John Bernard, the English comedian, who was in this country at the close of the eighteenth century, found the state of society very much like that which he had left in his own country. “They wore the same clothes, spoke the same language, and seemed to glow with the same affable and hospitable feelings. In walking along the mall I could scarcely believe I had not been whisked over to St. James’s Park; and in their houses the last modes of London were observable in nearly every article of ornament or utility. Other parts of the state were, however, very different.” (Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797–1811, p. 29.) Bernard found in New England abundant evidences of progress such as he had not been accustomed to in England, and splendid stamina of character (p. 30). Nothing, apparently, suggested to him that the people were not virile and sound.

[35] Bentley, Diary, vol. i, pp. 253 et seq., discusses at length “the Puerile Sports usual in these parts of New England”. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, vol. ii, p. 696, comments on the dearth of public amusement. Cf. also ibid., p. 864. The changed attitude of the public toward dancing, as reported by Weeden, pp. 696 and 864, doubtless finds its explanation in the growing consciousness that the resources in the way of entertainment deserve to be increased. At the close of the century, however, dancing was still frowned upon. Bentley, Diary, vol. ii, pp. 17, 232, 233, 296, 322, 363.

[36] Brissot, New Travels in the United States of America, p. 72: “Music, which their teachers formerly prescribed as a diabolic art, begins to make part of their education. In some houses you hear the forte-piano. This art, it is true, is still in its infancy; but the young novices who exercise it, are so gentle, so complaisant, and so modest, that the proud perfection of art gives no pleasure equal to what they afford.” Cf. also Bentley, Diary, vol. ii, pp. 247 et seq., 292.

[37] Brissot, New Travels in the United States of America, pp. 86 et seq. Brissot generously explains this fact upon the ground that in a country so new, whose immediate concerns were so compelling, and where, also, wealth is not centered in a few hands, the cultivation of the arts and sciences is not to be expected. On the side of invention the situation was far from being as bad as a reading of Brissot might seem to imply. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, vol. ii, pp. 847–858.

[38] Goddard, Studies in New England Transcendentalism, p. 18. While the passage cited deals with an earlier situation, the general observation made concerning the well-poised character of the New England type of mind is as valid for the close of the eighteenth century as for the corresponding period of the preceding century; and the failure of New England to take a “plunge ... from the moral heights of Puritanism” is all the more impressive in the later period in view of the variety and character of the new incitements and impulses which the people of New England generally felt in the period following the Revolution.

[39] Conspicuous in this group was the new merchant class. In the wake of the Revolution came an industrial and commercial revival which profoundly affected the life of New England. While the period of the Confederation, on account of its political disorganization and the chaotic state of public finance and the currency, was characterized by extreme economic depression, on the other hand, the adoption of the Constitution communicated to the centers of industry and commerce a feeling of optimism. The sense that a federal government had been formed, equal to the task of guaranteeing to its citizens the rights and privileges of trade, gave early evidence that the economic impulses of the country had been quickened notably. Such evidence is too abundant and too well known either to permit or to require full statement here, but the following is suggestive: The fisheries of New England, which had been nearly destroyed during the Revolution, had so far revived by 1789 that a total of 480 vessels, representing a tonnage of 27,000, were employed in the industry. At least 32,000 tons of shipping were built in the United States, a very large part of this in New England, in 1791. Before the war the largest amount built in any one year was 26,544 tons. But the record of 1791 was modest. From 1789 to 1810, American shipping increased from 202,000 to 1,425,000 tons. Because of the federal government’s proclamation of strict neutrality with regard to the wars abroad, the carrying trade of the world came largely into the hands of shipowners and seamen of the United States, with the result that the dockyards and wharves of New England fairly hummed with activity. The exports of 1793 amounted to $33,026,233. By 1799 they had mounted to $78,665,522, of which $33,142,522 was the growth, produce, or manufacture of the Union. Within a very few years after the adoption of the Constitution, American merchants had become the warehousers and distributors of merchandise to all parts of the world. The wharves of New England were covered with goods from Europe, the Orient, the West Indies, and from the looms, shops, and distilleries of the nation. Directed by resourceful and far-sighted men who had the instinct for commercial expansion, ships sailed from New England ports for Batavia, Canton, Calcutta, St. Petersburg, Port Louis. They carried with them coffee, fish, flour, provisions, tobacco, rum, iron, cattle, horses; they brought back molasses, sugar, wine, indigo, pepper, salt, muslins, calicoes, silks, hemp, duck. The situation is dealt with in detail by Bishop, History of American Manufactures, vol. ii, pp. 13–82; Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, pp. 227 et seq.; Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, vol. ii, pp. 816–857.

[40] Winsor, The Memorial History of Boston, vol. iii, pp. 191, 203; Morse, The Federalist Party in Massachusetts, pp. 37, 38; Harvard Theological Review, January, 1916, p. 104.

[41] Weeden, Early Life in Rhode Island, pp. 357 et seq., calls attention to the spacious and elegant houses which were built at Providence about 1790, and to the new group of merchants which the expansion of trans-oceanic commerce called into existence there. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, pp. 821 et seq., deals with the situation in a larger way.

[42] Parker, History of the Second Church of Christ in Hartford, p. 172. The passage contains a vivid picture of the state of polite society in an important Connecticut center. Love, The Colonial History of Hartford, pp. 244 et seq., deals with the transformation of social life with particular reference to the disintegration of Puritanism.

[43] An outcry against the excesses of fashion began to make itself heard. “An Old Farmer,” writing to the Massachusetts Spy, March 27, 1799, complains on account of the consequent drain upon the purses of husbands and fathers: “I am a plain farmer, and therefore beg leave to trouble you with a little plain language. By the dint of industry, and application to agricultural concerns, I have, till lately, made out to keep square with the world. But the late scarcity of money, together with the extravagance of fashions have nearly ruined me.... I am by no means tenacious of the old way, or of old fashions. I know that my family must dress different from what I used to when I was young; yet as I have the interest of husbands and fathers at heart, I wish there might be some reformation in the present mode of female dress.... In better times, six or seven yards of Calico would serve to make a gown; but now fourteen yards are scarcely sufficient. I do not perceive that women grow any larger now than formerly.... A few years since, my daughters were not too proud to wear good calfskin shoes; two pair of which would last them a year: But now none will suit them but morroco, and these must be of the slenderest kind.... Young ladies used to be contented with wearing nothing on their heads but what Nature gave them.... But now they dare not appear in company, unless they have half a bushel of gauze, and other stuff, stuck on their heads”. The letter closes with a humorous account of the writer’s embarrassing experience with the trains of the ladies’ dresses on the occasion of a recent visit to church.

[44] Swift, Lindsay, The Massachusetts Election Sermons (Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. i, Transactions, 1892–1894), pp. 428 et seq.

[45] Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, vol. ii, pp. 864 et seq.

[46] Scudder, Recollections of Samuel Breck, with Passages from His Note-Books, pp. 178 et seq. Breck visited New England about 1791. He was impressed with the looseness of life and gross lawlessness which he saw. A fairer judgment appears on page 182: “The severe, gloomy puritanical spirit that had governed New England since the days of the Pilgrim forefathers was gradually giving way in the principal towns”, etc.