Free The Seekers by John Jakes Page B

Points To
    Vast Population Increase!
    “To return to my original point,” Pleasant said, “there is enough happening in the United States to provide a young fellow with twenty lifetimes of satisfying labor. Give that a scan and you’ll see I’m right. Now I must get to work and finish this review of The Mysterious Monk. I saw it last night at Powell’s theater. A most diverting Gothic melodrama—”
    Abraham hardly heard. Carrying the sheets in his blackened fingers, he retired to the back stairs of the building, found a little light under a grimy window, plucked an apple from his leather apron and began to read.
    For a while he couldn’t get past the opening sentence. He kept seeing Elizabeth’s lovely and defiant blue eyes.
ii
    Finally Abraham managed to read the article to the end. Mr. Pleasant’s piece was indeed a paean to the prosperity and intellectual achievement that seemed to be sweeping the nation.
    Pleasant began by noting that the first census, authorized by Congress in 1790, had discovered a population nearing four million, of which, he reported in a dour aside, almost seven hundred thousand were slaves. The editor predicted that by the time of the next census—the year the new century, opened—the country would probably grow to an astonishing five or six million people, particularly since there was now more room in which to raise families. The treaties maneuvered through the ministries of England and Spain by Mr. Jay and Mr. Pinckney had at last resolved some territorial disputes and brought a measure of stability to the northwest.
    Jay’s treaty had removed or reduced the British threat on the country’s northern and western borders. Pinckney’s Treaty of San Lorenzo, signed in Madrid, had established the Mississippi as the official western limit of the country—set the southern boundary at the thirty-first parallel—and, most important, given America free navigation of the river and free deposit of goods—the right to store and re-ship them without paying duty—at Spanish-held New Orleans for an initial period of three years. Settlers raising crops for profit would now have a secure and easy route to a major port.
    The nation had adapted with reasonable ease to the new coinage of 1786. Abraham smiled at Pleasant’s deliberate inclusion of the fact that Mr. Jefferson had thought out the system, based on the Spanish milled dollar; the editor wasn’t as pliant as he pretended.
    A general economic boom was accelerating the pace of commerce and invention. Mr. Whitney of New Haven, for instance, had virtually eliminated the old, tedious process of cleaning green seed cotton. His new gin enabled a single slave to separate out a remarkable fifty pounds of staple per day. As a result, the entire south was turning to a cotton economy; the commodity had at last been made profitable. At the same time, the luckless Whitney was spending a fortune to defend his patent against infringements by rival manufacturers.
    As for “expansionist fever”—well, a whole array of startling developments had made it possible for immigrants to travel into the newly won west faster and more safely than ever before.
    Highways were a-building; a turnpike modeled after those in Britain had been opened between Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Boone’s Wilderness Road had been widened to accommodate wagon traffic. And the waterways swarmed with one-way flatboats and keel-boats. Families going west gathered on the Pittsburgh docks faster than craft to transport them could be constructed. Wayne’s victory had made a journey down the Ohio relatively safe.
    Mr. Pleasant touched on other trends that promised to quicken the pace of migration even more. Men were talking of canal systems. Steam, power was being harnessed for river boats. Fitch and Rumsey had already launched trial vessels on the Delaware and the Potomac—
    With a sigh, Abraham turned over the last sheet. The editor had indeed painted a glowing picture.