to sell could tell how much it
was worth. But even worse than all this was the swift and certain
renewal of bankruptcy which so many states were preparing for
themselves.

[Sidenote: Distress in New England.]

Nowhere did the warning come so quickly or so sharply as in New England.
Connecticut, indeed, as already observed, came off scot-free. She had
issued a little paper money soon after the battle of Lexington, but had
stopped it about the time of the surrender of Burgoyne. In 1780 she had
wisely and summarily adjusted all relations between debtor and creditor,
and the crisis of 1786 found her people poor enough, no doubt, but able
to wait for better times and indisposed to adopt violent remedies. It
was far otherwise in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. These were
preeminently the maritime states of the Union, and upon them the blows
aimed by England at American commerce had fallen most severely. It was
these two maritime states that suffered most from the cutting down of
the carrying trade and the restriction of intercourse with the West
Indies. These things worked injury to shipbuilding, to the exports of
lumber and oil and salted fish, even to the manufacture of Medford rum.
Nowhere had the normal machinery of business been thrown out of gear so
extensively as in these two states, and in Rhode Island there was the
added disturbance due to a prolonged occupation by the enemy's troops.
Nowhere, perhaps, was there a larger proportion of the population in
debt, and in these preeminently commercial communities private debts
were a heavier burden and involved more personal suffering than in the
somewhat patriarchal system of life in Virginia or South Carolina. In
the time of which we are now treating, imprisonment for debt was common.
High-minded but unfortunate men were carried to jail, and herded with
thieves and ruffians in loathsome dungeons, for the crime of owing a
hundred dollars which they could not promptly pay. Under such
circumstances, a commercial disturbance, involving widespread debt,
entailed an amount of personal suffering and humiliation of which, in
these kinder days, we can form no adequate conception. It tended to make
the debtor an outlaw, ready to entertain schemes for the subversion of
society. In the crisis of 1786, the agitation in Rhode Island and
Massachusetts reached white heat, and things were done which alarmed the
whole country. But the course of events was different in the two states.
In