Water Closets

The 1856 guide to designing and furnishing “American village homes” also declared that “Health, comfort and decency, all demand that every dwelling, however humble, should have a water-closet under its roof, accessible with ease and without exposure to the external air.” Installing a toilet was simple if the dwelling had running water and drainage but took more care and cost if not. Essential for any indoor toilet was a chimney pipe to draw the foul smells away from the dwelling. Where indoor toilets were not yet provided, there were outhouses (also referred to as privies, necessary houses, and back houses). Trips to the outhouse at all hours and in inclement weather were unnecessary when a chamber pot or a night pot served its purpose.

A study of rented tenements in Boston in the early 1890s found that in the city as a whole, 91.9 percent of families had access to water closets, and the rest (8.1 percent) had access only to privies. The different wards of the city showed considerable diversity: in three wards more than 99 percent of the families had access to water closets while in another ward 35 percent had access only to privies. Access to a water closet was not always exclusive: in one ward as many as eighteen families shared one, and in two wards as few as four families shared one. We may assume that thirty years earlier, water closets were substantially less prevalent. They also would have been less common in less built-up areas. Frederick Law Olmsted, in recounting his travels in Texas in the 1850s, told a story (probably apocryphal) of a German gentleman who settled in a town in Texas and built a “water-closet” (almost certainly an outhouse). Nothing like it existed in town. He was assailed for indecency, and his water closet disappeared at night. He built another, and it too disappeared. Persisting, he built a third. It remained, and two or three others appeared in town. Several months later, 12 or 15 water-closets stood in a line beside the public square.

Theater

Theater was a form of popular entertainment. Larger cities might have several theaters, and traveling companies would play smaller venues. The plays offered were both newly written works and revivals of old favorites and classics. The newly written works included stage adaptations of popular fiction such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The year 1860 saw productions in New York City of works by William Shakespeare including “Hamlet”, “Richard the Third”, “Romeo and Juliet”, and “Macbeth”. In addition Fitzgerald Tasistro recited “Othello” and “Hamlet” entirely from memory, each on its own evening.

Theater thrived on controversy, as it does today. In December 1859 the Winter Garden Theatre produced “The Octoroon”. The timing was either fortuitous or deliberate, opening just days after the execution of a militant abolitionist, John Brown, who had raided a federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Wild rumors about the play circulated before it opened as its subject was slavery, but the play, although intense, was more melodrama than abolitionist invective. The story involved a woman named Zoe who was born to a slave mother and a slaveholder father and whose appearance and education “places her on a footing of equality with whites”. Zoe had been wooed by a man named McCloskey, whom she had rejected. The slaveholder father died impoverished, and his estate was being sold to repay the debts. Zoe was one of the assets, and McCloskey was a prospective buyer. According to the reviewer, the “defect in the play” lay “in the fact that the serious interest outweighs the comic to the extent that there is barely a moment of relaxation permitted to the spectator.”

Illumination

The various liquid fuels listed in the 1860 census were derived from animals, plants, and minerals. Sperm oil came from the oily matter found in the heads of certain types of whales; it was what remained when spermaceti, a solid component of the oily matter, had been removed. Whale oil was produced by rendering blubber. The census enumerated 422 whale hunting firms in four states, which employed 12,300 hands and produced products having an annual value of $7.7 million. Massachusetts had an 86.9 percent share of the business. The other whaling states were Connecticut, Rhode Island, and California.

A whaling ship not only carried the hunters in pursuit; it was a factory that stripped the whale’s carcass of its valuable parts and rendered the fat into oil that could be stored for the duration of the voyage. Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick, although not popular when it was first published in 1851, presented a reasonably accurate picture of the hunt, the shipboard rendering of blubber into oil, and the harvesting of spermaceti. Whale fishery products also included whale bone, a fibrous material taken from the mouths of certain whales that was prized for its flexibility, strength, elasticity, and lightness. It was used for umbrella ribs, stiffening stays, and the frameworks of hats. When heated, whalebone was flexible and retained the shape into which it was molded.

Kerosene and coal oil were distilled from coal. At a later time, kerosene would be known as a distillate of petroleum. Lard oil was made from the fat of butchered swine. Camphene, burning fluid, and rosin oil were all derived from turpentine, which was distilled from the sap of pine trees. Camphene, also referred to as oil of turpentine, was a distillate of turpentine, and burning fluid was a mixture of turpentine and alcohol. Rosin oil was a distillate of rosin, a product of distilling turpentine. Camphene and burning fluid were explosive and responsible for much injury and fire damage. In spite of the danger, people used camphene because it was cheap. Lamps intended for use with camphene or burning fluid generally had one or more narrow cylindrical burners that rose an inch or more above the top of the reservoir that held the fuel – keeping the flame at a distance from the fuel reduced the risk of an explosion.

The Light-House Board, an administrative body that was a part of the federal government, operated 425 lighthouses and lighted beacons and 47 light-vessels along the coasts and waterways of the United States in 1860. A combination of a Fresnel lens and an Argand lamp produced an intense beam of light that made a lighthouse visible for miles at night. The Fresnel lens was a beehive-shaped apparatus composed of glass or glass and metal. Lenses and prisms surrounded the lamp and redirected the light into the horizontal plane.

The Argand lamp burned a hollow, cylindrical wick that encouraged an upward draft to form both inside and outside of it. This caused the flame to burn more intensely. Depending on the importance of the lighthouse, the lamp might have had as many as five wicks burning.

In 1860 all but one of the lights and beacons used Fresnel lenses. At an earlier time, the Light-House Board had used sperm oil in its lamps, but the cost encouraged them to seek a substitute. Colza, or rapeseed oil, gave a satisfactory light at a lower price, but the supply in the United States was not adequate to keep all the lighthouse lamps burning. Although lard oil burned badly in the lamps, when heated it proved to be a suitable replacement for the colza, and so in 1860 the Light-House Board was in the process of switching over.

Illuminating and lubricating oils were distilled from petroleum, which came from pools and springs in various places around the world. Petroleum had not gained much notice as a fuel or lubricant because it appeared to be available only in small quantities that were not commercially valuable. An oil well drilled by Edwin L. Drake in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859 changed that assessment. The burning fluid distilled from petroleum yielded a light deemed superior to sperm oil’s at less than half the cost. Petroleum production, about 20,000 gallons in 1859, rose to 2 million in 1860 and to 20 million in 1861. A cartoon published in the April 20, 1861, issue of Vanity Fair bore the caption “Grand Ball Given by the Whales in Honor of the Discovery of Oil Wells in Pennsylvania” and showed a group of whales in formal evening attire, celebrating and toasting one another with champagne.

Wood

The number of saw mills producing lumber in 1860 is an indication of the importance of wood in the United States. The census showed that 19,600 establishments employed 71,000 hands to produce lumber having a value of $91.6 million. During the colonial period and the early days of the republic, sawmills were local enterprises due to the difficulty and expense of transporting timber or lumber any distance. Circumstances had changed by 1860. In relatively new states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, which were being drawn upon as major sources of lumber, larger than average saw mills were being built at the mouths of rivers, and the rivers were used to transport the logs from the timbering sites to the mills.

As reflected in the 1860 census, Pennsylvania produced lumber with the greatest value ($10.7 million), and New York produced the next greatest value ($9.7 million). The lumber industry showed a great deal of variation from state to state in terms of the numbers of mills and hands and the value of product relative to state population. States above the national average included Michigan, Florida, Oregon, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. These states had recently been admitted and were experiencing above average levels of population growth. Two exceptions were the older states, Maine and New Hampshire; both experienced low population growth, were heavily wooded and were probably supplying lumber to the other northeastern states.

States below the national average were older, with lower than average population growth, such as Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The exception was Illinois, a recently admitted state that experienced population growth of more than 100 percent, but its value of sawed lumber produced per capita was far below the national average. The reason for this appears to be that by 1860, a substantial lumber market had developed in Chicago, which was the recipient of lumber harvested and sawed in Michigan and Wisconsin for distribution into the plains. Chicago made Illinois a lumber conduit rather than a lumber producer.

The Economy: An Overview

We speak habitually of “the economy” in generalizations as though they are the reality being described and not merely placeholders for the myriad individual transactions that constitute the commercial, business, and financial activities of a society. The danger in making economic generalizations is the same that arises from speaking of any of the social sciences as the interaction of impersonal forces – it divorces understanding from both the human motivation and the accidental occurrences responsible for causing most events. The problem, of course, is that the fundamental economic activity is so vast as to make most individual transactions irrelevant. That alone would lead us to seek more meaningful information in the measures that show the accumulated effects of multiple transactions, in the way that most of the economic activity undertaken by a business firm over the course of a year can be summarized in its financial statements. At the same time, we try to look behind the balance sheets and income statements to understand who the individuals who engaged in the transactions were and what they hoped to achieve.

Population Movements

Aside from slavery, among the most striking differences between the northern and southern sections of the country were those associated with immigration and internal migration of the free white population. The nineteenth century saw a massive increase in the number of immigrants coming to the United States with the overwhelming majority – 86.7 percent of the foreign born – living in the northern states. The Emigrant’s Manual, a travel book intended for Britons interested in moving to the United States, warned the emigrant that

the slave states are unsuitable for his purposes. The mechanic and farm-labourer will not seek a country where honest industry is associated with bondage and all its degradations. But what is more material, there is no room for him…However dear slave labour may be made in a slave state, it will always be cheaper than free labour; were it not, the masters would abandon their slaves.

The pattern of internal migration, as reflected in the 1860 census, also reinforced the slave-state versus free-state dichotomy. People born in free states tended to settle in other free states when they migrated while people who were born in slave states tended to settle in other slave states, although the tendency of people from slave states to move to free states was greater than the tendency of people in free states to move to slave states. According to the 1860 census, 350,700 free people born in free states were residing in slave states whereas 709,600 free people born in slave states were residing in free states. Given that ten million more people lived in the northern states than the southern states, the fact that twice as many people left the southern states for the northern states than went the other way has significance.

Panama

The alternative to traveling between the east and west coasts by stagecoach or wagon was to go by water. In 1849 the journey around the tip of South America took between 180 and 300 days by sail. The gold rush created such a demand for passage by water to California that the cost rose as high as $1,000. The physical and temporal remoteness of the western states created a scarcity of goods and news that raised the local price of both: one traveler to California took 1,500 copies of the New-York Tribune and other newspapers that he purchased in New York City for pennies a copy and sold them in California over the course of two hours a dollar each. Improved information about winds and currents that was made available by 1851 enabled mariners to reduce voyages to San Francisco from on average 187.5 days to 144.5 days, and a fast clipper ship could make the voyage in about 110 days. As more vessels sailed the route, the cost of passage fell to around $100.

The 1850s also saw the development of ground transport across the Isthmus of Panama – part of Colombia, which was then called New Grenada – to avoid sailing around South America and shorten the travel time. Initially the journey by way of Panama took six weeks, but by the early 1850s it had dropped to three or four weeks. Travel across Panama was further facilitated by the construction of 47 miles of railroad, ocean to ocean, completed in January 1855. When regular operations began, the trip by rail generally took three hours. Passengers, mail, and freight traveled in both directions, and on a number of occasions the locomotives and rolling stock moved 1,500 passengers, US mail, and the freight of three steamers across the isthmus in half a day. By 1860 steamships made the trip from New York to Panama in eight or nine days and from Panama to San Francisco in about ten days. The Panama railroad also became a significant transfer point for cargoes and passengers moving between other Pacific and Atlantic destinations.

Farm Acreage

The 1860 census enumerated 2.0 million farms of three acres or more, although the average farm had about 200 acres. Farm acreage included both improved and unimproved land. Improved land included all cleared land used for grazing, grass, or tillage and land lying fallow. Unimproved land had not been cleared and would include a wood lot, for example, although it omitted land that was not improvable, such as a marsh that could not be drained, and large ponds and lakes over ten acres in surface area. These figures do not give an indication of the number of acres under cultivation or the intensity of the cultivation in terms of intended cash yield per acre.

The average size of the individual farms within each state reveals a distinct regional pattern. The average farm in most of the southern slave states was substantially in excess of 200 acres (the national average) while the average farm in most of the northern states was 175 acres or fewer. In Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri – slaves states that had lower proportions of slaves than the states of the lower south – the average farm size tended toward the national average. Slavery contributed to the larger average farm size in the states of the lower south. Large plantations employed slaves as gang labor to produce cash crops – cotton, sugar, and rice – on a vast scale. Of the 20,289 farms that were between 500 and 1,000 acres, 83.4 percent were in southern states. Of the 5,348 farms that were 1,000 acres and larger, 85.5 percent were in the southern states. The average farm size in the Pacific coast states was also significantly higher than the other northern states. In Oregon 6.7 percent of the farms were 500 acres or larger, and in California 4.3 percent of the farms were of that size. In the other northern states, less than 1.0 percent of the farms were 500 acres or larger.

Pig Iron

Historically, pig iron had been produced on “iron plantations” with sources of iron ore, large stands of trees that could be felled and converted to charcoal, limestone (or oyster shells), and water power sources to run the blast furnaces. If a plantation were sufficiently large, and the level of production were sufficiently restrained, the harvested timber would grow back in time to be cut again, making the plantation self-sustaining in fuel. When the costs of transportation were high, the raw materials needed to run a blast furnace could not be carried any appreciable distance if the furnace were to operate profitably. By contrast pig iron had sufficient value that it could be transported considerable distances and be sold at a profit. As the transportation costs fell, the furnace did not need to be located near all the inputs. Moreover, the use of steam power meant furnaces no longer needed to be near water-power sites. In 1860 this transition was in process.

Many producers of pig iron in 1860 still had their own sources of iron ore. The census enumerated 157 establishments that mined it in nine states, but these mines accounted for only 39.3 percent of the iron ore used in producing pig iron. In 1860 pig iron was made in only eighteen states, and the days had not yet arrived when a relatively small number of large blast furnaces would be fed iron ore carried long distances by rail and barge. Deposits of coal and iron ore in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, region led to the creation of a number of businesses including the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company and the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Company. The iron and coal company used local resources to make iron products. The railroad company’s principal business was hauling coal to distant industries and cities; at the start of 1860 its rolling stock included 72 locomotives, 17 passenger cars, 369 freight cars, and 3,310 coal cars. Some of the otherwise empty coal cars returning to Scranton carried iron ore to the iron and coal company. Apparently the local ore was not of the best quality: an advertisement by the iron and coal company stated that the completion of the railroad brought to Scranton “Magnetic Ores from the best mines in New Jersey which, used in combination with other ores, produces a quality of Iron of superior strength, and of great durability”. By modifying the product, the company claimed, it turned a weakness into a competitive advantage.

Professional Officers

The years after the Mexican War offered few opportunities for career officers to exercise command under fire, and most of those involved battles with the Indians, who did not fight in the same manner as a conventional army. Moreover the Mexican War had been of a different scale than the Civil War. The American forces that engaged in the major battles in the Mexican War under the command of General Winfield Scott – Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Cherubusco, El Molino del Rey, and Chapultpec – numbered no more than 8,500 men and officers. The American forces that engaged in major battles under the command of General Zachary Taylor – Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena Vista – were no more than about 6,600. The field armies of the Civil War consisted of tens of thousands of men, and none of the officers who led those armies had prior experience in commanding that many men. Thus the corps of professional officers had not gained experience that was relevant to their development as potential battle commanders. Most of the professional officers were competent; some were capable, and a few were gifted. The enduring problem for both the Federal and Confederate civilian leaders was to identify those military commanders whose performances would be consistently superior.

July 4, 1860

As the 1860 election campaign started the nation celebrated the eighty-fourth anniversary of Independence Day with cannon salutes at sunrise, midday and evening, church bells, parades, military drills, speeches, prayers, toasts, music and fireworks. In Richmond, Virginia the First Regiments, accompanied by Smith’s Band and Drum Corps, assembled at seven in the morning for a drill and parade and was dismissed at ten o’clock “thus avoiding all unnecessary exposure to the scorching rays of the noonday sun.” Fireworks and firearms caused at least 53 injuries in New York City.

Taos, in the New Mexico Territory, held its first major celebration of Independence Day. In the afternoon several hundred Indians from the Taos Pueblo “went through many of their quaint and fantastic dances in honor of our national jubilee.” The Fourth of July in Augusta, Georgia, involved a custom of unknown origin in which children in oversized clothing, referred to as the Fantastics, sang and played in the streets, asking for treats and playing tricks. In North Elba, New York, the Fourth was observed at John Brown’s grave by family members and others with readings of the Declaration of Independence and the Sermon on the Mount. In Boston the occasion featured an oration by Edward Everett.

In the featured race at the regatta in Providence, Rhode Island, the shell from Yale beat out the one from Brown. The Staunton Spectator of Staunton, Virginia, described the local Independence Day celebrations and observed that

In these days of disunion sentiment it is gratifying to witness a continued reverence for the day that gave birth to our great nation. It has often been asked, to which section would the glorious 4th of July belong, in the event of dissolution? We trust it may never become a practical question.

Charles Grandison Finney

The preachers of the Second Great Awakening softened doctrine with the message that salvation was available to all who sought God. Evangelical Christians used revival meetings – essentially political rallies in support of God’s candidacy – as an event to attract and entertain the curious and they used the press to engage large numbers individually through the printed word. Charles Grandison Finney, a noted revivalist and proponent of revivalist methods, advised ministers to study the measures used by politicians since their “object is to get up an excitement, and bring people out.” Reverend Finney urged people to use these methods not because they were pious or right but because they were “the appropriate application of mean to the end.” He continued:

The object of the ministry is to get all the people to feel that the devil has no right to rule this world, but that they ought all to give themselves to God, and vote in the Lord Jesus Christ as the governor of the universe.

"Empirical" an Epithet

Elisha Bartlett, professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, cautioned that causation lay beyond the reach of medical knowledge of the time, and he urged fellow physicians to base their therapies upon clinical experience rather than deduction from principles. Although to contemporary ears Professor Bartlett sounds prescient, his remarks were not typical of sentiments voiced within the profession at the time. Medicine is – and was in 1860 a body of knowledge accumulated through the experiences of prior years and generations. Although a physician’s body of received knowledge might have been based upon empirical experiences of prior generations, his practice was an informed undertaking based upon what he learned and knew, not an empirical undertaking based upon what he was deducting as he went along. In fact physicians used the word “empirical” as an epithet to describe and criticize medical treatment that was not based upon the established knowledge of orthodox medicine.

Bleeding, purging, and puking the patient remained primary medical therapies. Doctors removed large quantities of a patient’s blood by opening a vein with an instrument called a lancet. Smaller quantities of blood were removed by a process called cupping or by application of leeches. Physicians caused patients to purge their bowels by administering doses of calomel, a mercury compound that acted as a laxative. It had an antiseptic effect, but it was poisonous. The physician induced vomiting by applying doses of tartar emetic, an antimony compound that also had an antiseptic effect and was poisonous. During the decades leading up to 1860, “heroic” doses of tartar emetic and calomel were not uncommon.

Economic Matters

The fundamental transactions that make up the economic activity of American society have not changed materially since 1860: people buy and sell products and services, they rely upon financing as the universal lubricant to facilitate transactions, and the prices of publicly traded securities (stock and bonds) fluctuate in reaction to various events in anticipation of their expected effects upon profits and interests rates. By today’s standard the involvement of the government in ordering and regulating transactions and markets in 1860 was slight. Moreover, subsequent experience has shown that such ordering and regulation can be both beneficial and pernicious – beneficial when it penalizes fraud and corruption and fosters fairness and equality of access to economic resources and pernicious when marginal benefits are achieved at substantial cost or when artificial scarcities restrict access to economic resources. The various markets in 1860 operated well enough but were capable of substantial improvement, and the same judgment is valid today.

Phrenology

Phrenology also was a social philosophy drawn from a scientific hypothesis asserting that the laws of nature rewarded healthy behavior and punished unhealthy behavior, and the lives of individuals and society in general could be improved by discovering and teaching the laws of nature. This facet of phrenology encouraged education. Consistent with the appetite for popular entertainment, phrenology became an industry that provided both lectures about phrenology as a science and a social philosophy and demonstrations of phrenological examinations of living subjects, featuring interpretations of their characters from the shapes of their skulls. In addition practicing phrenologists analyzed individuals and offered them advice on how best to live their lives – the same services one might seek today from a therapist or counselor.

By 1860 phrenology as a scientific theory was in disrepute. Animal experiments failed to establish its claim that specific biological functions were located in specific parts of the brain. The complexity of the mental faculties that phrenology associated with these areas was criticized by those who believed that the basic mental functions were more fundamental than the various mental faculties described by phrenology. For example, one 1860 critique observed that phrenology included memory as an attribute of all the separate mental faculties – an observation that anticipated the better-known critique of phrenology written by William James in 1900, in which he said the portion of the brain competent to support a faculty described by phrenology “would need to be an entire brain in miniature”.

Phrenology had been introduced to the United States at a time when interest in public education was rising, so its emphasis on education as a means of improving individuals and society found a receptive audience. Horace Mann – who, as the first secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education (appointed in 1837) became a noted educational reformer – believed in phrenology. The apparent potential of phrenology as a social philosophy was great. It asserted that nature rewarded certain types of behavior and punished others, and these laws of nature were discoverable and could be taught. The primary expositor of this philosophy gave as an example the notion that a moderate diet combined with moderate physical and mental exercise promoted physical and mental health. Such observations were reasonable, but they did not necessarily support the assertions of the social philosophy based upon them. Nonetheless, the assertions of using education to improve society and that educational techniques could be used to bring the various faculties of the mind into a more productive balance had obvious appeal to reformers who sought to promote public education and improve the treatment of the insane.

Out of the Ordinary

Notwithstanding the strong societal pressures toward conformity with accepted sexual roles, the public had a fascination with people who stepped outside what was considered the norm. The stories of two remarkable women – one unknown and one well known – serve as examples. Charley, age 19, was arrested in New York City in 1856. Born Ellen London in New Orleans, on her fifteenth birthday she had put on men’s clothing and taken a job as a messboy on a riverboat; later she worked as a bartender New York City. Charley found that she got along better in men’s clothing and could get better wages. At five feet three inches tall, with her black hair cut short, she was described as a “perfect love of a fellow”. When she was arrested for prostitution, Charley was unemployed and was paying her way from her savings. The New York Times carried the news under the headline “An Unfeminine Freak – A Girl in Man’s Clothes” although the story and the tenor of the reporter’s questions reflected curiosity and sympathy. In the absence of any evidence to corroborate the charges, the magistrate dismissed them. Her true gender made public, Miss London said she planned to join her sister in California.

Eliza Gilbert’s career was somewhat different. Born in Ireland, she spent her early years in India among the British army families. Through her beauty, presence, and grace as a dancer – aided, no doubt, by her charm and genius for both self-promotion and reinventing herself – she gained fame in Europe under the name Lola Montez. Her successes and reversals were due principally to the facts that she flouted convention and defied established authority. She had liaisons with Franz Liszt and King Ludwig of Bavaria; the latter named her the Countess of Landsfeld. She fled Bavaria during the 1848 uprisings and eventually relocated to California, where she reestablished her fame as a dancer. She later became an actress and a popular lecturer, and she published a book of beauty tips and another with stories of love throughout the ages. The New York Times reported her appearances and mentioned her in its pages at least a half dozen times during 1860. Her ability to stay in the public eye, attract lecture audiences, and sell books indicated she was entertaining, and she maintained the public’s interest in her both because and in spite of her unconventional life. Today she would be considered a celebrity.

Militia

Independent militia companies rose in the absence of state militia service. The companies generally had fine uniforms and aspired to precision drilling that indicated a greater interest in martial display than martial prowess. In 1860 the Chicago Zouaves, numbering about 100 men, declared themselves the best-organized and drilled military company in the country and made a tour of the eastern United States to show off their abilities. Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, a protégé of Abraham Lincoln, led the Chicago Zouaves. The touring company consisted of about 50 men and officers and an 18-piece band. According to the New York Times, “The full Zouave uniform consists of loose scarlet pants, with a gold cord over a blue stripe, high gaiters and leggings; blue vest with orange braid, and a peculiar pattern of moiré, antique facing; a jacket of blue with red and orange trimmings, and bell buttons, and a jaunty little red cap with black band and orange trimmings.” The Chicago Zouaves were met with great acclaim. During July and August 1860, with the presidential election campaign in full swing, they visited twenty cities and towns, including New York City, Boston, West Point, and Washington City, where they performed for President Buchanan.

Written and Printed Words

Mass media in 1860 took the form of the printed page. A handpress of the sort Benjamin Franklin used during the eighteenth century, still in limited use in 1860, could turn out 50 copies an hour. Steam presses used in 1860 could turn out more than 20,000 newspapers an hour. The advances in printing technology, however, had not eliminated the tedious work required to prepare to print a page of text: each letter was an individual piece of metal type picked and positioned by a compositor’s hand.

The capacity to produce printed materials existed in all states in 1860, although the northern states had a proportionally larger portion of the printing industry. In 1860, printing required paper, and the papermaking industry was widespread although not so nearly ubiquitous as printing. Only 15 of 19 northern states and 8 of 15 southern states had firms that made paper. The industry produced paper worth $20.1 million, of which 91.3 percent was made in the northern states.

The volume of paper produced in the United States indicated the importance of print media in the government and society. In 1856 the United States had a population comparable to the populations of Britain and France but produced two to three times as much paper per capita as those countries – the United States produced 6.4 tons of paper per 10,000 people while Britain produced 2.4 tons and France produced 2.0 tons.

No Gifts of Prophesy

The men who approved and signed the Declaration of Independence did not possess any gifts of prophecy of which we are aware, but having created a nation that consisted principally of towns and farms arrayed across a thin strip of land along the Atlantic coast of North America, they probably did not foresee that in 1860, the eighty-fourth year of Independence, the United States would stretch across the continent, the settled eastern portion would extend to and across the Mississippi River, and that two states on the Pacific coast would be organized and admitted to the union. They knew about water power, steam power, and electricity – Benjamin Franklin had become an international celebrity for his experiments that established that lightning was electricity. They knew as well that large-scale manufacturing was expanding in Europe. Some of them, no doubt, regarded those factories as “dark Satanic Mills” (William Blake’s phrase from a few decades later), but we cannot reasonably expect that they would have anticipated the degree to which these mechanical forces and this means of organizing production would transform and bind the expanding nation together with a wealth of manufacturing, economical transportation, and telegraphic communication.