minds. There was a cyclone of discussion, a tumult of debate that was hushed only by the ocean on one side and the wilderness on the other. Let it be said, however, that in this strange period as in all others of like nature in history there were a few men whose thoughts were largely given to questions of material development and who tried hard, although in vain, to attract the attention of their brethren. These conditions were not surprising when considered in connection with what had preceded them. They were, rather, natural and inevitable, and now require to be mentioned because of a phenomenon in which they were soon to result. For many years all that was strongest in the intellect of the colonies had been concentrated, with an intensity hard to exaggerate, on political affairs. For an equal time the people had lived a national life in which warfare and politics had been almost the only elements. The leaders of public thought and action had ceaselessly appealed to the country in utterances dealing with those things, and the mass of the people had done nothing but listen to the appeals, argue about them and fight in response to them. And at last the end of the long tumult had come; the abstract political condition so long desired and struggled for had been gained. But the country could not at once put aside all memory of the period just ended, and turn with calm and unclouded thought to the more prosaic but equally important questions of domestic affairs and continental progress. Indeed, it is probable that such things were even further from the public mind immediately after the Revolution than before or during the struggle, since nations like individuals have youth, strength and senility, and their inhabitants collectively manifest in those periods many of the characteristics of the individual man. It was a very young, though vigorous and boisterous nation that had been born of the Revolution. It was old enough to realize its own existence, and was much interested in itself and its surroundings, but did not yet feel equal to the task of walking very far in any one direction. The colonies, though they had won their freedom, did not yet know what to do with it. Absorbed in a contemplation of past perils from which they had so recently emerged, the freemen suddenly found that independence, in itself, was not a complete solution of the problem created by their ambition. No sooner was the fighting ended than the chief figures of the land fell into another violent discussion over the next step to be taken, and the populace forthwith took sides and added to the clamor. During the years from 1783 to 1789 the country was a continuous political caucus, and no broad subject that did not in some way relate to state rights, Federal jurisdiction, term of office, taxation, the franchise, or such things, had much chance of winning the public ear. Even the significance that lay in the extension of the national territory to the Mississippi River failed to receive general attention. There was no way to get there. The national horizon, in the eyes of the mass of the people, still remained about two hundred miles wide from east to west. CHAPTER XIV NO JOHN FITCH CONCEIVES THE PLAN OF APPLYING STEAM TO IT T was amid these conditions, in the year 1785, that a man named John Fitch, born in Connecticut but then living in Philadelphia, came forward with a plan for revolutionizing the social and business affairs of mankind by applying steam to the purposes of travel and transportation. He proposed to run boats on the Delaware River by means of steam power, and proceeded to do it, while the baby-among-nations looked on. The complete record of Fitch's life and work is available, and it is therefore only necessary, in these pages, to preface the narrative of his invention of the steamboat in America by saying that he was a gunsmith during the 1 Whittelsey's "Sketch of the Life of John Fitch": Spark's "Amer. Biog.," Vol. VI. Westcott's "Life of John Fitch": Howe's "Historical Collections of Connecticut": "Ohio Archæological and Historical Publications," Vol. VIII. Lloyd's "Steamboat Directory": O'Callahan's "Documentary History of New York": Preble's "History of Steam Navigation": Thornton's "Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats": Watson's "Annals of Philadelphia": U. S. Patent Office Report for 1850, Part I. "New York Magazine," 1790; etc., etc., etc. Revolution, a worker in metal, a maker and repairer of clocks and watches, and an explorer, map maker, surveyor and captive of the Indians in the western wilderness. Because of unhappy domestic relations he had left his family some sixteen years before the date mentioned, after long consideration of the consequences of that step on himself and his reputation. And in later years, when putting into words the manuscript record of his undertakings that was entrusted to the Philadelphia Library, to be opened thirty years after its deposit in that institution, he said: "I know of nothing so perplexing and vexatious to a man of feelings as a turbulant Wife and Steamboat building. I experienced the former, and quit in season, and had I been in my right sences, I should undoubtedly have treated the latter in the same manner.” Fitch's scanty education, of which proof is seen in the passage quoted, will be understood when it is said that his father, a close-fisted man, compelled him to quit his intermittent schooling at the age of ten despite the boy's protest. After that calamity he worked for himself during the hours in which his parent did not demand his services, raised a crop of potatoes which he sold for ten shillings, and bought a geography. He would have realized more from his labor had not his father demanded of him a quantity of the produce equal to that originally given to him to plant. The incident is an illustration of the qualities which later impelled the man to persevere, in the face of obstacles and derision, until he had turned his vision of a steamboat into a reality. The idea of a steamboat came to him in the spring of 1785, and by August his first rough model was completed. On the 20th of that month, Doctor Ewing, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a letter to William Houston, a former member of Congress, in which he said: "I have examined Mr. Fitch's machine for rowing a boat. It is certain that the extensive force of water, when converted into steam, is equal to any obstruction that can be laid in its way.. and the application of this force to turn a wheel in the water, so as to answer the purpose of oars, seems easy and natural by the machine which he proposes, and of which he has shown me a rough model. With this as a basis Fitch started for New York City in an effort to interest Congress in his invention. He stopped on the way at Trenton, where Houston wrote a similar letter, and at Princeton, where Provost Smith of Princeton College gave him a third. Reaching the national capital, the inventor wrote a letter to Congress which read as follows: "Sir: "August 29, 1785. "The subscriber begs leave to lay at the feet of Congress, an attempt he has made to facilitate the internal Navigation of the United States, adapted especially to the Waters of the Mississippi. The machine he has invented for the purpose, has been examined by several Gentlemen of Learning and Ingenuity, who have given it their approbation. Being thus encouraged, he is desirous to solicit the attention of Congress, to a rough model of it now with him, that, after examination into the principles upon which it operates, they may be enabled to judge whether it deserves encouragement. And he, as in duty bound, shall ever pray. "John Fitch. "His Excellency, The President of Congress." This letter was referred to a committee of three members, who made no report as far as the records show. The minutes of Congress, at that time, contained no reference to any but matters considered to be of importance. Fitch's invention did not fall within that category. He returned to Pennsylvania filled with anger at the treatment he had received, and thereafter referred to the committee of Congress as "ignorant boys." But before departing from New |