s. It was
essentially fallacious, therefore, to liken the case of the United
States to that of ancient Rome.

[Sidenote: Influence of railroad and telegraph upon perpetuity of the
American Union.]

But there was another feature of the case which was quite hidden from
the men of 1783. Just before the assembling of the first Continental
Congress James Watt had completed his steam-engine; in the summer of
1787, while the Federal Convention was sitting at Philadelphia, John
Fitch launched his first steamboat on the Delaware River; and
Stephenson's invention of the locomotive was to follow in less than half
a century. Even with all other conditions favourable, it is doubtful if
the American Union could have been preserved to the present time without
the railroad. But for the military aid of railroads our government would
hardly have succeeded in putting down the rebellion of the southern
states. In the debates on the Oregon Bill in the United States Senate in
1843, the idea that we could ever have an interest in so remote a
country as Oregon was loudly ridiculed by some of the members. It would
take ten months--said George McDuffie, the very able senator from South
Carolina--for representatives to get from that territory to the District
of Columbia and back again. Yet since the building of railroads to the
Pacific coast, we can go from Boston to the capital of Oregon in much
less time than it took John Hancock to make the journey from Boston to
Philadelphia. Railroads and telegraphs have made our vast country, both
for political and for social purposes, more snug and compact than little
Switzerland was in the Middle Ages or New England a century ago.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of travelling a hundred years ago.]

At the time of our Revolution the difficulties of travelling formed an
important social obstacle to the union of the states. In our time the
persons who pass in a single day between New York and Boston by six or
seven distinct lines of railroad and steamboat are numbered by
thousands. In 1783 two stage-coaches were enough for all the travellers,
and nearly all the freight besides, that went between these two cities,
except such large freight as went by sea around Cape Cod. The journey
began at three o'clock in the morning. Horses were changed every twenty
miles, and if the roads were in good condition some forty miles would be
made by ten o'clock in the evening. In bad weather, when the passengers
had to get down an