John Stevens of New York and Hoboken had set up a machine shop
that was to mean much to mechanical progress in America. Oliver
Evans, a mechanical genius of Delaware, was dreaming of the
application of high-pressure steam to both road and water
carriages. Such manifestations, though still very faint, were to
Franklin the signs of a new era.
And so, with vision undimmed, America's most famous citizen lived
on until near the end of the first year of George Washington's
administration. On April 17, 1790, his unconquerable spirit took
its flight.
In that year, 1790, was taken the First Census of the United
States. The new nation had a population of about four million
people. It then included practically the present territory east
of the Mississippi, except the Floridas, which belonged to Spain.
But only a small part of this territory was occupied. Much of New
York and Pennsylvania was savage wilderness. Only the seacoast of
Maine was inhabited, and the eighty-two thousand inhabitants of
Georgia hugged the Savannah River. Hardy pioneers had climbed the
Alleghanies into Kentucky and Tennessee, but the Northwest
Territory--comprising Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and
Wisconsin--was not enumerated at all, so scanty were its people,
perhaps not more than four thousand.
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