1801. TRADE IN THE SOUTH WEST. 485 about to attempt a new venture. This was nothing less than opening a market for the products of the country and supplying the community with cash.* It must, said he, be obvious to every one that a circulating medium was badly needed, and that the exportation of produce was the only way by which the money so much wanted could be obtained. He proposed, therefore, to buy hemp, pork, flour, cotton, beeswax, and a score or so of beef cattle, sell them wherever he could, and bring back the cash, and he hoped that his fellow-citizens would encourage this first attempt to carry produce to a market. They seem to have done so, and a number of merchants were soon engaged in bringing in from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore what they announced as fine assortments of merchandise to be sold at Nashville for produce.† One trader goes so far as to remind the people that to him they owe "the pleasing prospect of an established cotton market"; declares that he was the first to bring about this trade, and insists that they should in return deal exclusively with him.‡ As years passed on, even this manner of trading proved disappointing. The mass of the community, it is true, was much the better for it. The creature comforts of the people were increased. It put better clothes on their backs, better shoes on their feet, better furniture in their houses. But it brought no more specie to their pockets, and by 1810 the newspapers are again full of complaints and remedies. Some attributed the scarcity of cash to the refusal of the State, the banks, and the business men to receive the old cut money which for years past had been taken by everybody. Some thought the falling off in emigration was the true cause. Others laid it to the custom of buying at Philadelphia and not at New Orleans. This produced four evils. As the merchandise was bought at Philadelphia, and the cotton and hemp for which it was exchanged at Nashville were sold at Natchez or New Orleans, the money did not remain in Tennessee, but went on to Philadelphia. This barter kept down the price of produce, because more was grown than could be * Tennessee Gazette, October 8, 1800. Ibid., April 1, 1801, and September 16, 1801. exchanged. The price being low, industry was suppressed; men did not raise as much as they could, but as much as they needed for barter. This made it necessary for the farmer who wanted specie to export his own produce. A few of the well-to-do, by associating in companies of ten or a dozen, had been able to load a flat-boat and send one of their number along as supercargo to Natchez. But the small planters could not be exporters. One hundred of them would hardly raise enough to fill a boat. If they acted individually and intrusted their produce to commission merchants, all manner of risks were run. The boat might sink on the way. The bookkeepers might swindle them. The merchant might cheat them. Even if all went well, five per cent. would have to be paid to the person who brought back the money. Some humble economist, reflecting on the evils of this system, proposed that the State should interfere. His plan was for the Legislature to name two places of deposit, as Nashville and New Orleans, and for the people to elect two agents to manage them. Any man who had a barrel of pickled pork, or a hogshead of tobacco, or a bale of cotton, which he wished to dispose of, should be at liberty to carry it to Nashville, deposit it with the agent, and obtain a receipt. When a boat-load had thus been collected, the goods should be sent in State boats to the agent at New Orleans, sold and accounted for. A small charge for such service would bring a large revenue to the State, and would be gladly paid by the people.* While demands were thus being made in every section of the country for better means of communication, shorter channels of inland trade, less costly ways of transportation, an agent, destined in time to revolutionize trade, commerce, and navigation all over the earth, was slowly creeping into notice. After twenty years of cold indifference the people had at last found use for the steamboat. That it was possible to move boats by steam had been shown over and over again both at home and abroad. Hardly a section of country could be named in the United States where somebody had not, at some time, * A Commercial System submitted to the People of Tennessee. The system is elaborately explained in fourteen essays in the Democratic Clarion, May to October, 1810. 1785-1807. THE STEAMBOAT. 487 made use of some form of steamboat. James Rumsey had done so at Shepherdstown on the Potomac. John Fitch had repeatedly done so on the Delaware, and William Longstreet on the Savannah. Elijah Ormsbee had shown one to the people of Pawtucket and Providence. Samuel Morey had travelled in another from New Haven to New York. Fitch had used others on the Collect Pond in New York city, and at Bardstown on the Ohio. Oliver Evans had exhibited his Oruktor Amphibolos to the citizens of Philadelphia. John Stevens had propelled his boat across the Hudson. A little money, a little encouragement, a little patient endurance of failure, would have made more than one of these ventures a success. But the story of the steamboat is the story of every invention, of every great undertaking the world has yet seen; the story of steady growth, of gradual development. It is not within the power of any man to perfect anything. The astonishing progress which separates the clumsy craft of Rumsey from the Clermont, and the yet more marvellous progress which parts the Clermont from the Teutonic, are the results of the combined efforts of generations of men. Rumsey struggling with the sluggish current of the Potomac; Fitch striving to establish a steamboat line on the Delaware; Ormsbee borrowing a boat from one man and a copper still from another with which to make his experiments; Morey tossing on the waters of Long Island Sound; Evans driving his Oruktor around the Centre Square at Philadelphia-these are the men who made straight the way for Fulton and Stevens. Every man who since that day has produced a better tool, a safer boiler, a more economical form of grate; who has improved the steam engine; who has found a better way of making steel or welding iron; who has invented a labor-saving machine; who has in any way widened the domain of human knowledge, has done his part in the evolution of the "ocean greyhound" which in our day traverses three thousand miles of water in less time than, seventy-five years ago, Fulton spent in traversing three hundred miles of land. Robert Fulton was the son of an Irish emigrant, and was born in Pennsylvania in 1765. He grew up in the town of Lancaster, and, his biographer declares, showed at an early age a marked taste for drawing, painting, and inventing. So strong were these propensities that at twenty he went to Philadelphia and supported himself for some years painting miniatures and making such drawings as the mechanics from time to time required. After a long struggle between what seems to have been a desire to be a great artist and a desire to be a great inventor, his artistic tastes triumphed, and he went to London, where he fell under the influence of Benjamin West. From London he went to Paris, and took up his abode in the family of Joel Barlow. At Paris, Fulton's mechanical tastes soon got the mastery over his artistic tastes, and he began to turn his attention seriously to diving-boats, marine torpedoes, and steamboats. By 1800 his ideas concerning the steamboat had been so far developed that he asked Volney to lay before Napoleon a plan for moving vessels with steam. Volney sent the communication to the Minister of Marine, who sent it to the First Consul, who ordered the Minister to treat with Fulton. A proposition was thereupon made by the Minister of Marine to spend ten thousand francs on experiments to be conducted in the harbor of Brest. Napoleon agreeing to this, the plan of Fulton was referred to the Institute for examination, and was never heard of again for three years. It was at this point that Fulton fell in with Robert R. Livingston, who had just come out as United States Minister to France, and to whose friendship and to whose purse is to be ascribed no small measure of his success. The interest of Livingston in steam navigation had early been awakened, and he had at his own cost built a boat and made experiments on the Hudson river. Confident of success, he obtained from the Legislature of New York a grant of the exclusive right to navigate the waters of New York State by steam. The condition of the grant was that he should, within one year, move a boat of twenty tons by steam at the rate of four miles an hour.* He failed to do so. But the work went on, and when in 1801 Jefferson sent him as Minister to France, he was still engaged in experimenting. Though his labors were thus cut short in America, they * Act of March 27, 1798. 1806. ROBERT FULTON. 489 were continued in France, where he seems for the first time to have met Fulton, and where the two formed the partnership which proved so fruitful of great results. Encouraged by what Fulton had done, and still believing that a steamboat could be successful, Livingston obtained another grant from the New York Legislature in 1803.* The monopoly which in 1798 had been given conditionally to Livingston, and not secured, was now extended to Fulton and Livingston if they should within two years, by means of steam, move a twentyton boat four miles an hour against the current of the Hudson. As no time was to be lost, preparations were made at once for experiments on the Seine. That intelligence of these preparations came to the ears of Napoleon, and recalled to mind his order of 1801, is quite likely, for he now commanded the Minister of Marine to send him the project submitted by Fulton in 1800. Having read it in his camp at Boulogne, he ordered that a commission should be chosen from the members of the Institute, and that they should examine the project immediately. His letter is dated July twenty-first, 1804. On August eighth the people of Paris witnessed the experiment. The learned members of the Institute seem to have been but little impressed. To Fulton and Livingston the trial was most encouraging. They determined to persevere, and despatched an order to Watt and Boulton at Birmingham for an engine to be delivered in the United States. Livingston soon after returned to New York. Fulton went over to London, and two years were consumed in endeavoring to persuade the English Government to adopt his submarine torpedo. Even in 1806, when he came back to the United States,† it was the torpedo, not the steamboat, that occupied his thought. The moment, therefore, his foot touched land, he hastened to Washington, and passed the winter of 1807 explaining models and lecturing on the torpedo to the President and the Secretary of the Navy. The steamboat, however, was not forgotten. When Fulton reached New York in December, 1806, he found the engine built for him in England lying on a wharf near the * April 5, 1803. + December 13, 1806. |