Chewing tobacco and dipping tobacco were much more common place BC (before cigarettes). So much so that the Supreme Court even had (still has but are used as waste baskets) spitoons. Spitting fell out of favor in the late 1800's/early 1900's as spitting began to be associated with spreading disease.

I'll follow up on what /u/Jimmypickles said and throw some citations to back up what (s)he posted, because it's a correct answer. People were spitting so much because until about 1910, chewing tobacco was the most popular form of tobacco use in the United States.

While we're most familiar with cigarette smoking as the principal form of tobacco use, cigarettes are a relatively recent invention. The first cigarette production machine was invented in 1881, but cigarettes didn't start to take off in a big way until after 1910. In 1913, RJ Reynolds introduced Camel brand cigarettes, the first definitely modern cigarette. Take a look at this atlas of cigarette history from the World Health Organization.

Anyway, back to the statistics. Snuff and chewing tobacco were easy to use and a mainstay of American tobacco use since the first European-American settlers. Remember, until the development of the lucifer match, there was no way to easily light a cigar or pipe, something that precluded its popularity. Even for years after that, cigars and pipes took second fiddle to chewing tobacco and snuff. In 1880, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans were consuming almost 6 pounds of tobacco per capita. Almost four pounds of that was chewing tobacco, with another pound and a half coming from cigars. Pipes and snuff made up the rest.

Looking at the chart I've linked, you can see how cigarettes really take off in the 20th century, and cigarette consumption skyrockets ─ displacing almost entirely all other forms of tobacco ─ during World War II, when cigarettes were included in soldiers' ration packs and became the easiest way to get a nicotine fix for millions of Americans.