hat Eli Terry started the manufacture of clocks as
a business; that cotton sewing thread was first manufactured in the
United States at Pawtucket, R.I.; and that the first turnpike in our
country was completed. This extended from Philadelphia to Lancaster, a
distance of sixty-two miles.

%281. The Period of Commercial and Agricultural Prosperity.%--Just at
this time came another change of great importance. Till 1793 we had
scarcely any commerce with the West Indies. England would not allow our
vessels to go to her islands. Neither would Spain, nor France, except to
a very limited degree. It was the policy of these three countries to
confine such trade as far as possible to their own merchants. But in
1793 France, you remember, made war on England and opened her West
Indian ports to all neutral nations. The United States was a neutral,
and our merchants at once began to trade with the islanders. What these
people wanted was lumber, flour, grain, provisions, salt pork, and fish.
All this led to a demand, first, for ships, then for sailors, and then
for provisions and lumber--to the benefit of every part of the country
except the South. New England was the lumber, fishing, shipbuilding, and
commercial section. New York and Pennsylvania produced grain, flour,
lumber, and carried on a great commerce as well. So profitable was it to
raise wheat, that in many parts of Virginia the people stopped raising
tobacco and began to make flour, and soon made Virginia the second
flour-producing state in the Union. Until after 1795 the people of the
Western States were cut off from this trade. But in that year the treaty
with Spain was made, and the people of the West were then allowed to
float their produce to New Orleans and there sell it or ship it to the
West Indies. Kentucky then became a flour-producing state.

As a consequence of all this, people stopped putting their money into
roads and canals and manufactures, and put it into farming,
shipbuilding, and commerce. Between 1793 and 1807, therefore, our
country enjoyed a period of commercial and agricultural prosperity. But
with 1807 came another change. In that year the embargo was laid, and
for more than fifteen months no vessels were allowed to leave the ports
of the United States for foreign countries. Up to this time our people
had been so much engaged in commerce and agriculture, that they had not
begun to manufacture. In 1807 all the blankets, all the woolen cloth,
cotton c