First Bank of the United States
The President and Company, of the Bank of the United States known as the First Bank of the United States, was a national bank, chartered for a term of twenty years, by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791. It followed the Bank of North America, the nation's first de facto central bank. Establishment of the Bank of the United States was part of a three-part expansion of federal fiscal and monetary power, along with a federal mint and excise taxes, championed by Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton believed a national bank was necessary to stabilize and improve the nation's credit, to improve handling of the financial business of the United States government under the newly enacted Constitution; the First Bank building, located in Philadelphia, within Independence National Historical Park, was completed in 1797, is a National Historic Landmark for its historic and architectural significance. In 1791, the Bank of the United States was one of the three major financial innovations proposed and supported by Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury.
In addition to the national bank, the other measures were an assumption of the state war debts by the U. S. government, establishment of a mint and imposition of a federal excise tax. The goals of Hamilton's three measures were to: Establish financial order and precedence in and of the newly formed United States. Establish credit—both in a country and overseas—for the new nation. Resolve the issue of the fiat currency, issued by the Continental Congress prior to and during the American Revolutionary War—the "Continental". In simpler words, Hamilton's four goals were to: Have the Federal Government assume the Revolutionary War debts of the several states Pay off the war debts Raise money for the new government Establish a national bank and create a common currency According to the plan put before the first session of the First Congress in 1790, Hamilton proposed establishing the initial funding for the First Bank of the United States through the sale of $10 million in stock of which the United States government would purchase the first $2 million in shares.
Hamilton, foreseeing the objection that this could not be done since the U. S. government did not have $2 million, proposed that the government makes the stock purchase using money lent to it by the bank. The remaining $8 million of stock would be available to the public, both in the United States and overseas; the chief requirement of these non-government purchases was that one-quarter of the purchase price had to be paid in gold or silver. Unlike the Bank of England, the primary function of the bank would be a credit issued to government and private interests, for internal improvements and other economic development, per Hamilton's system of Public Credit; the business would be involved in on behalf of the federal government—a depository for collected taxes, making short-term loans to the government to cover real or potential temporary income gaps, serving as a holding site for both incoming and outgoing monies—was considered important but still secondary in nature. There were other, non-negotiable conditions for the establishment of the First Bank of the United States.
Among these were: That the bank would have a twenty-year charter running from 1791 to 1811, after which time it would be up to the Congress to approve or deny renewal of the bank and its charter. That the bank, to avoid any appearance of impropriety, would: be forbidden to buy a government bond. Have a mandatory rotation of directors. Neither issue incur debts beyond its actual capitalization; that foreigners, whether overseas or residing in the United States, would be allowed to be First Bank of the United States stockholders, but would not be allowed to vote. That the Secretary of the Treasury would be free to remove government deposits, inspect the books, require statements regarding the bank's condition as as once a week. To ensure that the government could meet both the current and future demands of its governmental accounts, an additional source of funding was required, "for interest payments on the assumed state debts would begin to fall due at the end of 1791...those payments would require $788,333 annually, and... an additional $38,291 was needed to cover deficiencies in the funds, appropriated for existing commitments."
To achieve this, Hamilton repeated a suggestion he had made nearly a year before—increase the duty on imported spirits, plus raise the excise tax on domestically distilled whiskey and other liquors. Local opposition to the tax led to the Whiskey Rebellion. Hamilton's bank proposal faced widespread resistance from opponents of increased federal power. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and James Madison led the opposition, which claimed that the bank was unconstitutional, that it benefited merchants and investors at the expense of the majority of the population. Like most of the Southern members of Congress and Madison opposed a second of the three proposals of Hamilton: establishing an official government Mint, they believed this centralization of power away from local banks was dangerous to a sound monetary system and was to the benefit of business interests in the commercial north, not southern agricultural interests, arguing that the right to own property would be infringed by these proposals.
Furthermore, they contended that the creation of such a bank violated the Constitution, which stated that Congress was to regulate weights
Congress of the Confederation
The Congress of the Confederation, or the Confederation Congress, formally referred to as the United States in Congress Assembled, was the governing body of the United States of America that existed from March 1, 1781, to March 4, 1789. A unicameral body with legislative and executive function, it was composed of delegates appointed by the legislatures of the several states; each state delegation had one vote. It was preceded by the Second Continental Congress and governed under the newly adopted Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, which were proposed in 1776–1777, adopted by the Continental Congress in July 1778 and agreed to by a unanimous vote of all thirteen states by 1781, it was held up by a long dispute over the cession of western territories beyond the Appalachian Mountains to the central government led by Maryland and a coalition of smaller states without western claims. The plan was introduced by Maryland politician John Hanson and was referred to as'The Hanson Plan'; the newly reorganized Congress at the time continued to refer itself as the Continental Congress throughout its eight-year history, although modern historians separate it from the earlier bodies, which operated under different rules and procedures until the part of American Revolutionary War.
The membership of the Second Continental Congress automatically carried over to the Congress of the Confederation when the latter was created by the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. It had the same secretary as the Second Continental Congress, namely Charles Thomson; the Congress of the Confederation was succeeded by the Congress of the United States as provided for in the new Constitution of the United States, proposed September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia and ratified by the states through 1787 to 1788 and into 1789 and 1790. The Congress of the Confederation opened in the last stages of the American Revolution. Combat ended in October 1781, with the surrender of the British after the Siege and Battle of Yorktown; the British, continued to occupy New York City, while the American delegates in Paris, named by the Congress, negotiated the terms of peace with Great Britain. Based on preliminary articles with the British negotiators made on November 30, 1782, approved by the "Congress of the Confederation" on April 15, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was further signed on September 3, 1783, ratified by Confederation Congress sitting at the Maryland State House in Annapolis on January 14, 1784.
This formally ended the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the thirteen former colonies, which on July 4, 1776, had declared independence. In December 1783, General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, journeyed to Annapolis after saying farewell to his officers and men who had just reoccupied New York City after the departing British Army. On December 23, at the Maryland State House, where the Congress met in the Old Senate Chamber, he addressed the civilian leaders and delegates of Congress and returned to them the signed commission they had voted him back in June 1775, at the beginning of the conflict. With that simple gesture of acknowledging the first civilian power over the military, he took his leave and returned by horseback the next day to his home and family at Mount Vernon near the colonial river port city on the Potomac River at Alexandria in Virginia. On March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were signed by delegates of Maryland at a meeting of the Second Continental Congress, which declared the Articles ratified.
As historian Edmund Burnett wrote, "There was no new organization of any kind, not the election of a new President." The Congress still called itself the Continental Congress. Despite its being the same exact governing body, with some changes in membership over the years as delegates came and went individually according to their own personal reasons and upon instructions of their state governments, some modern historians would refer to the Continental Congress after the ratification of the Articles as the Congress of the Confederation or the Confederation Congress; the Congress had little power and without the external threat of a war against the British, it became more difficult to get enough delegates to meet to form a quorum. Nonetheless the Congress still managed to pass important laws, most notably the Northwest Ordinance of 1787; the War of Independence saddled the country with an enormous debt. In 1784, the total Confederation debt was nearly $40 million. Of that sum, $8 million was owed to the Dutch.
Of the domestic debt, government bonds, known as loan-office certificates, composed $11.5 million, certificates on interest indebtedness $3.1 million, continental certificates $16.7 million. The certificates were non-interest bearing notes issued for supplies purchased or impressed, to pay soldiers and officers. To pay the interest and principal of the debt, Congress had twice proposed an amendment to the Articles granting them the power to lay a 5% duty on imports, but amendments to the Articles required the consent of all thirteen states: the 1781 impost plan had been rejected by Rhode Island and Virginia, while the revised plan, discussed in 1783, was rejected by New York. Without revenue, except for meager voluntary state requisitions, Congress could not pay the interest on its outstanding debt. Meanwhile, the states failed, or refused, to meet the requisitions requested of them by Congress. To that end, in September 1786, after resolving a series of disputes regarding their common border along the Potomac River, delegates of Maryland and Virginia called for a larger assembly
Initial public offering
Initial public offering or stock market launch is a type of public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and also retail investors. Through this process, colloquially known as floating, or going public, a held company is transformed into a public company. Initial public offerings can be used: to raise new equity capital for the company concerned. After the IPO, shares traded in the open market are known as the free float. Stock exchanges stipulate a minimum free float both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the total share capital. Although IPO offers many benefits, there are significant costs involved, chiefly those associated with the process such as banking and legal fees, the ongoing requirement to disclose important and sometimes sensitive information. Details of the proposed offering are disclosed to potential purchasers in the form of a lengthy document known as a prospectus. Most companies undertake an IPO with the assistance of an investment banking firm acting in the capacity of an underwriter.
Underwriters provide several services, including help with assessing the value of shares and establishing a public market for shares. Alternative methods such as the Dutch auction have been explored and applied for several IPOs; the earliest form of a company which issued public shares was the case of the publicani during the Roman Republic. Like modern joint-stock companies, the publicani were legal bodies independent of their members whose ownership was divided into shares, or partes. There is evidence that these shares were sold to public investors and traded in a type of over-the-counter market in the Forum, near the Temple of Castor and Pollux; the shares quaestors. Mere evidence remains of the prices for which partes were sold, the nature of initial public offerings, or a description of stock market behavior. Publicani lost favor with the rise of the Empire. In the early modern period, the Dutch were financial innovators who helped lay the foundations of modern financial systems; the first modern IPO occurred in March 1602 when the Dutch East India Company offered shares of the company to the public in order to raise capital.
The Dutch East India Company became the first company in history to issue bonds and shares of stock to the general public. In other words, the VOC was the first publicly traded company, because it was the first company to be actually listed on an official stock exchange. While the Italian city-states produced the first transferable government bonds, they did not develop the other ingredient necessary to produce a fledged capital market: corporate shareholders; as Edward Stringham notes, "companies with transferable shares date back to classical Rome, but these were not enduring endeavors and no considerable secondary market existed."In the United States, the first IPO was the public offering of Bank of North America around 1783. When a company lists its securities on a public exchange, the money paid by the investing public for the newly-issued shares goes directly to the company as well as to any early private investors who opt to sell all or a portion of their holdings as part of the larger IPO.
An IPO, allows a company to tap into a wide pool of potential investors to provide itself with capital for future growth, repayment of debt, or working capital. A company selling common shares is never required to repay the capital to its public investors; those investors must endure the unpredictable nature of the open market to price and trade their shares. After the IPO, when shares are traded in the open market, money passes between public investors. For early private investors who choose to sell shares as part of the IPO process, the IPO represents an opportunity to monetize their investment. After the IPO, once shares are traded in the open market, investors holding large blocks of shares can either sell those shares piecemeal in the open market or sell a large block of shares directly to the public, at a fixed price, through a secondary market offering; this type of offering is not dilutive. Once a company is listed, it is able to issue additional common shares in a number of different ways, one of, the follow-on offering.
This method provides capital for various corporate purposes through the issuance of equity without incurring any debt. This ability to raise large amounts of capital from the marketplace is a key reason many companies seek to go public. An IPO accords several benefits to the private company: Enlarging and diversifying equity base Enabling cheaper access to capital Increasing exposure and public image Attracting and retaining better management and employees through liquid equity participation Facilitating acquisitions Creating multiple financing opportunities: equity, convertible debt, cheaper bank loans, etc. There are several disadvantages to completing an initial public offering: Significant legal, account
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 49,192, it is the 15th largest city in the Commonwealth, it lies on the east bank of the Susquehanna River, 107 miles west of Philadelphia. Harrisburg is the anchor of the Susquehanna Valley metropolitan area, which had a 2017 estimated population of 571,903, making it the fourth most populous in Pennsylvania and 96th most populous in the United States. Harrisburg played a notable role in American history during the Westward Migration, the American Civil War, the Industrial Revolution. During part of the 19th century, the building of the Pennsylvania Canal and the Pennsylvania Railroad allowed Harrisburg to become one of the most industrialized cities in the Northeastern United States; the U. S. Navy ship USS Harrisburg, which served from 1918 to 1919 at the end of World War I, was named in honor of the city. In the mid-to-late 20th century, the city's economic fortunes fluctuated with its major industries consisting of government, heavy manufacturing and food services.
The Pennsylvania Farm Show, the largest free indoor agriculture exposition in the United States, was first held in Harrisburg in 1917 and has been held there every early-to-mid January since then. Harrisburg hosts an annual outdoor sports show, the largest of its kind in North America, an auto show, which features a large static display of new as well as classic cars and is renowned nationwide, Motorama, a two-day event consisting of a car show, motocross racing, remote control car racing, more. Harrisburg is known for the Three Mile Island accident, which occurred on March 28, 1979, near Middletown. In 2010 Forbes rated Harrisburg as the second best place in the U. S. to raise a family. Despite the city's recent financial troubles, in 2010 The Daily Beast website ranked 20 metropolitan areas across the country as being recession-proof, the Harrisburg region landed at No. 7. The financial stability of the region is in part due to the high concentration of state and federal government agencies.
Harrisburg's site along the Susquehanna River is thought to have been inhabited by Native Americans as early as 3000 BC. Known to the Native Americans as "Peixtin", or "Paxtang", the area was an important resting place and crossroads for Native American traders, as the trails leading from the Delaware to the Ohio rivers, from the Potomac to the Upper Susquehanna intersected there; the first European contact with Native Americans in Pennsylvania was made by the Englishman, Captain John Smith, who journeyed from Virginia up the Susquehanna River in 1608 and visited with the Susquehanna tribe. In 1719, John Harris, Sr. an English trader, settled here and 14 years secured grants of 800 acres in this vicinity. In 1785, John Harris, Jr. made plans to lay out a town on his father's land, which he named Harrisburg. In the spring of 1785, the town was formally surveyed by William Maclay, a son-in-law of John Harris, Sr. In 1791, Harrisburg became incorporated, in October 1812 it was named the Pennsylvania state capital, which it has remained since.
The assembling here of the sectional Harrisburg Convention in 1827 led to the passage of the high protective-tariff bill of 1828. In 1839, Harrison and Tyler were nominated for President of the United States at the first national convention of the Whig Party of the United States, held in Harrisburg. Before Harrisburg gained its first industries, it was a scenic, pastoral town, typical of most of the day: compact and surrounded by farmland. In 1822, the impressive brick capitol was completed for $200,000, it was Harrisburg's strategic location. It was settled as a trading post in 1719 at a location important to Westward expansion; the importance of the location was. The Susquehanna River flowed west to east at this location, providing a route for boat traffic from the east; the head of navigation was a short distance northwest of the town, where the river flowed through the pass. Persons arriving from the east by boat had to exit at Harrisburg and prepare for an overland journey westward through the mountain pass.
Harrisburg assumed importance as a provisioning stop at this point where westward bound pioneers transitioned from river travel to overland travel. It was because of its strategic location that the state legislature selected the small town of Harrisburg to become the state capital in 1812; the grandeur of the Colonial Revival capitol dominated the quaint town. The streets were orderly and platted in grid pattern; the Pennsylvania Canal was coursed the length of the town. The residential houses were situated on only a few city blocks stretching southward from the capitol, they were one story. No factories were present but there were blacksmith shops and other businesses. During the American Civil War, Harrisburg was a significant training center for the Union Army, with tens of thousands of troops passing through Camp Curtin, it was a major rail center for the Union and a vital link between the Atlantic coast and the Midwest, with several railroads running through the city and spanning the Susquehanna River.
As a result of this importance, it was a target of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during its two invasions; the first time during the 1862 Maryland Campaign, when Lee planned to capture the city after taking Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, but was prevented from d
Crisis theory
Crisis theory, concerning the causes and consequences of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall in a capitalist system, is now associated with Marxist economics. Earlier analysis by Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi provided the first suggestions of the systemic roots of Crisis. "The distinctive feature of Sismondi’s analysis is that it is geared to an explicit dynamic model in the modern sense of this phrase... Sismondi’s great merit is that he used and explicitly, a schema of periods, that is, that he was the first to practice the particular method of dynamics, called period analysis". Marx built on Sismondi's theoretical insights. Rosa Luxemburg and Henryk Grossman both drew attention to Sismondi's work, on the nature of capitalism, as a reference point for Karl Marx, Grossman in particular pointed out how Sismondi had contributed to the development of a series of Marx’s concepts including crises as a necessary feature of capitalism, arising from its contradictions between forces and relations of production and exchange value and consumption, capital and wage labor.
His "inkling... that the bourgeois forms are only transitory" was distinctive. John Stuart Mill in his Of the Tendency of Profits to a Minimum which forms Chapter III of Book IV of his Principles of Political Economy and Chapter V, Consequences of the Tendency of Profits to a Minimum, provides a conspectus of the accepted understanding of a number of the key elements, after David Ricardo, but without Karl Marx's theoretical working out of the theory that Frederick Engels posthumously published in Capital, Volume III. Marx's crisis theory was only understood among leading Marxists at the beginning of the twentieth-century, his notes, ‘Books of Crisis’ remain unpublished and have been referred to. A small group including Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin attempted to defend the revolutionary implications of the theory, while others, first Eduard Bernstein and Rudolf Hilferding, argued against its continued applicability, thereby founded one of the mainstreams of revision of the interpretation of Marx's ideas after Marx.
It was Henryk Grossman in 1929 who most rescued Marx's theoretical presentation... ‘he was the first Marxist to systematically explore the tendency for the organic composition of capital to rise and hence for the rate of profit to fall as a fundamental feature of Marx's explanation of economic crises in Capital.' Independently Samezō Kuruma was in 1929 drawing attention to the decisive importance in Marx's writings and made the explicit connection between Crisis theory and the theory of imperialism. Following the extensive setbacks to independent working class politics, the widespread destruction both of people and capital value, the 1930s and'40s saw attempts to reformulate Marx's analysis with less revolutionary consequences, for example in Joseph Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction, and his presentation of Marx's crisis theory as a prefiguration of aspects of what Schumpeter, others, championed as a theory of business cycles. “... more than any other economist identified cycles with the process of production and operation of additional plant and equipment”A survey of the competing theories of crisis in the different strands of political economy and economics was provided by Anwar Shaikh in 1978. and by Ernest Mandel in his'Introduction' to the Penguin edition of Marx's Capital Volume III in the section ‘marxist theories of crisis’ where Mandel says more about the theoretical confusion on this question at that time among thoughtful and influential marxists, than an excursus or introduction to Marx's crisis theory.
There have been attempts in periods of capitalist growth and expansion, most notably in the long Post-War Boom to both explain the phenomenon and to argue that Marx's strong statements of its'law like' fundamental character under capitalism have been overcome in practice, in theory or both. As a result, there have been persistent challenges to this aspect of Marx's theoretical achievement and reputation. Keynesian's argue that a "crisis" may refer to an sharp bust cycle of the regular boom and bust pattern of "chaotic" capitalist development, which, if no countervailing action is taken, could continue to develop into a recession or depression, it continues to be argued in terms of historical materialism theory, that such crises will repeat until objective and subjective factors combine to precipitate the transition to the new mode of production either by sudden collapse in a final crisis or gradual erosion of the basing on competition and the emerging dominance of cooperation. Karl Marx considered his crisis theory to be his most substantial theoretical achievement.
He presents it in its most developed form as Law of Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall combined with a discussion of various counter tendencies, which may slow or modify its impact." Roman Rosdolsky observed that ‘Marx concludes by saying that the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is ‘in every respect the most important law of modern political economy... despite its simplicity, it has never before been grasped and less consciously articulated... It is from the historical standpoint the most important law.’ A key characteristic of these theoretical factors is that none of them are natural or accidental in origin but instead arise from systemic elements of capitalism as a mode of production and basic social order. In Marx's words, "The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself"; the law of the falling rate of profit, the unexpected consequence of the profit motive, is described by Marx as a "two-faced law with the same causes fo
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, is the county seat of Allegheny County. As of 2018, a population of 308,144 lives within the city limits, making it the 63rd-largest city in the U. S; the metropolitan population of 2,362,453, is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, the 26th-largest in the U. S. Pittsburgh is located in the south west of the state, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. Pittsburgh is known both as "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses and as the "City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges; the city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclined railways, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. The city developed as a vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest, as the mineral-rich Allegheny Mountains made the area coveted by the French and British empires, Whiskey Rebels, Civil War raiders. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, shipbuilding, foods, transportation, computing and electronics.
For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment. S. stockholders per capita. America's 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out; this heritage left the area with renowned museums, medical centers, research centers, a diverse cultural district. Today, Apple Inc. Bosch, Uber, Autodesk, Microsoft and IBM are among 1,600 technology firms generating $20.7 billion in annual Pittsburgh payrolls. The area has served as the long-time federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, energy research and the nuclear navy; the area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The nation's eighth-largest bank, eight Fortune 500 companies, six of the top 300 U. S. law firms make their global headquarters in the area, while RAND, BNY Mellon, FedEx, Bayer and NIOSH have regional bases that helped Pittsburgh become the sixth-best area for U.
S. job growth. In 2015, Pittsburgh was listed among the "eleven most livable cities in the world"; the region is a hub for Environmental Design and energy extraction. In 2019, Pittsburgh was deemed “Food City of the Year” by the San Francisco-based restaurant and hospitality consulting firm af&co. Many restaurants were mentioned favorable, among them were Superior Motors in Braddock, Driftwood Oven in Lawrenceville, Spork in Bloomfield, Fish nor Fowl in Garfield and Bitter Ends Garden & Luncheonette in Bloomfield. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham; as Forbes was a Scot, he pronounced the name PITS-bər-ə. Pittsburgh was incorporated as a borough on April 22, 1794, with the following Act: "Be it enacted by the Pennsylvania State Senate and Pennsylvania House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania... by the authority of the same, that the said town of Pittsburgh shall be... erected into a borough, which shall be called the borough of Pittsburgh for ever."
From 1891 to 1911, the city's name was federally recognized as "Pittsburg", though use of the final h was retained during this period by the city government and other local organizations. After a public campaign, the federal decision to drop the h was reversed; the area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee and several other settled groups of Native Americans. The first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers Dutch, followed in the early 18th century. Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers. During 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off; the French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalle's 1669 claims.
The French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne; the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddock's Field. General John Forbes took the forks in 1758. Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named "Pittsborough". During Pontiac's Rebellion, native tribes conducted a siege of Fort Pitt for two months until Colonel Henry Bouquet relieved it after the Battle of Bushy Run. Fort Pitt is notable as the site of an early use of smallpox for biological warfare. Lord Jeffery Amherst ordered blankets contaminated from smallpox victims to be distributed in 1763 to the tribes surrounding the fort; the disease spread into other areas, infected other tribes, killed hundreds of thousands. During this period, the powerful nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York, had maintained control of much of the Ohio Valley as hunting grounds by right of conquest after defeating other tribes.
By the terms of the 1768 Treaty of
Benjamin Franklin Bache (journalist)
Benjamin Franklin Bache was an American journalist and publisher. He founded a newspaper that supported Jeffersonian philosophy, he attacked the Federalist political leaders, including Presidents George Washington and John Adams, historian Gordon S. Wood wrote that "no editor did more to politicize the press in the 1790s." His paper's heated attacks are thought to have contributed to passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts by the 5th United States Congress and signed by President John Adams in 1798. The grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Bache was referred to as "Lightning Rod Junior" after his famous grandfather's experiment; the son of Sarah Franklin and Richard Bache, he died at 29 in the yellow fever epidemic of 1798. Sarah "Sally" Franklin, the only daughter of Benjamin Franklin and Deborah Read, met Richard Bache while on a visit away from her parents, they were married on November 2, 1767. On August 12, 1769 she gave birth to Benjamin Franklin Bache. From the moment she set eyes on her grandson, Deborah Read Franklin fell in love with Benjamin, whom she called “her little kingbird.”
She took to “Benny,” as she called him, as her own. She and her husband had lost their only son, Francis Folger Franklin, at the age of four from smallpox, she and Benjamin had earlier taken in his illegitimate son, William Franklin, as an infant at the beginning of their marriage, raised him in their household. Benjamin Franklin Bache was baptized on August 1769 in Christ Church in Philadelphia, his godmothers were Deborah Read Franklin. His godfathers were his uncle and grandfather Benjamin Franklin, who had a proxy at the ceremony, as he was on an extended diplomatic mission in England. On December 19, 1774, Deborah Read died. Although he was at her funeral, the boy Benjamin regretted not having been at his grandmother's deathbed. In May 1775, at the age of five, Bache met his grandfather Benjamin Franklin for the first time when he returned from England, his grandfather's arrival brought more tumult to his home, as Franklin had brought with him William Temple Franklin, his 15-year-old grandson, the illegitimate son of William Franklin.
On October 29, 1776, Franklin took his two grandsons along on his diplomatic mission to France to negotiate a firm alliance. Bache was seven when their party boarded the USS Reprisal, sailed for France, they suffered violent storms, attacks by hostile British ships. Soon after arriving in France, Benjamin Franklin enrolled Bache in a local boarding school run by Mr. d’Hourville. Without any English speaking students attending the school, Franklin transferred him to Le Coeur's along with other students from the British North American colonies, such as Charles Cochran, Jesse Deane, John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams of Massachusetts. In the spring of 1779, Benjamin Franklin sent Bache to Geneva, as he wanted Bache to gain experience in a Republic. By June 1783, Benjamin Franklin was ready to recall his grandson to Paris, where he would study how to be a printer until they left Europe to return to Philadelphia in 1785. Bache was a good student at the University of Pennsylvania, having graduated in 1787.
Affected by being taken from his family at such a young age, as well as his grandfather's lengthy absences due to his diplomatic work, Bache appeared depressed and shy as an adolescent. After a few years at Le Coeur's, Franklin began having Bache trained for a career as a printer-publisher, as he had been. In the early months at Geneva, the youth was under the care of Philibert Cramer. At the age of 13, he was learning the classics: he was interpreting Telemachus, Sallust, Cicero's Catiline Orations and the New Testament in Greek. In 1781, Bache wrote in his diary about the extensive school work. Upon returning to Philadelphia, Bache began working as a printer at his grandfather's shop at the family's Franklin Court property on Market Street, presaging his future career as a newspaper editor. Bache had learned type-founding as an apprentice in Paris to Francois-Ambrose Didot, the first printer to print on vellum paper, he considered Didot to be the “best printer that now exists and maybe that has existed.”
After living abroad for so long, he felt. As his grandfather was starting to fade, Bache oversaw the print shop's operations, but under the older man's watchful eye, his first print job was "An Ode in Imitation of Alcaeus," a poem by the linguistic scholar William Jones, who decried England's corruption and the misuse of monarchical power. Bache's first ventures in commercial publishing were school texts, including Isaiah Thomas’ collection of writings by Aesop and Erasmus, his early ventures included reprinting a series of four Lessons for Children books by Anna Letitia Barbauld, an Englishwoman. She used a Lockean approach of applying behavioral techniques of esteem and disgrace to instill wisdom and virtue, her works taught children not to mistreat animals, or be idle. In one story, three boys at a boarding school receive cakes from home. Harry greedily becomes sick. Peter hoards his cake. Billy shares his cake with the other students and with an old blind man; the act of being unselfish made the boy “more glad than if he had eaten ten cakes.”
Following his grandfather's death in 1790, Bache inherited Franklin's printing equipment and many of his books. He founded The Philadelphia Aurora, a newspaper with an editorial position that surpassed Franklin's fierce pro-French and democratic position. Bache promised, "This paper will always b
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