What charming scenes attract the eye
On wild Ohio's savage stream.
Here Nature reigns, whose works outvie
The boldest pattern art can frame.
The _East_ is half to slaves consigned,
And half to slavery more refined."




CHAPTER IV

FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERACY



Scarcely a failure of the Confederation Government can be found which
does not lead in the last analysis to the financial situation both
during and following the war. Suddenly plunged into the Revolutionary
War, drained of ready money by the colonial system, possessed of no
mines, mints, nor any resource for securing a medium of exchange except
an undependable paper promise to pay, the people of the United States
emerged from the war broken in purse and overwhelmed with debt.
According to Jefferson's estimate made at the time, they owed at least
sixty-eight millions of dollars. To this fruit of the war he added the
four hundred millions of paper money issued by the Federal and State
Governments, estimated, in its depreciated condition, at about
seventy-two millions more of debt. The ragged Continental soldiers,
frequently reduced to seven-tenths of a pound rations, their arrearages
of wages paid in Continental currency worth four pence on the dollar,