And Gates and Sullivan to vengeance rose;
While brave McDougall, steady and sedate,
Stretched the nerved arm to ope the scene of fate."

[Sidenote: Economic conditions.]

In economic conditions the United States were little more advanced than
had been the colonies. The country abounded in natural resources: timber
clad the whole Appalachian range, and spread far into the Mississippi
valley; the virgin soil, and particularly the rich and untouched prairies
of the West, were an accumulation of unmeasured wealth. Yet it was little
easier to get from the sea to Lake Erie or to the Ohio than it had been
forty years before. It seemed impossible that a country could be held
together when it was so large that a courier might be two months on his
way from the seat of government to the most distant frontier; and
Jefferson predicted that it would be a thousand years before the country
would be thickly settled as far west as the Mississippi. The chief
resource of the country was agriculture; almost every State raised its own
food, and there were considerable exports, particularly of wheat and
flour. Manufactures were chiefly imported from England, the only widely
known American industry being the distilling of New England rum. The chief
source of wealth was still commerce; in 1790 the exports and imports were
about twenty million dollars each, or five dollars per head of the
population. The movement of vessels to foreign ports was tolerably free,
but the vexatious restrictions and taxes imposed by England tended to
throw an undue part of the profit into the hands of the English merchants.
Business of every kind was much hampered by the want of bank capital and
by the state of the currency.