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THE NATION IN A NUTSHELL

A _RAPID OUTLINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY._

By George Makepeace Towle

Author Of "Young People's History Of England," "Young People's History
Of Ireland," "Heroes Of History," "Modern France," Etc.


1886



THE NATION IN A NUTSHELL


CONTENTS:

I.      AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES
II.     THE ERA OF DISCOVERY
III.    THE ERA OF COLONIZATION
IV.     THE COLONIAL ERA
V.      THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
VI.     SOCIETY IN 1776
VII.    THE REVOLUTION
VIII.   THE CONFEDERATION AND CONSTITUTION
IX.     WASHINGTON'S PRESIDENCY
X.      THE WAR OF 1812
XI.     THE MEXICAN WAR
XII.    THE SLAVERY AGITATION
XIII.   THE CIVIL WAR
XIV.    THE PRESIDENTS
XV.     MATERIAL PROGRESS
XVI.    PROGRESS IN LITERATURE
XVII.   PROGRESS IN THE ARTS
XVIII.  PROGRESS IN SCIENCE AND INVENTION
XIX.    POLITICAL CHANGES




THE NATION IN A NUTSHELL

AN OUTLINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY.




I. AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.


[Sidenote: Geology and Archaeology.]

The sciences of geology and archaeology, working side by side, have made
a wonderful progress in the past half a century. The one, seeking for
the history and transformations of the physical earth, and the other,
aiming to discover the antiquity, differences of race, and social and
ethnical development of man, have obtained results which we cannot
regard without amazement and more or less incredulity. The two sciences
have been faithful handmaidens the one to the other; but geology has
always led the way, and archaeology has been competed to follow in its
path.

[Sidenote: Four Eras of Civilization.]

Though we may doubt as to the exactness of the detailed data established
by the archaeologists, there are certain broad facts which we must
accept from them as established beyond doubt. These facts are of the
highest value and interest. The antiquary has been able, from discovered
remains of extinct civilizations, to reconstruct societies and peoples,
and to trace the occupancy of countries to periods far anterior to that
of which history takes cognizance. The general fact seems to be settled
that, in prehistoric times, Europe passed through four distinct eras.
These were the Rude Stone Age, when man was the contemporary in Europe
of the extinct hairy elephant and the cave bear; the Polished Stone Age;
the Bronze Age, when bronze was used for arms and utensils; and the Iron
Age, in which iron superseded bronze in the making of useful articles.

[Sidenote: Ancient America.]

In the same way it has been established that, on our own continent, the
oldest discoverable civilization was one in which rude stone implements
were used, and man lived contemporaneously with the megatherium and the
mastodon. Then polished and worked stone implements came into use; and
after the lapse of ages, copper. The researches of our antiquaries
have rendered it probable that America is as ancient, as an inhabited
continent, as Europe. Evidences have been brought to light, leading to
the conclusion that many thousands of years before the Christian era,
America was the seat of a civilization far from rude or savage. Groping
into the remains of the far past, we find skeletons, skulls, implements
of war, and even basket-work, buried in geological strata, which have
been overlaid by repeated convulsions and changes of the physical earth.
But so few are the relics of this dim, primeval period, that we can
only conclude its antiquity, and we can infer little or nothing of its
characteristics.

[Sidenote: Primeval Races.]

Advancing, however, another stage in research and discovery, we come
upon clear and overwhelming proofs of the existence on this continent of
a great, enterprising, skilful, and even artistic people, spread over an
immense area, and leaving behind them the most positive testimony, not
only of their existence, but of their manners and customs, their arts,
their trade, their methods of warfare, and their religion and worship.
Compared with this people, the Red Indians found here by the Pilgrims
and the Cavaliers were modern intruders upon the land. These ancient
Americans, indeed, were far superior in all respects to the Red Indian
of our historic acquaintance. When the Red Indians replaced them, the
civilization of the continent fell from a high to a much lower plane.

[Sidenote: The Mound-Builders.]

The great race of which I speak is known as "the Mound-Builders." Like
the "Wall-Builders" of Greece and Italy, they stand out, in the light
of their remains, as distinctly as if we had historical records of them.
The Mound-Builders occupied, often in thickly settled communities, the
region about our great Northern Lakes, the valleys of the Mississippi,
the Ohio, the Missouri, and the regions watered by the affluents of
these rivers, and a wide and irregular belt along the coast of the Gulf
of Mexico. There is little or no evidence that the same race inhabited
any part of the country now occupied by the Eastern and Middle States;
but some few traces of them are found in North and South Carolina.

[Sidenote: Ancient Mounds.]

The chief relics left by this comparatively polished race are the very
numerous mounds, or artificial hills, found scattered over the country.
These are sometimes ten, and sometimes forty and fifty, feet in height,
with widely varying bases. They present many forms; they are circular
and pyramidal, square and polygonal, and in some places are manifestly
imitations of the shapes of beasts, birds, and human beings. There are
districts where hundreds of these mounds appear within a limited area.
Sometimes--as at Aztalan, in Wisconsin, and at Newark, in the Licking
Valley--a vast series of earthwork enclosures is discovered, sometimes
with embankments twelve feet high and fifty broad, within which are
variously shaped mounds, definitely formed avenues, and passages and
ponds. These enclosures amply prove, aside from the geological evidences
of their antiquity, the existence of a race very different from the
Red Indians. They were clearly a people not nomadic, but with fixed
settlements, cultivators of the soil, and skilful in the art of military
defence.

[Sidenote: Altars and Temples.]

The excavations of the wonderful mounds have brought to light many
things more curious than the mounds themselves. It seems to be
established that the mounds were used for four distinct purposes. They
were altars for sacrifice, and, like the Persians, whose sacrificial
ceremonies strikingly resembled those of the Mound-Builders, they were
sun-worshippers. They offered up the most costly gifts, and even human
victims. The pyramidal mounds, with avenues leading to the summits,
were the sites of the stately sun and moon temples. Here, undoubtedly,
imposing ceremonies were often performed. The lower or "knoll" mounds
were used as the sepulchres of the dead. They yield up to the modern
antiquary numberless skulls, of a type distinctly different from those
of the Red Indians. The Mound-Builders buried their dead, most often,
in a sitting posture, adorned with shell beads and ivory ornaments.
Sometimes the dead were burned. Finally, the mounds were employed as
points of observation.

[Sidenote: Relics of the Mounds.]

[Sidenote: Early Arts.]

That the Mound-Builders were a far more civilized race than the Indians
is clearly revealed by the relics found in and about the mounds. They
have left behind them thousands of flint arrow-heads, many of beautiful
workmanship. They used spades, rimmers, borers, celts, axes, fleshers,
scrapers, pestles, and other implements whose use cannot now be
determined, made of various stones, such as porphyry, greenstone,
and feldspar. They knew well the use of tobacco, for among their
most artistic and elaborately carved remains are pipes, some of them
representing animals and human heads. It seems to be certain that they
had even attained the art of weaving cloth fabrics; for pieces of cloth,
of a material akin to hemp, have been found in the mounds, with uniform
and regularly spun threads, and every evidence that they were woven by
some deft invention or mechanical device. It is certain that the Red
Indian was ignorant of this valuable art.

[Sidenote: Primeval Mining.]

Among the highly wrought remains of the mounds are fanciful water-jugs,
well carved and symmetrical in shape, some of which were evidently
made to keep water cool. The human heads represented on these bear no
resemblance to the Indian types. Drinking cups with carved rims and
handles, sepulchral urns with curious ornaments, kettles and other
pieces of skilful pottery, copper chisels, axes, knives, awls, spear and
arrow heads, and even bracelets, come to light, here and there. There
is no doubt that the Mound-Builders were miners. For, on the southern
shores of Lake Superior, great excavations indicate an extensive and
skilful mining of copper at a very remote period. It is singular, on
the other hand, that no iron implement has ever been discovered in the
mounds. The builders used iron-ore as a stone, but never learned the art
of moulding it into weapons or utensils.

Thus the fact that vast areas of what are now the United States were
once occupied by an active, skilful, imaginative, and progressive race,
seems fully established. Not less certain is it that in their physical
type, in their government, in their arts, habits, and daily pursuits,
they were separated by a wide gap from the Red Indians whom our
ancestors found in possession of the continent. The Indian was roving,
and hunted for subsistence. The Mound-Builders were sedentary, and
undoubtedly cultivated maize as their chief article of food.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Mound-Builders.]

But how remote the Mound-Builders were from the era of European
settlement, whence they came; how, whither, and when they
vanished,--these are questions before which science stands harassed,
impotent to answer positively. There are those who, marking certain
apparent resemblances between the implements, religious rites and
customs, and cranial formations, of the Mound-Builders, and those of
the Asiatic Mongols, conclude that the former were originally Asiatic
hordes, who, crossing Behring Straits, when, perhaps, the two continents
were united at that point, formed a new home and established a new
empire here. Others, with more proof, connect them with that great
Toltec race which occupied Central America and Mexico, before they were
driven out by the ruder and more warlike Aztecs.

[Sidenote: The Aztecs.]

The Toltecs have left ample records of their existence and gorgeous
civilization, in noble monuments and very numerous though till recently
undecipherable inscriptions; and many similarities lend weight to the
theory that the empire of the Mound-Builders, in the Ohio, Mississippi,
and Missouri valleys, was the result of a great Toltec migration from
Central America, which they left to Aztec dominion. Thus while we call
our continent the "New World," it is not improbable that we may be
living in a country which was alive with art, splendor, invention,
and power, when Europe was a dreary waste, over which the now extinct
monsters roamed unmolested by man.




II. THE ERA OF DISCOVERY.

[Sidenote: Historic Myths.]

We live in times when the researches of scholars are minute, pitiless,
and exhaustive, and when no hitherto received historical fact is
permitted to escape the ordeal of the most critical scrutiny. Many are
the cherished historical beliefs which have latterly been assailed
with every resource of logical argument and formidably arrayed proofs,
unearthed by tireless diligence and pursuit. Thus we are told that the
story of William Tell is a romantic myth; that Lucretia Borgia, far from
being a poisoner and murderess, was really a very estimable person; and
that the siege of Troy was a very insignificant struggle, between armies
counted, not by thousands, but by hundreds.

In the same way the old familiar question, "Who discovered America?"
which every school-boy was formerly as prompt to answer as to his age
and name, has in recent years become a perplexing problem of historical
disputation; and at least can no longer be accurately answered by the
name of the gallant and courageous Genoese who set forth across the
Atlantic in 1492.

[Sidenote: Icelandic Discoverers.]

Bancroft, on the first page of his history, pronounces the story of
the discovery of our country by the Icelandic Northmen, a narrative
"mythological in form and obscure in meaning"; and adds that "no clear
historical evidence establishes the natural probability that they
accomplished the passage." But the first volume of Bancroft was
published in 1852. Since then, the proofs of the discovery of the
continent by the Icelanders, very nearly five hundred years before
Columbus was thrilled with the delight of beholding the Bahamas, have
multiplied and grown to positive demonstration. They no longer rest upon
vague traditions; they have assumed the authority of explicit and well
attested records.

[Sidenote: Discoverers of America.]

The discovery of the New England coast by the Icelanders is the earliest
which, down to the present, can be positively asserted. But it has been
recently urged that there are some evidences of American discovery by
Europeans or Asiatics long prior to Leif Erikson. There are certain
indications that the Pacific coast was reached by Chinese adventurers in
the remote past; and it is stated that proofs exist in Brazil tending to
show that South America was discovered by Phoenicians five hundred years
before Christ. The story is said to be recorded on some brass tablets
found in northern Brazil, which give the number of the vessels and
crews, state Sidon as the port to which the voyagers belonged, and even
describe their route around the Cape of Good Hope and along the
west coast of Africa, whence the trade-winds drifted them across the
Atlantic.

[Sidenote: Icelandic Voyagers.]

Confining ourselves to credible history, it appears that in the year 986
(eighty years before the conquest of England by William of Normandy), an
Icelandic mariner named Bjarne Herrjulson, making for Greenland in his
rude bark, was swept across the Atlantic, and finally found himself
cast upon dry land. He made haste to set sail on his return voyage, and
succeeded in getting safely back to Iceland. He told his story of
the strange land beyond the seas; and so pleased had he been with its
pleasant and fruitful aspect that he named it "Vineland."

[Sidenote: Leif Erikson.]

The story of Bjarne impressed itself upon an intelligent and adventurous
man, Leif Erikson; who, having purchased Bjarne's ship, set sail for
Vineland in the year 1000, with a crew of thirty-five men. He reached
what is now Cape Cod, and passed the winter of 1000-1 on its shores.
Returning to Iceland, his example was followed, two years later, by
another Erikson, who established a colony on the shores of Narragansett
Bay, not far from Fall River, where the founder died and was buried.

[Sidenote: Columbus in Iceland.]

It is well nigh certain that Christopher Columbus, in the year 1477,
visited Iceland, and even sailed one hundred leagues beyond it,
discovering there an unfrozen sea. The idea of western discovery was
already in his mind, and he had received hints of a western continent,
from certain carved objects picked up in the Atlantic by other
navigators. It is altogether probable that the conjectures of Columbus
were confirmed into conviction by the Icelandic traditions of Leif's
discovery, during his sojourn at Rejkjawik. From this time Columbus was
more than ever intent upon the enterprise which, fifteen years after,
conferred upon him imperishable glory.

[Sidenote: Voyage of Columbus.]

The story of Columbus is, or should be, familiar to every American who
can read. How he sailed forth from the roads of Saltez on the 3d of
August, 1492, with three vessels and a crew of one hundred and twenty
men; how the voyage was stormy and full of doubts and discouragements;
how, finally, early on the morning of October 12, Rodrigo Triana, a
seaman of the _Pinta_, first descried the land which Columbus christened
San Salvador; how they pushed on and found Cuba and Hayti; how, after
returning to Spain, Columbus made two more voyages westward,--one
in 1493, when he discovered Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Porto Rico: and
another in 1498 when the Orinoco and the coast of Para rewarded his
researches; and his subsequent unhappy fate--all these events have been
related by many writers, and most vividly of all by the graphic pen of
Washington Irving.

[Sidenote: Menendez.]

The era of American discovery may be said to have continued till the
memorable fourth day of September, 1565, when the Spaniard Menendez
founded the first town on this continent, on the Florida coast, which he
called St. Augustine. In one sense, indeed, the era of discovery did not
cease down to within the memory of men still living; for the discovery
of a path across the Rocky Mountains might well be regarded as included
in it. But during the period which intervened between the return of
Columbus from his first voyage and the building of St. Augustine,
the extent and character of the eastern portion of our continent was
revealed to Europe by many and successful navigators.

[Sidenote: The Cabots.]

The story of Columbus inspired the cupidity and territorial ambition of
England, France, Spain, and Italy; and in the year 1497 John Cabot,
a Venetian by birth, but long a resident of Bristol, England, set out
thence across the Atlantic. He was accompanied by his son Sebastian.
On the 24th of June he came in sight of Newfoundland, and then of Nova
Scotia; then he sailed southward and reached Florida. As this was a year
before the third voyage of Columbus, in which he saw the coast of the
mainland, to John Cabot belongs the honor of having landed upon the
American continent before Columbus.

[Sidenote: Amerigo Vespucci.]

Voyages to the new land now followed each other in quick succession
for many years. It was in 1499 that the accomplished but unscrupulous
Amerigo Vespucci made his first voyage to Hispaniola, following it up by
voyages along the coast of South America. He returned thence to claim,
after the death of Columbus, the honors due to the great Genoese.

[Sidenote: Verrazzani.]

Portugal and France, jealous of the success of the Spanish and English
expeditions, lost no time in entering into this perilous and brilliant
competition for maritime honor and western possession. Portugal sent out
Cortereal, and France Verrazzani. The former skirted the coast for six
hundred miles, kidnapping Indians, and spending some time at Labrador,
where he came to his death. Verrazzani, in 1524, sailed for the Western
Continent in the _Dolphin_, ranged along the coast of North Carolina,
and so northward until he espied the beautiful harbor of New York, and
anchored for a brief rest in that of Newport. Verrazzani returned to
France with glowing accounts of the beauty, fertility, and noble harbors
of the country.

[Sidenote: Jacques Cartier.]

Within ten years France sent forth another expedition, under the command
of the famous Jacques Cartier, which was destined to acquire for that
nation its claim to the possession of Canada. Cartier sailed from St.
Malo to Newfoundland in twenty days. He went up the St. Lawrence, and
returned home to tell the thrilling tale of his adventures. The next
year he came back to discover the sites of Montreal and Quebec; and he
made two more voyages, in 1540 and 1542.

[Sidenote: Ponce de Leon.]

Meanwhile, Spain was resolved to sustain the great prestige she had
gained by the expeditions of Columbus, and to yield to no rival her
claims to dominion on the new continent. In 1512, Don Juan Ponce de
Leon, a brave soldier and adventurous man, who had accompanied
Columbus on his second voyage, landed on the peninsula of Florida, and
established the right of Spain to its possession. Five years after,
Fernandez landed on the coast of Yucatan; and ere long Garay explored
the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: De Soto.]

It is not possible, in this survey, to follow, or even to name, the
Spanish expeditions of discovery and conquest between 1512 and 1550.
Suffice it to say that during this period subjects of the Spanish king
landed on the coast of South Carolina, entered the harbors of New York
and New England, crossed Louisiana and northern Mexico to the Pacific,
explored Mexico and Peru, marched across Georgia under the lead of the
renowned Ferdinand de Soto, penetrated to the interior, and, after many
romantic adventures and desperate hardships, discovered the magnificent
river which we call the Mississippi; made perilous excursions into the
wild depths of Arkansas and Missouri, and even to the remote banks of
the Red River.

[Sidenote: Character of the Discoverers.]

The enterprises of Spaniards, English, Portuguese, and French were alike
prompted by the greed of gain. All sought the fabled El Dorado; all
craved the power of colonial dominion. None the less were the navigators
and soldiers, whom the nations sent forth to reveal a new world to
civilization, men of courage and fortitude, able in achieving the
momentous tasks assigned to them. Columbus and Cabot, at least, thought
less of riches and fleeting honors than of the proper and noble glories
of discovery; it was left to their Spanish successors to kidnap the
Indians, to rob their settlements and murder their women, and to invade
the peaceful wilds of America, with fire and the sword.




III. THE ERA OF COLONIZATION.

[Sidenote: Voyages of Colonization.]

To acquire a title to the fertile and fruitful lands and fabled riches
of the newly discovered continent, became the aspiration of the great
maritime states of Europe, which had shared between them the honors of
its discovery. From the middle of the sixteenth to the beginning of the
seventeenth century, the voyages of adventure and projected colonization
were almost continuous. Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Englishmen fitted out
vessels and crossed the ocean, to make more extended researches, and to
found, if possible, permanent settlements. Although failure generally
attended these attempts at colonization, they gradually led the way to
the final occupation of the continent.

[Sidenote: The Huguenots in America.]

Of these abortive efforts, that of Admiral Coligny to found a settlement
of the Huguenots, who were persecuted in France, on the new shores, was
the earliest and one of the most romantic. As long ago as 1562, America
became a refuge of the oppressed for conscience's sake. The Huguenot
colony, taking up their residence on the River May, gave the name of
"Carolina" (from King Charles IX.) to their new domain. After many and
terrible hardships, they returned again to France, to be soon succeeded
by another colony of Huguenots, also sent out by brave old Coligny,
which settled on the same soil of Carolina.

[Sidenote: Menendez in Florida]

This aroused the jealousy and cupidity of Spain. The "most Catholic"
king was not only enraged to find the soil which he claimed as his own
by right of discovery, taken possession of by the subjects of his French
rival, but was scandalized that the new colonists should be Calvinistic
heretics. It was the very height of the gloomiest period of religious
fanaticism and persecution in Europe. Menendez was accordingly sent
out to Florida by King Philip, and assumed its governorship; and on
September 8, 1565, Saint Augustine, the oldest town in the United
States, was founded, and Philip of Spain was solemnly proclaimed
sovereign of all North America. Menendez lost no time in attacking the
Huguenot colonists of Carolina. They were speedily defeated, and most
of them were ruthlessly massacred; and our almost virgin soil was thus
early the scene of another St. Bartholomew.

Meanwhile, England was not idle in contesting with France and Spain
the supremacy of the western land. Very early in the sixteenth century
projects of colonizing America were formed in England.

[Sidenote: English Colonization.]

Numerous voyages hither were undertaken during the reign of Henry VIII.;
but the accounts which remain of them are rare and meagre. Some of
them resulted in terrible disasters of shipwreck and death. Late in the
century a courageous and determined navigator, Martin Frobisher, made
three voyages to America, but without establishing a colony, or finding
the treasures of gold and gems which he sought. Later, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, the half-brother of Raleigh, and Barlow, made attempts to found
colonies, but in vain.

[Sidenote: Raleigh's Expedition.]

It was in the spring of 1585 that Sir Walter Raleigh fitted out his
famous expedition of seven ships, and one hundred and eight emigrants,
and sent it forth, bound for the shores of Carolina. At first it seemed
as it art English colony were really about to prosper in the new land.
They established themselves at Roanoke, and explored the country.
Hariot, one of the shrewdest of them, discovered the seductive
proper-ties of tobacco, the succulence of Indian corn, and the nutritive
quality of potatoes.

[Sidenote: Sir Francis Drake.]

The hostility of the natives, however, soon became so bitter, and their
attacks so frequent, that the colony was glad to return to England
in the visiting ships of Sir Francis Drake. Two years later Raleigh,
undismayed by the failure of his first colony, sent out another, under
John White, which settled on the Isle of Roanoke, and founded the "city
of Raleigh." It was here that, on the 18th of August, 1587, the first
child of English parents was born on American soil. Her name was
Virginia Dare, and she was the granddaughter of Governor White. The
Governor returned to England, leaving the emigrants behind; and on his
going back to Roanoke, three years afterwards, no vestige of the colony
could be discovered. It is supposed that they were all massacred by
the Indians during White's absence. The first permanent settlement in
America, was made by the French, at Port Royal, in 1605.

[Sidenote: Port Royal.]

[Sidenote: Colonies in Virginia.]

English enterprise was now at last ready to found and perpetuate states
on the new continent. In little more than a year after the French
occupation of Port Royal, a patent was granted by King James the First
to a party of colonists, under Newport and Smith, authorizing them to
form a government in Virginia, subject to the English crown. Imagine,
then, three small ships setting forth, on the bleak 19th of December,
1606, and directing their way to Virginia, with one hundred and five men
on board, and freighted with a goodly store of arms and provisions. Most
of the party were gallant and courtly cavaliers: there were but twelve
laborers and four carpenters in all the company. After a stormy voyage
they passed up the James River, and landing, on its shores, they founded
Jamestown.

[Sidenote: Heinrich Hudson.]

The news of the colonization of Virginia, the success of the adventurous
emigrants in maintaining their settlement, and the fertility, beauty,
and salubriousness of the continent, soon inspired other enterprises of
a similar kind. The Dutch have always been famous navigators; and it was
in 1609 that gallant Heinrich Hudson, alter two previous futile attempts
to find a western passage to India, reached these shores, and sailed
up the noble river which now bears his name. Five years after, a Dutch
colony was formed on Manhattan Island, whereon the city of New York now
stands, to which was first given the name of "New Amsterdam." The colony
prospered, and in 1624 the island was purchased of the Indians for
twenty four pounds English money.

[Sidenote: The Pilgrims and Puritans.]

We now reach the fourth permanent colony on American soil; that which
was more powerful in shaping our destinies and determining our national
traits than any other. The story of the Pilgrims and Puritans is almost
too familiar to be rehearsed. Every schoolboy knows of their adventures
and trials, their hardships and their dauntless energy, their piety and
rigidity of rule, the great qualities by the exercise of which it may
be justly claimed that they made themselves the true founders of the
American Republic. Driven by persecution from their native England,
they took refuge in Holland; and from thence they sailed in two small
vessels, the _Speedwell_ and the _Mayflower_ on a July day in 1620, for
the new world. One hundred Puritans thus crossed the ocean.

[Sidenote: Settlement at Plymouth.]

After a tempestuous voyage of sixty-three days, the _Mayflower_ coasted
along Cape Cod, and landed, on the twenty-first day of December, at
Plymouth. The _Speedwell_ had been forced to put back in a disabled
condition. Before landing, the Puritans made a solemn compact of
government, purely republican in form, and to this they afterwards
religiously adhered. In 1629 another English Puritan colony, called the
"Massachusetts Bay Colony," settled at Salem; and in the following
year came Governor John Winthrop, with eight hundred emigrants. The
Massachusetts Bay Colony, thus re-enforced, and now numbering not far
from one thousand souls, settled Boston and its neighborhood.

[Sidenote: New England Colonized.]

New Hampshire began to be settled three years after the landing of
the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Maine was colonized not much later. Vermont,
having been explored by Champlain in 1609, was settled some years
after. The Rhode Island colony was founded by Roger Williams and five
companions, driven from the Boston and Plymouth colonies in succession,
in 1636; and Connecticut first became the seat of a settlement in 1635,
the colonial constitution being adopted in 1630. Next in point of time,
Delaware was settled by parties of Swedes and Finlanders in 1638, and
was called "New Sweden." The province passed into the hands of the Dutch
of New Amsterdam, however, in 1655.

[Sidenote: European possessions in America.]

Thus, in a period of a little less than half a century, the whole of the
American coast had been acquired by, and was to a large degree under
the dominion of, five European nations. In 1655 the Spaniards held the
peninsula of Florida; the French were in possession of, or at least
claimed the right to, what are now the two Carolinas; the Dutch held
Manhattan Island, New Jersey, a narrow strip running along the west bank
of the Hudson, and a portion of Long Island; the Swedes were established
(soon to be deprived of it) in what is now Delaware, and a part of
what is now Pennsylvania, along the Delaware River; while the English
possessions far exceeded those of all the others put together, including
as they did nearly the whole of Virginia, a large share of Maryland, all
of New England, and the greater part of Long Island.

[Sidenote: William Penn.]

In the year 1681 all the Dutch possessions had been added to the
dominion of the English in America; and it was in this year that William
Penn, having received a grant of a large tract of land in what is now
Pennsylvania, sent out a colony, which settled on his grant. The next
year he came in person, assumed the governorship of the colony, founded
Philadelphia, and made his famous treaties with the Indians. At the
close of the seventeenth century the English dominion comprised the
whole coast, from Canada to the Carolinas; and it may be fairly said
that when the eighteenth century opened, the era of colonization had
reached its culmination, English civilization was indelibly stamped on,
and firmly planted in, the new continent. The crystallizing process of a
new and mighty nation had begun and was in rapid progress.




IV. THE COLONIAL ERA.


[Sidenote: England's Acquirements.]

The Colonial Era, intervening between the permanent colonization of the
Atlantic coast and the momentous time when the colonies united to assert
their independence, may be said to have been comprised within a period
of a little more than a century. In 1664 England had acquired possession
of the whole colonized territory from the Kennebec to the southern
boundary of South Carolina. Georgia was still unsettled, and remained
to be colonized some sixty years after by that good and gallant General
Oglethorpe, who forbade slavery to be introduced into the province, and
prohibited the sale of rum within its limits. Florida was still held by
the Spanish, the only continental power which then had a foothold on the
Atlantic border of what is now the United States.

[Sidenote: Colonial Progress.]

The century of settlement and growth which we call the Colonial Era was
full of hardship, romance, brave struggling with great difficulties,
fortitude, and alternate misfortune and success. As we look back upon it
from this distance, however, we do not fail to be struck with the steady
and certain progress made towards a compact and enduring nationality.
Even then the same variety of race and habits and characteristics which
the United States reveal to-day were to be observed in the population
which was scattered over the narrow strip of territory extending
a thousand miles along the seaboard. There were English
everywhere--predominant then, as English traits still possess, in a yet
more marked degree, the prevailing influence. There were, however, Dutch
in New York and Pennsylvania, some Swedes still in Delaware, Danes in
New Jersey, French Huguenots in the Carolinas, Austrian Moravians, not
long after, in Georgia, and Spaniards in Florida.

[Sidenote: The New England Colonies.]

Amid such a diversity of races, of course the habits, the laws, and
the religious opinions of the colonies widely differed. But these
differences were not confined to those arising from variety of origin.
The English in New England presented a very marked contrast to the
English in New York and in Virginia. The settlements of Plymouth and
Massachusetts Bay comprised communities of zealous Calvinists, rigid
in their religious belief and ceremonies, codifying their religious
principles into political law, and adhering resolutely, through thick
and thin, to the idea expressed, by one of the early Puritans, that
"our New England was originally a plantation of religion, and not a
plantation of trade."

[Sidenote: Roger Williams.]

Roger Williams founded Rhode Island on the principle of religious
toleration; but he carried thither the sobriety and diligence and
courage of his former Puritan associations. He provided, as he himself
said, "a shelter for persons distressed for conscience." Connecticut was
also essentially a "religious plantation," which for many years accepted
the Bible as containing the only laws necessary to the colony,
and confined the right of suffrage to members of the church; and
Connecticut, as well as Massachusetts, vigorously punished offenders
by the rough, old-fashioned methods of the pillory, the stocks, and the
whipping-post.

[Sidenote: Colonial New York and Virginia.]

No contrast could be more striking than that between colonial New
England and colonial New York and Virginia. The Puritans gathered
together in towns and villages; they lived in log or earth cottages, one
story high, with no pretensions to ornament, and but little to comfort.
The wealthier New Englanders, after a time, built two-story brick
houses; but these were still plain and substantial, and not imposing.

[Sidenote: Puritan Costumes]

The men wore short cloaks and jerkins, short, loose breeches, wide
collars with tassels, and high, narrow-crowned hats with wide brims. The
women dressed in plain-colored homespun, but bloomed forth on Sundays
with silk hoods and daintily worked caps. The proximity of Indians
required that every New England village should be a fortress, and every
citizen a soldier. Two hundred years ago, muster-days and town-meetings,
means of defence from attack and of self-government within, were as
prominent features of New England life as they are to-day.

[Sidenote: New England Industries.]

The New Englanders were mainly farmers, hunters, and fishermen. Commerce
was slow to grow up among them. Trade was the means towards supporting a
religious state; not a method for the acquirement of wealth. By and by,
however, manufactures of cotton and woollen fabrics grew up, lumber was
floated down to the coast, gunpowder and glass were made, and fish were
cured for winter use and to be sent abroad. They ate corn-meal and milk,
and pork and beans were a favorite New England dish from the first; and
they drank cider and home-brewed beer. The first coins appeared in
1652; and the oldest college on American soil, Harvard, was founded at
Cambridge in 1636.

[Sidenote: Dutch and Cavaliers.]

The Dutch, in New York, and the Cavaliers, in Virginia, set out upon
their colonial careers in a very different way. The Dutch came to
America as traders; the Cavaliers came to be landed proprietors and to
seek rapid fortunes. Instead, therefore, of clustering close in towns
and villages, both the Dutch and the Cavaliers spread out through the
country and established large and isolated estates. Wealthy Dutchmen
came hither with patents from the East India Company, took possession
of tracts sixteen miles long, settled colonies upon them, and lived in
great state on their "manors," ruling the colonies, working their lands
with slaves, and assuming the aristocratic title of "Patroon." Thus
a sort of feudal system grew up, in which the "Patroons" exercised an
authority well nigh as absolute as that of the mediaeval barons on the
Rhine; and this system long flourished side by side with the democratic
simplicity of the Puritan commonwealths.

[Sidenote: Captain John Smith.]

In the same way the Virginians scattered themselves in the fruitful and
sunny valleys between the sea and the Alleghanies, and in time created
lordly domains and plantations, over which the possessors exercised
feudal sway. But this colony, composed originally in the main of
gentlemen unused to manual labor, and indisposed to bear patiently the
hardships of early settlement, did not become established without many
and serious difficulties. The colonists at first hung tents to the
trees to shelter them from the sun; and the best of their houses "could
neither well defend wind nor rain." Captain John Smith wrote to England,
begging his friends there to "rather send thirty carpenters, husbandmen,
gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, and diggers-up of the roots, well
provided, than a thousand of such as we have."

[Sidenote: Tobacco in Virginia.]

The Virginians cultivated tobacco; and in the same year that the
Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock, the first cargo of African slaves was
carried up the James River in a Dutch trading ship. It is an interesting
fact that so extensive and profitable was the early cultivation of
tobacco in Virginia that it became the general medium of exchange. Debts
were paid with it; fines of so much tobacco, instead of so much money,
were imposed; a wife cost a Virginian five hundred pounds of the
narcotic weed; and even the government accepted it in discharge of
taxes.

[Sidenote: Virginian Customs.]

Virginia early became divided into classes; the landlords being a
virtual nobility, the poorer colonists a middle class, and the slaves
comprising the lower social stratum. The Church of England was the
prevailing sect, and English habits of hospitality and ease of manner
replaced the Puritan austerity of the North. Yet Virginia had a severe
code of punishments; and at one time, if a man stayed away from church
three times without good reason, he was liable to the penalty of death.
The Virginians were tolerant of all faiths excepting those of the
Quakers and the Roman Catholics. Persons professing these creeds were
sternly excluded from the colony.

[Sidenote: The Indians.]

Just one hundred years before the outbreak of the Revolution, the white
population of New England had reached fifty-five thousand: while the
Indians, retreating at the approach of the European, had become reduced
to two-thirds of that number. The presence of the aborigines on the
borders of the whole line of the colonies seemed at first, destined to
become fatal to the settlement of the continent. But had it not been
for Indian hostility, the colonies might never have grown together and
merged, first into a close defensive alliance, and then into a great
and united state. It was mainly the sentiment of the common preservation
that brought about the intimate relations which gradually grew up
between Puritan, Dutchman, and Cavalier.

[Sidenote: Indian Wars.]

The Puritans treated the Indians with strict justice: Penn made friends
of the powerful tribes along the Delaware; and Roger Williams succeeded
in conciliating the Narragansetts. But a time came when the Indians saw
clearly that they were being pushed further and further back, away
from their ancient homes. Then followed the terrible wars which so
long threatened the existence of the struggling colonies, and which the
dauntless courage and hardihood of the settlers alone rendered vain.
King Philip arose, and struggled fiercely for more than a year to
exterminate the New England intruders. The Canadian French, jealous of
English supremacy on the continent, joined hands with the Indians, and
incited them constantly to fresh assaults. These French had explored the
Lakes, and the Mississippi as far as what is now New Orleans; and they
feared lest the English should deprive them of these western domains.

Wars succeeded each other with alarming rapidity. After King Philip's
War came King William's War in 1689, Queen Anne's War in 1702, King
George's War in 1744, the Canadian War (which lasted from 1755 to 1763,
and in which Quebec was taken by Wolfe, and Canada was conquered by the
English), and finally, Pontiac's bold but futile rebellion, aided by
the French, in 1763. It was these wars, and the growing need of combined
resistance to the tyrannical assumptions of the British government,
which together drew close the bonds of friendship and mutual support
between the colonies, and made them capable of striking a successful
blow for independence.





V. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.


[Sidenote: The Revolution.]

[Sidenote: American Loyalty.]

The Revolution was long in brewing. The discontent of the colonies at
their treatment by the mother country was gradual in its growth. At
first it seemed rather to inspire fitful protests and expostulations,
than a desire to foster a deliberate quarrel. Even New England, settled
by Pilgrims who had no strong reason for evincing loyalty and affection
for the land whence they had been driven for opinion's sake, seemed
to have become more or less reconciled to the dominion of British
governors. There can be no doubt that the colonists, even down to within
a brief period of the Declaration of Independence, hoped to retain their
connection with Great Britain. Congress declared, even after armies had
been raised to resist the red-coats, that this was not with the design
of separation or independence. Even the mobs cried "God save the king!"
Washington said that until the moment of collision he had abhorred
the idea of separation: and Jefferson declared that, up to the 19th of
April, 1775 (the date of the battle of Lexington), "he had never heard a
whisper of a disposition to separate from Great Britain."

[Sidenote: Effect of the Stamp Act.]

The Stamp Act, and the similar acts which followed it, united the
colonies in a spirit of resistance. They inspired Patrick Henry's
eloquence in Virginia; they gave rise to the "tea-party" in Boston; they
produced the Boston massacre; they led to the burning of the _Gaspee_
in Narragansett Bay; they finally developed, no longer rioting, but
open and flagrant rebellion at Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill. The
colonies did not refuse to be taxed. They recognized the right of
Great Britain to tax them. But they claimed that this right had its
condition--that the taxed people should be represented in the body which
held the taxing power. Had the colonies been permitted to send members
to the British Parliament, and to have a voice in the deliberations of
the government, the Revolution might never have taken place. But King
George and his Tory ministers were obstinate to folly. They met protest
with repression; in order to subjugate the colonies, they added tyranny
to tyranny. The warnings of Townshend and Chatham were lost upon them,
and at last the colonies, utterly despairing of a settlement with
a power so deaf and so inconsiderate, launched into the storm of
revolution.

[Sidenote: Independence Hall.]

[Sidenote: Trumbull's Picture.]

Every American who pays a visit to Philadelphia should visit the plain,
old-fashioned, sombre room known as "Independence Hall." Its dinginess
is venerable; its relics are illustrious. In this hall have resounded
the voices of Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hancock, Randolph,--the whole
circle of Revolutionary statesmen. On that table, which is pointed out
to you, the famous Declaration was signed. From the walls historic faces
gaze down upon you. Every relic has its record and its hint. In the
square below, you see the place where the Philadelphians of 1776
listened to the reading of the Declaration from the Court House steps.
No one can visit this hall without conjuring up in his fancy the
memorable scene of the first of our "Fourths of July"; and, happily,
a great painter, who knew many of the actors in it, has preserved its
features on canvas. It is not difficult, standing in Independence Hall,
and retaining Trumbull's picture in memory, to imagine very nearly the
scene it presented.

[Sidenote: Signers of the Declaration.]

There were the long rows of plain uncushioned benches, extending up and
down the sides, filled with men of all ages, some with wigs, some with
powdered hair, some with unpowdered hair, all dressed in small-clothes,
breeches, knee-buckles, long stockings, and buckled shoes; coats of
blue, gray, and snuff color; venerable men like Franklin and Stephen
Hopkins, men in the full vigor of middle life, like Samuel Adams and
Roger Sherman, young men in the ardor and flush of lusty patriotism,
like Thomas Jefferson, and Francis Hopkinson, and Robert Livingston, and
John Hancock--the younger evidently predominating, alike in numbers and
activity. The faces were solemn and grave, no doubt, though Dr. Franklin
would have his genial joke about the necessity of their all hanging
together, lest they should all hang, separately; deep silence prevailed,
followed now and then by an excited stir among the benches.

[Sidenote: President Hancock.]

[Sidenote: The Continental Army.]

Then there was the President's table, a little aside from one end of the
hall, with papers strewed over it, and by its side President Hancock,
attired with dainty and aristocratic precision, his sword by his side,
his wig perfectly dressed, his face earnest yet serene and bright. We
can fancy, too, the commotion which arose, the leaning forward, the
holding of the breath, then the dead silence, when the committee
appointed to draw the Declaration advanced to the President's table. It
was the moment of crossing the Rubicon. It was the burning of the
ships behind them. From this moment there was to be no possibility of
retreating. Independence declared, it still remained to conquer it.
British troops burdened the soil; shiploads of them were at that moment
crossing the Atlantic. The Continental army was but an armed rabble,
with patriotism for their strongest weapon. And would the colonies, one
and all, adhere, and "hang together"; or would the Declaration strike
terror to timid hearts, and destroy its purpose by its very audacity?

[Sidenote: Thomas Jefferson.]

[Sidenote: Franklin.]

All this must have passed through the mind of each deputy as the
illustrious committee of five stood before Hancock, at the President's
desk. Foremost among them was Thomas Jefferson, the tallest, youngest,
and ablest of the five; their chairman, and the author of the great
document which he held in his hand. In his thirty-fourth year, Jefferson
was then a fine specimen of the Virginian gentry, his tall form clad
loosely in the small-clothes of the period, his bright red hair,
unpowdered, gathered carelessly behind with a ribbon, his light blue
eyes clear and calm, and his lips parted in a placid and confident
smile. Next to him, side by side, stood Franklin and John Adams, sons
of Massachusetts--the one risen from the printer's case, the other a
prosperous country lawyer, descended from the good Puritan stock of John
Alden. Franklin was already beyond three score and ten; his gray hair
hung in long locks to his shoulders; his snuff-colored coat reached to
his knees; his large, pleasant face must have encouraged the others on
that fateful day, so did it shine with trust in the cause and confidence
in its success.

[Sidenote: Roger Sherman.]

Pugnacity and determination were revealed in the short thick-set figure
of John Adams; the round bald head, the firm mouth, the set eyes of
the Braintree patriot, gave the idea that he was grimly and terribly in
earnest. Square-headed old Roger Sherman was another figure well worth
studying; a man, like the others, with the air of being rather resolved
on, than resigned to, the step which was being made, and seriously
prepared to take all consequences. And, to complete the group, there was
the polished and scholarly Livingston of New York, almost a fop in dress
and toilet, a model of elegance and fine courtesy, who, though serving
as one of the committee, was absent when the Declaration was signed. The
signing did not take place for several weeks after its adoption.

[Sidenote: The Declaration proclaimed.]

[Sidenote: British exasperation.]

Jefferson read the Declaration to the Congress, and it was accepted,
with a few alterations, by the votes of the deputies of twelve of the
colonies. New York alone abstained from voting. The bell of the State
House rang out the tidings; the Declaration was read to a surging,
excited crowd in the square; it was sent off in all directions by fleet
messengers, and read at the head of each brigade of the Continental
army; and the colonies now knew that the fight was to go on to the
bitter end. Thenceforth there was no thought of patching a compromise
with the mother country, or of returning to the old allegiance to
the British crown. On the side of England, national pride and royal
obstinacy urged forward every preparation to continue the struggle; and
the voices of Chatham, Burke, and Fox were drowned amid the storm of
exasperation which the Declaration had caused. A price was set upon the
heads of Hancock and Samuel Adams, and Hessians were purchased to fill
the insufficient corps of the red-coats.

[Sidenote: Consequences of the Declaration.]

Now the colonies were the United States, with a flag common to all, the
symbol of a united nationality. Seldom has a written paper so moved the
world. In our own history, the only document that can compare with
it, in its momentous results, was the emancipation charter of Abraham
Lincoln. Both required a courage that was nothing less than heroic: but
the proclaimers of the Declaration of Independence risked life, family,
property; engaged in an irreconcilable conflict against enormous odds;
defied the greatest naval power in the world, and the richest nation, in
pursuit, not of the material gain to be derived from the abrogation of
a tax, but of national liberties which they were determined to secure at
every hazard. The Declaration, indeed, was needed to combine the action
of the patriots, and to give them a definite and certain purpose. It was
the bond that pledged them to harmony, and which confined them to the
alternative of "liberty or death."




VI. SOCIETY IN 1776.

[Sidenote: American Society.]

Despite the numerous biographies, histories, narratives, diaries, and
volumes of correspondence concerning the revolutionary epoch, which fill
many shelves of our larger libraries, it is not easy to reproduce in
imagination the state of American society as it was a hundred years ago.
In order to do so we must exclude from the mind many objects and ideas
which have been familiar to us all our lives. We must subtract all of
material improvements, of changes in the method of doing things, of new
directions and wide divergencies in the current of thought and knowledge
that have come about in the interval. We must strip the modern home, for
instance, of appliances without which it is difficult to conjure up a
picture of comfort, much less of luxury. We must forget railways, and
the telegraph, and every other use of that still mysterious agent,
electricity. We must put out of our minds all notion of great cities, of
long lines of elegant shops, blocks of noble residences, spacious parks
adorned by every refinement of the gardening art, public buildings
capped with stately dome and graceful turret and sculptured front; all
notion of the later growth of recreation, the theatre and the concert
hall, the lecture platform, the brilliant holiday festival, the sea
excursion, the gay and attractive summer resort with its big hotels and
its countless luxuries. We must return in imagination, in short, to
a social condition but few remnants of which are still to be found in
remote corners of the country; the relics of which still visible to the
eye are rare and precious, and dwindling away day by day; and the
life and spirit of which have ceased with the broadened, gift-laden
civilization which has replaced the old primitive simplicity, and made
a powerful, teeming, and restless nation out of scattered villages and
colonies struggling to exist.

[Sidenote: Old-time Mansions.]

Still, there was a very distinct advance in culture, elegance, comfort,
and luxury, beyond the condition of the colonies in the previous
century. Those who remember the stately Hancock House, on the top of
Beacon Hill in Boston, and compare its exterior and interior with still
extant edifices which were residences of the wealthier colonists of two
hundred years ago, may gather some idea of the far more lavish adornment
and elegance of the period in which Hancock lived. We may well believe
that when Washington drove through the streets of Philadelphia in
a state coach, "of which the body was in the shape of a hemisphere,
cream-colored, bordered with flowers round the panels, and ornamented
with figures representing cupids, and supporting festoons," he presented
a very different appearance from that of the early Puritan governors
and Virginian squires; and could we have peeped into the square, solid
drawing-room in which, as President, he held his receptions, aided by
the matronly grace and dignity of Mrs. Washington, the scene would
be far gayer and more imposing than William Penn's house would have
displayed, or the company of the richest Dutch "patroon" of New York
could have presented in the seventeenth century.

[Sidenote: Old Furniture.]

Yet, had we gone over the mansion, in how many things would we, used
to the minute refinements of this later age, have judged it wanting!
Instead of gas, there would be candles, and not of the best quality,
everywhere. Instead of stoves and furnaces with coal, we should have
been fain to comfort ourselves with the cheerful blaze and genial glow,
but scant and capricious warmth, of the wood logs, burning in the big
open fireplaces. Lace curtains and moquette carpets would be nowhere
apparent. The furniture, though here and there richly carved and
bountifully upholstered, would be wanting in variety and the luxurious
ease of that which we now enjoy.

[Sidenote: The Tables of 1776.]

At table we should have missed the thousand refinements and inventions
of French and native cooking which now lend variety to our sustenance.
The food would have been substantial and heavy and little various; the
English simplicity, probably, of barons of beef and shoulders of mutton,
and cold bread, and big plum puddings, with a relish of fruits. Were we
in fancy to journey from New York to Philadelphia or Boston, we should
be forced to rumble slowly over bad roads, through interminable forests
and by desert sea-coasts, in heavy and rudely jolting vehicles, and be
several days upon the trip.

[Sidenote: Travelling in the Olden Time.]

[Sidenote: The Wealthier Classes.]

It is a striking fact that people in the days of Washington travelled
not a whit more rapidly than people in the days of Moses or of Homer.
The chariot-rider of the Olympic games attained a speed which
was, perhaps, never equalled in Europe or America until the first
railway-train sped between Liverpool and Manchester, in 1830. In 1776,
the Americans were still mainly confined to the original occupations of
the early colonists, farming, trade, hunting, and fishing. Manufactories
there were not as yet; Lawrence and Lowell. Pittsburg, and the great
industrial New York towns, were still in the womb of the future.
In almost every household throughout the land the old-fashioned
spinning-wheel was humming under the pressure of matronly and maidenly
feet, by which the homespun garments of the time were made. While the
less well-to-do and laboring classes were content with clothing spun and
knitted at their own firesides, the wealthier people arrayed themselves
with far more ostentation than they do at this day. Silks and satins
came hither by ship-loads from France to supply the luxury of costume
which was then in vogue. The difference between the costumes of that day
and of this was especially marked in the attire of gentlemen. Now there
is much greater plainness and uniformity. When Washington held his
levees, he was generally dressed "in black velvet, with white
or pearl-colored waistcoat, yellow gloves, and silver knee and
shoe-buckles." "His hair was powdered and gathered in a silk bag behind.
He carried a cocked hat in his hand, and wore a long sword with a
scabbard of polished white leather." The display of dress was not less
marked in other officials, and in men of high social rank. The judges of
the Supreme Court wore scarlet robes faced with velvet. "If a
gentleman went abroad, he appeared in his wig, white stock, white satin
embroidered vest, black satin small-clothes, with white silk stockings,
and a fine broadcloth or velvet coat; if at home, a velvet cap,
sometimes with a fine linen one under it, took the place of the
wig; while a gown, frequently of colored damask lined with silk,
was substituted for the coat, and the feet were covered with leather
slippers of some fancy color." All men shaved their beards clean; a man
who appeared in the streets wearing hair on any part of his face was
stared at, and very likely laughed at.

[Sidenote: Old-time Attire.]

[Sidenote: Wigs and Queues.]

All the great gentlemen wore wigs; most of the country farmers contented
themselves with tying their hair in a queue behind, sprinkling it with
powder when they went to church on a Sunday. As for the ladies, those in
the best society were even more elaborate in their toilets than those
of to-day. On the dressing of the hair, especially, much time and money
were spent. It was raised high upon the head and powdered thick; "the
hair dressers," says Higginson, "were kept so busy on the day of any
fashionable entertainment, that ladies sometimes had to employ their
services at four or five in the morning, and had to sit upright all the
rest of the day, in order to avoid disturbing the head-dress."

[Sidenote: Amusements.]

Although our ancestors did not possess the variety of amusements
which now exists, their life was far from a humdrum one. Theatres were
tabooed, but were beginning to hold their ground here and there, though
not, we may be sure, in New England. There were, however, private
theatricals and charades, which became at one period very much in vogue
in the aristocratic houses of New York and Philadelphia. Concerts were
often held, and in the country many old-time English festivals, such as
May Day, were kept up. The most frequent and fashionable amusements of
that time were balls and parties. We hear of the gentlemen and dames
going to "routs" in their sedan chairs, much as they did in the old
country: arriving at eight--they kept better hours than our modern
fashionable people--they would dance the staid and stately minuet and
the gayer contra-dance, to the music mainly of fiddles, till midnight,
and then separate, horrified at the lateness of the hour.

[Sidenote: Imitations of the English.]

Indeed, we are able to see in the habits of the American upper classes
a distinct imitation of London fashions, despite the quarrel with the
British. The whole etiquette of patrician society was based upon that
of the English court, just as the law administered in the courts was
borrowed from that dispensed at Westminster. It is interesting to note
that "gentlemen took snuff in those days almost universally: and a great
deal of expense and variety were often lavished upon a snuff-box. To
take snuff with one another was as much a matter of courtesy as the
lifting of the hat."

[Sidenote: Wine and Profanity.]

The days of prevalent cigar-smoking and tobacco-chewing had not come.
The use of wine and ardent spirits was regarded with less reprobation
in the old society than in the new; profanity, too, was indulged in much
more freely by men of standing and moral profession than now. Thus we
can recognize, in these and in many other things, a progress in morals,
and in greater refinement both of thought, manners, and language, as
well as in the material enginery of civilization.




VII. THE REVOLUTION.

[Sidenote: Washington as Commander-in-chief.]

George Washington had been assigned to the command-in-chief of the
colonial troops, just before the Battle of Bunker Hill. Thus, at the
very start, wisdom ruled the counsels and Providence guided the action
of our forefathers. The military abilities and lofty patriotism of
Washington could scarcely have been foreseen at the first in all their
breadth and scope; yet he was already known as a soldier of tried
courage and of prudent conduct, and as a Virginia gentleman of
conspicuous social and private virtues.

[Sidenote: Continental Generals.]

Washington assumed the chief direction of the Continental forces, under
the famous old elm which still stands, but a few steps from Harvard
College, in Old Cambridge, on the third day of July, 1775. At the same
time of his appointment, four major-generals--Artemus Ward, Israel
Putnam, Philip Schuyler, and Charles Lee--were designated. The principal
troops of the colonies were at this time gathered in an irregular cordon
around Boston. Their position was almost unchanged from that which they
had occupied before the Battle of Bunker Hill; for the British were
unable to follow up the success which they had achieved on that
occasion.

[Sidenote: The Continental Forces.]

The general-in-chief, on inspecting his forces, saw how ill disciplined
and ill supplied they were. They had but little clothing, a scant supply
of arms, and still less ammunition. Washington's first task was by
no means the least difficult of those which lay before him. It was to
create an army out of a brave but heterogeneous multitude of patriots.
It was to collect arms and supplies; to keep vigilant watch on the
British in Boston; to fortify and defend the surrounding circle; and
prepare to meet and drive out the pent-up foe.

At last, after preparations extending through nearly eight months,
Boston was attacked by batteries from Dorchester Heights, and on the
17th of March, 1776, Howe evacuated the town, and the first decisive
struggle of the seven years' contest had been decided in favor of the
Americans.

[Sidenote: First Campaign.]

The scene is now transferred further south. Charleston had, it is true,
already been attacked, but without favorable results to the English;
on the other hand, Arnold and Montgomery had vainly essayed to assail
British power in the Canadas. New York was the objective point of
those who had now come to be regarded as the invaders of our soil. Its
splendid harbor and its central position afforded a good standpoint. The
concentration of the troops of Howe, which had evacuated Boston, the war
ships commanded by his brother, Lord Howe, and the forces under Clinton,
which had been occupied in futile operations in the South, enabled
the British to force Washington out of New York, and to occupy it
themselves.

[Sidenote: Numerical Force of the Contestants.]

The whole British force engaged in this enterprise was scarcely less
than twenty-five thousand men; the American force did not exceed twelve
thousand; and the contrast in discipline and equipment still further
increased this inequality of strength. Then came the retreat across New
Jersey, succeeded by one of the most brilliant strokes of the war. This
was the midnight and midwinter crossing of the Delaware by the American
general and his troops, the forced march upon Trenton through the snow
and cold, and the surprise and utter defeat of the Hessians at that
place on Christmas morning.

[Sidenote: Valley Forge.]

But the colonists, though waxing in strength, were not yet able to cope
in a prolonged and active campaign with the royal army. Philadelphia,
like New York, had to be given up. The terrible winter months spent at
Valley Forge formed one of the saddest and most heroic romances of the
Revolution. The army lived in huts, which, as Lafayette exclaimed, "were
no gayer than dungeons." Bread and clothing were sadly wanting. The cold
was intense, and almost unremitting. The Pilgrims during their first
winter at Plymouth were scarcely more comfortless.

[Sidenote: Bennington.]

It was early in the following year (1777) that General Burgoyne made an
offensive movement southward from Canada, by way of Lake Champlain and
Fort Ticonderoga. A portion of his troops were sent to Bennington to
capture some stores collected there by the Vermont patriots. A vigorous
defence of these stores by the intrepid Stark resulted in the repulse,
first of the British, then of the Hessian troops. The next scene in
the drama was what may be called the second decisive action of the
war. Burgoyne, with his whole force of five thousand men, encamped at
Saratoga. There he was confronted by General Horatio Gates, who engaged
him in two battles, which, however uncertain their immediate issue, were
followed by a retreat on Burgoyne's part. The Americans succeeded in
turning his flank, and hemming him in; and then came the surrender of
Burgoyne and his entire force.

[Sidenote: Surrender of Burgoyne.]

The consequences of this event were of far greater moment than the
elimination from the contest of an able British general and five
thousand well drilled British and mercenary soldiers. It silenced the
complaints which were growing loud against the inactivity of Washington.
It once more harmonized the colonial counsels, which were becoming
seriously discordant. It inspired new effort throughout the colonies.
And it decided France to make open cause with the struggling patriots.
To the masterly diplomacy of Franklin we owe it that the great
European rival of England threw the weight of her sympathy and material
assistance on our side.

[Sidenote: Charleston Taken.]

[Sidenote: Capture of Stony Point.]

From the moment of Burgoyne's surrender, the tide of the war was
fitful, but on the whole, towards American success. There were still
vicissitudes, now and then an apparent back-sliding; Charleston was
taken by Clinton; massacres by Indians took place in Pennsylvania; the
progress of the cause at times seemed grievously slow. On the other
hand, "mad" Anthony Wayne assaulted and took Stony Point, on the Hudson;
Paul Jones made vigorous havoc with the British war-ships, conquering
the _Serapis_ and carried terror to the English by approaching close to
their coast with his doughty _Bonhomme Richard_; Marion and Sumter kept
up constant hostilities with the British in South Carolina; and the
vexatious character of the war was evidently wearying the patience, and
wearing upon the determination, of the royal government.

[Sidenote: Surrender of Cornwallis.]

The final scene of the war, at least that which most obtrusively
stands forth in its panorama, was the siege and capture of Yorktown,
in Virginia, and the surrender of General Lord Cornwallis with seven
thousand troops. On this occasion the Americans had the aid of a corps
of French troops under Count Rochambeau, while the French Admiral de
Grasse guarded York River. The siege was so vigorous that in ten
days Lord Cornwallis found himself unable to hold the town. But for
a propitious rain-storm, he might yet have saved his army, and thus
protracted the war. His attempt to leave Yorktown under cover of night
was, however, frustrated by the outburst of a tempest; and he was forced
to send word to Washington that he would surrender.

[Sidenote: Peace.]

This he did, with all the customary formalities of war, on the 19th of
October, 1781. By this act seven thousand British troops, the largest
force left on American soil, were withdrawn from the conflict. It was
the death-blow to British hopes. The war dragged on, however, for two
years more. The royalist troops held New York, Charleston, and Savannah,
but did not venture upon aggressive projects. At last, a treaty was made
at Paris, on the 3d of September, 1783, by the conditions of which Great
Britain grudgingly acknowledged the independence of the United States of
America.

[Sidenote: The Revolutionary Heroes.]

There would be no justice in presenting even an outline of the American
Revolution, without referring to its triumphs of statesmanship and
diplomacy, as well as its triumphs of military achievement. Washington,
Greene, Stark, Putnam, Wayne, Lafayette, De Kalb, Steuben, Schuyler, and
their fellow-soldiers, performed a great part, and that which was the
most brilliant and conspicuous, in accomplishing our liberties. But in
the Congress were patriots quite as devoted, and not less efficient;
while Franklin, during his sojourn abroad, exercised with great skill
the delicate and subtle generalship of diplomacy. It would have been
easy for the statesmen of the Revolution to render all of Washington's
efforts vain and futile. The triumph of unworthy ambitions in the
colonial counsels might well have brought wreck and ruin upon the cause.

[Sidenote: Revolutionary Statesmanship.]

Had the revolutionary statesmen lacked capacity or courage, they would
have loaded the army with a burden which it probably could not have
supported. The marvel of the period was the almost undisturbed unity,
readiness, and practical energy of every branch of the public service;
the devotion of each one in his own sphere to the common end; the
general co-operation in the means by which that end was to be reached;
the remarkable rarity of treason, even of self-seeking; the steadfast
exercise, amid the comfortlessness of camps and the temptations of the
council-hall of the highest and worthiest public virtues.




VIII. THE CONFEDERATION AND CONSTITUTION.


[Sidenote: The Confederation.]

[Sidenote: Bond of the States.]

The Confederation was designed as a temporary civil machine, with which
to conduct a war common to the colonies. The Constitution was the later
and permanent bond, combining the States under a single government.
Without the confederation, there would have been chaos in the
revolution; without the constitution, there would have remained the
weakness arising from the division and rivalry of States. It is most
interesting to observe the gradual manner in which our civil government
crystallized out of the original elements offered by the colonies;
and it is wonderful to see with what wise deliberation and patriotic
earnestness States differing so widely in manners, in religion, in
colonial system, and even in blood and race, were brought together in
harmonious coalition, bound with a bond which the greatest civil war of
modern times failed to sever, and which it seems only to have confirmed
and strengthened.

[Sidenote: Early Confederations.]

There were, indeed, local confederations before those which, in
1774, enabled a congress to meet at Philadelphia, and which, in 1777,
established articles for a more regular, though still a temporary, civil
enginery with which to bring the war to a successful conclusion. More
than a century before the first meeting of the Continental Congress,
the idea of a confederation had been agitated among the New England
colonies. In 1643 a confederation of those colonies was agreed upon
at Boston, with twelve organic articles, for the common protection and
defence. Here was the very beginning of American unions; and in its
features may be discovered traces of the democratic principles of the
Pilgrims.

[Sidenote: Declaration of Rights.]

A general congress of all the colonies met at New York in 1690,
for purposes of conference, when the Stamp Act was promulgated.
Massachusetts invited the colonies to meet in a general congress, which
assembled at New York in 1765, adopted a declaration of rights, asserted
the sole right of taxation to rest in the colonies, and passed other
important resolutions. Eleven years before this, commissioners from
nearly all of the colonies had met at Albany, and before this body
Benjamin Franklin submitted his famous "project of union." Other
conferences and congresses were held between 1765 and 1774; but it was
early in September of the latter year that the first formal Continental
Congress met, at Philadelphia, mainly to concert measures for resisting
the arbitrary acts of the mother country. The rules which guided its
deliberations were few and simple; but even so early we find Patrick
Henry arguing upon the great question of the rights of the States, which
has been a bone of contention in this country from that time to this.

[Sidenote: Articles of Confederation Adopted. ]

The first formal articles of confederation, after several ineffectual
attempts, were adopted on the 15th of November, 1777, when the States
were in the midst of the war of independence; but they were not formally
ratified by all of the colonies until 1781, when Maryland at last agreed
to them. These articles contained the germs of nationality, the crude
material out of which the much broader and wiser constitution was
afterwards framed. The second article provided for the complete
"sovereignty, independence, and freedom," of the several States, in all
powers not expressly delegated to Congress.

[Sidenote: Restrictions on the States. ]

It was declared that the confederation was a mutual league for
protection and defence; that each State should deliver fugitives from
justice to the others, and accord full faith to the judicial records
of the others; that each State should have the right to recall its
delegates, and that no State should be represented in Congress by
less than two nor more than seven delegates; that no State should send
embassies to foreign powers, confer titles of nobility, lay imports
inconsistent with treaties of the United States, keep vessels of war
or military forces in time of peace without the consent of Congress, a
certain quota of militia excepted, or engage in war except in certain
specified exigencies.

These, with many minor regulations, were the organic rules under
which our civil government was carried on from 1777 to 1788, when the
constitution came into force. The confederation was supplied with an
executive chosen by Congress, comprising secretaries of foreign affairs,
war, and finance. It was evident, however, that this league, while it
had well served a temporary purpose, was quite inadequate to the
purpose of a permanent bond of union. "We are one nation to-day," said
Washington, "and thirteen to-morrow; who will treat with us on these
terms?"

[Sidenote: Steps towards a Constitution.]

The first formal step towards establishing a constitution was the
meeting, in the autumn of 1786, of commissioners from Virginia,
Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, at Annapolis. They
conferred together, and reported to Congress a recommendation that a
body, comprising delegates from all the States, and empowered to frame
an organic instrument, should be convened early in the following year.
Congress adopted the scheme, and the constituent convention was called.

[Sidenote: The Constituent Convention.]

This famous assembly met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and its
deliberations continued until the middle of September. Among its
members were many of the most eminent statesmen and soldiers of the
Revolutionary period.

[Sidenote: Members of the Convention.]

George Washington, pre-eminent in war, and to be still pre-eminent in
times of peace, presided over the convention, and was one of the guiding
spirits of its labors. Of the thirty-eight delegates who signed the
constitution, six--Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris,
James Wilson, and George Clymer--had previously signed the Declaration
of Independence. It was in the constitutional convention that Alexander
Hamilton's genius for statesmanship became conspicuous to the whole
nation; while Madison, the future President, achieved therein a large
reputation.

[Sidenote: The Non-signers.]

Among others, the two Pinckneys from South Carolina, John Dickinson,
Jonathan Dayton, Rufus King, Gouverneur Morris, Jared Ingersoll, and
John Rutledge, were eminent in various spheres of public life. Some of
the members of the convention refused to, or for some reason did not,
sign the constitution after it was completed and drafted. These were
Elbridge Gerry and Caleb Strong of Massachusetts, Oliver Ellsworth
of Connecticut, John Lansing and Robert Yates of New York, William
C. Houston of New Jersey, Luther Martin and John Francis Mercer of
Maryland, George Mason, James McClung, Edmund Randolph, and George Wythe
of Virginia, William R. Davis of North Carolina, William Houston and
William Pierce of Georgia.

[Sidenote: Issues in the Convention.]

The discussions on the proposed constitution were long, earnest,
sometimes heated, and revealed the presence of widely divergent
opinions. Four plans, or projects, were submitted severally by Edmund
Randolph, William Paterson, Charles Pinckney, and Alexander Hamilton,
differing widely in the political systems recommended. Throughout, the
struggle was between those who desired to preserve a large degree
of independence to the States, and those who wished to make a strong
national government; and the crisis of the struggle came upon the
question whether the States should have equal votes in the Senate, or
should be represented in that body, as in the House of Representatives,
according to population.

This was warmly debated for several days, the venerable Roger Sherman
and Hamilton sustaining the principle of State equality, and Madison
and Rufus King as vigorously opposing it. At last the former party
prevailed, after a report in favor of State equality in the Senate said
to have been moved in committee by Dr. Franklin. Other phases of the
same contention occurred in the discussion of the article specially
defining the powers of Congress. It was the object of the "States'
rights" party to limit these as much as possible, and of the nationalist
party to give them a broad range.

[Sidenote: The Constitution a Compromise.]

[Sidenote: Powers of Congress.]

Thus, after labors extending through nearly four months, the
constitution issued from the hands of its framers with the marks of
compromise and concession on almost every section. On the one hand,
the States were to vote as equals in the second and upper branch of
Congress, and reserved to themselves local self-government and all
powers not expressly set forth in the instrument. On the other, Congress
was clothed with authority to lay uniform taxes and imposts, to provide
for the common defence, to borrow money on the credit of the nation, to
regulate foreign commerce, to make naturalization and bankruptcy laws,
to coin money, to establish post-offices and roads, to declare war and
raise armies and a navy, to constitute courts, to organize and call
out the militia, and to "execute the laws of the Union, suppress
insurrection, and repel invasions."

Animated, too, by the true republican spirit, the framers of the
constitution inserted in it that no bill of attainder or _ex-post-facto_
law should be passed; that the writ of _habeas corpus_ should only be
suspended in cases of extreme necessity; and that no title of nobility
should either be granted by the government or accepted by a citizen of
the United States.

[Sidenote: Ratification of the Constitution.]

As soon as the constitution was promulgated, a warm contest arose in all
the States over its ratification. The instrument, upon being ratified by
nine States, was to become the organic law of the land. Although it was
strenuously opposed by many eminent men, among them Patrick Henry, a
sufficient number of States assented in time to bring the constitution
into operation the year after its submission to the people.

[Sidenote: "The Federalist."]

Although neither Hamilton nor Madison was entirely satisfied with the
work of the convention, both sank their scruples in a loftier spirit of
patriotism; and their defence of the constitution, in conjunction
with John Jay in the _Federalist_, is likely to be read as long as the
constitution lasts. How wisely the framers labored, and the great fruits
of their labor, are far more clearly to be seen now that the great
instrument has been so long and so severely tried, than was possible in
their own generation. The constitution has stood well the strain of a
progress far more rapid, and needs far more vast and pressing, than they
could have foreseen. It protects the liberties of a nation many fold
more extended and numerous than they could have anticipated would
exist within the brief space of a century; nor does the promise of its
endurance yet grow feeble.




IX. WASHINGTON'S PRESIDENCY.


"To have framed a constitution was showing only, without realizing, the
general happiness. This great work remained to be done; and America,
steadfast in her preference, with one will summoned her beloved
Washington, unpractised as he was in the duties of civil administration,
to execute this last act in the completion of the national felicity."
Thus spoke Gen. Henry Lee, the funeral orator of Washington, and
the father of a later and more famous Lee, who fought to destroy the
national felicity of which his father spoke.

[Sidenote: Test of the Constitution.]

The test of the constitution had come; and it was indeed an experiment
well calculated to arouse the liveliest anxieties of the infant nation.
The passions of party ran yet more high in those days than in our
own. Views the most antagonistic existed already, regarding the
interrelation, as well as the probable success, of the organic
instrument. But upon one point: all factions, however opposed, were
agreed. The only possible first President of the United States was
George Washington.

[Sidenote: Election of Washington as President.]

The new nation proceeded, in the autumn of 1788, to the choice of an
executive. There being no contest as to the chief office, the struggle
turned on the Vice-Presidency; but even in this case one candidate was
conspicuous far above the others. If Virginia had the President it
was right that Massachusetts should have the Vice-President; and as
Washington was the pre-eminent Virginian, so John Adams was, beyond all
dispute, the foremost New Englander. Ten States voted in the election,
casting sixty-nine electoral ballots. Washington received the whole
sixty-nine; and our government began with the happy augury of an
unanimous choice for its head. For Vice-President, John Adams received
thirty-four votes; John Jay nine; R.H. Harrison six; John Rutledge six;
John Hancock four; and George Clinton three.

[Sidenote: Washington takes the Oath of Office.]

It was on the last day of April, 1789, that President Washington took
the oath of office at New York, and in person delivered his inaugural
address in the presence of the two branches of Congress. This masterly
paper expressed the reluctance with which Washington had abandoned a
retreat which he had chosen "as the asylum of my declining years"; his
willingness to yield the prospect of repose to the call of country and
duty; his faith in the constitution and in the future of the nation; and
his devout reliance, in the burden he was taking upon himself, on "the
benign Parent of the human race."

[Sidenote: The First Cabinet.]

A very able cabinet surrounded and strengthened the hands of our
first President. Thomas Jefferson, who had written the Declaration of
Independence, had been Governor of Virginia, and was the successor of
Franklin at the Court of France, was made Secretary of State. At the
head of the Treasury--then, as now, the most important branch of the
executive--was placed the still young but conspicuously able Alexander
Hamilton; the most forcible of revolutionary pamphleteers, the most
efficient of staff-officers, and already an authority on finance.
Major-General Henry Knox, the chief of the continental artillery
service, who had presided over the war department during the
confederation, became Secretary of War. Samuel Osgood of Massachusetts,
experienced in civil affairs and a judicious counsellor, was assigned
to the General Post-Office; and Edmund Randolph, who had recanted his
hostility to the constitution, and was now a close ally of Jefferson,
was appointed the first Attorney-General of the United States.

[Sidenote: Washington's Difficulties.]

[Sidenote: Antagonism of Parties.]

Many difficulties surrounded the first President and his advisers at the
outset. The nation was deeply in debt, and its currency was a paper one.
The people, oppressed for so many years by the burdens of an unequal
war, were irritated by the necessarily heavy taxes. The Indians on
the borders of the settled States were troublesome. And, to add to the
embarrassments of our statesmen, the relations of the United States
with the European powers were strained, and at times alarming. The two
parties which had struggled to fashion the constitution continued to
agitate the country in a more bitter rivalry than has been seen since,
with the exception of the party excitement of the period just before the
Rebellion. Their antagonism became more pronounced during Washington's
presidency, by reason of the great European war then going on, which
divided the sympathies of our people and politicians between France and
England.

[Sidenote: The Republicans.]

On the one hand, the party which called itself "Republican," and at the
head of which were Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, James Madison,
Edmund Randolph, and Patrick Henry, were zealous friends of the French
Revolution. They regarded that great convulsion as a desperate attempt
on the part of our recent allies to found a republic like that of the
United States; and they were in favor of extending the French our aid
and sympathy, while the more eager went so far as to advocate our active
participation in the war on behalf of France. On the other hand, the
"Federalists," chief among whom were Washington, John Adams, Hamilton,
and Jay, deplored the excesses of the French Revolutionists; thought
their example rather to be avoided than emulated; and, with a still
lingering affection for England despite her tyrannies, leaned to her
side in the conflict which was so fiercely raging.

[Sidenote: State Rights and a Central Government.]

The cabinet itself was divided between these two parties. Jefferson, the
"Republican" leader, was Secretary of State; Hamilton, the "Federalist"
leader, was at the head of the Treasury. On other than foreign
subjects the antagonism of the two parties was distinctly defined. The
Republicans were the stout defenders of what they called the rights of
the States. The Federalists wished to make the central government as
strong as possible. The Republicans favored strict economy, a democratic
simplicity of manners and costumes, and opposed official ceremony and
formality. The Federalists were the aristocratic party, elegant and
patrician in their tastes, sticklers for etiquette and state. Hamilton
and Washington were freely charged by the Republicans with being
monarchists at heart.

[Sidenote: Washington's State.]

Political capital was made of the President's ostentatious style of
living, of his cream-colored coach and six, and liveried lackeys, his
velvet and gold apparel, his almost royal levees, and his well known
desire that the title of "High Mightiness" should be conferred upon him.
He was accused of imitating the state of the monarchs of the old world,
and of wishing to gather a brilliant, ceremonious, and exclusive
court about him. Thus before he had completed his two terms of office,
Washington found himself confronted and opposed by a powerful democratic
party. John Adams, his successor in policy as well as in office, was
chosen President by only one majority in the electoral college; and when
his term expired, the Republicans succeeded in placing Jefferson in the
executive chair, and in holding power for a quarter of a century.

[Sidenote: Washington's Policy.]

Washington's administration, however, proved his capacity for
statesmanship as well as for war, his wisdom and force of character, and
his pure and lofty devotion to the interests of the whole country.
His policy was at once vigorous and moderate. At first he preserved an
almost impartial bearing towards the two parties, as indicated by his
selection of their several chiefs for the highest seats in his cabinet.
Towards the close of his term, however, the government became more
distinctly Federalist. Hamilton's influence became paramount; and
Jefferson retired from office to put himself at the head of a very
earnest and aggressive opposition.

[Sidenote: Relations with Foreign Powers.]

The results of Washington's policy may be recognized, at this distance
of time, as having been in the highest degree beneficial to the welfare
of the young nation. He placed its finances on a sound basis. He
maintained order, and put a term to the aggressions of the Indians. He
compelled Algiers to prevent her pirates from preying upon our commerce.
He made friendly treaties with England and Spain. With the French
question he dealt in a manner most creditable to his wisdom, and in the
only manner by which the United States could escape being involved once
more in war. He issued a proclamation of absolute neutrality; and he
saw that it was adhered to in the spirit and in the letter. Towards the
close of his presidency, the arbitrary conduct of France towards this
country was such that a conflict became imminent. Even an invasion by
the French was threatened. This danger continued into the period of
John Adams' term; but the firm and vigorous policy of Washington and his
successor averted it, while the European, wars in which Napoleon soon
became involved diverted the attention of France elsewhere.

[Sidenote: States Added to the Union.]

[Sidenote: General Results of Washington's Administration.]

Three States were added to the Union of thirteen during Washington's
tenure of office. Vermont came within the circle in 1791; Kentucky
followed in the next year; and her neighbor, Tennessee, became a state
in 1796. What a contrast in national expenditure there was between
Washington's administration and those of modern times may be judged
when it is stated that the average annual expense of the government in
Washington's time was something less than two millions of dollars. The
population, according to the first census taken in 1790 was a little
less than four millions. Now we number more than fifty millions. It may
be said, generally, of Washington's presidency, that it gave the new
government a good start on its career of growth, order, and prosperity.
By his statesmanship, which was pure, solid, and vigorous, rather than
brilliant, peace was preserved at home and abroad; and the result was
that that general happiness which Henry Lee spoke of as promised only by
the constitution had already at least begun to be realized.




X. THE WAR OF 1812.

[Sidenote: The Period of Political Settlement.]

The period between the inauguration of Washington and the declaration
of war against Great Britain in 1812 may be regarded as the era of
formation and political settlement in the history of the republic.
It must not be forgotten that, at first, many of the wisest American
statesmen looked upon Republicanism as an experiment, and did not
place implicit faith in its success. The accession of Jefferson to the
presidency, however, and the events of his administration, gave the
Republican idea full scope and trial. The most philosophical and
studious of the statesmen of that day, Jefferson had the courage to
test the theories for which he had contended against the Federalism of
Washington, Adams, and Hamilton, by a vigorous practical policy.

[Sidenote: Jefferson's Ideas.]

Jefferson was heartily supported in this by the great mass of the
nation; and it was he who, thus sustained, established those general
principles of policy and government which became final, and have
prevailed ever since. That suffrage is a right and not a privilege,
that we should make large annexations of territory, and become the
controlling power of the continent; and that a rigid economy should
be practised, leaving the States the largest scope of local
self-government: these were cardinal articles in the Jeffersonian creed.
For twenty-four years Jefferson himself, and Madison and Monroe, his
fellow-Virginians and his earnest political disciples, presided without
interruption over the destinies of the country.

[Sidenote: Condition of the Union in 1812.]

The condition of the United States in the year 1812 presented a
striking and most favorable contrast to that which they had exhibited at
Washington's accession. The population had increased from four to about
seven and a half millions. The sixteen States over which Washington
presided had swelled to eighteen. Ohio and Louisiana had been admitted
to the circle. But this was by no means the limit to territorial
acquisition. It was President Jefferson who added to the domain of the
Union that vast and fertile tract which is even now in rapid process of
settlement, and which was known as the Louisiana purchase. This tract
reached from the banks of the Mississippi to the base of the Rocky
Mountains. It embraced nearly a million square miles, or more than the
whole of the area of the Union as it then was; and fifteen millions of
dollars were paid to France in exchange for it. A great invention had
been put into practical operation during Jefferson's term. This was the
steamboat. Robert Fulton put the _Clermont_ upon the Hudson in 1807; and
thenceforth navigation by steam was to play a great part in the commerce
and economical progress of the land.

[Sidenote: Inventions.]

[Sidenote: Causes of the War.]

President Madison, who assumed the executive chair in 1809, inherited a
quarrel with Great Britain from his predecessor, which soon ripened
into war. The great contest which raged between France and Great Britain
early in the century could not but affect the rest of the civilized
world. American commerce had already grown into importance, and was now
seriously crippled by the arbitrary course respecting trade adopted by
both of the belligerents. Each power forbade neutral nations to trade
with its foe. But while Napoleon followed the example of Pitt in making
a decree to this effect, the bearing of Great Britain towards this
country, in respect to the prohibition of trade, was far more arrogant
and vexatious than that of France. American ships were captured on
the high seas by British men-of-war, carried into port, adjudged, and
confiscated.

[Sidenote: The Right of Search.]

A still more serious assault upon our national honor was made by the
British government. It claimed the right to search American vessels for
British seamen, and proceeded to execute it. Thus sailors were taken
from our ships by the hundred; and, on one occasion, an American ship,
the _Chesapeake_, was fired upon and forcibly boarded by a British
man-of-war, within sight of the Virginia coast. For a while retaliation
was attempted in the shape of an embargo upon American vessels; but this
was soon found to tend to the utter extitinction of our commerce, and
the embargo was abandoned. Remonstrance with Great Britain proved to be
of no avail. The English ministry at that time was a strict Tory one,
and far from friendly in disposition toward the United States. Despite
the protests of our envoy, the practice of search was vigorously
pursued.

[Sidenote: War Declared.]

This was the state of affairs when James Madison became President.
The party represented by him was now clamorous for war, while the old
Federalists, especially those of New England, as earnestly deprecated
it. At last it became apparent that war was the only remedy for the
outrages committed almost without cessation on our commerce. The
President sent a message to Congress expressing this opinion; and on
the 18th of June, 1812, war was formally declared against Great Britain.
This was evidently in accordance with the will of the nation: but we
did not enter upon the conflict without the bitter opposition of the
Federalists. A convention of the leading members of that party met at
Hartford, held secret sessions, and issued an energetic protest against
the war. This aroused a deep sense of hostility in the breasts of the
war party; and, ever since, the Hartford Convention has been regarded
as at least an injudicious demonstration at a period when war already
existed, and when the government needed the support of every patriot to
bring it to a successful end.

[Sidenote: Beginning of Hostilities.]

[Sidenote: Naval Victories.]

The Americans began hostilities by making an ineffectual attempt to
conquer Canada. Meanwhile the English promptly took up the challenge,
sent ships of war loaded with excellent soldiers, many of them veterans
of the Napoleonic wars, across the Atlantic, and engaged Tecumseh,
and other Indian chiefs inimical to the intruders upon their former
hunting-grounds, to aid them in the contest. While Tecumseh, however,
was defeated and killed, the successes of the American army were few
compared with the brilliant exploits of our naval forces. The War of
1812 proved that the Americans had studied well the British example and
system in naval warfare. It was emphatically a naval war, simply because
Great Britain could only approach us from the sea. The victories of Hull
and Perry showed the greatest maritime power on earth that, though our
navy might be inferior to hers in distant waters, it was more than a
match for hers on the Lakes and the American coast. If the _Shannon_
captured the _Chesapeake_, and if gallant David Porter had at last
to desert the burning _Essex_, on the other hand the capture of the
_Guerrière_ and the surrender of the British squadron on Lake Erie to
Perry, more than compensated for our disasters.

[Sidenote: The British take Washington.]

It was the the last year of the war, which continued nearly three years,
that the British landed on our southern coast, and, making havoc of
villages and plantations as they went, took Washington, and burned the
Capitol and the President's house, from which Mr. Madison and his family
had happily escaped into Virginia. But the enemy found it impossible to
pursue their temporary success to a decisive issue. Both countries were
weary of the war, and overtures of peace having been made, four American
commissioners--John Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay, and
Jonathan Russell--were sent to Ghent, in Belgium, to meet British
commissioners and conclude a treaty. The treaty of Ghent was signed on
the 24th of December, 1814; and, singularly enough, while such subjects
as the boundary line and the fisheries were discussed, that treaty
contained no stipulation in regard to the British claim to the right of
search.

[Sidenote: Battle of New Orleans.]

In those days, when there were neither railways, steamships, nor
telegraphs, news was long in travelling from one continent to the other.
The tidings of the treaty did not reach New Orleans in time to prevent
General Andrew Jackson from winning glory by defending that city from
behind his cotton-bales. This was one of the most brilliant land-battles
of the war, and was fought on the 8th of January, just a fortnight after
peace had been formally concluded at Ghent.

[Sidenote: Results of the War.]

The War of 1812, while it left many questions unsettled between the
mother and the daughter country, practically put an end to the vexatious
disturbance of our commerce by Great Britain. It also tended to give a
longer lease of political power to what was then called the Republican
party, and prepared the way for the "era of good feeling," over which
the amiable though not conspicuously able President Monroe presided. The
war also brought certain men prominently before the public eye. Hull,
Bainbridge, Porter, Decatur, Rodgers, and Perry, were enshrined among
the country's naval heroes. General Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe,
and General Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, later reaped the reward
of the Presidency, the indirect result of their military exploits. The
gallant Richard M. Johnson afterwards became Vice-President; and it was
in the War of 1812 that General Winfield Scott won his first laurels,
and that General Zachary Taylor, long afterwards President, gave promise
of the military genius which later so much aided in bringing the Mexican
War to a speedy and victorious end.

[Sidenote: Growth of the Union.]

The period of the war and of the years immediately succeeding witnessed
a very rapid growth of population, and a notable swelling of the tide of
emigration westward. In 1816 Indiana came within the circle of States;
followed alternately by slave and free states--Mississippi, 1817;
Illinois, 1818; Alabama, 1819; Maine, 1820. and Missouri, 1821. The
great highway built between Cumberland and Wheeling was all alive in
those days with the wagons and groups of new settlers. A long era of
peace was to follow, and to give the country opportunity to increase, to
develop its resources, and to make rapid progress in its prosperity and
the development of its institutions.




XI. THE MEXICAN WAR.

[Sidenote: An Era of Peace.]

[Sidenote: Andrew Jackson.]

An interval of over thirty years elapsed between our second war with
Great Britain and the war with Mexico. Although this period was one of
external, and, excepting the troubles which now and then arose with the
Indians, of internal peace, its social and political aspects are very
full of interest. Within its limits the first railway and the first
telegraph-lines were laid in the United States, and the great Erie Canal
was built. After three tranquil presidential terms, presided over by the
sensible though not brilliant Monroe, and by the shrewd, scholarly, and
positive younger Adams, a man succeeded to the Executive Chair whose
course was destined to revolutionize parties, to carry party bitterness
to a height of great violence, and to divert the political destinies
of the country into new channels. Andrew Jackson was well fitted by his
strong will and stubborn courage to do the dangerous work of his time.

[Sidenote: Nullification.]

Various considerations induced the State of South Carolina to defy
the Union. The alleged ground of her quarrel was the high rates of the
tariff imposed by Congress upon imports. This tariff she resolved to
resist; hence a resolution was passed by a convention in South Carolina
that after a certain date the tariff should be null and void within her
limits. It was further resolved that if the United States attempted
to enforce it, South Carolina should secede, and form an independent
government. John C. Calhoun was, or was charged with being, the
instigator of this movement. It was at once quelled, however, by the
prompt action of President Jackson. He sent troops and war-ships to
Charleston, under the command of General Scott; and "nullification" was
overawed and defeated.

President Jackson also had the nerve to veto the bill creating a
national bank; and when, after two terms of service, he retired, he gave
up to the rule of his designated successor a nation of fifteen millions
of people, solvent, prosperous, and apparently destined to a long career
of peace and power. The four years of President Van Buren's term were
not notable for great events, and are chiefly interesting as exhibiting
the re-formation of parties, in which the lines between the Whigs and
the Democrats became more defined and distinct. Van Buren was the leader
of the Democrats, but was soon to lose that leadership by reason of his
connection with the fast-growing anti-slavery cause. Henry Clay was the
Whig chief; and continued to be so, despite the rivalry of Webster, down
to the time of his death. [Sidenote: Causes of the Mexican War.]

[Sidenote: Texas.]

It was during the term of President John Tyler, who succeeded to the
chief magistracy after poor worn-out old General Harrison had exercised
its functions for one brief month, that the events took their rise which
ripened into the War with Mexico. The large territory of Texas, lying
upon our extreme southwestern border, between Louisiana and Mexico, had
revolted from the latter nation and set up an independent republic of
its own. Texas had been largely colonized from the slave States, and
General Sam Houston, formerly of Tennessee, was its President.

[Sidenote: Election of Polk.]

The republic sought admission to our Union in 1837, but the application
was then refused. Seven years later, Mr. Tyler gave it a more hospitable
reception. A treaty was framed, and at first rejected by the United
States Senate. At last, in March, 1845, just as Mr. Tyler was retiring
from office, a resolution was adopted by both houses of Congress
annexing Texas, and this resolution was approved by the outgoing
President. The presidential campaign in the autumn of 1844, between
Henry Clay as the Whig and James K. Polk as the Democratic candidate,
was fought mainly upon the issue of this annexation, and the election of
Mr. Polk was looked upon as a confirmation of it by the people.

[Sidenote: Boundary Dispute.]

No sooner had the new President been inaugurated than what the Whig
leaders had earnestly predicted came to pass. A dispute arose with
Mexico as to the boundary between that country and Texas. Mexico claimed
that this boundary was the river Nueces; Texas asserted it to be the
Rio Grande. The matter was one of some importance, as the Nueces is
a hundred miles northeastward from the Rio Grande, and that much of
territory was therefore in dispute. The brief negotiations which
ensued with a view to the settlement of this question, proved abortive.
President Polk accordingly ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy the
disputed territory with a small body of troops. Taylor concentrated his
men at Corpus Christi, near the frontier.

[Sidenote: First Battles.]

The Mexicans were equally prompt, and the first collisions occurred at
Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, near the Rio Grande. General Taylor
repulsed the enemy with little difficulty and but small loss, and,
crossing the Rio Grande, advanced upon and captured Matamoras. Thus far
the hostilities had proceeded when a formal declaration of war was made
against Mexico by the United States. Clay and the Whigs strenuously
opposed this action; but the administration party bore down all
opposition. Volunteers now flocked, especially from the Southern States,
to Taylor's standard; and in a few weeks he found himself at the head
of a resolute though not very well disciplined force of nearly eight
thousand men. Monterey, a fortified town of considerable importance, was
held by about nine thousand Mexican troops. General Taylor's objective
point was the City of Mexico.

[Sidenote: Taylor's Campaign.]

After an attack of three days, Monterey fell into his hands. Victory
followed his army everywhere. Santa Anna, a crafty and able man, who
had sat in the presidential chair of Mexico, was now in command of the
Mexican army, and confronted Taylor at Huena Vista. His gallant attempt
to stay the advance of the triumphant Americans, however, failed, for
Taylor defeated him in what was perhaps the most brilliantly and hotly
contested action of the war. Taylor's force at Buena Vista numbered
about six thousand men, the larger part of them being but rudely
disciplined soldiers. Santa Anna's command comprised at least twenty
thousand Mexicans. It was at Buena Vista that the Lancers, the best body
of troops in the Mexican army, were routed by the dashing onset of the
American volunteers.

[Sidenote: Victory at Vera Cruz.]

[Sidenote: Scott Enters Mexico.]

General Scott now appeared upon the scene to reap fresh victories,
and to lend powerful aid, by his scientific skill and ripe military
judgment, in bringing the war to a decisive issue. He was despatched
with an army to attack Vera Cruz, the most important port and fort on
the Mexican coast. His force numbered between eleven and twelve thousand
men, and he was supported by Commodore Matthew Perry, who operated with
a fleet in the Gulf. Vera Cruz fell after a vigorous bombardment and
a brave defence. The Mexicans could no longer hold the fortress of San
Juan D'Ulloa, which was speedily occupied by General Scott. The two
victories of Buena Vista and Vera Cruz rendered the cause of the
Mexicans hopeless. The fall of the capital was only a question of more
or less delay. The resistance of the Mexicans was still obstinate,
though always ineffectual. The troops of the United States won in
succession the battles of Cerro Gordo, Cherubusco, El Molino del Rey and
Chapultepec. Finally, on the 14th of September, 1847, the American army
of six thousand, under Winfield Scott, entered the City of Mexico. This
was one year and four months after war had been declared by Congress.

Besides these main operations, there were various collateral movements
designed to cripple the power and diminish the territory of Mexico.
General Kearney, with an independent force of volunteers, had marched
into and taken possession of the province of New Mexico; Colonel
Doliphan had in like manner occupied Chihuahua; while Colonel Fremont,
placing himself at the head of a band of American settlers recruited in
the valley of the Sacramento, and supported by Commodore Stockton, had
availed himself of the opportunity to hold Upper California for the
United States.

[Sidenote: The Treaty of Peace.]

Thus Mexico was subdued and compelled to come to terms, her enemy
dictating these from her own capital. Commissioners met at the city
of Guadalupe Hidalgo to conclude a treaty of peace. By this instrument
Mexico agreed to accept the Rio Grande as the boundary between herself
and Texas, adding thereby to the territory of the United States an area
of not less than five hundred thousand square miles; to make over New
Mexico and Upper California to the United States in consideration of the
sum of fifteen millions of dollars; and to guarantee the debts due from
Mexico to American citizens. This treaty was duly ratified and
exchanged in the spring of 1848--about two years after the beginning of
hostilities.

[Sidenote: Political Effect of the War.]

[Sidenote: California.]

The political effect of the Mexican War was to add a large territory and
a fast-increasing population to the tier of slave-holding States, and
thus to aggrandize the slave-holding oligarchy, as opposed to the party
in favor of free soil. On the other hand, the military glory won by
General Taylor, and his adoption in the year after the war as the Whig
candidate for the Presidency, singularly enough brought into power the
party which had persistently opposed both the annexation of Texas,
and the war which had been undertaken to complete it. The Mexican War
provided the parties with four presidential candidates, Generals Taylor,
Scott, Pierce, and Fremont, two of whom succeeded in reaching the
summit of executive authority. When Colonel Fremont raised the American
standard in California, it was little imagined that he was acquiring
a province for the country the value of which was destined to be
incalculably greater than the Texan republic. Within a year, however,
the gold mines had been discovered, and that wonderful civilization of
the Pacific Coast which we now witness had begun to grow up in the far
western wilderness.




XII. THE SLAVERY AGITATION.

[Sidenote: Slavery Inherited.]

The United States inherited, and had to accept, from the colonial
system, a great moral and social wrong. Slavery, planted on our soil
soon after its first settlement, had spread not only through the South,
but had existed for a time even in the Puritan colonies of New England.
An active slave-trade had grown up, and was still flourishing at the
time that the constitution was framed. There is every reason to believe
that the most eminent and enlightened even of Southern statesmen, in
the very infancy of the Republic, regarded African bondage as not only
a moral, but, in many regards, a material evil. Washington and Jefferson
especially uttered, in no doubtful accents, their dislike of the system;
while such northern statesmen as Franklin, Adams, and Roger Sherman
protested in yet sterner tones against its continuance.

[Sidenote: Strength of the Slave Power.]

[Sidenote: The Missouri Compromise.]

But slavery, like many traditional abuses of nations, was so securely
lodged, so difficult to uproot, that wise men at once deplored its
presence and despaired of its abolition. While, therefore, the framers
of the constitution refused to insert a direct recognition of slavery in
that instrument, choosing to regard it as temporary, and likely in
time to become extinct, other subjects, crowding upon the attention of
statesmen at the period of political formation, pushed this of slavery
for a while into the background. The first definite collision between
the upholders and the opponents of slavery occurred when, as a
consequence of the rapid growth of the country, the territories began
one after another to knock for admission into the household of States.
The dispute came to an issue in the year 1820. Missouri sought admission
into the Union, and it was attempted to admit her as a slave state. Then
the Northern statesmen declared that some limit or restriction should be
placed upon future admissions of States, in regard to slavery.

[Sidenote: The "Slavery Agitation."]

The debates in Congress were long and warm. Every argument which has
since become so familiar on the subject was advanced on one side and on
the other. The moral evil of slavery, its demoralizing influence upon
freeman and bondman, its cruelties in practice, were dilated upon by
some; others pictured "the peculiar institution" in its more patriarchal
and pleasant aspects. Finally, the northern members agreed to admit
Missouri as a slave State, on condition that thenceforth all new states
north of the line of 36°30'north latitude--known as "Mason and Dixon's
line"--should be free; while all new states south of that line should
decide for themselves whether they should be free or slave. It was the
vain hope of the statesmen of Monroe's time that this settlement, known
in history as the "Missouri Compromise," would be accepted as final, and
that the mutual ill-feeling which had already become bitter between the
sections would be finally allayed by it.

They flattered themselves that they had put a period to the agitation,
and that the irritating question was now cast outside the domain of
American politics. Perhaps they did not sufficiently reflect that the
same power which had established the boundaries of slavery might,
when the opportunity was ripe, erase them. The slavery agitation was,
however, only in its infancy. It had within it a vital and irrepressible
element of growth. With the advance of civil liberty, the growth of
education, it, too, must necessarily make progress. As yet it was in the
hands of so-called "fanatics." Respectable statesmanship, having made
the Missouri Compromise, would have no more of it.

[Sidenote: The "Liberty Party."]

[Sidenote: Garrison.]

It was early in General Jackson's presidency that the small but
determined "Liberty party" of the North began to attract attention
by what was considered the extravagance of its utterances, and the
absurdity of its proposals. The Quaker Lundy published his "Genius of
Universal Emancipation"; Garrison put forth the "Liberator" at Boston;
and soon, in various parts of the Union, abolition tracts and fanatical
orators brought down upon them not only the execration of the South,
but the assaults of northern mobs. An insurrection, under the lead of
a negro named Turner, broke out in Virginia, and massacres and burnings
followed. The Georgia Legislature put a price upon Garrison's head; and
that devoted advocate of human freedom responded by founding the New
England Anti-Slavery Society--an example soon followed in various places
through the North.

[Sidenote: Sympathy for the Slaves.]

[Sidenote: Lovejoy Killed.]

The cause was right, and grew despite every obstacle of mob violence,
persecution, contempt, and, not the least, the indignant hostility
of respectable statesmanship. Yet evidences began to appear, here and
there, that the sympathy even of official responsibility was gradually
leaning to the principle of liberty. The Massachusetts Supreme Court
declared the child Med, whose master had brought her to Boston, to have
become by that act free. There was still, however, much suffering in
store for the anti-slavery advocates. Garrison, in attempting to speak
before the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, was dragged through
the streets by an enraged mob, and was only saved from death by being
hurried to the jail as a refuge. A hall in Philadelphia which had been
desecrated by an abolition conference, was burned. Elijah Lovejoy, an
Illinois abolition editor, was killed by a mob. These are a few among
many examples of the violence with which the abolitionists were treated.

The old "Liberty party," however, grew gradually into the larger and
more powerful "Free Soil" party, of which the venerable John Quincy
Adams became the champion in the House of Representatives, and Martin
Van Buren the presidential candidate in 1848. It was still, of course,
a small minority, but its influence was now distinctly felt in the
legislative councils and in the politics of the country. The petitions
in favor of abolition which invaded Congress created alarm in the South,
and at last the southern members found it necessary to pass a rule
excluding these "incendiary documents" altogether.

[Sidenote: The Compromise of 1850.]

If the Free Soilers were becoming formidable, the South was also
resolved to assume the offensive. Its triumph in securing the annexation
of Texas as another slave State was followed, a few years after, by the
celebrated "Compromise" of 1850; by which, while California was admitted
as a free State, and the slave trade was abolished in the District of
Columbia, the Fugitive Slave Law was also conceded. This aroused the
indignation of very large numbers in the North, and the treatment of
fugitives under it, notably that of Jerry in New York State, and
of Anthony Burns in Boston, did much to develop and strengthen the
anti-slavery feeling. The outrageous character of the law was too
palpable to be unperceived and unresented.

[Sidenote: The Free Sellers.]

[Sidenote: Border Ruffianism.]

The next effort of the slave power provoked the formation of a great
national anti-slavery party, out of the old Free Soil elements. This
effort, which, by the aid of the Pierce administration and some Northern
statesmen, was successful, was to destroy the Missouri Compromise of
1820 and thus open the way to the creation of slave States north, as
well as south, of Mason and Dixon's line. The immediate object of
this policy was to make slave States of Kansas and Nebraska, two great
territories which were ready for admission into the fatuity of the
Union. No sooner had the Nebraska Bill passed, in May, 1854, than the
terrible scenes of "border ruffianism" began. As the new law required
that the inhabitants of the territories should themselves decide whether
slavery should exist or not, the attempt was made to convert Kansas into
a slave State by invasions of "border ruffians" from Missouri. After
a long and bloody struggle, the cause of freedom triumphed in the two
disputed territories.

[Sidenote: The "Irrepressible Conflict."]

The events in that part of the Union served to win many converts to the
anti-slavery cause in the North. The Republican party was organized on
the eve of the Presidential election of 1856. Its chief doctrine was
that no more slave States whatever should be admitted to the Union. It
put a ticket into the field with Colonel John Charles Fremont as
the candidate for President, and William L. Dayton of New Jersey for
Vice-President. It could not be expected that so young a party would
triumph at its first essay; but when Fremont received 113 electoral
votes, while Buchanan had only 177, it was appreciated everywhere
that the "irrepressible conflict" between slavery and liberty was fast
approaching its crisis.

[Sidenote: John Brown's Raid.]

The self-sacrificing heroism of a fanatic, the most salient incident of
the slavery agitation during the Presidency of Buchanan, had a marked
influence in hastening the final issue. This was John Brown's raid upon
Harper's Ferry, for the purpose of setting free the slaves. The old
man's courage, his utter self-devotion to his cause, his noble death,
his simple and sincere character, appealed most strongly to the sympathy
of the opponents of slavery, and even compelled words of strong praise
from the lips of Henry A. Wise, the Virginia Governor, who signed his
death-warrant.

[Sidenote: The South Prepares to Secede.]

The cause of free soil at last attained its triumph in the election
of 1860. All things foreshadowed the success of Abraham Lincoln. The
northern people were ripe for decisive action against the extension, at
least, of human bondage. The Democratic party divided into two factions
at Charleston, and the factions put each a candidate into the field,
mutually to destroy each other. The South so far gave up the contest as
to make preparations, while the presidential battle was yet raging,
to withdraw from the Union. Then, as the grand, bitter, but necessary
result of the long-continued slavery agitation, the war came, and wiped
out slavery with the blood of patriots.




XIII. THE CIVIL WAR.

[Sidenote: The Civil War.]

The great American Rebellion of 1861-65 is still, perhaps, too near to
be judged with the calm and judicial spirit which gives its chief value
to history. Thousands of those who took part in it on either side are
yet living; millions who witnessed its progress, and watched its course
with varying emotions of grief and joy, who mourned its dead, exulted in
its victories, and hailed its termination, yet hold it in vivid memory.
Moreover, all that could be said of it, from bald narrative to
infinite discussion of this and that general, this and that campaign
or stratagem, of causes and effects, has already been repeated till the
tale has been, not twice, but many times told.

The results of that awful yet necessary conflict are still being felt,
in one way or another, by all of us. Many a household still mourns the
loss of those who died on southern battle-fields. We feel the war in our
business, in our pockets. We feel it in the financial enigmas which
even yet await solution. And although we have come to a period of
reconciliation, when we can with free hearts garland with roses the
graves alike of the blue and the gray, we feel still the indirect
influences of the war in our political contests.

[Sidenote: Origin of the War.]

[Sidenote: Secession.]

The war may be said to have had its origin in two not necessarily
connected circumstances. It was the fruit, on the one hand, of a certain
political doctrine; on the other, of a threatened and to-be-defended
social condition. The political doctrine was that called "State's
rights," from which two corollaries were deduced by Calhoun and his
disciples: "nullification," or the right of a State to disobey a United
States law; and "secession," or the right of a State to withdraw from
the Union at will. The social condition was that of slavery, threatened,
as the South thought, by the election of Abraham Lincoln, and to be
defended under cover of the political doctrine which Calhoun had
taught the South to credit and to cherish. Thus, while the cause of the
rebellion was slavery, its justification was an asserted constitutional
right. The North did not believe in slavery, or at least in the
extension of slavery. But what the North at first undertook to subdue
was not slavery in the States, but the altogether destructive doctrine
of secession.

[Sidenote: South Carolina's "Ordinance."]

[Sidenote: Fort Sumter Taken.]

The threat loudly uttered during the election of 1860, that the South
would secede if Lincoln were chosen, was duly followed up by action in
a few weeks after that event. Before Christmas South Carolina had
passed her famous "ordinance," and by early February, 1861, Mississippi,
Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas had followed in her
footsteps. The senators and representatives of these States in Congress
retired front its halls, breathing defiance as they went. South Carolina
took the lead in military, as she had done in political action. Claiming
the national property within her limits, she attached and took Fort
Sumter in Charleston harbor. The way had been prepared for this by
Secretaries Floyd and Toucey of the Buchanan Cabinet, who had sent South
materials of war, and so disposed the navy as to render it for the time
powerless for aid in the Union cause.

[Sidenote: Call for Troops.]

Lincoln was now President. The guns fired at Sumter roused the North,
and gave the signal of war, proving that a conflict could no longer be
avoided. Meanwhile, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas
were hurried out of the Union by the political leaders. On the day
following the fall of Sumter, the President issued his call for
seventy-five thousand volunteers, and the governors were urged to send
such forces as they could at once to Washington, which was threatened
with an attack. Then came the assault upon the gallant Sixth
Massachusetts in the streets of Baltimore, the isolation of Washington,
and its relief. A blockade of the southern ports was proclaimed.

[Sidenote: Bull Run.]

After a few minor engagements, such as those in Western Virginia, in
which McClellan was successful, and at Big Bethel, the first great
battle was fought on July 21, 1861, at Bull Run. This was in consequence
of an attempt by General Scott to advance upon Richmond. The result was
the total defeat of the Union army, which recoiled in confusion upon
Washington. Later in the first year of the war, General Lyon gained some
advantages over the rebels in Missouri, and naval expeditions were sent
to Hatteras and Port Royal; General Scott yielded the command-in-chief
to General McClellan, and rebel privateers appeared upon the ocean, and
began their destructive depredations upon our commerce. Great Britain
had too hastily recognized the belligerent rights of the rebels, and in
November the capture of Mason and Slidell was followed by their delivery
again to the protection of the British flag.

[Sidenote: Second Year of the War.]

The second year of the war found no less than half a million of soldiers
enlisted in the army of the Union. It seemed as if we were now ready
to cope with rebellion in all its extent and strength. The hope of
an approaching and decisive triumph animated the hearts of the loyal.
McClellan now led the Army of the Potomac against Richmond, approaching
it from the east. Then followed the battle of Fair Oaks, and the
Seven Days' battles, of which that at Malvern Hill was the most hotly
contested. The Confederates were beaten, with terrible loss on both
sides. Cedar Mountain and the second Bull Run followed, the latter
proving a disaster as serious as the former struggle on the same field
had been.

[Sidenote: Antietam.]

Then came Lee's advance into Maryland, his capture of Frederick City,
and that great battle, Antietam, in which Lee was repulsed and retreated
into Virginia. But McClellan, having failed to follow up his advantage,
was relieved of the command-in-chief, which was conferred on Burnside.
Burnside's repulse at Fredericksburg was followed by a discouraging
retreat. But though the attempt to capture Richmond was foiled, in other
parts of the country many advantages were obtained by the Union forces
in the year 1862.

[Sidenote: Union Victories.]

Prominent among these were the victory of the _Monitor_ over the
_Merrimac_, in Hampton Roads; the capture of Roanoke Island and Fort
Pulaski; Grant's gallant victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, at
Island No. 10, and, later, at Pittsburg Landing; and the heroic taking
of New Orleans by Farragut and Butler.

[Sidenote: Chancellorsville.]

At the very threshold of the third year of the war, President Lincoln
issued the "Proclamation of Emancipation." Thus not only was the crime
of slavery wiped away, but a new source of strength to our forces was
provided by the emancipated negroes, who were enlisted to aid in the
confirmation of their freedom by final victory. The first half of
the year 1863 witnessed what was perhaps the gloomiest and most
disheartening period of the war. Hooker succeeded Burnside, only to meet
at Chancellorsville the same disastrous fate which had overtaken his
predecessor at Fredericksburg. General Lee was encouraged to assume the
offensive, and to invade Pennsylvania. The North was discouraged; the
expense of the war began to be grievously felt; the draft was becoming
very obnoxious; the desertions from the army were alarming in number.

[Sidenote: Gettysburg.]

Lee advanced by the Shenandoah Valley into the Northern States. But at
Gettysburg he met the reorganized Union army, under Meade. The collision
of one hundred and sixty thousand men, lasting for three days, resulted
in that hard-won Union victory which proved the turning-point of the
war. On the day of Lee's retreat from Gettysburg, the Fourth of July,
Vicksburg was surrendered to Grant. Soon after, Port Hudson fell, and
the Mississippi was opened to the passage of troops. Then the Battle
of Chattanooga was fought and won, and Tennessee was rid of Confederate
occupation. Meanwhile, the siege of Charleston was proceeding on the
coast, and before the end of the year Fort Wagner was taken.

[Sidenote: Grant Commander-in-chief.]

[Sidenote: Sherman's March to the Sea.]

We have now reached the fourth year of the war, 1864. It was now clear
that the result was only a question of time. The first events of the
year were not brilliant. Kilpatrick made his famous but futile raid near
Richmond; Hanks met with disaster at Red River; Forrest captured Fort
Pillow and killed three hundred negro troops. The last act of the
momentous drama began by the elevation of General Ulysses S. Grant
to the command-in-chief in March. The two great movements which were
together to seal the fate of the Confederacy were at once prepared.
Grant, assuming command of the Army of the Potomac, made Richmond his
objective point. He advanced deliberately towards the southern capital,
and fought the terrific battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and
Cold Harbor. He laid siege to Petersburg, but without immediate result.
Meanwhile the gallant Sherman began his marvellous march to the sea,
took Atlanta, and at last entered Savannah in triumph. Sheridan, making
his famous ride, defeated Early at Cedar Creek. The _Alabama_ was
sunk by the _Kearsarge_ off the French coast. Mobile was captured by
Farragut. The _Albermarle_ was destroyed.

[Sidenote: Surrender of Lee.]

The Confederates were now penned in, and it only remained to make a
last strenuous effort to end the war. While Sherman advanced northward,
taking Charleston by the way, and Terry captured Fort Fisher, the siege
of Richmond became closer and more vigorous. Then Sheridan conquered at
Five Forks, turning the flank of the hunted and hounded Lee. Finally,
on the 3d of April, 1865, the Union troops occupied Richmond and
Petersburg; Lee surrendered on the 9th, at Appomattox; Johnston followed
by yielding to Sherman; and the Southern Confederacy was no more.




XIV. THE PRESIDENTS.

[Sidenote: Number of Presidents.]

Between 1789, when the government organized by the constitution
began its functions, and 1886, the people of the United States have
twenty-five times chosen a President; and of the Presidents, seven have
been chosen for a second term. Four of them, having died in office, were
succeeded by Vice Presidents. While the number of terms, therefore,
has been twenty-five, the executive chair has been filled by twenty-two
individuals. In referring to the line of Presidents, and scanning the
names of those who have exercised powers more extensive than those
of English royalty, we are struck by the fact that very few of our
Presidents have ranked first, in point of intellect, in their own
generation. It may be said, indeed, that Jefferson alone of them all was
without dispute the foremost statesman of his day.

[Sidenote: Presidential Ability.]

Comparing our elected chief magistrates with the various lines of
hereditary sovereigns of Europe, we find that pre-eminent ability is
scarcely more frequent among them than is presented by the houses of
Romanoff, Hohenzollern, and Hapsburg. When, however, we consider their
moral qualities as rulers--their patriotism and purity, their freedom
from a too grasping ambition, the fidelity and zeal with which they
have served the country as best they knew how--we are perhaps not
unreasonable in judging them superior, as a line of rulers, to any royal
house of which history affords record. Very rarely has it been that
a President has been even suspected of craving increased power for
himself, or of using his office for unworthy personal ends. Some have
been weak, some perverse and obstinate; but as the clouds of party
passion, which have sometimes obscured the motives and the acts of our
chief magistrates, pass away, we may recognize in their action honest
though now and then ill directed efforts to use their high office for
the general weal.

[Sidenote: The Ablest Men not Presidents.]

Our intellectually ablest men have not, with the exception of Jefferson,
attained the Presidency, though many of them have aspired to it. No one
can doubt that Hamilton was a greater political genius than the first
two Presidents. It can scarcely be questioned that Webster, Calhoun,
and Clay were greater in this respect than the three Presidents who
succeeded Jefferson. Madison was a man of culture, clear vision, and
political learning, but he was the disciple of Jefferson, and did not
reveal qualities of originality and constructiveness in statesmanship.
Monroe was a man of yet more limited capacity, unless Polk be excepted,
Monroe was the least able of all our Presidents. But he had a large
experience in public affairs, he was judicious and cool-tempered, and
thoroughly honest and simple-minded. He was personally liked, and after
Washington was the only President who was the unanimous choice of the
country.[1]

[Sidenote: Monroe.]

[Sidenote: John Quincy Adams.]

John Quincy Adams, a trained statesman, who had been an ambassador,
a Senator, and a Secretary of State, was still inferior in point of
political intellect to Clay, his own Secretary of State, and to Calhoun,
the Vice-President; and there were several others at that time who might
justly be competed with him. So, although Andrew Jackson was perhaps the
greatest of our Presidents in executive vigor and stern force of will,
as a political figure his most devoted admirers would scarcely rank him
with Clay or Webster. Van Buren was rather a shrewd politician than an
eminent statesman; but he was a politician in a higher sense, and no
stain of dishonor attaches to his career, while his presidential term
was an honest and able one.

[Sidenote: Later Presidents.]

Many public men might be named who, living at the time of Harrison's
elevation, were very much his political superiors; in his very cabinet
were at least three, Webster, Crittenden, and Ewing; and John Tyler was
very far from being in the front rank of American statesmen, though his
political capacity has sometimes been underrated.

Polk was the weakest of all our later Presidents, and he too presided
over at least three secretaries who were intellectually larger men, in
Marcy, Robert J. Walker, and Buchanan. The same may be said in comparing
General Taylor with his advisers, and Fillmore, Pierce, and Lincoln
with theirs; for while no one can fail to revere the grand moral
and practical qualities which make Lincoln illustrious, in purely
intellectual eminence he was excelled by Seward, Chase, and perhaps
Stanton.

[Sidenote: A Conservative Republic.]

[Sidenote: Origin of the Presidents.]

Ours has always been a conservative Republic. The French Republicans
of '93 and '48, the Communards of '71, did not derive their wild and
visionary fanaticism from our example, although there can be no doubt
that our Revolution had not a little influence in hastening that
of France. When the people have been called upon to choose a chief
magistrate, therefore, they have not sought men of extreme views, nor
have humble birth and limited education often been recommendations of
candidates. It is notable that the first six Presidents were selected
from the class which in England is called the "gentry." Washington,
indeed, belonged to the high rural aristocracy of Virginia; Mount Vernon
was as much a patrician manor-house as are the "halls," "priories," and
"manors" of rural England; and he lived there in the style of a country
magnate, John Adams belonged to the sturdy New England yeomanry sprung
from the Pilgrims, and, as the descendant of John Alden, had some
reason to pride himself upon good blood. The three succeeding Virginia
Presidents were sons of gentlemen-farmers, and belonged to the
cultivated gentry of the Old Dominion. Jackson was the first of the
plebeian Presidents, and then came Van Buren, of the gentry by birth;
Harrison, the son of a signer of the Declaration, and thus well born,
and Tyler, another Virginia gentleman, the lord of Sherwood Forest. Polk
belonged to the same rural condition. Fillmore was the next President
of humble beginnings, and Lincoln the third; while Andrew Johnson,
who learned to read after he was married, and began life as a country
tailor, was the most lowly born of all our chief magistrates.

[Sidenote: Military Presidents.]

Those young men who, having a taste for and ambition in politics,
adopt the law as a stepping-stone to political honor, may derive
some encouragement from the classification of the Presidents by their
professions; for out of the twenty-two Presidents, no less than eighteen
were at some period of their lives practising at the bar. The four
who were not lawyers were the four military Presidents, Washington,
Harrison, Taylor, and Grant. Three other Presidents, however, derived
something of their fame from military careers--Monroe, Jackson, and
Pierce. Monroe was a revolutionary colonel, Jackson the hero of New
Orleans, and Pierce a brigadier in the Mexican War. But Monroe owed
his political eminence to diplomatic successes and the friendship of
Jefferson and Madison: while Pierce certainly did not win the presidency
by his Mexican exploits.

[Sidenote: Presidential Succession.]

No man has ever yet passed directly from the United States Senate to the
White House. Of the Presidents, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren,
Harrison, Tyler, Pierce, Buchanan, and Johnson had been senators; while
John Adams, Jefferson and Van Buren held the Vice-Presidency just
before their elevation by election to the higher office. The custom
of succession from the one office to the other, which prevailed in the
earlier years of the Republic, was broken when Madison was preferred to
George Clinton in 1808; and was revived only in the single instance
of Van Buren, whom the irresistible will of Jackson imposed upon the
Democrats as his successor. Washington, before becoming President, had
held the office of President of the Constitutional Convention. Polk had
only served in the lower House of Congress, over which he had presided
as speaker. Neither Taylor nor Grant ever held a state or national
office before being raised to the Executive Chair. Lincoln had served
a few years, with but little distinction, in the national House of
Representatives. The same may be said of Hayes, and of Fillmore before
he was chosen Vice-President.

[Sidenote: Presidents Contributed by the Various States.]

Virginia has had five Presidents, four of them having served in the
first quarter of a century of the national existence. Tennessee has had
three; Ohio, three; Massachusetts, two; New York, four; Illinois, two;
and New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana, each one. But Harrison,
though elected from Ohio, and Taylor, elected from Louisiana, were
both born in Virginia; and Lincoln, elected from Illinois, was born in
Kentucky. Therefore Virginia gave birth to seven of the Presidents. In
point of years, the ages of the Presidents have ranged from sixty-eight,
which was Harrison's age on his accession, to forty-six, which was
Grant's age when he became President; the average age being about
fifty-seven.




XV. MATERIAL PROGRESS.

[Sidenote: A Twofold Progress.]

It is manifestly impossible to give, within the brief scope of this
volume, more than a hint of the elements which have entered into and
stimulated the material progress of the United States during the past
century. That progress may be said to have been twofold; the progress
which we have shared in common with the civilized world, and the
progress which has been peculiar to ourselves. The agency which
invention and discovery have had in our advancement scarcely needs to be
pointed out. We have only to look around us, and remember the origin
of many of the comforts, conveniences, luxuries, nay even what we now
regard as necessities, that surround us and minister to our existence,
in order to comprehend how very vast, how much beyond easy calculation,
the material progress of the century has been.

[Sidenote: Modern Comforts.]

Every hour of the day, should you stop to reflect, you would find
yourself doing something, or aided by something, unknown to or unused
by the generation of 1776. Sitting in your parlor or library, your feet
rest upon carpets, which were introduced into American households in
1792; the book you are reading--which has far better paper, print,
binding and illustration than the old copy of "Pilgrim's Progress" which
your great-grandfather used to read--is lighted by gas, which did not
come into use till this century was well on its way; and that gas you
have lit by a friction match, an affair of marvellous simplicity, which
was unknown till after 1830.

[Sidenote: Improvement in Dress.]

You are writing, perhaps, with a steel pen; the Declaration of
Independence was signed with quills. It is, possibly, a rainy day. You
put on rubbers, and you carry an umbrella. The men of '76 had to do as
best they could without either. You burn coal in a furnace or stove;
they must fain have warmed themselves with more cheery but less
warming wood, in an open fireplace. Every article of your dress is an
improvement in convenience and comfort on those worn by Washington in
all his Presidential glory.

[Sidenote: Rapidity of Transit.]

Your walls are hung with photographs; your wife or daughter has a
sewing-machine. In the kitchen are endless contrivances which our
great-grandmothers would have greeted with speechless astonishment. You
can order a case of goods from Hong Kong on Monday, and be told that
they are ready for shipping on Thursday. You can go to San Francisco
in almost the same time that it took, only fifty years ago, to reach
Washington from New York. When General Jackson went to the capital to
be President, he could travel no faster than did the Jews, after the
captivity, from Babylon to Jerusalem.

[Sidenote: Material Growth.]

[Sidenote: Population.]

Taking a broader view--for we might go on with the material details of
progress all about us _ad infinitum_, did patience and strength hold
out--we look abroad over the land, and note the great elements of
a progress peculiarly American, in the growth and distribution of
population, in manufactures, agriculture, and commerce. Each and all
have been incalculably aided by perpetual invention. A few leading facts
must suffice to show that our orators, in their most daring flights, can
scarcely exaggerate the marvels of our material advance. The population
of this country in 1776, including slaves, was about two and three
quarters millions. In 1886, it is without doubt more than fifty
millions. In 1790, when the first census was taken, the figure was a
little less than four millions. A notable circumstance in reference to
the movement of our population has been the increase of the proportion
of dwellers in our cities to those in the rural districts. In 1790, only
one-thirtieth of our population inhabited the cities. In 1886, probably
nearly one-fourth are included in the cities.

In 1790 there were but six cities with a population of more than eight
thousand each. These were: Philadelphia, with about 42,500; New York,
with about 33,000; Boston, with about 18,000; Charleston, with about
16,300: Baltimore, with about 13,500; and Salem, with a little over
8000. The total was about 131,500. Now the aggregate of our urban
population is, probably, at least 12,000,000. It may be added that
the _centre_ of our population has shifted from a few miles east of
Baltimore, where it was in 1790, to about eight miles west by south from
Cincinnati, where it is now supposed to be.

[Sidenote: Agriculture.]

The earliest avocation of our colonies was that of agriculture; and
before 1776 our agricultural industries, owing to the discoveries which
had gradually been made as to the capabilities of the then settled
districts, had grown to important proportions. It needs but a glance
at the map to observe over what a vast area agricultural enterprise has
spread since 1790. We may fairly say that invention and improvement, in
the application of chemistry and mechanical discovery to the cultivation
of land, have kept pace with the territorial advance of agricultural
science. There can scarcely be named a farming operation which is not
performed by instruments far more perfect, and with a rapidity far
greater, than was possible with our ancestors.

[Sidenote: Cheaper Tools.]

Human labor has been greatly lessened in proportion to the results
obtained. Tools are cheaper; and whereas they were formerly made, to
a large extent, on the farms themselves, they are now perfected in
factories supplied with the most efficient machinery. There were in
1880 two thousand establishments for the manufacture of agricultural
implements, with an annual production valued at over $68,000,000. It
would take up too much space to give even a list of these implements;
suffice it to say that it is calculated that the value of those now in
use on American farms is at least $500,000,000. A hundred years ago a
man could only manage six bushels of grain a day--cutting, binding and
stocking, threshing and cleaning it. Now, with the aid of mechanical
appliances, a single man's labor can achieve almost eight times as much.

[Sidenote: Advance of Agricultural Arts]

To machinery must be added the advance in the arts of manuring,
draining, irrigation, and of grafting and obtaining greater varieties
of fruits and vegetables. The improvement in breeding and raising
live-stock must not be omitted. In this product the wealth of the
country was at least $2,000,000.000 in 1880.

[Sidenote: First Mills.]

Great as has been our progress in agriculture, it is scarcely so
remarkable as that in manufactures. In 1776 we were mostly a farming
community. Now, in New England at least, to a large extent in the Middle
States, and to some degree in the West and South, manufactures have
outstripped the farming industry. Manufacturing necessarily began,
indeed, very early in the settlement of the country; for ships had to
be built, and were built, soon after the colonization of Plymouth and
Boston. The first saw-mill was erected at Salmon Falls as early as 1635.
A printing-press was set up at Cambridge in 1638, and a book-bindery in
1663. The first fulling-mill for making cloth was started at Rowley in
1643. Iron manufacture was regularly established at Lynn in 1645. The
first successful cotton-mill in the United States was started by Samuel
Slater at Providence in 1793.

[Sidenote: The Cotton Industry.]

[Sidenote: Manufactures.]

The growth of the cotton industry may be appreciated when we state that
its extent in 1831 comprised 795 factories and 1,246,500 spindles;
while in 1880 there were over ten million spindles, and the value of
the products reached nearly two hundred million dollars annually. The
progress in woollen manufacture has been equally rapid. Since 1850 the
number of factories in this industry has more than doubled, while the
value of the products has increased over fourfold. Looking over the
whole field of manufacturing industries, it is stated that the
estimated capital employed throughout out the country in 1880, namely
$2,790,000,000, does not really approximate to the total amount.
According to the census of that year, moreover, over two and a half
millions of persons were engaged in manufacturing; while about seven and
a half millions were employed in agriculture, and nearly two millions
in trade and transportation. Only a hint can thus be attempted of our
progress in manufactures.

[Sidenote: Commercial Relations.]

It need scarcely be said that commerce, as the great medium of barter
and exchange between States and with foreign nations, has necessarily
kept pace with the development of the industries which we have briefly
glanced at. The increase of our mercantile marine, up to the unhappy
period of the war, when it was almost swept from the ocean, kept pace
with the ever-increasing needs of the business of the country. Now it is
again slowly reviving from the disasters of the civil conflict. During
the past century, our commercial relations have extended to the remotest
corners of the earth, whither we send the commodities we have to spare,
and whence we derive those which we need for comfort, convenience,
luxury, and wealth. The extent to which steam applied to water
navigation, and telegraphy laid not only over the continents but under
the oceans, have stimulated our commerce in common with that of the
world, is more easy to be observed in general than calculated in detail.
With many nations we have treaties of commerce, and the time may not
be long in coming when such pacts will be reciprocated between all the
trading nations of the world.




XVI. PROGRESS IN LITERATURE.

[Sidenote: English Literature.]

[Sidenote: Majority of Authors from New England.]

With English laws, customs, Protestantism, habits of thought, and
methods of culture, we also inherited the English literature. So rich
was already this inheritance when our colonies were settled, that there
was little need or incentive for the early Americans to strike out into
new literary paths, and create an original literature. Our ancestors
read Milton, Bunyan, Doddridge, Butler, Dryden, Pope, and Shakespeare.
It is a noteworthy fact that American literature not only took its start
from, but, up to within recent times, was mainly produced by the New
England and the Middle States. Even now, the noted writers in any
branch of letters born south of Virginia may almost be counted upon the
fingers. It is equally true that west of Ohio authors who have won
a general and permanent reputation are few. If we survey American
literature from the time of Cotton Mather (who may perhaps be called the
first author of the country whose works are still remembered and read)
to the present, we find that a majority of the best authors, both in
prose and verse, have been New Englanders.

[Sidenote: Ante-Revolutionary Writers.]

The rise of our literature having taken place in the colonies of
Puritan stock, and those most fully imbued with Puritan sobriety and
seriousness, it was natural that our earliest literary products should
be religious and philosophical. Cotton Mather, with his extravagant
"Magnolia"; Jonathan Edwards, with his stern treatise on the Will;
Franklin, with his shrewd maxims, and clear, strong, unadorned essays,
were about the only ante-revolutionary writers who are not by this
time forgotten. It was not surprising that the period of the Revolution
should develop a literature peculiarly political. There were, no doubt,
already poetasters, novelists, and essayists; but even their names are
strange to us of this age. Where are they and their works? What faint
traces are still left of them show us that they were mostly mere
imitators, and not brilliant ones, of the English authors of their day.

[Sidenote: Political Literature.]

But our political literature became, with the Revolution and its sequel,
most vigorous, philosophical, eloquent, and profound. The Declaration
itself was a masterpiece of political style, as well as of substance;
and Jefferson, its author, continuing for years after to discuss
political questions with a lucidity and vigor which were unrivalled
in America, took his place in literary history as perhaps our greatest
political writer. Close behind him came writers like Hamilton, Jay,
Madison, Ames, Freneau, and Tom Paine, all of them holding high rank in
this department of letters.

[Sidenote: Post-Revolutionary Writers.]

When we became an independent nation, literature naturally felt the
impulse and inspiration of the new national life. Poets and novelists
came up of a higher type than their ante-revolutionary predecessors;
writers like Dwight, Hopkinson, Trumbull, Barlow, Brockden Brown, and
Paine. But no one of these attained the rank of genius, nor did any of
them establish a great reputation; and if they are remembered at all,
it is rather by happy isolated pieces than by the general excellence of
their works. The American novels of the last century, unlike the English
novels of Swift, Fielding, and Goldsmith, have one and all passed into
oblivion.

[Sidenote: William Cullen Bryant.]

The position of American literature in 1886 may, especially in the
departments of history and poetry, fairly bear comparison with that of
England. Yet the first really great American authors, if we except
the theological and political writers of whom mention has been made,
published their first works at a period quite within the memory of
men still living. Our first great poet was William Cullen Bryant, who
survived to old age to observe to what vast proportions our literary
productions, both in quality and quantity, had grown. Our first great
biographer and essayist, Washington Irving, may be remembered as living
by the man of thirty-five. Our first eminent novelist, James Fenimore
Cooper, would only be ninety-seven if he were still among us. And our
first great historian, Prescott, died but twenty-seven years ago.

[Sidenote: Rise of American Poetry.]

The new career of American letters, indeed, may be said to have been
begun when William Cullen Bryant published "Thanatopsis," in the year
1816. Our writers then began to feel the influence of the vigorous
schools of English poetry of which Byron, Wordsworth, and Coleridge were
the shining lights. Like these, our own writers shook off the poetic
dominion of Pope, and declared form to be subordinate to the thought and
the feeling. Bryant, the enthusiastic disciple of Wordsworth, set the
bold example, and from that moment American literature received an
element of vitality which was given it its noble and rapid growth. It
is almost always the case that, in young nations, poetry is the first
branch of letters to be developed. The earliest masterpieces of Greek
and English literature are the "Iliad," the "Canterbury Tales," and
the "Faerie Queene." Perhaps the best German literature before Lessing,
worth remembering, was the songs of the Minnesinger.

[Sidenote: Earlier Poets.]

[Sidenote: Later Posts.]

In the United States, Bryant was soon followed by a succession of poets
whose productions clearly revealed the magnetism of the English revival,
and gave promise of the rise of that poetic art which we have seen reach
its culmination in our own day. Richard H. Dana wrote the "Buccaneer";
Fitz-Greene Halleck, "Marco Bozarris"; Edgar A. Poe "The Raven"; the
painter Allston turned easily from brush to pen, and added more than
one fine poem to our literature; Emerson rose to found a school of
transcendental poetry as well as philosophy; N.P. Willis became the
lyrical likeness of Moore on this side of the Atlantic; Percival reached
a brief popularity, and wrote some things well worthy of remembrance;
and the banker-poet Sprague filled a worthy place in our group of bards.
In the next generation came the poets of the highest culture and most
widely extended popularity: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf
Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

[Sidenote: Historians.]

The United States have produced a race of historians whose works and
names may not unfairly be ranked with those of Hume, Macaulay, Hallam,
and Froude. Prescott and Irving have been followed by Bancroft, Motley,
Parkman, Adams, Kirk, Goodwin, Young, and Ticknor. Sydney Smith, were
he now living, would find his question, "Who reads an American
book?" speedily answered; for in English drawing-rooms and on English
book-stalls "Evangeline" and "The Wayside Inn" are to be found quite
as often as "In Memoriam" and "Idyls of the King"; and "Ferdinand
and Isabella" and the "Rise of the Dutch Republic," as often as the
histories of Macaulay and Froude.

[Sidenote: Theological Literature.]

Our theologians have kept pace, in the amount and intellectual force of
their writings, with those of the older continent. It is not astonishing
that, in a nation established by a sect for the purpose of doing God
honor, a race of great theological authors should arise. The names
of Hopkins and Emmons, of Dwight, Channing, Norton, Theodore Parker,
Wayland, Bacon, Park, Bushnell, and many others, will recur, to remind
us how active religious philosophy and speculation have been from the
time of Jonathan Edwards to the present.

[Sidenote: Political and Legal Writers.]

In other departments of letters our progress during the century, though
less marked, has been very distinct. Webster, Everett, Sumner, Winthrop,
and, it may well be added, Lincoln, have made a literary art, as well as
a practical career, of politics. American legal writers, like Greenleaf,
Kent, Story, and Parsons, are quoted in the English as in the American
courts, as authorities worthy of respect and trust. In the domain of
searching literary criticism, England has perhaps produced no author
since the days of Gifford and Jeffrey superior in learning, acuteness,
and grace to Edwin P. Whipple.

[Sidenote: Humorists.]

[Sidenote: Writers of Fiction.]

Humorists have been many; in this field we count not only Lowell, Neal,
and Holmes, but the younger band, which includes Artemas Ward, Mark
Twain, Nasby, Bret Harte, Warner, and Leland. In the department of
essays and miscellaneous belles-lettres, the names of George William
Curtis, Thoreau, Tuckerman, Higginson, Marsh, and many more, crowd upon
the mind. Foremost among writers of fiction may be classed Cooper and
Nathaniel Hawthorne; and though in this field America can scarcely
contest the palm with the mother country, and the great purely national
novel has not yet appeared, the fertility of our novelists affords
promise that in time great and national romances will come. Meanwhile,
Mrs. Stowe, Donald G. Mitchell, T.B. Aldrich, William D. Howells (poet
as well as novelist), Henry James, Julian Hawthorne, Stockton, Miss
Phelps, E.E. Hale, and others, have delighted thousands by their
imaginative works.

[Sidenote: American Dictionaries.]

To present even a list, indeed, of American writers who may be called
noted, would much more than occupy the limits assigned to this chapter.
The multitude that crowds upon the memory, even in a cursory glance over
our history, is so large that even in mentioning any names at all one
runs the risk of some unjust omission. Suffice it to say that no field
of letters has remained wholly uncultivated in this country, and that
literary invention in the United States, though sometimes at a pause,
on the whole advances with their population and civilization. We have
philosophers, men of science, poets, critics, essayists, art writers,
theologians, fully able to cope with their literary brethren in the old
world. Let it be added that America has produced the two dictionaries
which are to-day paramount authority in every English school, college,
and university; and that in the science of language George P. Marsh and
William D. Whitney have carried their studies to depths as profound,
and have given the world results as valuable, as have any old-world
philologists.




XVII. PROGRESS IN THE ARTS.

[Sidenote: Old-time Simplicity.]

American art, like American letters, was of slow and difficult growth.
The early colonists, even those who, like the Virginia cavaliers and the
settlers in Maryland, possessed somewhat of the old-world culture and
taste, had little time for the ornamental. To worry a decent living
out of an inhospitable and reluctant soil, and to serve God after their
strict and severe fashion, were abundant occupation to the Puritans.
Therefore, could we carry ourselves back through the generations and
find ourselves in the streets and abodes of colonial New England, we
should observe but very few and slight attempts at decoration.

Pictures, unless it were now and then a scriptural or historical
print, there would be none on the plain walls with their heavy beams;
varnishing and frescoing would be but rare vanities, if indeed such
could be anywhere discovered at all; as for rare vases, or bronzes, or
marbles, such things were assuredly unknown. The austere simplicity of
the place, the people, and the age, forbade not only a footing to the
arts, but refused all nurture to imaginative growths. The Puritans
especially had the lofty scorn of art which resented the idea of a
picture or a statue in a church with as much indignation as they would
have shown to the Pope had he invited them to return to the fold of
Rome.

[Sidenote: John Singleton Copley.]

As there was very little literature for America to be proud of before
the Declaration of Independence, so, in casting our eyes backward over
the annals of art, we can discover but one notable native artist in the
period between the early settlements and the Revolution. This was John
Singleton Copley. He was born in Boston in 1738, and became the pupil
of Smybert, an English artist of some talent, who had accompanied Bishop
Berkeley across the Atlantic and had settled in Boston. The pupil soon
eclipsed the master, and for years Copley stood alone as a popular
portrait-painter in New England.

[Sidenote: Historical Pictures.]

But even the monopoly of his profession did not suffice to give him
adequate support, or gratify Copley's ambition; and he was forced to
seek in a more art-loving land the full recognition and reward of his
genius. He left behind him many portraits which still exist as precious
heirlooms in New England families, and just as the storm of the
Revolution was gathering, he set sail for the mother country, which he
never afterward left. Before he went, however, a son had been born to
him in Boston, who was destined long after to reach the highest summit
of English legal dignity and rank--Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst. Copley was
especially great as a portrait-painter, but he also sometimes adopted
historical subjects. Of these the best known is his "Death of Lord
Chatham," which now hangs in the South Kensington Museum, in London.

[Sidenote: Benjamin West.]

Copley was soon succeeded by an American artist whose triumphs in
England afterward far outshone his own. Benjamin West was born in
Pennsylvania in 1738, and was the youngest of nine children, of Quaker
parents. His genius for art was discovered in an amusing way. When he
was seven sears old he was put to the task of fanning the flies away
from the sleeping baby of one of his sisters. Instead of doing so, he
sketched her face with black and red ink. His mother snatched the paper
from him, looked at it with amazement, and exclaimed: "I declare, he has
made a likeness of little Sally." From the Indians be got some of the
pigments with which they smeared their faces, and his mother's indigo
bag supplied him with blue; while from the house cat's tail he took
the hair for his brushes. West was well known as a portrait-painter
at fifteen. His Quaker friends at first demurred at the vanity of his
calling: but in a solemn meeting the spirit happily moved them to bless
him and consecrate him to art. He found rich patrons, who sent him to
Italy, where he studied the great masters with zeal and enthusiasm.

[Sidenote: Royal Academy Founded.]

This sojourn in the favored land of art, and the chance which procured
him an introduction to King George III. as he was passing through
England on his way home, deprived his native country of this famous
artist. Received and petted at the English court, he took up his
permanent residence in London. There, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and
encouraged by the king, he founded the Royal Academy, of which he
became president; and as long as King George retained his mind, West was
constantly in the sunshine of royal favor. He was appointed "Painter
to His Majesty," and a splendid income rewarded his labors. He was
neglected by the Prince of Wales, but was recompensed for the loss of
his court associations by the patronage of the nobles and people.
Copley and West were the forerunners of a succession of American
portrait-painters not inferior in their art to their European
contemporaries. Both Copley and West aspired to something higher and
more creative than copying the lineaments of human faces, but it may be
said of them that in historical and imaginative painting they fell short
of the highest standard.

[Sidenote: Peale, Stuart, and Trumbull.]

Following Copley and West came, close together, three painters whose
works were of a high order, some of them being familiar to every one in
engraved copies. These were Charles Wilson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and
John Trumbull. Peale was a saddler's apprentice, Stuart the son of
a snuffmaker; Trumbull, on the other hand, was the son of one of the
foremost statesmen of the Revolution. To all three we owe portraits of
Washington from life. Peale painted him in his prime, just after the
battle of Monmouth; Trumbull painted him as he was a few years later,
at the surrender of Cornwallis; and Stuart painted him when the added
dignity of age had crept upon him, and he was President at Philadelphia.
Both Peale and Trumbull fought in the Revolution. Trumbull is now
best known as the painter of the historical pictures of the war for
independence which hang in the Capitol at Washington; of which the most
familiar is the "Battle of Bunker's Hill."

[Sidenote: Washington Allston.]

It could no longer be said, after these great painters had lived and
left enduring results of their labors, that America was devoid of a
genius for, or an appreciation of, art. The appearance of Washington
Allston, who as a colorist won the name of the "American Titian," and
whose noble conceptions of Biblical subjects, executed with wonderful
power, have given him permanent rank among the best artists of his time;
and of Henry Inman, whose versatile genius readily took up portrait,
historical, or landscape painting at will, served to carry American art
yet another grade higher. Rembrandt Peale sustained the tradition of his
father's ability by his own works; Sully came from England to win fame
here as a portrait-painter; Vanderlyn and many others rapidly rose
to establish art as a profession and adornment in this country. It is
worthy of note that two of the greatest of American inventors, Robert
Fulton and S.F.B. Morse, began life as artists; but found it more
profitable, in fame and fortune, to run steamboats and establish
telegraphs.

[Sidenote: Artists as Inventors.]

[Sidenote: Sculptors.]

The sister arts have nourished in this country in a degree scarcely less
marked than painting. In sculpture, a later but prolific growth with
us, the names of Hiram Powers, Horatio Greenough, Crawford, Ball, Story,
Ward, Rogers, Hart, and Harriet Hosmer, sufficiently attest the progress
made and the reputation established in this respect. In drawing,
caricature, water-colors, and other minor branches of art, our progress
has been scarcely less notable; we may fairly claim to have our Gillrays
and Cruikshanks as well as our English cousins.

[Sidenote: Art a Modern Necessity.]

Art, from having been a very rare luxury among our forefathers even as
lately as the beginning of this century, has become an adjunct, it may
even be said a necessity, of our civilization. Drawing is being taught
in our schools, and is regarded as one of the polite accomplishments of
educated young ladies. Art galleries have sprung up everywhere, and art
stores are popular resorts in our larger cities. Art societies thrive
and flourish in many States, and art teachers are in demand in most of
our towns. Colonies of artists swarm in stately buildings in New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia. The time has come when no artist of merit need
starve for want of patronage.

Thousands of Americans, travelling abroad every year, spend the larger
portion of their time in Europe in visiting those splendid art galleries
which the munificence and taste of kings and nobles have established,
and which are free to all the world. The taste for art has become
universal, and has penetrated all classes; few are the American houses,
in these days, wherein the evidences of this taste are not apparent.

[Sidenote: Music.]

Music has progressed with the other arts in popularity and culture;
though America, like England, has as yet produced no really great
composer. Every branch of music, however, is cultivated with us; and
music as a profession is even more certainly lucrative than painting.
America welcomes the most renowned singers and musicians in the world,
and the highest efforts of musical composition are performed here to
audiences sufficiently cultivated fully to enjoy and appreciate them.
We cannot doubt that the future will still further develop the American
love of all the arts; or that, in time, this continent will rival that
of Europe in great artistic productions.




XVIII. PROGRESS IN SCIENCE AND INVENTION.


[Sidenote: The Patent Office.]

The progress in practical science and invention, in this country and the
civilized world, has been so amazingly rapid during the present century,
that the merest hint of a few of the most important elements of that
progress can alone be given. The fertility of the human intellect, in
devising quicker and more exact methods of doing those things which
contribute to the wealth and the pleasure of man, has accomplished
results so vast and so varied since the Declaration of Independence,
that the mind cannot survey the smallest portion of this field without
bewilderment and wonder. If we should visit the Patent Office at
Washington, and give ourselves up to a scrutiny of its records, its
tabulated results, and its long rows of cases of models, we should in
time gain some idea of the extent to which American minds have carried
the effort of invention.

[Sidenote: Discoveries in the Exact Sciences.]

Yet the Patent Office, while it exhibits the results of American
invention, fails to show anything like the total amount of useful
discovery which has been achieved on this continent since the foundation
of the government. There are those who discover and invent, and who do
not patent. There are discoveries which cannot be circumscribed by the
filling-out of blank forms, and an official restriction on their use.
This is emphatically the case with discoveries in the exact sciences,
which, while they have added immeasurably to the knowledge of mankind,
have also attained results the most useful and practical.

[Sidenote: Meteorological Laws.]

Illustrations of this truth may be found in the progress made by such
sciences as astronomy and meteorology. No one can doubt the value of
the result which accrues to human lore from a more accurate knowledge
of astronomy, of the mutual influences of the solar system, and the
physical character of its members. Nor can we deny that the rapid
strides which have been made within thirty years in the science of
meteorology are of the most immediate benefit to the material interests
of men. The simple statement that the predictions of "Old Probabilities"
as to the weather prove, in a large majority of instances, to be
justified by the event,--founded as they are, not upon mere guesswork,
but upon ascertained meteorological laws and a proved uniformity in the
direction of storms,--is enough to show the importance of the recent
discoveries in this field. One has only to reflect upon the changes in
the course of little and of great events wrought by the weather, to be
convinced of their large and permanent value.

[Sidenote: Improvements in Machines and Methods.]

We can look in no direction, however, without at once in some degree
appreciating, and being astonished at, the metamorphosis which has been
effected by the activity of scientific invention and discovery of
the most palpably practical kind. No practical profession, trade, or
industry can be named in which the improvements in machinery and
methods have not been such, within the century, as to alter most of
its conditions, and very greatly to multiply its efficiency and
productiveness. These improvements have descended, too, from general
systems to the minutest details. Cloth fabrics are not only manufactured
on a very different scale and extent, but every little appliance of the
machinery has been made better, and does its appointed work faster and
with greater precision.

[Sidenote: Steam and Electricity.]

[Sidenote: Conveyances.]

If one were asked what two inventions made within the century have
wrought the greatest changes, the reply would be prompt that they are
locomotion by steam and communication by electricity. The steam-engine
and the steamship have made it possible to travel around the world, if
not in the eighty days required of Jules Verne's hero, at least in a
hundred; while the telegraph enables us to talk with our friends at the
antipodes--if such we have--within a week. What share America has had in
achieving these mighty agencies is signified by the names of Fulton
and Morse. Nor have other means of locomotion and communication been
neglected. The horse-car has to a large extent taken the place of the
omnibus and of the lumbering stage-coach; while vertical travelling, by
means of the elevator, has become easy and luxurious in our day. In the
making of carriages of every kind, the progress becomes very apparent
when we compare the light and elegant vehicles which fill our
fashionable avenues on a pleasant day, with the coaches in which
Washington and Lafayette deigned to ride on state occasions.

[Sidenote: Iron Manufactures.]

In the great industries, invention has supplied the means of changing
the rude ore or the raw material into every manifold form of use and
ornament, in an increased production which would have filled the men of
'76 with amazement. Machinery has come to do a vast amount of work which
manual labor used to do; yet, by a happy compensation in the economic
condition of things, human labor, far from being left in the lurch by
mechanical introduction and ever increasing efficiency, is in greater
demand than before. In the melting and puddling of iron, in its casting,
forging, and rolling, and especially in its turning and planing,
the inventions have been, perhaps, more striking than in any other
operations upon metals; and the importance of the improvements thus
effected in the manufacture of iron may be appreciated when we consider
to how many more precious uses iron is put than any other metal. The
advances made in the working of wood, and in that noble engineering
science which employs itself in the construction of canals, dikes, and
bridges, are not less notable.

[Sidenote: Machines and Weapons.]

To even mention the devices by which the manufacture of cotton and
woollen fabrics, of shoes, of silks, and very many other articles, has
been brought from rude processes to the rapid production seen to-day at
our great industrial centres, would require a volume. To America is due
the sewing-machine, which in the factory and in the household has given
a manifold value to labor, has cheapened time, and is assuredly one of
the chief triumphs of human ingenuity. We have done our part, too, in
devising deadly weapons for contending armies. The revolver, invented by
Samuel Colt, made a man armed with it six times as formidable as he was
before; and the breech-loader, first attempted by John Hall of Yarmouth,
Massachusetts, more than seventy years ago, was generally adopted in
Europe. It is said that the greater number of the military arms made
in the United States for Europe are on the breech-loading system.
The invention of what is called the principle of "assembling," which
consists in making the various parts of a machine "in distinct pieces
of fixed shape and dimensions, so that the corresponding parts are
interchangeable," has brought about a revolution in the manufacture
of other articles besides fire-arms. It is applied also to watches,
sewing-machines, knitting-machines, and even to agricultural implements
and the building of locomotive engines.

[Sidenote: Labor Saving Appliances.]

The kitchen, the farm, and the sitting-room have been invaded by
labor-saving appliances so numerous and so deft as to make each of these
domestic departments a sort of factory in itself. The spinning-wheel
has been abandoned for the sewing and the knitting machine, and the
hand-plough for the steam-plough, and the scythe for the mowing-machine,
and the rude kitchen knife and spoon for an endless variety
of contrivances, from the apple-parer, the egg-beater, and the
bean-shelters, to the lemon-squeezers, knife-sharpeners, and
coffee-mills.

[Sidenote: Various Inventions.]

It is equally vain to attempt the enumeration of the improvements in
the security of movable property, the rapidly changing devices for more
effective fire-alarms, the revolution in the system of fire prevention
with its steam-engine and its fire-alarm telegraph, the growing
efficiency of the science of aerostation, the invention of scales for
weighing heavy bodies, the processes for refining the precious metals,
the achieved idea of making ice by machinery, the great advance effected
in the making of glass, and the vast changes which have been wrought in
many respects by the perfection of india-rubber as an article of common
use.

[Sidenote: Surgical Progress.]

[Sidenote: Printing and Engraving.]

Nor must we forget to hint at the discoveries which have given new
effect to surgical skill--the discovery of anaesthetics, the perfection
of artificial limbs, the repair of the body, and the valuable method
of lithotrity; while even the match need not be disdained as one of the
chief inventions of the century. Paper, too, and engraving, and
printing (with all its complications of stereotyping, electrotyping, and
heliotyping), photography (with its constant improvements), can only be
mentioned to open the mind to a wide vista of marvellous triumphs.
We have but to glance along the stalls of a modern book-store, to
appreciate that the arts of printing and engraving have made a more
rapid progress during the past hundred years than during all the
previous centuries since the invention of type; while it may fairly
be said that the United States can at last boast that not only is her
literature worthy to be compared with that of England, but that it is
as well printed, illustrated, and bound, and is presented on home-made
paper as elegant and as durable, as are the choicest publications of
London and Paris.




XIX. POLITICAL CHANGES.


[Sidenote: Sources of Government.]

President Woolsey has forcibly remarked that states and forms of
government have had mainly two sources of origin. They have either
"slowly built themselves up for ages, finding support in historical
causes, and in past political habits"; or, they have been "the
artificial results of political theory." England presents the most
conspicuous modern example of the former class; while France, since the
Revolution, may be regarded as the chief modern example of the latter.
And as it was with England, our mother-country, so it has been, and
is, with us. It is true that the organism of the United States was the
immediate result of revolution, and is founded upon a constitution that
is written and fixed, or only with great pains and difficulty modified.
Yet, if we search further and deeper for the materials of which our
national fabric has been constructed, we shall easily recognize that our
freedom, like that of England, has really "broadened slowly down from
precedent to precedent."

[Sidenote: Gradual Growth of the American System.]

The growth towards American independence did not begin, the seeds of it
were not sown, either at Bunker's Hill or at Philadelphia. Indeed the
growth had then reached the period of fruitfulness. The progression
towards an independent nation, and a free nation, began at Plymouth and
at Jamestown. The Constitution only made articulate the spirit which had
been growing for more than a century, and it still left an unwritten law
set up by custom, habit, and characteristics most aptly nourished to the
ends reached in 1776, 1787, and 1789. While our written constitution was
made, we still retained the common law of England as the basis of our
own, and, like England, proceeded gradually to build upon this broad
foundation the superstructure of statute.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Government.]

If, therefore, the origin of our government was in one respect
revolutionary, it was not revolutionary as being sudden, accidental,
and without preparation. The revolution was, in fact, almost formal in a
political sense. The same people, the same traditions remained, and
the same growth went on. There was a new bond, binding the colonies
together, and holding them the more sturdily to purposes already formed
and undertaken. Yet it was certain that a new government, starting
forth, as ours did, at a period when political theories of diverse and
contradictory import were engaged in a very active struggle in Europe,
would meet with unusual difficulties, and be beset with grave dangers
from the outset.

[Sidenote: The Contest of Diverse Political Ideas.]

We note, therefore, in the very body which framed the constitution, the
rise of the contest out of which have come the most momentous changes
which our polity has since undergone. Happily for us, we have had to
witness no sudden and startling alterations in the form or spirit of our
institutions. What changes have occurred--and some have occurred of very
high and grave importance--have come gradually, have been foreseen. The
victories of parties in this country have never been by _coups d'état_.
They have been won by light of day, with banners flying and trumpets
sounding. We have not been subject to that dread of sudden calamity, of
a bean-stalk growth of anarchy in a night, which haunts the French to
this day, and which makes both kings and peoples in continental Europe
sensitive to every untoward rumor.

[Sidenote: Political Changes.]

Of all the political changes which the United States have undergone
during the ninety-nine years of our national career, the most
conspicuous, perhaps, is that which has tended to increase the powers
of the central government, and diminish those of the several States. The
contest between those who believed in a strong central power and those
who jealously defended the largest share of independence for the
several States compatible with the bond of federation, began in the
Constitutional Convention; and the instrument which was there framed,
after long discussion and many perils, was really a compromise between
these two principles. On the one hand, the equality and dignity of the
States were conceded in the structure of the Senate, in the division
of the electoral votes by States, and in the "reserved rights" of the
States, which have been so often and so strenuously insisted upon since.

[Sidenote: Early Political Parties.]

On the other, the words of the Constitution throughout imply that the
United States constitute more than a league--a nation; and the money
power was lodged in the lower house of Congress, elected by the people
of the nation, according to their population. The opposing ideas
regarding the powers of the States and of the government, respectively,
gave rise to the two first political parties, the Federalist and the
Republican; and these have had as successors parties which have fought
the same battle over and over again. The later Whigs and Republicans,
on the one hand, and the Democrats, on the other, have usually been the
champions, respectively, of a strong central government, and of State
rights. The older Democrats insisted on a strict construction of the
Constitution, and opposed the undertaking of internal improvements and
the maintenance of a national bank by the general government; and
for the first sixty years of this century the State rights principle
prevailed in national policy with little interruption.

[Sidenote: Rights of the States.]

[Sidenote: Tendency towards Centralization.]

It happened that the social institution and evil of slavery, which
had become confined to the Southern States, needed the defence of the
doctrine of State rights for its continuance. Nullification, in 1833,
and secession, in 1861, were the ultimate conclusions of that doctrine,
practically applied for the purpose of sustaining the system of human
bondage. A State had a right, it was said, to break her "compact"
with the Union; and the Southern States, following in the line of this
doctrine, did attempt to secede in order to maintain slavery. The war
which followed was the rock upon which the doctrine of State rights
split. The tide at once turned towards a strong central government.
Extraordinary powers, civil, military, and financial, were exercised to
put down the rebellion; and some of these powers, once assumed by the
general government, have been continued to this day. They have been
greatly strengthened by the enormous patronage which has accumulated
in the hands of the Executive; by the army of office-holders which,
scattered through the land, is subject to the influence of the central
power.

[Sidenote: Results of Emancipation.]

[Sidenote: The Fifteenth Amendment.]

Connected with this change are some other changes, scarcely less
important. One of these is the establishment, throughout the Union, of
universal male suffrage. The emancipation of the slaves wrought a social
and economic change the final results of which are still problematical.
It also introduced a new political element, by endowing millions of
ignorant men with electoral rights for their own protection. Gradually
yet steadily through our political history, restrictions upon the
suffrage have been swept away. At first, not only was there a property
qualification in many of the States, but foreigners and negroes were in
some of them altogether excluded from the polls. The fifteenth amendment
to the Constitution crowned the edifice of universal suffrage in the
United States; and the floodgates, once open, can never be shut again.
A set of men once armed with the vote cannot be deprived of it: and all
the efforts of Know-nothing movements will probably be vain, whether
directed against the freedman, the Chinaman, or the European emigrant.
The only way to meet the evils which accompany universal suffrage is
by paths of education, and the creation of a pure and sincere public
spirit.

[Sidenote: The Political Changes Gradual.]

[Sidenote: Changes Effected by the Civil War.]

It may be said, then, of the few great political changes which have
come over the spirit of our body politic, that they have been, like the
English revolutions, gradual, and, if on one occasion violent, at least
long contemplated and foreshadowed. On questions of commercial finance,
we are still where we were half a century ago. The antagonistic
principles of a protective tariff and of free trade are still struggling
for the mastery. The greatest changes--that produced on the government
in aggrandizing it at the expense of the States, and that produced on
the South by freeing and enfranchising the blacks--were brought about
by the civil war. The evil results which have flowed from them, mingled
with great good, are evident in many ways. Is it too much to hope that,
a generation hence, those of us who survive will look back gratefully
upon a survival of the good only wrought by these changes; and upon
a completed reform of the civil service, a purified government and
Congress, a people no longer eager to grow suddenly rich by wild
speculation, but content with the moderate prosperity attained by steady
enterprise and wholesome trade; and a South educated and reconciled,
with its civil and political freedom assured by its own enforcement of
equal law?




FOOTNOTES:


[Footnote 1: Monroe was chosen for his second term by every vote but
one in the Electoral College. That vote was given by Mr. Hummer of New
Hampshire, on the ground that it was a dangerous precedent to elect a
President unanimously.]






End of Project Gutenberg's The Nation in a Nutshell, by George Makepeace Towle