and their murder-shouts shall be driven from every decent resort Let them desert the theater, and with the shillings thussaved pay some of their old debts.

While the factions wrangled, the benefit-night of a favorite actor drew near. No man knew better than he how to profit by the popular will, and at no time in the whole course of his life had so fine a chance of profiting by the popular will been offered him. Politics ruled the hour. The city was full of excited Federalists, who packed the theater night after night for no other purpose than to shout themselves hoarse over the "President’s March. ” He determined to make use of this fact. He would take the march, find some one to write a few patriotic stanzas to suit it, and, on the night of his benefit, sing them to the house. Some Federalists were consulted, were pleased with the idea, and named Joseph Hopkinspn as the man best fitted to write the words. He consented, and in a few hours “Hail Columbia” was produced. The night for the benefit was that of Wednesday; the 25th of April, and the Gazette announced that the performance would comprise a comedy called “The Italian Monk;” comic opera of “Resina“More Sack,” an epilogue on the character of Sir John Fal staff; and “an entire new song (written by a citizen of Philadelphia), to the tune of the “President's March”, will be sung by Mr. Fox, accompanied by the lull band and a grand chorus: -F jin united let ns be. ]>«! yfi g around our librrtv: As a band of brothers joined, Peace and safety we shall find.’

Long before the curtain rose the house was too small to hold the thousands who clamored to be let in. Those who got in were too excited to wait quietly for the song. At last the comedy ended, and Mr. Fox appeared upon the stage. Every line was loudly applauded, the whole house joined in the chorus, and, when the verse “Behold the chief who noy commands” was reached, the audience rose to its feet and cheered till the building shook to its foundations. Four times the song was encored, was demanded again at the close of the play. A few called for “Cadra,” but were quickly put down. The words of “Hail Columbia” were printed in full in the newspapers of the following day. The Gazette hoped that every lady in the city would practice the music, learn the words, and sirig them at the next repetition; then perhaps the two or three FrenchAmericans who-remained might feel the charm of patriotism and join in the chorus of the song.

TRAVELING IN 1809.

The stage-coach was but little better than a huge covered box mounted on springs. It had neither glass windows, nor doors, nor steps, nor closed sides. The roof was upheld by eight posts which rose from the body of the vehicle, and the body was commonly breasthigh. From the top were hung curtains of leathery to be drawn up when the day was fine, and let down and buttoned when rainy and cold. Within were four seats. Without waa the baggage, Fourteen pounds cf luggage were allowed to be carried free by each passenger. But if his portmanteau or his brass-nail-studded hair trunk weighed more, he paid for it at the same rate per mile as he paid for himself. Under no circumstances, however, could he be permitted to take with him on the journey more than 150 pounds. When the baggage had all been weighed, and strapped on the coach, when the horses had been attached, and the way-bill made out, the eleven passengers were summoned, and, clambering to their seats through the front of the stage, sat down with their faces toward the driver’s seat. On routes where no competition existed, progress was slow, and the travelers were subjected to all manner of extortion and abuse. “Brutality, negligence. and filching,” says one, “are as naturally expected by people accustomed to traveling in America as a mouth, a nose, and two eyes are looked for in a man’s face.” Another set out one day in March, 1796, to go from Frenchtown to New Castle, on the Delaware. Seventeen miles separated the two towns, a distance which he declares a good, healthy man could have passed over in four hours and a half. The stage-coach took six. When it finally reached New Castle it was high noon, and the tide was making, the wind was fair, and the boat for Philadelphia was ready at the wharf. Yet he was detained for an hour and a half “that the inn-keeper might scrub the passengers out of the price of a dinner.” Dinner over, the boat set sail and ran up the river to within two miles ofjGloucester Point There, wind and tide failing, the vessel dropped anchor for the night. Some passengers, anxious to go on by land, were forced to pay half a dollar each to be rowed to the shore. At lin

the morning the tide again turned. But the master was then drunk, and, when he could be made to understand what was said, the tide was again ebbing, and the boat aground. Evening came before 'the craft reached Philadelphia. The passengers were fortyeight hours on board. Another came from New York by stage and by water. He was almost ship-wrecked in the bay, lost some of his baggage at Amboy, was nearly left by the coach, and passed twenty hours going sixteen miles on the Delaware. The Captain was drunk. The boat three times collided with vessels coming up the river. A gentleman set out in February to make the trip from Philadelphia to Baltimore. Just beyond Havre de Grace the axle broke. A cart was hired, and the passengers driven to the next stage inn. There a new coach was obtained, which, in the evening, overset in a wood. Toward daylight the whole party, in the midst of a shower of rain and snow, found shelter and breakfast at a miserable house three miles from Baltimore. But the host would not suffer one of them to dry his clothes by the kitchen stove. When an editor in* the town was asked to publish an account of their trip he refused. The owner of the coach-line might, he said, hinder the circulation of his newspaper. To add to the vexation of such delay “The Apostolic Assembly of the State of Delaware” had forbidden stage-coaches to cross their “hand’s-breadth of territory” on the Sabbath. The worst bit of road in the country seems to have been between Elkton, in Maryland, and the Susquehanna ferry. There the ruts

were so deep that, as the wheels were about to enter one, the driver would call upon the passengers to lean out of the opposite side of the coach, to prevent the vehicle from being overturned. “Now, gentlemen,” he would say, “to the right.” “Now, gentlemen, to the left” Yet another traveler had quitted Philadelphia for New York. All went smoothly till the coach drew near to the town of Brunswick. There one of a rival line was overtaken, and a race began. At Elizabethtown, a young woman, well mounted, rode up behind the coach, and tried to pass. In an instant half the men on the stage began to revile her most shamefully, raised a great shout, frightened her horse, and all but unseated her. One, indeed, ventured to expostulate. But he was

quickly silenced by the question: “What! suffer anybody to take the road of us?” At New York three of the passengers found lodgings in a single room at an inn. The custom was a general one, and of all customs was the most offensive to foreigners. No such thing, it was said, was ever seen in the British Isles. There every decent person not only had a bed, but even a room to himself, and, if he w'ere so minded, might lock his door. In America, however, the traveler sat down at the table of his landlord, slept in the first bed he found empty, or, if all were taken, lay down on one beside its occupant without so much as asking leave, or caring who the slireper might be. If he demanded clean sheets, he

was looked upon as an aristocrat, and charged well for the trouble he gave.; for the bedclothes were changed at stated times, and not to suit the whims of travelers. GEORGE WASHINGTON LIBELED. Twice had Washington been chosen by the unanimous vote of the Electoral College, and twice inaugurated with the warmest approbation of the whole people. Rut the times had greatly changed. In 1789 and 1792 every man was for him. In 1796, in every town and city of the land were men who denounced him as an aristocrat, as a monocrat, as an Anglomaniac, and who never mentioned his name without rage in their hearts and curses on their lips. Yet, much as his popularity had suffered, it was still great and powerful, and thousands of men in the Republican party would gladly have seen him’seated for a third term in the presidential chair. But he would not, and, on the 17th of September, made public his farewell address. \ Had it been a second proclamation of neutrality, or an open declaration of war against the French, it could not have provoked more angry and ill-timed replies. His character, said one,.having been founded on false appearances, can only be respectable while if is not known. His temper is arbitrary. His disposition is avaricious. He has a great passion for being seen. Without any skill as a soldier he has crept into fame by the places he has held, and by the success of the cause he espoused. Nor will the schemes of finance he has favored add much to his renown. If it be a merit to have laid a tax that raised an insurrection, then he shares it with the British Ministers who provoked the Revolutionary War. If it be a merit to have burdened the many to enrich the few, then he shares it with that infatuated monarch who brought about the present state of France. If it be a merit to have bound the American aristocracy to its Government by a large and everlasting debt, then he shares it with that British monarch who drove the Stuarts from their throne. History will yet tear the page devoted to his praise. It was France and his country that, in defiance of England, gave him fame, and it is France and his country that will, in defiance of England, take that fame away. Once his conduct had been guided by candor. Of fate he had sadly departed from that wise course. He had refused to the representatives of the people the papers they had a right to see. From that moment the brightness of his countenance faded. The glory that once shone round him dissolved in mist The enemies of liberty and his country claimed him as their own, and the name of Washington sank from the high level of Solon and Lycurgus to the mean rank of a Dutch Stadtholder, or the insignificance of a Venetian Doge. Posterity will look in vain tor anv marks of wisdom in his administration. They would, instead, behold a funding system, the worst of all diseases that, ever inflict a State. They would see an excise arming a freemen against their fellow-men, and they would say the great champion of American liberty retained the barbarous usages of the feudal system by keeping men in livery, and twenty years after the founding of the Republic, still owned 500 slaves.

HOW FIRES WERE PUT OUT IN THE LAST CENTURY. The law then required every householder to be a fireman. His name might not appear on the rolls of any of the fire companies; he might not help to drag through the streets the lumbering tank which served as a fire engine, but he must at least have in his hall-pan-try. or beneath the stairs, or hanging up behind his shop door, lour leathern buckets inscribed with his name, and a huge bag of canvas or of duck. Then, if he were aroused at the dead of night by the cry of fire, and the clanging of every church bell in the town, he seized his buckets and his bag. and, while his wife put a lighted candle in the window to illuminate the street, set off for the fire. The smoke of the flame was his guide, for the custom of fixing the place of the fire by a number of strokes on a bell had not yet come in. When at last he arrived at the scene he found there no idle spectators. Each one was busy. Some hurried into the building and filled their sacks with such movable goods as came nearest to hand. Some joined the line that stretched away to the water, and helped to pass the full buckets ! o those who stood by the flames. Others took posts in a second line down which the empty pails were hastened to the pump. The house would often be half consumed when the shouting made known that the engine had come. It was merely a pump mounted over a tank. Into the tank the water from the buckets was poured, and pumped thence by the efforts of a dozen men. No such thing as suctionhose was seen in Philadelphia till 1794. A year later one was made which became the wonder of the city. The length was 160 feet. The material was canvas, and, to guard against decay, was carefully steeped in brine. The fire buckets, it was now thought, should be larger, and a motion to that effect was made in the Common Council. But when it was known that the new buckets, if ordered, must hold ten quarts the people protested. Ten

quarts would weigh twenty pounds, and the bucket five pounds more. This was too much, for, as everybody knew, the lines at a fire were often made up of boys and lads not used to passing heavy weights. “Eight quarts was enough. Much could also be accomplished by cutting the city into fire wards, and giving a different color to the buckets of each ward. They could then be quickly sorted when thb fire was put out At New London five fire wardens took charge of the engines, and all who aided in putting out fires. To disobey a warden’s order was, to incur a fine of 1 pound. If a good leathern bucket was not kept hanging in some convenient place in the- house, and shown to the warden when he called, 6 shillings a month was exacted as punishment At New York, however, it was a long time before the bucket gave Way to the hose. There, if a householder were ojd, or feeble, or rich, and not d sposed to quit a warm I bed to carry his buckets to the fire, he 1 was expected at least to eend them by ’ i Al » ■ .

his servant or , his slave.. Whed-Ahe flames had- been extinguished, the buckets were left in the street, to be sought out and brought home again by their owners.

wages in 1800. The condition of the wages class of that day may well be examined; it is full of instruction for social agitators. In the great cities unskilled workmen were hired by the day, bought their own food, and found their own lodgings. But in the country, on the farms, or wherever a band Was employed on some public work, they were fed and lodged, by the employer, and given a few dollars a month. On the Pennsylvania canals the diggers ate the coarsest diet, were housed in the rudest sheds, and paid $6 a month from May to November, and $5 a month from November to May. Hod-carriers and mortar-mixers, diggers and choppers, who, from 1793 to 1800, labored on the public buildings and cut the streets and avenues of Washington City, received S7O a year, or, if they wished, S6O for all the work they could perform from March 1 to December 20. The hours of work were invariably from sunrise to sunset. Wages at Albany and New York were 3 shillings, or, as money then went, 40 cents a day; at Lancaster, $8 to $lO a month; elsewhere in Pennsylvania workmen were content with $6 in summer and $5 in winter. At Baltimore, men were glad to be hired at 18 pence a day. None, by the month, asked more than $6. At Fredericksburg, the price of labor was from $5 to $7. In Virginia, white men, employed by the year, where given £l6 currency; slaves, when hired, were clothed and their masters paid £1 a month. A pound, Virginia money, was, in Federal money, $3.33. The average rate of Wages the land over was, therefore, $65 a year, with food and, perhaps, lodging. Out of this small sum the workman must, with his wife’s help, maintain his family.