The Saratoga Campaign

The first years of the Revolutionary War were discouraging for Americans.   British forces were larger, better trained, and better equipped.  American victories were few, but in the fall of 1777, Americans defeated the British in two battles that turned the war in their favor. 

In the summer of 1777, the British army under General John Burgoyne moved south towards Albany, New York.   Burgoyne planned to gain controls of the Hudson River and separate New England from the other colonies, but about 25 miles north of Albany, at Bemis Heights, an American force under General Horatio Gates blocked his path.   The British tried twice to get around Gates.  On September 19 and again on October 7, the armies clashed at Freeman’s Farm, a mile north of Bemis Heights.  The Americans were victorious both times.

Burgoyne pulled back to Saratoga (now Schuylerville).  He expected help from British forces in southern New York, but relief did not arrive.  The Americans surrounded the British, and on October 17, Burgoyne and his 5,000 men surrendered.  The victories near Saratoga gave Americans new confidence and convinced the French that Americans had to resolve and skill to defeat Britain.  As a result, France entered the war as an American ally.

One of the heroes of the Saratoga campaign was Benedict Arnold, who later betrayed the American cause.

The image you see here is a painting by John Trumbull titled The Surrender of General Burgoyne, and it hangs in the Rotunda of the United States Capital.

1789

The crowd roared as the tall Virginian appeared on the balcony of New York City's Federal Hall.  George Washington, hero of the revolution, had agreed to serve his country in a new role.  


On that day, April 30, 1789, he took the oath of office as the first President.

Less than a year before, the states had approved the new Constitution, which created a strong central government.  in January and February of 1789, elections were held to choose a President, Vice President, and members of Congress.   The first Congress had 26 senators and 65 representatives.   It met in New York, the temporary capital, on April 6.  Then came the inauguration of George Washington, who had been chosen President by unanimous vote.

The President and Congress got right to work.  Congress passed the Bill of Rights, protecting the basic freedoms of Americans, and sent it to the states for approval.  Congress also established the executive departments, such as the Department of State and the Department of War, and the federal court system.   And George Washington began to shape the office of the President, setting patterns and precedents that later Presidents would follow.

Another question that Congress had to address early on was how to address the President.  After considering "Your Excellency" and "Your Highness," Congress settled on the simple "Mr. President."

The Constitutional Convention

Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787

On May 25, 1787, representatives of 12 American states met at Philadelphia. Only five years earlier, these states had defeated the British and had become independent. They then banded together under an agreement called the Articles of Confederation. But now they needed a better agreement – a constitution outlining a unified democratic government.

Delegates included James Madison and George Washington of Virginia, Alexander Hamilton of New York, and old Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania, among 51 others. They debated long and hard over many issues. How much power would the new federal government have and how much would be kept by the states? Who would make national laws? Who would enforce those laws? Gradually the delegates worked out their differences. The Constitution they agreed upon called for three branches of government – the legislative (Congress) to make the laws, the executive (the President) to enforce the laws, and the judicial (the Supreme Court) to interpret the laws.

The new constitution went into effect in 1789 when nine of the 13 state state governments approved, or ratified, it. It has been the main governing document of the US for more than 200 years. And it has been used as a model by name newer nations.

Rhode Island sent no delegates to Philadelphia and was the last state to ratify the Constitution.

1814

In 1814, America had been at war with Great Britain for two years. The War of 1812 had begun largely because of British interference with American trade. During 1814, American army and navy forces won several battles that eventually brought peace between the two countries. But the most dramatic event of the war occurred in 1814 with the British attack on America’s capital city, Washington.


In August, 1814, a British force landed in Maryland, scattered the weak American forces there, and on August 24, marched into Washington. President James Madison and other government officials fled the city. Before she left, First Lady Dollley Madison rescued the portrait of George Washington that hung in the White House.

British General Robert Ross ordered Washington’s public buildings to be burned. The British piled furniture up in the White House’s drawing room and set it afire; the inside of the mansion was gutted. The Treasury and War Department buildings were burned next. When the British set fire to the Capitol, it’s interior was destroyed and its roof collapsed. Repairs to Washington took years. Not until 1819 was Congress able to meet again in the the Capito..

The only government building in Washington not burned in 1814 was the patent office; it’s precious drawings and models were sparred.

Clipper Ships

“Never, in these United States,” wrote historian samuel Eliot Morison, “has the brain of a man conceived, or the hand of man fashioned, so perfect a thing as the clipper ship.”
The word “clip,” which meant simply “to cut”, later came to mean “to move quickly”.” So a clipper ship was a fast-sailing one.

Clipper ships were the fastest and most beautiful sailing ships ever built. Between 1845 and 1859, American shipyards produced nearly 500 of them. The speediest were the giant Yankee clippers. With their masses of sail, these long, slender ships could travel up to 400 nautical miles a day.

Clippers were first built to carry goods to and from China. After the discovery of gold in California in 1848, they carried prospectors and supplies from the East Coast, to the gold fields. Earlier, this 15,000-mile trip around the southern tip of South America took five months. But by the early 1850s speedy clippers such as the Flying Cloud had cut the time to three months. Clippers set other records, too. In 1849, the Sea Witch sailed from Hong Kong to New York in 74 days. In 1852, the Challenger raced from Japan to California in 18 days. And in 1860, the Andrew Jackson sailed from New York to Liverpool, England, in 15 days. But by then steamships, which did not depend on wind, were replacing the clippers. The era of these “greyhounds of the sea” were coming to a close.

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was called “Old Hickory” by the soldiers he commanded. Like the hickory tree, he was strong and tough. But his soldiers loved him, and so did the American people.

Born in the backwoods log cabin. Jackson fought in the Revolutionary War when he was only 13. When he was 14, Andrew Jackson refused to shine the boots of a British officer. The officer slashed him with his sword, leaving a permanent scar on Jackson’s head.

As a young lawyer he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he became a cotton planter, a Congressman, and a militia officer. During the War of 1812 against Britain, he commanded the victorious American troops at the Battle of New Orleans. That triumph made Jackson a national hero. Although he narrowly lost the presidential election of 1824, he won easily four years later.

During his eight years in the White House, Jackson used his powers to strengthen the national government and improve the lives of ordinary Americans. He firmly opposed those who believed that individual states could nullify (cancel) laws they didn’t like. He fought against the Bank of the United States, which he thought favored the rich. And he vetoed many bills that seemed to him to be undemocratic. Because he fought for the average man against the wealthy, Andrew Jackson was known as “the people’s president.”

The Whiskey Rebellion

One of the threats the new American nation faced in the 1790s came not from a foreign power, but from its own people. The threat became known as the Whiskey Rebellion, because it involved the refusal of farmers in western Pennsylvania to pay a tax on whiskey.

Each year the farmers made whiskey from their corn. A new national tax on corn liquor hurt their business. The farmers were used to paying local taxes, but they resented the national tax. They refused to pay it, and the federal tax collectors were attacked and driven away.
New President Georgia Washington knew there were far more at stake than the tax on whiskey.

He realized that the authority of the new national government was being challenged. It this protest succeeded, others would also defy the government’s laws. Washington called up the militia of four states and personally took command of an army of more than 13,000 soldiers in Pennsylvania. At this show of force, the Whiskey Rebellion ended 0without fighting. And the whiskey tax was soon being collected peacefully. Washington’s decisive action ended a significant threat to the young American government.

In putting down the Whiskey Rebellion, Georgia Washington commanded a force of soldiers larger than any he had led during the Revolution.

John James Audubon

In long hair and buckskin clothes, John James Audubon looked like other men on the American frontier in the early 1800s. But Audubon had a unique occupation. His work was the lifelike painting of birds and other wildlife in their natural surroundings.

Born on the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo, Audubon was the son of a French trader. He went to school in France, where he learned to paint. In 1803, he came to the uNited DStates to stud farming, but instead spent most of his time in the woods, oobserving and sketching birds and wildlife. Soon Audubon set himself an ambitious goal: to paint America’s bird in realistic settings. He traveled widely searching for birds and painting them. Eventuall, he made New Orleans his home painting portraits to help support his family while continuing to add to his great bird project.

Audubon made the first “banding” experiments on wild birds. He tied threads around their legs when they were babies and later tracked their nesting habits.

No American publisher was interested in Audubon’s work, but a publisher in Scotland recognized his genius. Birds of America was published in four large volumes beginning in 1827. It made Audubon famous. In the 1840s, two volumes of his studies of mammals appeared, adding to his reputation as a superb artist and pioneering naturalist.

The Alien and Sedition Acts

In the U.S., the right to speak freely is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. But in 1798, the country’s leaders tried to limit free speech and freedom of the press. At that time, the new nation was on the brink of war with France. As an attempt to limit criticism of the government and support for France the Federalist Party of President John Adams pushed the Alien and Sedition Acts through Congress.

The Alien Act denied citizenship to anyone who had lived in the U.S. for less than 14 years and allowed the President to deport “dangerous” foreigners. The Sedition Act allowed the government to arrest anyone who criticized its policies. Among those tried and convicted under the laws were several newspaper editors and a congressman. Matthew Lyon, a congressman from Vermont was jailed for criticizing the Sedition Act in a letter to a newspaper.

In 1799, realtions with France improved dramatically, but critics of the government were still being put in jail. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, he immediately pardoned everyone convicted of sedition during the previous three years. The Alien and Sedition Acts were allowed to expire in 1802, and freedom of speech returnmed to the U.S.

Whaling

From high in the rigging of a tall-masted ship, a lookout cries, “Thar she blows!” The crew springs into action. Quickly they lower their rowboats and set out in pursuit of a nearby whale.

Whaling was a major industry in the first half of the nineteenth century. From ports such as Nantucket and New Bedford in Massachusetts, whaling ships sailed on voyages that lasted for years and took them around the world.

Lookouts on the ships kept watch for whales coming to the surface to breathe. When a whale was spotted, the whalers chased and harpooned it. Then they rowed away to avoid being overturned by their wounded prey.

Sometimes a harpooned whale took a boat on a “Nantucket sleigh ride,” pulling it for hours across the ocean. When the whale finally tired, it was killed with lances. Then the whalers lashed it to the whaling ship and cut it up.

Blubber, or fat, was boiled down to make whale oil, which was sold as fuel for lamps. Corset stays were made from baleen (thin plates of bone from the mouths of right whales). Sperm whales yielded oil used to lubricate fine instruments and waxy ambergris, used in perfume.

At the industry’s peak, there were more than 700 American whaling ships killing some 10,000 whales a year. But whaling declined after 1850 as petroleum replaced whale oil as fuel.

Modern whalers, using harpoon guns and helicopters, brought some species close to extinction.

Here is an article regarding whaling in days gone by.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum site is great place to explore the subject a bit more.

P.T. Barnum

If you wanted to see a mermaid, a giant, or a bearded lady, P.T. Barnum would gladly grant your wish. During the 1800s, Barnum was one of America’s best-known showmen. He prided himself on being a master of the art of “humbug,” or fooling people.

Barnum’s show-business career began in New York City in 1835, when he exhibited an old woman whom he said was George Washington’s nurse. He claimed that she was 161 years old. Though Barnum’s story was false, people flocked to see the old woman anyway.

Later, Barnum opened his American Museum, where he displayed a variety of heavily publicized attractions, some real and many fake. Among the most popular attractions were Chang and Eng, Siamese twins joined at the waist, and a dancing midget who became famous as General Tom Thumb.

Barnum also presented genuinely talented performers, such as Jenny Lind, the Swedish singer. He sent her around the country on a successful concert tour. In 1871, Barnum launched a traveling circus that later featured Jumbo, which he claimed to be the world’s largest elephant.

Barnum’s circus merged with others owned by J.A.Bailey and the Ringling Brothers to form today’s Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, “the greatest show on earth.”

P.T. Barnum was elected to the Connecticut state legislature and also served a term as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

John Jacob Astor

When 20-year old John Jacob Astor arrived in New York City from Germany in 1784, he was almost penniless. But by the time of his death in 1848, his ventures in fur trading and real-estate development had made him the richest man in America.

Astor became his career by trading German toys for furs in upstate New York. He soon made enough money to set up a string of trading posts in the Great Lake region. In 1808, he organized the American Fur Company, which came to control most of the fur trade in the United States as the frontier moved west. Astor’s fur-trading post at Astoria, Oregon, was the first permanent American settlement in the Pacific Northwest. Astor also made a fortune during the War of 1812, buying United States government bonds at low cost and reselling them at a profit.

Astor’s greatest profits, however, came from real-estate investments. When he retired from the fur trade in 1834, he devoted his full time to this endeavor. He made so much money---he left about $20 million when he died---that his enemies called him a “self-invented money-making machine.” Astor loved making money and acquiring property. “Could I begin life again,” he said, “I would buy every foot of land on Manhattan Island.” Indeed, his heirs tried to do just that. They acquired so much real estate that they became known as “the landlords of New York.”

Aaron Burr

Aaron Burr was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, a brilliant lawyer, and the Vice President of the U.S. But he is remembered as the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and as an accused traitor.

Burr served under George Washington in the Continental Army and became a successful lawyer in New York City. He also became an influential figure in national politics. Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury under President Washington, was Burr’s main political rival. In the election of 1800, Burr and Thomas Jefferson received the same number of electoral votes for President. Hamilton supported Jefferson, and Burr was named Vice President instead.

Four years later, Burr accused Hamilton of insulting him and challenged him to a duel. And on July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey, Burr fatally wounded Hamilton. In the early 1800s, duelists were expected to try to wound, not kill their foes.

The next year, Burr launched the scheme that led to his downfall. He was accused of trying to set up an independent empire in the Southwest, with himself as the ruler. He was arrested and tried for treason. Although he was acquitted because of lack of evidence, he was viewed as a traitor by the public. Burr lived in Europe for several years and then returned to New York, where he practiced law, forgotten by the nation he had once hoped to lead.