BURLINGTON HARBOR AND RAILROAD YARD BEFORE THE FIRE OF 1894.

Burlington soon renewed its lumber trade, bringing its lumber in rafts through the Richelieu River and Canal from Canada-pine from the Ottawa Valley and spruce from Quebecand distributing it at various stages of manufacture to all parts of the Eastern States.

Every kind of business was affected by the raiiroads. The pro

duce of the farms and merchandise from the cities were transported more cheaply and more quickly.

Travel was made

easier. The mails

were carried more

swiftly and were

delivered more

frequently. Changes then recent in the postal laws were favorable to a rapid development of the mail

service. The rates of postage in the beginning of our government were very much higher than they are. now. The postage on a letter was paid by the receiver and varied according to the distance from which it was brought. Here are the rates for letters established by law in 1816:

Each letter conveyed not more than 30 miles, 6 cents; over 30 miles and not more than 80 miles, 10 cents; over 80 miles and not more than 150 miles, 12.5 cents; over 150 miles and not more than 400 miles, 18.75 cents; over 400 miles, 25 cents.

Private expresses carried much mail matter. They became responsible for its safety, and carried at a less price than the government charged.

In 1845, by act of Congress the following rates were established for letters weighing one-half ounce or less:

Each letter conveyed not over 300 miles, 5 cents; over 300 miles, 10 cents, and the business of carrying the mai's was forbidden to private parties.

Two years later the use of adhesive stamps to prepay postage was authorized by act of Congress, and in 1856 their use was made compulsory.

The first postage stamps made in the United States were printed in Brattleboro in 1845.

Four months before the first railroad train was seen in Vermont, a telegraph line had been completed between Troy, N. Y., and Burlington. So was the way preparing for new economical conditions and a new social state.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CIVIL WAR.

1. The Anti-Slavery Vote.-In 1853 the antislavery vote for governor was large enough to prevent an election by the people. In 1854 a vacancy in the senate of the United States was to be filled by the legislature of Vermont, and Lawrence Brainerd, a Liberty Party man of 1841, was unanimously elected senator. In 1856, the State, by a large majority, chose electors to vote for John C. Fremont, the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

2. Growth of the National Idea.-During the last war with Great Britain the people of Vermont had exalted the authority of the State at the expense of the authority of the nation. Many of them disputed the right of the federal government to call the militia. of a State to act beyond the borders of the State, except in certain cases specified in the constitution of the United States. But the near approach of a hostile army aroused their patriotism and dispelled their scruples. Every huzza and bonfire and booming gun for victories on land and lake and ocean, impressed more deeply the thought that the United States is a nation; and the discussions of the tariff laws and of the Missouri compromise, and nullification, and the fugitive slave law, helped to emphasize the thought. Should there come rebellion on account of slavery, the position of Vermont was not doubtful.

3. The Southern Claim.-Rebellion came. The people of the South were accustomed to slavery. To them the terms master and slave expressed relations necessary among men, and so, right. They held that slaves were property, and claimed the right to take that property into any part of the Union and have for it the protection of law.

4. The Purpose of the North.-To the people. of the North the same terms suggested the reversal of fundamental laws. The permission of slavery in territory controlled by the national government was, in their judgment, a great wrong. Slavery had no rights and should have no protection beyond the States in which it already existed. Only by excluding it from the national domain could the nation purge itself from the greatest sin of the age. Such was the belief of the Republican party. The issue was joined in 1860, and the Republicans were victorious in the election of Abraham Lincoln President of the United States.

5. Secession.-The slaveholders saw that the predominance of the Republican party meant that there should be no more Slave States, while the number of Free States, already in the majority, would soon be greatly increased. The privileges of their pet institution would be diminished, and perhaps ultimately the institution itself would be overthrown. At any rate the day of their supremacy in the Union was past. Rather than remain in the Union shorn of their former influence they preferred to dissolve the Union. In December, 1860, a State convention of South Carolina passed an "ordinance of secession," declaring the State of South Carolina to be separate from and independent of the United States. In the course of the following month similar ordinances were passed by conventions in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana; and by a convention in Texas, on the first

day of February, 1861. The conventions of the seceded States appointed delegates, who met at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4, adopted a provisional constitution, and elected a president and a vice-president of their provisional government, who were inaugurated February 18. Forts, arsenals, dock-yards, a navy-yard, ships and other property of the United States, within the seceded States, had been seized by the States and were turned over to the Confederate government, as soon as it was organized. Officers of the United States army and navy resigned their com missions and entered the service of the Confederacy. At only four places-Pensacola, Key West, Charleston, S. C., and at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay

were any fortifications left to the United States, from the Rio Grande to the Potomac. Hostile forts and batteries were building for the reduction of two of these and within the range of their guns, but their commanders were forbidden to fire upon them. The Star of the West, a government steamer, sent from New York with reinforcements and supplies for Fort Sumter, at Charleston, was fired upon by the Confederates and compelled to return. Senators and representatives in Congress from the Southern States left their seats and went home.

6. The New Administration.-President Lincoln was inaugurated March 4, and in his inaugural address expressed his determination to do what he could to preserve the Union. The affairs of the government had been left in the greatest confusion. The men called to the administration of affairs were not familiar with their duties. What measures the Northern States would sustain was unknown. What will result, peace or war? was the question of many loyal

men.