Washington
>From New York Baily returned to Baltimore and went on to
Washington. The records of all travelers to the site of the new
national capital give much the same picture of the countryside.
It was a land worn out by tobacco culture and variously described
as ‘dried up,’ ‘run down,’ and ‘hung out to dry.’ Even George
Washington, at Mount Vernon, was giving up tobacco culture and
was attempting new crops by a system of rotation. Cotton was
being grown in Maryland, but little care was given to its culture
and manufacture. Tobacco was graded in Virginia in accordance
with the rigidity of its inspection at Hanover Court House,
Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Cabin-Point: leaf worth sixteen
shillings at Richmond was worth twenty-one at Hanover Court
House; if it was refused at all places, it was smuggled to the
West Indies or consumed in the country. Meadows were rapidly
taking the place of tobacco-fields, for the planters preferred to
clear new land rather than to enrich the old.