The still-unpaid cost of the war against Britain, a debt of $82 million, pressed like a dead weight on the national economy

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 33.

The reality was that America in the first decade of the new century was poor, weak, and backward. By many measures there had been little progress from colonial days. Compared with London, with its one million people, America’s great cities were little more than overgrown medieval villages. Boston had actually lost population for several years following the Revolution; by 1800 its population stood at 25,000, little more than what it had been thirty years earlier. New York had 60,000, Baltimore 13,000, Charleston 18,000. With the possible sole exception of Philadelphia—whose 70,000 residents enjoyed neatly laid-out blocks, streetlights, drains, and wooden pipes that brought in fresh water—they also had no sanitation to speak of, bad paving, an abundance of dramshops, and periodic outbreaks of yellow fever and other deadly epidemics that sent the residents fleeing for the hills. The still-unpaid cost of the war against Britain, a debt of $82 million, pressed like a dead weight on the national economy; the entire capitalization of all the banks in the country amounted to but a third as much.