From a print in the possession of the Lenox Library] On the whole, a bird's-eye view of the United States showed a wilderness, 820,680 square miles in extent, that had a line of settlements along the coast. The political condition of the country was not unlike its physical--chaotic. The thirteen colonies, having thrown off allegiance to the mother-country, had essayed the formation of a ship of state, but had created only a raft of thirteen logs, if such a simile may be permitted, which chafed each other with growing friction. Congress was nominally the executive, the legislative, and the judicial head of a nation, but the money it issued ceased to circulate, and the bonds, representing borrowed coin and war material, were little better. As a body, the Congress consisted of a score or so of respectable gentlemen who met in a hall hired for the purpose, where they expressed their opinions on matters of international as well as local concern, and then begged the sovereign states to take action. They had no power _to do_ anything--not even to raise the money with which to pay the rent of the hall in which they met. An examination of the American merchant marine at this time shows that it had fallen far below that of the colonies. In a communication to Congress, 19 ship-builders of Philadelphia said (1789) that while they had launched 4500 tons of shipping per year before the war, "it appears from an average of three years past that we have built only to the amount of 1500 tons annually." Similar complaints were made by the shipwrights of Charleston, Baltimore, and Boston. The Charleston communication was especial interesting. It said:-- "From the diminished state of ship building in America, and the _ruinous restrictions_ to which our vessels are subject in _foreign ports_; from the distressed condition of our commerce, languishing under the _most disgraceful inequalities_, its benefits transferred to strangers ... who _neither have treaties with us_ ... nor are friendly to our commerce," it therefore seemed necessary to ask Congress to consider what ought to be done in the matter (_Am. State Papers_, VII, 9; X, 5-6).