Not only did the people of the United States, in the time of President Washington, have no railroads and no steamboats, but they lacked a great number of other conveniences. Telegraphs and telephones were unknown. Electric lights are an invention of our own time, but our ancestors did not even have gas or kerosene oil. Lamps of any kind were almost unknown; houses were lighted with tallow candles, though some of the people made candles of a green wax derived from the berries of the wax-myrtle tree. The poorest people burned a wick in a vessel containing a little grease, or lighted pieces of pitch pine on the hearth. With such lights, it was no great virtue that they went to bed early. Even the streets of large towns were lighted with dim lanterns. Stoves for heating were almost unknown; those for cooking were not yet dreamed of. Wood was the only fuel used in houses. Blacksmiths burned charcoal.

There were few mines and very few manufacturers. Wool or flax was prepared and spun at home, and then woven into plain homespun cloths for men's and women's wear. The greater part of the people were farmers, and the farmer rarely spent money. What his family ate and wore was produced at home. The rough shoes worn in winter were, perhaps, bought of a neighboring cobbler, but they were sometimes made at home. The children, and, in many cases, the parents themselves, went barefoot in summer. Many plows, wagons, and sleds were made on the farm. In many parts of the country the plow was unknown, and the packhorse or rudimentary sledge took the place of the wagon. The farming was generally of the roughest kind, but the land was new and fertile.

There were many backwoodsmen who had a dress of their own. They wore loose hunting-shirts of deer skin or homespun, a fur cap, moccasins, and buckskin leggings. These woodsmen lived by hunting, by trapping, by poling boats and driving packhorses, by trading with American Indians, and sometimes by petty farming. Until after the Revolution, mechanics and workingmen wore leathern breeches.

Of the nearly four million people in the United States in 1790, about one seventh were black slaves. These slaves were found in every State except Massachusetts and Maine, which was then a part of Massachusetts (Note: According to the 1790 census). But they were few in the Northern States. Of the Northern States New York had the most slaves—more than twenty thousand. Nearly seven-eighths of all the slaves were in Maryland, Virginia, and the two Carolinas. These were the lands of tobacco, indigo, and rice culture.

In these States country life preserved aristocratic forms. Here, until after the Revolution, the oldest son of the family usually inherited the land, according to the custom of the old English law. Some of the great planters lived like nobles. They were accustomed to manage public affairs, and from this class came some of the most eminent statesmen of the period following the Revolution. Virginia was called the Mother of Presidents." But the poorer people at the South had little or no chance for education, and were generally rude and illiterate. There were few towns in the Southern States, very few mechanics, and little of the ship building and manufactures that were soon to make New England rich. But in Washington's time the Southern States were the richest as well as the most populous. If they had but little town life, there was much social delight in the plantation-houses.

The so-called cities of the United States, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, were only what would now be counted towns of moderate size. But in each of these little capitals there was an aristocracy that affected the style and fashion of the English gentry. Gentlemen and ladies gathered at fashionable houses in the afternoon, and spent the time in talking, and sipping tea from dainty little china cups. Sometimes large parties rode down to a public garden in the country, or a tavern by the seaside, to drink tea. In most of the chief towns there were held once in two weeks "assemblies," or balls. At these assemblies there were stately minuets and country dances, and much money was lost and won at card-tables in a room prepared for fashionable gambling, which was then one of the recognized amusements of good society.

About the time of the Revolution gentlemen wore their hair long and powdered it white. Ladies dressed their hair in a lofty tower. One fine lady of the time paid six hundred dollars a year to her hair dresser. Gentlemen, as well as ladies, wore bright colors and a variety of rich fabrics, so that a fashionable assembly presented a cheerful appearance. But, with all this mirth in the upper ranks of society, life was less comfortable then than now. The common people lived hardly, with few comforts and fewer luxuries. Even the rich, with all their loaded tables and fine show, lacked the substantial comforts of our modern life. There was more drinking to excess then, and there was less refinement in speech and manners, than there is now.