A CENTURY OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES. 231 
It is difficult to fully realize the burning zeal with which every 
one was imbued to make the United States dependent upon 
nothing but itself. It was not enough to be politically free. 
Freedom was not fully won so long as we were compelled to 
depend upon foreign powers for anything whatsoever. In 
the introduction to his little geography of 1791, Morse voices 
these sentiments. He says: 
“It is to be lamented that this part of education (geography) has 
hitherto been so much neglected in America. Our young men, univer¬ 
sally, have been much better acquainted with the geography of Europe 
and Asia than with that of their own state and country. The want of 
suitable books on this subject has been the cause, we hope the sole cause, 
of this shameful defect in our education. Till within a few years we have 
seldom pretended to write, and hardly to think for ourselves. We have 
humbly received from Great Britain our laws, our manners, our books, 
and our mode of thinking; and our youth have been educated rather as 
the subjects of the British king than as citizens of a free republic. But 
the scene is now changing. The revolution has been favorable to science, 
particularly to that of the geography of our own country.” 
The great lexicographer, Noah Webster, was inspired by 
the same views when preparing his dictionary; and espe¬ 
cially did that great democrat, Jefferson, strive unceasingly 
to complete the independence of which the political part was 
definitively secured by the peace of 1783. 
He would not have us reckon our longitude from a foreign 
meridian, or depend upon a foreign country for an ephemeris 
or for coast charts. Accordingly, in 1804, a meridian through 
the Executive Mansion was surveyed and marked on the 
ground as the first meridian of the United States. The name 
Meridian Hill survives in testimony of this. In 1807 the 
Coast Survey was created to accurately chart our coasts for 
purposes of commerce and defense ; and in 1804 the famous 
expedition of Lewis and Clarke to the Pacific ocean expanded 
our political and mental horizon in matters geographic. A 
great system of national highways, both roads and canals, 
was projected and pushed forward. The practical introduc¬ 
tion of steamboats stimulated progress. Lake Champlain 
was connected with the Hudson by a canal, while work upon 
“ Clinton’s ditch,” or the Great Western canal, as the Erie 
33—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 13 
