The Fabric of America (10 page)

Where astronomy was concerned, Ellicott's insecurities vanished. When Virginia's boundary with Pennsylvania reached the Ohio River in August 1785, his job as the state's boundary commissioner abruptly ceased, because at that point Virginia's northern frontier followed the Ohio down to the Mississippi. The western edge of Pennsylvania, however, was to continue northward until it reached Lake Erie. Summoned back to Philadelphia by the demands of the state treasury, Rittenhouse demonstrated his confidence in Ellicott's skills by recommending him as his replacement. Thus, as they crossed the river, Ellicott immediately became a Pennsylvania boundary commissioner, a change he welcomed, because as he wrote in his diary “[Pennsylvania] is my native Country, and I love it beyond any other.”

For ten more weeks, Ellicott continued to push Pennsylvania's western border north toward Lake Erie until, in November, he and his assistant, Andrew Porter, were halted by boggy ground and freezing weather. The simplicity of running a meridian meant that the final miles to the lake could be run the following year by Porter alone. Ellicott's expertise was needed for the demands of running a parallel, the line that separated Pennsylvania from New York.

His solution to the complexities of demarcating an east-west parallel was to make Ellicott's reputation as the leading boundary-maker of his day. He not only dispensed with Mason and Dixon's elaborate method of combining the Great Circle and parallel, he also replaced the magnificent, six-foot-long zenith sector they and the 1784 boundary commissioners had used. Although its huge magnifying power offered incomparable accuracy, it was cumbersome to transport and operate—suspended vertically, it required the observer to lie on the ground to view stars directly overhead—and in 1786 the cash-strapped states could afford neither the time nor the money.

The method that Ellicott suggested as an alternative possessed the American virtues of simplicity and practicality. It depended upon his growing expertise as an astronomer, and a more convenient telescope. Instead of following a carefully navigated Great Circle with the inevitable delays of setting up the six-foot sector, he proposed to run a speedy guideline, also known as a random line, due west for twenty miles with a surveyor's compass in approximately the right direction. Then, using a more portable zenith sector, Ellicott planned to establish their exact longitude and latitude with a barrage of moon and star observations—he would carry out more than fifty on average at each stopping point—after which the necessary corrections would be made to bring them onto the parallel (see appendix). From there, the actual boundary could be run back along the parallel to the starting point, with markers inserted at mile intervals.

His growing authority was demonstrated when he convinced both Ritten-house and New York's boundary commissioners, including the highly regarded young Simeon de Witt, the state's surveyor general, to adopt this untried procedure. But de Witt's agreement came with a reservation. “He says they must depend on us for the necessary Instruments,” Rittenhouse reported. They needed in particular a zenith sector that would be more easily managed than Bird's delicate monster, but still powerful enough to see stars as they reached their highest point in the heavens at any time of night or day.

A zenith sector

The solution lay close at hand. Rittenhouse had constructed a five-foot sector, but it lacked an achromatic lens, which was needed to eliminate the rainbow flare that plain glass produced. Manufacturing such a lens was beyond the capacity of American technology, but at his own cost Ellicott bought one imported from England by an amateur astronomer in Philadelphia and adapted Rittenhouse's instrument to take it.

The work delayed their start until July, and the tensions over Ellicott's impending departure continued to build until, for the only time in their marriage, his wife broke down completely. By then Sally was pregnant again and already caring for six children under the age of eleven. She was evidently in tears when Ellicott left, and the letter he wrote the day after his departure suggests the sort of strain that running a boundary inflicted on both of them.

“
My dear, In consequence of your distresses
and anxiety about my journey and absence,” he wrote, “my mind is agitated beyond anything I have experienced before, and had not my honour and reputation and perhaps liberty depended upon the execution of this business, I should have returned home to breakfast. We are both young and have a young family to provide for, you have won more than your part, and I am desirous to do mine. If you
knew how much my happiness depends upon your peace of mind, I think you would be reconciled to this little, temporary separation.”

Ellicott's sympathy was unmistakably genuine, but it was not just financial pressure that drove him out into the wilderness. This boundary was his project. The zenith sector that he had bought from Rittenhouse with magnificent disregard for the family's rocky finances was his. Most important, the method was his. Indeed, the way in which the Pennsylvania–New York boundary was run would become the prototype for nearly all subsequent east-west borders in the United States, including its immense frontier with Canada.

The advantages of Ellicott's method were immediately apparent. In 1786, the commissioners succeeded in running the first ninety miles of Pennsylvania's northern border from the Delaware River as far west as the Tioga River in less than three months. Clearly marked “with substantial milestones,” it showed beyond doubt that the disputed Wyoming Valley was part of Pennsylvania. Their progress was accelerated by the effectiveness of the Rittenhouse sector, which proved to be a masterpiece of craftsmanship. Incorporated into it was the maker's own device for making the crosshairs in the focal lens. Instead of the usual strands of silk thread, which, however fine to the naked eye, appeared ropelike to astronomers trying to measure star locations precisely, Rittenhouse used the thread from a spider's web, an innovation that allowed unprecedented refinement of observation. When a survey team went over their line in 1881 using modern instruments, it found that Ellicott's system had tracked the parallel with exceptional accuracy.

The political consequences were immediate. The Pennsylvania assembly promptly created an immense administrative area, named Luzerne County, between the Delaware and Tioga rivers, including the Wyoming Valley. Then it sent in surveyors and a new set of commissioners to supervise the election of an assemblyman, sheriff, and other law officers. The commissioners were headed by the stern disciplinarian Colonel Timothy Pickering, formerly Washington's adjutant general, and when Ellicott returned in 1787 to continue the boundary, he was delighted to find that Pickering had already opened the county court and set in motion the administration of the newest part of Pennsylvania.

“
This circumstance
must be one of the most pleasing kind to the honest, well-disposed People of this unhappy District which has constantly been in a state of anarchy and confusion since its first settlement,” he wrote approvingly to Sally. “General Pickering has great merit for his exertions in bringing the Connecticut claimants to a quiet submission to the jurisdiction of the State.”

Not everyone agreed. To Ellicott's annoyance, anti-Pennsylvania rebels broke into the stables and stole the boundary commissioners' bridles and saddles. But he was correct in supposing that there was a strong inducement for Yankee settlers, legal and illegal, to metamorphose into Pennsylvania farmers, however unappealing the prospect of paying taxes and accepting the authority of sheriffs and revenue men and county courts. The classic answer came from John Locke in the second of his
Two Treatises on Government
: “The great and
chief end
therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government,
is the Preservation of their Property
.”

No doubt the Butlers—by far the most numerous family living in the Wyoming Valley—remained more inclined to reach for their rifles than their books when they saw the Pennsylvania judges coming, but their actions illustrate vividly the truth of Locke's diagnosis. So long as Connecticut laid claim to the valley, the Butlers had nominally accepted its authority and registered their titles to valley land with the state. But once Ellicott had run his line, the Butlers and most of their valley neighbors were persuaded to accept government from Philadelphia when Timothy Pickering promised that their title to the land would be confirmed by Pennsylvania. To put the matter crudely, the settlers' allegiances followed their title deeds, and those were now being registered in the Land Office of Pennsylvania.

The other side of Locke's equation was the price that government exacted for securing its citizens' property, and Pennsylvania's protection did not come cheap. The distress suffered by farmers in the newly created western and northern counties was caused not only by the shortage of cash in circulation, but by the power that the state possessed to enforce its demands.

The fashionable set in Philadelphia would surely have agreed with Ellicott's assessment of the benefits that Pickering brought to the Wyoming Valley. In
their eyes, government was undoubtedly for the good of all honest people— but it was especially good for those with money.

What gave Robert Morris and his friends a head start in the race to make money when peace came was the simple fact that they had access to large quantitites of gold and silver while the rest of the population had to make do with paper money. To finance operations in the Revolutionary War, all thirteen states and the Continental Congress had issued paper currency in staggering quantities, as much as $400 million in the course of the war. It came in every guise, from interest-bearing bonds to military warrants entitling veterans to hundreds of acres of land. One Philadelphia dealer advertised for sale no fewer than twenty-two different types of bills, warrants, bonds, and certificates. Putting such a flood of money in circulation created galloping inflation. By the end of 1780, the
index of wholesale prices
in Philadelphia had risen a hundredfold in five years, and the bills themselves had lost up to 80 percent of their face value.

“
I lent the old Congress £3000 [about $10,500] hard money in Value, and took Certificates promising interest at 6 per cent
,” Benjamin Franklin moaned after the war, “but I have received no Interest for several years, and if I were now to sell the principal, I could not get more than 3s 4d [just under 60 cents] for the Pound [about $3.50] which is but a sixth part.”

The drop in value prompted many holders of paper money, especially desperate veterans who had been paid in military warrants, to take the loss and sell. Since they were sold for cash, these different forms of currency were soon concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, who bought them for as little as ten cents on the dollar. Of the $4.8 million that Pennsylvania issued in paper money, much of it in interest-bearing bonds, no less than 96 percent was owned by just over four hundred individuals, and fifty percent ended up in the hands of Robert Morris's circle. It was an investment that quickly paid dividends.

Alarmed by the threat of economic meltdown, the states and Congress made desperate efforts from 1780 onward to reduce the amount of paper in circulation. In the space of just five years, wild inflation turned to deep deflation as the supply of money was choked off. New U.S. bills with guaranteed interest payments of 6 percent were offered in exchange for forty old ones, and similar deals were made by the states. To ensure that the interest was paid, taxes were raised to a level where receipts were up to 300 percent
higher than in the colonial era. Pennsylvania, for example, took in an average of $205,000 annually in the late 1780s compared with less than $70,000 before the war.

So great was the interest burden, however, it is estimated that up to three quarters of the revenue that states raised went to pay the bondholders. If taxpayers lacked money to pay, county courts would issue orders for the seizure and sale of their goods, which the sheriffs were expected to execute without delay. Shylock-like, the holders of the new bonds insisted upon their interest. “Issue the Executions,” demanded one bondholder when a state treasurer was slow to pay the interest he was due. Since $1,000 worth of bonds, purchased for as little as $200, produced an annual income of $60, they were an excellent investment.

Devalued bills could, however, be put to still more profitable use. In every state, land offices were created to sell vacant territory, and they were authorized to accept, in partial payment at least, paper money at face value. Instead of an annual but belatedly paid 6 percent return, a speculator could make an immediate profit of up to 80 percent by exchanging devalued bills for land.

Boundaries were essential to the operation. Apart from confiscated Loyalist properties, the bulk of the vacant land was situated at the extremities of the states far from the populated coast. Hence the pressing urgency to define their landward borders. And what Ellicott and Rittenhouse did for Virginia and Pennsylvania was replicated by other boundary-makers—Simeon de Witt for New York and New Hampshire, Thomas Hutchins and Rittenhouse again for Massachusetts and New York, Richard Henderson and Thomas Walker for North Carolina and Virginia, William Houstoun and John Habersham for Georgia and South Carolina.