ston to New York, taking a week by
stage-coach, and three or four days by sailing vessel, was a more
momentous undertaking than a voyage to Europe now. Few traveled for
pleasure. Few took any active interest in public affairs beyond their own
neighborhood, or at most their own State, and the bond of the
confederation rested loosely on communities now no longer united by the
apprehension of common danger.

* * *

Between the North and the South the contrast was already ominous of
future strife. The Southern planter lived like an aristocrat surrounded
by servants and slaves, dispensing hospitality according to his means
after the fashion of the British nobility. Cotton had not yet poured the
gold of England into the lap of the South, but tobacco held its own as a
substantial basis of wealth. In the North, on the other hand, the tiller
of the soil was usually its owner, assisted sometimes by indentured
servants or slaves, but never himself above the toil which he exacted
from others. The North, too, had its great families, descendants of
patroons and others who had received large grants of land and enjoyed
exceptional privileges, and were now growing in wealth with the
increasing value of their property; but the aristocratic Northern
families were gradually losing political power and influence, and sinking
toward the level of the people; whereas in the South the aristocratic
element was arrogating more and more the control of State affairs, and
the representation of Southern States in the councils of the nation. In
the North also equality was promoted by the potent influence of the
Revolution in breaking up the system of servile white labor. Master and
man were summoned for the defence of their country; they fought, they
suffered and endured together the same privations for a common cause.
Distinctions of class were obliterated by the blood that flowed freely
for the freedom of all, and what remained of ancient aristocratic
prejudice was yet more thoroughly undermined by the example of the great
social upheaval in France. Nevertheless the system of white servitude was
not entirely abolished until long after the close of the eighteenth
century, immigrants to this country frequently selling themselves as
"redemptioners" to pay the cost of their passage. The limits of this form
of service seldom exceeded seven years. No taint was apparently attached
to it, and many a worthy family ha