From Englishmen to Americans.(Review)

One evening in the summer of 1787, during the Constitutional Convention, a group of old friends gathered in Philadelphia for dinner. The talk turned to General Washington, now presiding with implacable dignity over the convention's sessions. As the story goes, Gouverneur Morris of New York asserted that he could be as familiar with General Washington as with any other intimate acquaintance. Another guest, Alexander Hamilton, promptly offered to provide dinner for a dozen with the finest wine if, at Washington's next reception, Morris would simply walk up to Washington, clap him on the shoulder, and say, "My dear General, how happy I am to see you look so well." Hamilton, of course, had served closely on Washington's staff during the Revolutionary War, and both he and Morris knew the general as well as any man did.

On the appointed evening, with a substantial crowd already gathered, Morris took up the bet. He walked over to Washington, bowed, shook hands, and then placed his left hand on Washington's shoulder, while repeating the promised words. The response was immediate. Washington reached up, removed Morris's hand, stepped back, and, in silence, fixed his eyes on Morris until the mortified offender retreated into the assembly. No one ever ventured such public familiarity with Washington again.

Yet, a mere thirteen years later, the third president of the United States took to answering the front door of the White House for himself clad in a lounging jacket. While Washington had held formal levees --stationed in front of the fireplace, he met his guests while dressed in black velvet, his hair powdered and gathered behind in a large silk bag, yellow gloves on his hands, holding a cockaded hat edged deeply with black feathers, resplendent in knee and shoe buckles, a sword peering from beneath his coat, bowing deeply from the waist-Jefferson had receptions where he circulated among the crowd shaking hands. It almost goes without saying that Jefferson was among the first to give up the powdered wig and to replace his aristocratic buckles with egalitarian trousers and shoe laces.

Democracy moved so quickly that by the time Dolly Madison became first lady in 1809, she adopted the practice of having "Hail to the Chief" played at state receptions simply to rouse guests to the proper respect for her husband. Perhaps nothing illustrates the direction of the new republic better than the Federalist Vice President John Adams's doomed effort to find a proper title by which to address the nation's chief executive; the senate rejected "His Highness the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties"--not to mention the classical Vir Amplissimus--in favor of plain "Mr. President." In fairness, one should add that even Washington was relieved by the senate's decision; only Adams grumbled morosely to his diary about the collapse of decorum.

Even from the vantagepoint of 1830, the world of the framers was impossibly distant. In 1790, the thirteen former American colonies of Great Britain, with a population of barely four million (including 700,000 black slaves) clung precariously to the Atlantic seacoast spread over an area roughly the size of France. Only six cities--Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Charleston, Baltimore, and Salem--had a population of 8,000 or more. Americans had not yet conquered the forest, and the difficulties of overland travel were so great that, as one text remarks, it was almost as difficult to assemble the first Congress of the United States as to convene church councils in the Middle Ages. It took twenty-nine days for news of the Declaration of Independence to reach Charleston from Philadelphia.

Society was different as well. Militia days, elections, weddings, even clerical ordinations were punctuated by the copious use of ardent spirits; the custom of toasting had an established life of its own. Men and women addressed their betters with their hats in their hands. Even in church, no one could forget who was among the governing "wise, good, and well-to-do"; pews were distributed by status in the community. In the same vein, class rank at Yale was determined not by grades but by family status.

By 1830, spurred by the opening of the Western Reserve and the Louisiana Purchase, men and women had poured across the Appalachians and Alleghenies into the trackless lands of the West. Between 1810 and 1820, population west of the Appalachians more than doubled. Missionary societies were formed to build up waste places, which included the rural farmlands of western Connecticut. The population boomed. Even the long-settled cities of the East grew exponentially; between the Boston Massacre and the 1820 census, Boston's population tripled and New York's grew sixfold. Perhaps most tellingly, in 1740 there was one lawyer for every 10,108 inhabitants of Massachusetts; by 1840 the ration was one for every 1153. At the same time, eastwest transportation benefitted from a system of "internal improvements" including the "national pike" that eventually ran from Baltimore to Vandalia, Illinois. Spurred by the federal government's example, New York State broke ground on the Erie Canal in 1817. When it was finished in 1825, New York City became the principal gateway to the markets of the upper West.