When the Constitution was adopted, a new nation was formed out of thirteen States, which before that time had been almost independent of one another. There was now to be chosen a President of this new nation, and the whole country turned its eyes to one man. General Washington, who had been for five years living quietly on his plantation at Mount Vernon, was the only person thought of for President, and he was elected without a rival. John Adams was chosen Vice-President.

Washington was inaugurated President of the United States in the city of New York, which was then the seat of government, on the 30th day of April, 1789.

The country, when Washington became President, contained less than four million people. The single State of Oregon has a larger population than the whole country had in Washington's time, and Pennsylvania also has more, while Ohio and Illinois have each nearly as many. The census of 1890, when it comes to be added up, will doubtless show that in one hundred years the population has increased to more than seventy million, or to at least eighteen times as many as there were when the first census was taken in 1790.

The three or four million people in America, when the Constitution made the States one nation, were settled chiefly along the Atlantic coast. The center of population was east of Baltimore, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. This shows how closely the people clung to the sea, which was almost the only great highway of their commerce. In traveling up into the country, one found the population becoming more sparse, and the houses generally mere cabins. By the time one reached the Alleghany Mountains, there was an end of settlements. All to the west of the mountains was a wilderness, populated with American Indians and teeming with wild beasts, except the little pioneer settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee. The western line of the territory of the United States was the Mississippi River, but the unbroken forests and prairies of that region seemed about as far away as the interior of Alaska does today.

The people of the first years of the republic had neither railroad nor steamboat. One of the commonest modes of travel from one town to another was by sailing packets. When one set out, it was impossible to foretell the length of the voyage; all depended on wind and weather. Stage wagons were also run between the larger towns. It took six days to make the journey from Boston to New York, and two or three to get from New York to Philadelphia. A journey required as many days then as it does hours now.

Many travelers made journeys in their own coaches or in light two-wheeled vehicles. The ferries were a terror to these. Large rivers were usually crossed in rudimentary scows, and not without danger, but at some places it was necessary to swim the horses over and float the carriage at the stern of a canoe.

Probably the most comfortable of all modes of travel at the time was that of riding on horseback. In America only were there horses that ambled naturally. The "natural pacer," of Virginia, and the "Narragansett pacer," of Rhode Island, were highly prized, and were matters of wonder even in Europe. Two people often traveled with one horse. The first rode ahead and tied the horse by the road; the second, when he came up, rode on past his companion and in turn tied the horse and left him for the other. This was called "traveling ride and tie."

When Washington became President, all the chief towns were on the seacoast, or on the tidewater of the rivers, except Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. Outside of that state, the roads were so bad that a large trading town was not possible away from water conveyance. The interior trade of Pennsylvania was carried on in great wagons, known as Conestoga wagons, each drawn by six or eight stout horses. There were ten thousand or more of these wagons running out of Philadelphia. The wagon-trade with the interior made Philadelphia the chief town of North America. Trade with remote districts of the country was still carried on by means of packhorses and bateaux, or small boats.

There was not much letter-writing then, and the mails were carried mostly on horseback, with little regularity and no speed, so that news sent by mail almost became history by the time it reached the reader. The newspapers were published weekly, and were slow with their news and rather dull in their comments.

There were schools in all the leading towns and cities. In New England there were schools in almost every township. But there was no public-school system like that which prevails at present. The schools were, for the most part, poor; the discipline in them was severe, and sometimes brutal. Boys were taught to read and write, and sometimes to "cast accounts." Girls learned to read, sometimes also to write. But needlework and fancywork were thought more appropriate to them. The oldest college in the country was Harvard, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The next oldest was the college of William and Mary, at Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia. Yale College, in New Haven, was the third in age. There was also a college in New York, one in Philadelphia, and another in Princeton, New Jersey.

For a long time after the colonies were settled there had been little that one could call literature or art or science. People that are busy in cutting down forests and building new towns have no time to write books or paint pictures. The early books were almost all on politics or religion. But in the fifty years before the Revolution there came to be a considerable interest in science and literature. One American, Benjamin Franklin, became famous in Europe as well as in America by his great discovery that the lightning of the clouds was but ordinary electricity. Franklin was also an admirable thinker and writer on many subjects, and one of the greatest men of his century. Three Americans, Copley, West, and Stuart, gained reputation in England as painters, but America could furnish only a slender support to artists.