CAUSES Ar IN AMERICAN HISTORY EDWIN W. MORSE hi »l«'r'''',%^V'r.'.'^' ■<■■'■■ ' '. ' 'fli %^^m'^yi'-m- r ■'■'■'4 i^i^if ^''-■■/■..ni^t A'.,ti ^ -''■.■fir, k i ; ^„.' ,. 4''.^ -. .«' .? .-v ., Vjia ':u:^'mMr^ Class Book.. Copyright 1^^ CORfRIGHT BEPOSIIi « Wf i CAUSES AND EFFECTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY %i ; ■->iiK teii > ii^ fc^* ««■. ^v^*^^^ jy " AP"*! ii__^ m^^ ^" N^ .\~^^~~^ *^«3^^^^"*^ ^'■^^^^■mgi^ ■ >^ rx Vi J ^ ^^^^BflPw"^'" >v m w BP^ ^^ ^^Bli^^^^^^^^^^l wtm ^^-. , ■ ^1» |g ^^^^^^^^^^^^E^ ^^^^^^H^^ "^ m ^ SANTA MARIA," FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS'S FLEET, IN DUPLICATE. Arriving at New York from Spain, in i8q3, to take part in the World's Columbian Exposition. CAUSES AND EFFECTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY THE STORY OF THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATION BY EDWIN W. MORSE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, FACSIMILES, AND MAPS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1912 E'7i Copyright, 1912, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published September, 1912 TO EVERY LOVER OF HIS COUNTRY WHO HAS PRIDE IN ITS PAST AND FAITH IN ITS FUTURE PREFACE Few things are drier or duller than the bare facts of his- tory. Few things are more interesting than the reasons why great events happened as they did and why the con- sequences of these happenings were what they were. Few things are more difficult than to prevent a multiplicity of details from crowding into an historical picture and from obscuring what is essential, significant, important. This narrative ignores details. It deals not so much with facts as with causes and effects — with the large cur- rents of thought, feeling, and action which from generation to generation, especially through the economic and intel- lectual influences of each period, have modified and shaped the destinies of the American people. The purpose of the book is thus to supply to the imagination a key to the real meaning of the evolutions, often complex and apparently confusing, of the historical pageant as it passes across the stage. If this purpose has been accomplished with the sim- plicity, clearness, and accuracy for which the author has striven throughout, the book should prove equally service- able as an introduction to American history which, by indicating its larger relations of cause and effect, will in- spire younger readers with a zeal for further and more intimate study, and as an interpretation of American his- tory which may give a new meaning to facts already famil- Vlll PREFACE Jar to older readers. Both of these classes of readers will find that the emphasis in this account of the development of the nation has been laid not upon the evolution of politi- cal parties, except in so far as parties became the instru- ments for the advancement of great political, economic, or moral ideas, but upon the important parts which intel- lectual and religious freedom, industrial and commercial activity, and even literature and the fine arts, not to include other kindred influences, have played in shaping the life of the people. A glance at the illustrations will suffice to show that they have been selected solely for their historical value as a pictorial commentary, contemporaneous whenever pos- sible, upon the more salient features of the narrative. E. W. M. CONTENTS DISCOVERERS Why the Northmen migrated from Norway to Iceland How Eric the Red came to discover Greenland Leif, Eric's son, reaches Vinland (probably Nova Scotia) by accident . ........ Why no effort was made to extend the discoveries . Marco Polo and others bring news from the far East Necessity of a water route to Asia .... Efforts of Prince Henry of Portugal to solve the problem Columbus turns his eyes to the west .... His four voyages in search of Cipango (Japan) and Cathay (China) ......... He dies without realizing that he has discovered a new hemi sphere ......... Vasco da Gama rounds Africa and reaches the Indies . Voyages of the Cabots made the basis for English claims Origin of the name America ...... II EXPLORERS AND CONQUERORS Spain at the height of her power .... Results of the expeditions of Balboa and Magellan Discoveries of Cartier and Drake .... Conquest of Mexico and Peru by Cortes and Pizarro Explorations of De Vaca, De Soto, and Coronado French interest in exploration half-hearted . Voyages of Verrazzano and Gomez Cartier's voyages establish the French claim to Canada Decline in the energy of Spanish exploration . lO II 12 12 13 13 13 14 14 16 16 CONTENTS Massacre of the French PIuKuenots in Florida by Menendez de Aviles ...... Attitude of Spain toward heretics . English enterprise under Elizabeth What Hawkins and Drake accomplished Influence of Hakluyt's collections of narratives Effects of the destruction of the Spanish Armada 16 18 18 18 20 20 III COLONISTS Two main streams flow from England ..... Early Jamestown settlers in search of gold or a way to the South Sea (Pacific) John Rolfe develops tobacco culture ..... Negro slave labor introduced by a Dutch vessel Influence of these incidents upon the civilization of \irginia and Maryland ........ Motives of the Pilgrims in leaving Holland .... Sailing for \'irginia, chance carries them to Massachusetts . The Puritans leave England to make homes and to secure religious freedom ........ Causes of the Cavalier migration to \'irginia The descendants of these families The Dutch, following Henry Hudson, reveal a greater genius for trade than for government The English take possession of New Amsterdam in 1664 Settlement of Maryland and Pennsylvania .... Both possess proprietary forms of government Turbulence and disorder in the Carolinas .... The \'irginia colonists stay in the Church of England . Creat influence of the Congregational church and ministry in New England Desire for peace and quiet the cause of religious persecutions The Flartford and New Haven colonies independent common- wealths .......... Penn and his Quaker followers ...... Influence of Roger Williams and Penn with tin- Indians Causes of Bacon's rebellion ....... 22 22 2 2 24 26 26 28 28 28 20 20 31 31 32 32 CONTENTS xi PAGE Importance of the alliance of the Dutch, and later the English, with the Five Nations . . . . .32 A bulwark against the French and their Algonquin allies from the north ......... 33 Educational matters in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Netherland ......... 33 Harvard College founded in 1636 ...... 33 IV NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA .Motives of the French in establishing settlements in Canada 35 Their policy as carried out by Champlain and his successors 35 Character and achievements of Champlain .... 36 How the alliance between the Five Nations and the Dutch was brought about ........ 36 Marquette and Joliet reach the Mississippi River . . -38 By floating to its mouth La Salle, in 1682, establishes the French claim to the water-shed of the Mississippi . 40 Quebec for a few years in the hands of the English ... 40 Effects in America of the wars between England and France from 1688 to 1763 ........ 42 Efforts of Count Frontenac and his successors to keep the Five Nations neutral and the New England tribes hostile to the English ........ 43 The massacre at Deerfield, Mass. ...... 44 William Pitt the elder plans to break down the French bar- rier to the westward expansion of the English colonies . 44 George Washington's first appearance on the historical stage 44 The French power finally broken by the fall of Quebec and Montreal ......... 45 V GROWTH OF THE COLONIES Consequences of the revolution in 1688 placing William and Mary on the English throne ...... 47 English origin of the witchcraft delusion .... 47 Royal governors under William . . . . . .48 xii CONTENTS PAGE Causes of annoyance and irritation 50 Pennsylvania and Maryland under proprietary governments until the Revolutionary War . . . . . -51 Diversified pursuits of the people . . . . . -52 Changes in the social, religious, and political life of the people 52 Cause of the beginning of the decline in influence of the New England ministry ......'. Reaction from the severity of Puritan rule . The "Great Revival" seeks to bring men back to the old standards ........ Presbyterianism establishes itself in the Valley of Virginia Advances in popular education ..... Private instruction in Virginia ..... Newspapers begin publication in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere ....... 56 Foundations of institutions of higher learning laid . . 56 VI RESISTANCE TO BRITISH TYRANNY No precedents to guide the King and his ministers . . 59 The British answer to the "Boston massacre" ... 59 Danger to the King of yielding to the colonists ... 60 Unable to understand that principle, not expediency, gov- erned the Americans ....... 60 Difference between the Stamp Act and the Townshcnd acts 62 The aim of Lord North's bills .62 New York, at first wavering, sides finally with her sister provinces ......... 64 Massachusetts and Virginia stand together .... 64 Patrick Henry an eloquent leader 64 All the colonies make common cause with Massachusetts after the port of Boston is closed ..... 64 Samuel Adams the creator of the bond of union ... 65 The first Continental Congress meets 65 Why the colonists as a whole had at this time no desire for independence ......... 65 Viewsof Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington on independence 66 Separation finally accepted as the only solution of the problem 66 Samuel Adams always working for that end .... 66 CONTENTS xiu VII INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION Evacuation of Boston by the British . . . . . Washington's resourcefulness after defeat in the battle of Long Island ..... Significance of Trenton and Princeton . Effect of Paine's Common Sense The Declaration of Independence . The victory of Saratoga leads to the treaty with France And makes any further incursion from Canada impossible Washington's share in the Saratoga campaign Compensations for the battles of the Brandywine and Ger- mantown ..... French help secured under the treaty . Charles Lee's treachery at Monmouth . Washington's two strategic principles . What was accomplished by this policy . Military inefficiency of Howe and Clinton Energy and ability of General Greene . Washington's plan to entrap Cornwallis Aid from the French fleet How the surrender at Yorktown was brought about Treaty of peace signed ...... Part played in the war by American privateers Paul Jones's exploit in the Bonhovime Richard Character of Washington ..... The obstacles which he overcame .... PAGE 69 69 70 70 70 72 72 72 72 74 74 75 75 76 76 78 78 79 79 79 80 80 80 1/ VIII THIRTEEN JEALOUS STATES The situation at the end of the war ..... 82 Changes in the direction of greater freedom .... 83 Prohibition of the slave trade and gradual emancipation fore- shadowed ......... 83 Origin and growth of the idea of federation .... 84 Why the federal union proposed by Franklin in 1754 was rejected 84 XIV CONTENTS Defects of the Articles of Confederation The states jealous of their rights .... Washington's plan for a national system How Maryland took the leadership toward this goal The Ordinance of 17S7 a result .... Its provisions and its significance .... Causes which made the Ordinance of 17S7 possible The fear of anarchy or civil war .... The Constitutional Convention called to avert this danger IX UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION The Constitutional Convention a representative body The result of its deliberations a remarkable document Important provisions based on compromises . The Federalist essays as an interpretation of the Constitution All the states finally ratify the Constitution . The Federalist party win the first election Organization of the new government Hamilton's qualities as Secretary of the Treasury His financial and economic policy What he hoped to accomplish The Republican party favors a strict construction of the Constitution ........ Effects of foreign affairs on both parties The power of the Federalists begins to wane . Jay negotiates a treaty with England in order to avert wa American commerce stimulated as a consequence . The Alien and Sedition laws the crowning blunder of the Fed- eralists ......... Purpose of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions . Demoralized, the Federalists lose the election of iSoo Far-reaching effects of the invention of the cotton-gin Cotton mills and other industries established Application of steam power to boats Rapid increase in population .... New states admitted to the federal Union The centre of population moves westward CONTENTS AN ERA OF EXPANSION The purchase of Louisiana by Jefferson . Jefferson's passion for peace .... New influences of the American democracy . What the Louisiana purchase embraced Lewis and Clark cross the continent Captain Gray discovers and names the Columbia The expeditions of Captain Pike Fulton drives the Clermont to Albany and back power ....... Steam power revolutionizes inland water transport The Barbary pirates are subdued . New England whale fisheries .... American vessels in the foreign trade Character of the exports and imports The population in 1810 . PACE loS 106 107 107 108 River no III by steam 112 ation 112 112 114 114 IIS 116 XI THE WAR OF l8l2 AND ITS CAUSES Attitude of Jefferson toward the merchant marine Indignities inflicted upon .'Kmerican sailors and vessels England's desire to cripple American commerce Results of her policy of impressing American seamen England's defense of this policy How American shipping suffered . The object of the embargo .... The Non-intercourse law takes its place Popular resentment increases War is declared ...... Victories of American frigates Reasons for American superiority on the sea . The battles of Lake Erie and Lake Champlain The battle of New Orleans .... Influences which brought about peace . Ravages of American privateers The Federalists as a party disappear 117 117 117 117 118 119 119 120 120 120 122 123 124 124 124 125 126 CONTENTS XII INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT The tide of migration sets westward The Cumberland Road constructed The Erie Canal completed in 1825 Other canal systems built Railroad construction after 1830 . Locomotive engines come into use . Increase of population in the West and Southwest The tide of immigration begins to tlow heavily Causes and quality of this immigration . Numbers and destinations of these immigrants Inventions and new industries Expansion of the national domain . The Floridas purchased and Texas wins its independence Causes and results of the war with Mexico Gold is discovered in California New states received into the federal Union Tariff legislation from 1816 to 1846 Andrew Jackson represents the new democracy Economic changes in the South The panic of 1837 and its causes . The Monroe Doctrine enunciated . XIII HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE Activity of American shipping interests after the War of 181 2 Packet ships for north Atlantic service . A prosperous decade for American shipping English jealousy and alarm ... American ships make world-wide voyages The New England whalemen ... Causes of the decline in the whaling industry Steam power applied to vessels for transatlantic service The Cunard line established . Ericsson invents the screw propeller CONTENTS American and British steamships . Congress changes its attitude regarding subsidies Disasters to the Collins line steamships . Tonnage figures of American shipping . Supremacy of American clipper ships Exports chiefly agricultural products Causes of the decline in American shipping Outlook for the merchant marine . Free materials for shipbuilding xvu PAGE 148 148 148 XIV GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN LETTERS Early sensitiveness to English criticism . Influences toward literary expression Scott, Byron, and Goethe .... Effects of foreign studies and travel on American si writers ....... Currents of new ideas set in motion Irving the pioneer in American fiction . Cooper wins a wide audience by his novels His characteristics as a writer Poe's characters and technique in his stories . Hawthorne's romances ..... Two Years Before the Mast and U)iclc Tom's CahL Bryant, poet and journalist .... Poe's philosophy of the art of poetry Lowell's most characteristic verse . Longfellow and Whittier .... The poems of Emerson ..... Four historical writers of distinction Bancroft and Prescott ..... Motley and Parkman ..... The breakfast-table philosophy of Holmes and th Lowell ....... Permanent value of Emerson's essays • 155 . 156 156 cholars anc 156 157 . 157 . 158 . 158 150 160 n 161 161 , 162 . 162 . 164 . 165 i6s 165 166 e essays of 166 168 XVlll CONTENTS XV SLAVERY AND SECESSION Reasons for the attitude of the South toward slavery Raising of slaves an important industry. Attempts to legalize the African slave trade Extent of the domestic trade in slaves . Financial interest of the South in slavery Importance and influence of the institution The Missouri Compromise Rise of the abolitionists under Garrison Southern resentment natural Attempts of the South to extend slavery Clay's Compromise of 1850 . Northern sympathizers with slavery The Kansas-Nebraska act a turning-point Kansas becomes a battle-ground Causes of the change in northern sentiment Origin of the Republican party Fremont defeated in 1856 New anti-slavery leaders appear Crimes against life and property in Kansas Assault of Brooks upon Sumner Decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case Object and results of John Brown's raid Significance of the Lincoln-Douglas debates The slave owners desert Douglas . Nomination and election of Lincoln Why secession was inevitable from the point of view of the South ...... The choice between slavery and the Union Jefferson Davis elected President of the Confederate States of America ..... Some compromise still looked for . Peace-at-any-price leaders in the North . Lincoln makes the preservation of the Union the issue Results of this master-stroke of statesmanship CONTENTS XVI CIVIL WAR The colossal task entrusted to Lincoln . The government unprepared for war Buchanan merely marks time .... At first Union forces out-generalled and out -fought McClellan as a commander ..... Different conditions in the West .... Grant at Fort Donelson and Shiloh Capture of New Orleans and surrender of Vicksburg divide the South ......... The Chattanooga campaign . Grant made commander-in-chief Menace of English or French intervention English sympathy with the South . The Trent affair ..... Effect of the Emancipation Proclamation Charles Francis Adams in England Anglo-Confederate commerce destroyers Results of the fight between the Moiiilor and the Mcr. Farragut at Mobile Bay Renomination of Lincoln in 1864 . The situation critical .... McClellan nominated by the Democrats Opportune victories for the Republicans Lincoln re-elected ..... Causes of the collapse of the Confederacy Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House English intervention a costly delusion . The South exhausted through starvation Generals who distinguished themselves . Davis's character and temperament Cost of the war to the North and the South Relative numbers and losses . Forces more evenly matched than is generally supposed Fruits of the war . Assassination of Lincoln His character .... The Gettysburg address PAGE 187 187 188 188 189 190 192 192 192 193 194 194 195 196 196 196 198 198 198 199 199 200 200 202 203 203 204 206 206 207 207 CONTENTS XVII RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION Demoralizing effects of the war Why the ballot was given to the negro .... Ex-Confederates believed to be enemies of the Union The danger a real one to the men of that day The "carpet-baggers" and "scalawags" in control in the South ......... Restoration of white leadership ..... Tweed and the Tammany ring ..... The gas ring in Philadelphia ...... Grant the prey of unscrupulous schemers The whiskey ring frauds ...... General Belknap forced to resign from the cabinet Financial panic of 1873 and its causes .... The Credit Mobilier scandal ...... Blaine's relations with railway corporations fatal to his polit ical ambition ........ Creditable acts of Grant's administrations The award of the Geneva Tribunal .... Issues in the Hayes-Tilden campaign .... How the South justifies intimidation .... XVIII POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS A protective tariff an issue in i860 Industrial interests favor a high tariff Democratic support for a high tariff Cleveland's efforts to reduce duties The Wilson bill and the Mills bill . Republican extravagance Power of business interests in regulating the t The Dingley bill and the Payne-Aldrich bill A board of tariff experts created The contest for sound money The West and the South demand more money Popularity of the greenback .... CONTENTS XXI Legislation in favor of silver The Bland-Allison bill International bi-metallism .... The Sherman Silver Purchase bill Cleveland buys gold to protect the government's Other causes of the panic of 1893 . Defeat of Bryan and free silver in 1896 Revival of business in McKinley's administration National finances placed on a gold basis in 1900 End of the agitation for free silver The panic of 1907 and its causes . The need of a new monetary system The purchase of Alaska and its results . Venezuela and the Monroe Doctrine Cleveland's attitude in this affair . A great danger happily averted Operation of the Pendleton Civil Service law Dr. Charles W. Eliot on the need of further reform President Taft's recommendations . The pohticians in the way of the reform Inventive ingenuity of the people . The telephone and the electric light Influence of other inventions . Aeroplanes and dirigible balloons . PAGE 229 230 230 230 231 232 232 232 232 232 232 233 234 234 235 236 236 236 238 238 238 239 239 XIX BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM The conflict between industrial combination and competition Purpose of the Interstate Commerce law Rise of industrial combinations or trusts The Sherman Anti-trust bill and its object Ineffective suits brought under it . Effects of the war with Spain upon the business imagination A great movement toward industrial consolidation Technical conditions all favorable ..... Combinations of railway systems ..... Enormous financial resources concentrated The dangers in the situation . . . . . 240 240 241 241 242 243 243 243 244 245 245 xxu CONTENTS Roosevell's work in averting these dangers His remedy for threatened evils Suits begun against two great trusts Denounced for "interfering with Ijusincss" The Anti-trust law generally accepted as salutary Causes of the war with Spain The blowing up of the Maine The Spaniards easily conquered Two military lessons of the war The anti-imperialistic agitation The United States becomes a world-power Its influence in Chinese affairs Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands The Panama Canal ..... The United States gives independence to Cuba Fate of the new republic still in the balance . Roosevelt's restless energy .... His work in checking the trusts and in conserving pub sources ........ 245 246 246 248 248 248 249 250 250 250 252 252 253 253 254 256 256 257 XX LITERATURE, FINE .ARTS, .AND EDUCATION Intellectual and a.'sthetic pursuits not altoget A few of Mark Twain's books noteworthy Whitman's place still in doubt A group of historians .... Works in scholarship and criticism Writers of novels and short stories Mr. Howells's literary career . Poetry languishes ..... .American painters and sculptors Interest in art in the middle and far West .Advances in architecture The future full of promise Merchant princes as founders of museums a Famous private collections Development in music .... Stagnation in the drama ther neglected 258 258 258 259 259 260 261 261 262 263 263 264 md a!- collectors 264 266 267 267 CONTENTS xxiii PAGE Popular and advanced education ...... 267 Mr. Rockefeller's and Mr. Carnegie's benefactions . . 268 Princely gifts from other sources ...... 268 The public school system of the country .... 270 Higher education for men and women . . . . .270 Reasons for the tendency toward industrial and trade schools 271 Instruction in scientific farming ...... 271 Athletic sports in the colleges . . . . . .272 Effects of the increase in the size of colleges and universities 273 America's contributions to civilization, according to President Eliot . . . . ... . . .273 How the American race-mind has expressed itself . . . 273 XXI SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH Statistics of the growth of the population Total wealth of the nation .... Foreign elements in the population Sources of foreign immigration Destinations of immigrants .... Percentages of foreign element in different states Drawn to America by the factory system Growth of manufacturing interests The farms of the country .... Not keeping pace with manufactures or population The tendency everywhere from the field to the factory . More consumers than producers, proportionately, of food stuffs ......... The remedies — more and better farms .... Mineral resources of the country ..... Production of iron in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States ....... Prosperity comes to the South Development of manufactures, mining, and diversified farming Value of the coastwise fishing industry .... Character and value of exports . . . . . Exports of manufactured iron and steel Nine-tenths of American exports carried in foreign vessels 275 275 276 276 277 277 278 278 279 280 280 282 282 283 283 284 284 286 286 287 287 xxiv CONTENTS PAGE Economic problems confronting I he country .... 287 New political ideas ........ 288 Relations of capital, labor, and society ..... 289 An encouraging outlook ....... 289 IXDKX ........... 291 ILLUSTRATIONS, FAC-SIMILES AND MAPS Santa Maria, Flagship of Columbus's Fleet, in Duplicate . Frontispiece PACE A Viking War-Vessel 2 The Fleet of Columbus 9 A Spanish Galleon of the Sixteenth Century 15 An English Ship of Elizabeth's Time 17 Fac-simile of the Title-Page of the American Volume of Hakluyt's Voyages, Enlarged Edition of 1598-1600 19 Ruins of the Old Church on the Site of Jamestown, Virginia . . 23 The Mayflower 25 Champlain's Picture of Quebec in 1609 37 Drawing of Niagara Falls by Hennepin, an Associate of La Salle . 39 Franquelin's Great Map of 1684 ....... 41 View of the Town of New York, from Brooklyn Heights, in 1679 . 49 Fragment, in Reduced Fac-simile, of the Boston Ncws-Lctlcr . . 55 Fac-simile, Reduced, of the Title-Page of Poor Richard's Almanac . 57 The Boston Massacre 61 St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia 63 Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia 67 A View of Boston in 1768 ......... 71 Fac-simile of Rough Draft of Opening Sentences of the Declaration of Independence .......... 73 Old Fort Putnam — The Key to the Defenses at West Point— Showing the Magazines .......... 77 Fac-similes of the Signatures of the American Commissioners to the Treaty of Paris .......... 85 Whitney's Cotton-Gin . loi Section of Claik's Map of His Route 109 .XXV xxvi ILLUSTRATIONS, FAC-SIMILES AND MAPS The Clermont in Duplicate at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, 1909 The United States Frigate Constitution .... Erie Canal and Aqueduct Over the IMohawk River at Rexford Flats New York Peter Cooper's Working Model for a Locomotive Engine, Thumb ......... The Town of Chicago in 1S31 Packet Ship Montezuma, of 1,070 Tons, of the Black Ball Line Clipper Ship Staghound, of 1,535 Tons .... Commencement Day at Harvard in Holmes's Time, 1825-1829 \'iew from the Orchard of Emerson's House at Concord Mrs. Stowe's Home in Brunswick, Maine, in which Uncle Tom' Cabin was Written Part of the Encampment of the Army of the Potomac Fac-simile of President Lincoln's Letter to Mrs. Bixby, of Boston The McLean House at Appomattox Court House, in which Lee Sur rendered to Grant ........ Tom Review of the Union Armies in Washington, May, 1S64 Evidence in Ku Kiux Klan Cases before the Congressional Com mittee The Tammany Ring ......... Thomas A. Edison at Work in His Laboratory in Orange, New Jersey United Slates Troops Landing at Daiquire, Cuba ... Battle-Ship Oregon under Way in New York Harbor ... Panama Canal — Gatun Upper Locks, East Chamber, Looking South December 16, 1910 . ....... The Administration Building at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 ......... The Carnegie Library at Pittsburgh Two Views of a Giant Harvester, as Used in California The Price-Campbell Cotton-Picking Machine, Which Does the Work of Fifty Persons . . ... CAUSES AND EFFECTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY DISCOVERERS How happened it that the Northmen were the discov- erers of America? In the last quarter of the ninth cen- tury there was a great migration from Norway of petty princes and their followers. Having lost their indepen- dence in a desperate naval battle in 872, thousands.of them chose to abandon Norway rather than remain as vassals of the victorious king, Harold Fairhair. These men were of a hardy, venturesome, seafaring race. They were called Vikings, not because they were kingly either in character or in bearing, but because they fitted out their ships in the viks, which was the Norwegian name for the deep bays that indent the coast of that rugged land. The sea had no terrors for them; they knew it in all its moods. They had both courage and skill, and sailed these wild northern waters without fear. One of their smaller fighting vessels for use along the coast was unearthed a few years ago in a good state of preservation, and is now to be seen at Christiania. When these Vikings left their homes in Norway some of them sailed away to France, others to England, Scotland or Ireland, and more yet to Iceland, across six hundred miles of ocean to the west, where they established a colony. So many of their fellow-countrymen followed them that before many years Iceland had a flourishing population of 3 4 DISCOVERERS fifty thousand. This colony of Northmen had been in existence more than a hundred years when one of its mem- bers, Eric the Red, became so dangerous, through the murders which he and his followers committed, that he was declared an outlaw. The sea offered the easiest and surest means of escape to safety, and Eric the Red sailed away. It was common rumor among the Vikings of that day that land of some sort — an island, probably — lay not far to the westward, and Eric the Red set out to see for himself if this report were true. As a matter of fact, of which Eric the Red was of course ignorant, Greenland at its nearest point lay only half as far, about two hundred and fifty miles, to the northwest as Scotland was to the southeast, so that the distance for a Viking ship and a Viking crew of those days was comparatively short. Voy- ages of five and six hundred miles were common occur- rences to the Northmen. They had to make voyages of this length in order to find markets for the oil, skins, wool and fish in which they traded. It was in 983 that Eric the Red set 'sail from Iceland and, after a short voyage to the westward, landed on the coast of Greenland. With something of the assurance of a modern real-estate promoter, he called this snow-and- ice-clad country Greenland in the hope and belief that the name would be alluring to settlers. He made his home in the new land and spent several years in exploring the south and west coasts. At the end of the century Eric's son Leif , leaving Norway as a missionary in the service of King Olaf to proclaim Christianity in Greenland, was carried by adverse winds LANDS THE NORTHMEN REACHED 5 far to the south of his destination, and discovered a land thereafter called Vinland, where there were "self-sown wheat [wild rice] fields and vines growing." Leif made his way northward to the Greenland settlements with this news, and as a result other ships voyaged to the south, to Labrador, Newfoundland and even Nova Scotia, the explorers bringing back descriptions of the strange lands they had found and of the natives whom they had en- countered. Modern scholarship identifies Labrador as the Helluland, Newfoundland as the Markland and Nova Scotia as the Vinland of the Icelandic sagas in which these voyages are described, although there are those who argue that the Northmen came further south than Nova Scotia. Greenland remained a Norse colony for four centuries, but the Northmen made no effort of which there is any record to extend their colonies to the south. The reason is supposed to have been the lack of weapons with which to conquer the natives, whom they first encountered in Nova Scotia. The Spaniards and Enghsh of five centuries later were better armed. Great achievements are never the result of sudden in- spiration; they are more often accidental, as in the case of Leif Ericsson's discovery of Vinland, or the fruit of pa- tient investigation, research, reflection, preparation. Years, oftentimes generations, pass before the vision of the poet or philosopher is shared by the man of action who has energy and scientific knowledge sufiicient to turn the dream into deeds. It was so with Columbus. Five hundred years were to pass after the expedition of the Northmen to Greenland and to Nova Scotia before Columbus was to set out from 6 DISCOVERERS Spain on his memorable voyage. But during fully half of that long period the way was slowly but surely preparing for him. The sequence of events during this period is noteworthy. In the middle of the thirteenth century two venturesome Franciscan friars, returning from a journey to the Far East, brought to Europe the first news that an open ocean lay to the east of Cathay, as China was called. Toward the end of the same century Marco Polo and his brother returned to Venice after an absence of twenty-four years, with marvellous stories of the wealth and splendor of the cities of Cathay, India, Cipango, as Japan was called in those days, and of the spice-growing islands off their coasts. This wonderful news inflamed the imagination and aroused the cupidity of all Europe. The brisk and highly profitable overland trade which the merchants of Venice, Genoa and other cities thereupon established with India and China, and which was carried on for years, was rudely interrupted, however, when, in 1453, Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, who thereafter barred the way to Asia. It became necessary, therefore, to find a new route, and the necessity produced the man^Prince Henry of Portugal, a famous patron of learning in his day, who, in the hope of solving this problem, gathered around him and trained a school of navigators. One of their number was Christo- pher Columbus, the Genoese. He sailed in these Portu- guese ships down the coast of Africa nearly to the equator, and earlier he had voyaged, perhaps in a trading- vessel from Bristol, England, to Iceland and beyond- -observing, studying, dreaming. THE PROBLEM BEFORE COLUMBUS 7 When the Portuguese navigators under Prince Henry found that the coast of Africa, after they passed the Gulf of Guinea, trended again to the south, they began to fear that no passage could be found around the continent to the spice islands of the Indies. It was this situation which led Columbus to turn his eyes to the west in search of a way to the rich but inaccessible East. Believing the equatorial circumference of the earth to be considerably less than it really was, and assuming, from the chart or world-map which Toscanelli, the Venetian astronomer and geographer, had sent to him and from other calculations, that the eastern coast of Asia extended nearly to what was later found to be the continent of North America, Colum- bus figured the distance from the Canaries to Cipango (Japan) to be not much more than two thousand five hun- dred miles. It was a fortunate error in calculation. For if he had known that the actual distance was nearly twelve thousand miles, he never, in his ignorance of the existence of the American hemisphere, would have had the courage to undertake the journey. Thus to Columbus's imagina- tion Cipango — an island, Toscanelli assured him, which "abounds in gold, pearls and precious stones," and where "they cover the temples and palaces with solid gold" — lay across what was in reality the western part of the Gulf of Mexico. The time, moreover, was ripe for Columbus's great achievement. For in 1492 Spain, had superseded Portu- gal in maritime as in other affairs, and, after a struggle which had continued for eight hundred years, had finally expelled from her soil the last of the Moorish invaders. She was thus free to devote her surplus energy to explo- 8 DISCOVERERS ration, conquest and colonization. For the next eighty years she was the leader in this great work, leaving the indelible impress of her language and her civihzation on the New World. Between 1492 and 1503 Columbus, the pioneer in her behalf, made four voyages to America. He died, how- ever, in May, 1506, without realizing that when, on an October evening, at the end of his first voyage with the Nina, the Pinla and the Santa Maria, he sighted a little island in what are now the Bahamas, he had discovered a new hemisphere. To the end he believed that the islands which he had explored and the coasts which he had skirted were parts of or were off the shores of China; and, believ- ing that he had found the Indies, he called the natives Indians — a name ever afterward given to the aborigines of North and South America. At first he thought that Cuba, and later Hayti, was the famed Cipango of Marco Polo, and on his last voyage he searched the coast of the main-land in vain for a waterway that might lead him to the rich but elusive Indies, all the time inquiring for and hoping to find the gold and precious stones and valuable spices which Marco Polo, Toscanelli and his own lively imagination had told him he should find at the end of his voyage. The direct inspiration for his last voyage was the news of the success of the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, in reaching the Indies by the route around Africa, whence he returned in. 1499 laden with spices and other valuable commodities. But, bafiled and disappointed, Columbus sailed back to Spain, broken in health, fortune and spirit. The report of the discovery by Columbus of what was lo DISCOVERERS supposed to be the indescribably rich island kingdom of Cipango was nowhere received with greater interest than in Bristol, in those days the principal seaport of England. The voyages of the Cabots, John and Sebastian, father and son, from Bristol were the direct outcome of this interest. John Cabot, like Columbus a Genoese by birth, had mas- tered the art of navigation in Venice, and in 14Q0 had been induced by professional reasons to make his home in this great English maritime centre. The authentic records of the results of the voyages of the Cabots in 1497 and 1498 are meagre and inconclu- sive — not inconclusive as to the fact that one or both of them reached America, but as to the exact points which they touched and the extent of their explorations. The latest historical scholarship favors Cape Breton Island as the landfall of John Cabot's voyage in 1497, while Labrador and Newfoundland each has its advocates. Cabot thought that the land he had found was on the coast of China. He brought back, however, no gold or silver, no precious stones, no rich stuffs, no fragrant spices, and the enthusiasm of the Bristol merchants, as likewise the interest of King Henry VII, in the enterprise languished and died. The Cabot voyages were not followed up; they did not promise commercially profitable results. Eighty years later, however, when comparative quid had followed the turmoil of the Reformation and when the power of Spain was on the decline, the bold spirits of Queen Elizabeth's court began to look abroad for conquest and adventure. It was then very convenient to cite the discoveries of the Cabots as proof of England's right to a large share of the choicest portion of the New World. ORIGIN OF THE NAME AMERICA ii The name America appeared in print first in a geographi- cal work entitled Cosmographie Introductio, by two pro- fessors, named Waldseemiiller and Ringmann, of the col- lege at Saint-Die, France, which was pubHshed in 1507, the year after the death of Columbus. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator, had made a voyage in 1497, i^ the service of Portugal, to the coast of South America "beyond the equator." Two years later he led another expedition to Brazil, Venezuela and other points. The suggestion was therefore made in this treatise that this part of the earth be called America. Vespucci himself had no hand in this affair — probably no knowledge of it. Neither he nor Columbus nor any of their contemporaries imagined for a moment that a new continent had been discovered. Nothing could exceed the density of the geographical darkness in which these early navigators were groping or the difficulties in the way of the scientific men who were trying to form intelligible conclusions from the masses of more or less contradictory and inaccurate information which they were bringing back to Europe from their voyages. And when from time to time a ray of light did emerge from this darkness, it lost nearly all of its value in the great shadow of China and the Indies which for years hung over and clouded the minds of sailor and scientist alike. So slowly did geographical truth come to fight in those days that it was not until a generation later that the first map appeared indicating anything like the true outlines of the two continents as a distinct and separate hemisphere. This was Mercator's map of 1 541. II EXPLORERS AND CONQUERORS The exploration and conquest of the New World which Columbus had discovered took place in the sixteenth century. In this work Spain, then at the height of her power, was the leader. During the seventy years following the death of Columbus in 1506, in the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V and Philip II, great fleets of vessels bearing soldiers, priests, colonists and adventurers by the thousands left the ports of Spain for the Spanish main and returned bearing rich freights of gold, silver and other treasure which Mexico, Central America and Peru had been forced to yield to the con- quering invader. Having at the outset secured a firm foothold at various points in the West Indies and having got some knowledge of the coast from Venezuela to Mexico, the Spaniards began to extend their sway to the main-land. Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the leader of one of the smaller of these colonizing expeditions, was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. In 15 13, from a mountain peak in Darien, he gazed upon the waste of waters to the west, without realizing in the least, one may believe, the significance of what he saw. Seven years were to pass before a Portuguese navi- gator of scientific equipment and force of character, Fer- dinand Magellan, in the service of Spain, was to find. ENTERPRISE OF THE SPANIARDS 13 through the straits which still bear his name, a waterway into the Pacific. It was this voyage of Magellan's, con- tinued across the Pacific and around the world and com- pleted in 1522, which gave European scientists their first glimpse of the true relation of the newly discovered lands to Asia. And yet, as has been noted, a score of years were to pass after this epoch-making voyage before the first map, Mercator's, was to be published defining with even an approximation to its true outlines the hemisphere of North and South America. As late as 1536, moreover, Francis I of France thought that the new country around the mouth of the St. Lawrence, which Jacques Cartier had explored, was the northeastern end of China. And although Sir Francis Drake, following Magellan, sailed around the world in 1 570-1 580, tarrying a month on the coast of Cali- fornia, many, many years were to pass before anything like an adequate notion was to prevail as to the extent of the continent of North America. To return, however, to our story, the conquest of Mexico and Peru by Hernando Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, re- spectively, between 15 18 and 1533, not only brought great honor to the Spanish name, but enriched enormously the royal treasury, and was a tremendous stimulus therefore to further exploration. The full records which have come down to us of three of these expeditions, those of Cabeza de Vaca, Hernando de Soto and Francisco Vazquez Coro- nado, are among the most valuable of the original narra- tives of early American history. They form the chief sources of our information as to the manners and customs of the Indian tribes between the Carolinas and the Gulf of California as they existed in the early part of the six- 14 EXPLORERS AND CONQUERORS teenth century. The narrative of the wanderings during six years among the Indians of Texas and northern Mexico of Cabeza de Vaca is a unique chapter in the book of early American adventure. The motive of De Soto's expedition inland and across the southern states to Arkansas and the Indian Territory was the same as that of Coronado's from a point on the Pacific north and across to the heart of the continent at Kansas and Nebraska — the hope of finding the rich cities which rumor through Cabeza de Vaca and other explorers had placed in the vast and unknown "North." The expecta- tion of the Spaniards was that they might find another race like the semi-civilized Aztecs and another city as full of wealth as was Montezuma's capital. They both failed in their quests. De Soto, however, won everlasting fame by discovering and crossing the INIississippi, and Coronado, if he did not find the gold and other treasure of which he went in search, brought back a store of curious informa- tion about the pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico and their inhabitants, the wonders of the canon of the Colo- rado and the huge herds of bison which covered the Great Plains. French exploration during the sixteenth century was in- termittent, half-hearted, futile. Francis I had only a lan- guid interest in over-sea matters; affairs at home, especially those growing out of the aggressive hostility of the Emperor Charles V, engrossed his attention. Under his auspices, however, a Florentine navigator, Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailed in a single caravel, in 1524, from the Carolinas to Newfoundland, skirting the shores of New Jersey, Long Island and New England, anticipating by a year the voy- A SPANISH GALLEON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Redrawn from an old print. i6 EXPLORERS AND CONQUERORS age which Estevan Gomez made in the service of the Span- ish king along the coast from Labrador to Florida in the search for a passage to the Indies. The three voyages to the St. Lawrence which Jacques Cartier made between 1534 and 1541 were of the highest importance, although they resulted in no permanent set- tlement. For they established the French claim to this new country, which the Indians called Canada, and opened the way for Champlain sixty- three years later. Although, as has already been. no ted, Francis I was under the impres- sion that the land which Cartier had discovered formed the northeastern part of China, the returning ships brought back none of the riches for which Cathay was famous, and the interest of the French king in the enterprise waned accordingly. Thenceforward the French called this land New France, as the Spaniards called Mexico New Spain. By T570 the decline in the activit}' and energy of Span- ish exploration and conc^uest became marked. Philip II, alarmed at the progress which the Protestant Reformation was making, set out to crush this new heresy by fire and sword, as his ancestors had destroyed Mohammedanism in Spain. The bloody ferocity and inhuman cruelty which were to be Spain's chief instruments in this holy warfare were foreshadowed by the massacre, in 1565, of the French Huguenots, a motley band of soldiers of fortune and ad- venturers who, under the leadership of Jean Ribaut and Rene de Laudonniere, had secured a precarious footing on the east coast of Florida. Pedro Menendez de Aviles descended u]K)n them and, in the joint service of God and of Philip II, killed them like sheep by the hundreds, as I 8 EXPLORERS AND CONQUERORS heretics and as invaders of soil that belonged to Spain. The incident was significant of the spirit of rehgious bigotry with which the Spaniards of the age of Charles V and of Philip II carried on their work of exploration in the New World, when the murder of a heretic, as every Protestant was regarded, was just as much of a solemn duty laid upon them by the church and the state as was the conversion of a savage to the true faith. Save for this holy butchery INIenendez is remembered only as the founder in the same year, 1565, of St. Augustine, which thus became the oldest town in the United States and the only town that was per- manently colonized in the sixteenth century. Such was the power, on sea and land, of Spain in the first half of this century that Henry VIII of England, preoc- cupied with the Reformation, was content to allow Charles V and Philip II to have free rein in the New World and in the waters thereof. Under Elizabeth, however, a bolder, less complaisant spirit prevailed, partly due, no doubt, to the fact that Spain was engaged in subduing the revolt in the Netherlands. Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake challenged the supremacy of the Spaniard on the sea, bringing home to England tales of many a gallant fight and of much rich plunder from Spanish ships and Spanish col- onies. Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho! gives in romance form a vivid picture of these stirring times. Hawkins, half pirate and half slave-trader, had brought to his fellow- countrymen in 1565 their first direct knowledge of Florida, while Drake's voyage around the world, in 1 577-1 580, had supplied a theme for endless conjecture and eager anticipa- tion to every seaport in England. It was on this mem- orable voyage that Drake sailed up the coast of California = 1^ THIRD AND LAST VOLVME OF THE VOY- AGES, NAVIGATIONS, TRAF^ fiques, and DiTcoueries of the £ngli//) Ration, and in fome few places.wherc they haue not been,of ftrangcrs,per- formcd within and before the time ofthcfc hundred ycercs, to all ! parts of the Ners found world of ly^mericitfiTthc PVcfi Indies, tiojn y j. degrees of Nonhcrly to 57.ofSouthcrlylailtudc: As namely ro Engrofianci^ Met a Incognita^ E^otilandy Tierra de Labrador ^en>f'jimdland.y^ 'iTye^rand bay, the gulfc ofS.Laii' renee^nd the Riiier ofCam/x^A re Vlock'kgA ix\iiSagutniy,^\ong the coaft olAram- ^v ,10 the I'hores and nisiiics of t/s>^/vMandi%r^if,3nd.l/,-!r»f»i',»i,toi:ue,yp3ttofiheC93ftof&^/y,,totlieRiuCTofPiit,r, throughthcStrcightsof^a^fffanforwirdandbjck'iard.andiothe » South of ilit laid Streight^ asfarre as J7.d(;ijM O': And from thence on the backfide oi America, along the coaftes.harbooR, tnd apes o(ChiU,Pcrn,!^icaragHt,JViK'tjaEffMinii,NrteHaGa/icia,Ciiiiact», Cttiftirma,'c(;iiA ^0uu,andmoic Notthcrij 3s£atTeis4).dc3Tees: Together withthe two rcriowmedjai^d profperousToyiges of Sir frmcuVriikf and MTteBM^Cani/SrOiind about tttetirciimfaence of the wholeearth, and dhiers ot'oer royages intended and fct Sanfc for thatcoocfe. CoBeBedby RicaARo HAKi-vvt Pre/tcher, trndfometimti •i i.deat of Chrill-CiMirch in Od"ord, ^ Imprinted at London by (jeorge'Bifho^t^lfe NeTifherie,znd. Robert Bark er. Anko Do>f^ 1^9. FAC-SIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE AMERICAN VOLUME OF HAKLUYT's "voyages," enlarged EDITION OF 15Q8-160O. From a copy of the original edition in the New York Public Library. 20 EXPLORERS AND CONQUERORS and spent a month in refitting his ship and in trading with the Indians, lying at anchor meanwhile in a harbor which Pacific coast scholars are agreed was what is now known as Drake's Bay, about thirty miles north of San Francisco. More than half of Elizabeth's reign had passed before she and her people were full}- aroused to the over-sea oppor- tunities for colonization and commercial expansion which lay between the Spanish possessions on the south and the French on the north. The man who opened the eyes of all England to the possibilities which beckoned to them from the great and unknown West was Richard Hakluyt, an Oxford scholar whose imagination had been quickened by the stories of returned sailors and whose mind had been trained by his studies in the subject of map, chart and globe-making. Hakluyt set to work with diligence and intelligence to bring to the knowledge of his fellow- countrymen the narratives of the navigators and explorers of all nations. He published his first collection of these narratives, gathered from widely different sources, some even by word of mouth, and translated when necessary into Enghsh, in 1582. The book was called Divers Voy- ages Touching the Discoverie of America. The first edition of his great work, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries oj the English Nation, appeared in 1589. No publication could have been more timely. For in the preceding year the mighty fleet of Spanish warships called the Armada had been destroyed by English shot and by storms which strewed the coasts of Scotland and Ireland with wreckage. And by the destruction of the Spanish Armada the Protestant religion was saved to England and END OF SPANISH RULE ON THE SEA 21 every quarter of the sea was opened to English ships with- out the fear of Spanish aggression. For nearly a hundred years Spain had been the arrogant mistress of the seas. Now her rule had come to an end. Ill COLONISTS The explorers and conquerors having shown the way in the sixteenth century, the colonists followed them in the seventeenth. The two main streams wdiich flowed from England to the shores of the New World came from alto- gether different sources and were impelled by very different motive powers. The band of gentlemen adventurers and soldiers of fortune who settled on the Jamestown peninsula in 1607 were in search of gold or a way by water or overland to the South Sea, as the Spaniards called the Pacific. Al- though they named their settlement after the new Stuart king, the Jamestown colonists brought with them the tra- ditions of Elizabeth's reign. They were still under the magic spell woven in their imaginations by the wealth which the Spaniards had found in Mexico and in Peru. But toil, privation, hunger and disease niet them at every turn and they and those who followed them died ])y hun- dreds. With the development of tobacco culture, which was begun by John Rolfe in 16 12, and the establishment in 161 9 of self-government through the first representative assem- bly in America, the fortunes of the Virginia colony bright- ened greatly. The character, moreover, of the colonists sent out from England was much better than in the early years. The dream of gold mines vanished. The practical problem of tobacco culture on a large scale took its place. RUINS OF THE OLD CHURCH ON THE SITE OF JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA. All that remains of the first English settlement. 24 COLONISTS Negro slave labor, introduced by a Dutch vessel in 1619, was welcomed as supplementing the convict labor largely used up to that time in the tobacco fields. These incidents in the early industrial life of the Jamestown colony had a far-reaching and determining influence upon the entire civilization of Virginia and upon that of Maryland as well, where the social and industrial conditions were largely the same. The little colony of Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in 1620, and the Puritans who, eight years later, began the great migration to Massachusetts Bay, were in search not of gold or silver, or of a way to the Indies, but of new lands and fresh opportunities, with religious freedom. They were home-seekers, not treasure-hunters, and they brought with them their wives and children, their household goods and the few servants whom they possessed. The Pilgrims or Separatists, as they were called, were Puritans who a dozen years earlier had fled from England and had gone to Holland in order to escape persecution for their religious beliefs. Finding it difficult to support themselves in a for- eign country and wishing to free themselves from the Dutch influence, they determined to find new homes in Virginia. The first company, one hundred and two in all, sailed in the M ay flower . Of this number, however, only thirty-five have thus far been identified as having come from the Leyden company. They were serious-minded, self-reliant, God-fearing men and women, whose long exile had weaned them from the mother-land, for which, however, they still retained a deep affection. To their number were added others who joined the vessel at Southampton or at Plym- outh, her port of departure. Chance carried the May- THE MAYFLOWER. From the model in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. 26 COLONISTS flower to the coast of Massachusetts, instead of to Virginia, where, after losing many of their number and suffering great hardships, those surviving succeeded finally in founding the Plymouth colony under Governor Bradford. . The Puritans, who to the number of fully twenty thou- sand poured into Boston and the other towns of the Massa- chusetts Bay colony between 1628 and 1640, are not to be confused with the Pilgrims who came from Holland with somewhat different motives. At this period fully ninety per cent of the people of England were Puritans. They constituted, speaking broadly, the great middle class of farmers, artisans, tradesmen and professional men, includ- ing many clergymen. They remained in the Church of England, trying to resist its drift under the Stuart kings toward what they regarded as Popish practices, until the persecutions of Archbishop Laud became unendurable, when they fled by the thousands across the sea to make homes for themselves where they could have peace and religious freedom. With the rise in power of Parliament under the leader- ship of Hampden and Pym, the flow of Puritan immi- gration to the New World slackened, and fmally when Charles I was beheaded and the Commonwealth was es- tablished it ceased. The very conditions, however, which brought the Puritan emigration from England to an end started another and even a larger stream, of an entirely different character, flowing to Virginia. This was made up of thousands of men of the best blood in royalist circles in England who sought in the New World at once rest after the strife of civil war and escape from the rule of the hated Commonwealth. CAVALIER MIGRATION TO VIRGINIA 27 This Cavalier class, as it was called, became the aristoc- racy of the colony, and transferred to the plantations of the tide-water counties of Virginia not a few of the manners, customs and tastes that had given grace and distinction to the country hfe of the landed gentry under the first two Stuarts. The families of Washington, Lee, Randolph, Pendleton, Marshall, Madison, Monroe and other men who became equally well known belonged to this class, and came to Virginia at this period. The migration was as distinctive as that of the Puritans to Massachusetts Bay, and largely accounts for the increase in the white population of Vir- ginia from fifteen thousand in 1649 to thirty-eight thousand in 1670. Meanwhile other portions of the seaboard were being rapidly settled. Henry Hudson, in the interest of the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river which now bears his name as early as 1609 in the Half Moon, but it was not until fourteen years later that the commercial enterprise of the Dutch gave them a firm foothold in New Amsterdam. They possessed more of a genius for trade than for government. While, therefore, the towns and forts which they built became active centres in the trade in furs with the Indians, political affairs in New Amsterdam be- came more and more hopelessly involved, as humorously illustrated in Washington Irving's burlesque, the Knicker- bocker History of New York. The distinctive feature of the Dutch occupation of New Netherland was the feudal-like system of land-tenure under the "patroons, " as the lords of the great estates along the Hudson and elsewhere were called. The people of New Amsterdam, however, did not prosper under commercial rule. When the English took 28 COLONISTS possession of the town in 1664 the population, after thirty years of Dutch occupation, was only fifteen hundred. The population of all New Netherland was not more than seven thousand, while by that time New England contained fully one hundred thousand people. Maryland was distinguished from her neighbors among the early colonies by the proprietary government under which the successive Lords Baltimore ruled the colony for sixty years, from 1632 until 1692; not, however, without constant effort and repeated interruptions due to disputes between the assembly and the proprietor. The proprie- tors, although of the Roman Catholic faith, welcomed the Puritans who were driven out of Virginia and other non- conformists; and even the Quakers were allowed to make a settlement. The colony, in fact, became an asylum for the persecuted of various sects. Religious liberty, however, brought with it religious strife. For years bitter conflicts were waged between the different sects, first one and then the other getting the upper hand. There were alternate periods, therefore, of toleration and persecution, which left the colony in a state of uncertainty and of unrest. The Pennsylvania colony, like that of Maryland, began its career under a proprietary government. In 1682 Will- iam Penn and his Quaker colonists founded Philadelphia, a spirit of broad religious toleration prevailing. The growth of the colony was rapid, although — perhaps because — the mixture of races in it was marked, and also because it was settled late. In three years the colony numbered seven thousand inhabitants. Nearly one-half of these people were of other than English birth or English stock — Dutch, Scotch-Irish, French, Finnish and Swedish. Owing to the RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 29 wise and beneficent rule of the proprietor no colony out- side of New England showed such vitality and capacity for growth. Relations with the Indians were peaceful. Farms became productive, and commerce, especially with the West Indies, increased rapidly. The CaroHnas went through a long period of turbulence and disorder, also under a proprietary form of government, alternately inefficient and rapacious, before they emerged into peace and quiet. The population of the Albemarle and Clarendon settlements in the north and south respec- tively was mixed and discord prevailed for years. Any consideration of religious matters in the colonies must take into account the different periods in which the colonies were settled and the different elements of which the populations were composed. Thus the Virginia colony had existed for twenty-one years and numbered nearly five thousand persons when, in 1628, John Endicott brought to Salem the first shipload of Puritans. The persecution of the Puritans in England did not become acute until the reign of Charles I. Meanwhile the Virginia colonists had consistently maintained their allegiance to the Church of England, and the English Puritans who joined them in the following years were content to accept this as the es- tablished form of faith in the colony. The antecedents of the New England Puritans and their motives in coming to Massachusetts Bay were such as to make it natural, perhaps inevitable, that the form of local government which they adopted should in effect centre in the church. The ministers, many of them graduates, as was John Harvard, of that nursery of Puritan clergy- men, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, were the leading 30 COLONISTS men, with the magistrates, in every community. Congre- gationalism, the essence of which is the independent, self-governing character of each church organization, in fellowship with other bodies of the same denomination, became the State Church, so to speak, and only church members were allowed to vote in civil affairs or to hold office. As the cultivation of the land yielded only meagre returns and as the Indians presented a constant threat of danger, the people gathered in towns. And the centre, social and political as well as religious, of each town was the church. The age, moreover, which produced Milton and Bunyan and Cromwell in England was one of deep and intense religious feeling, in which breadth of view and a spirit of charity found little chance for play. Whatever inconsist- ency one may find between the ideal of religious liberty and the intolerant temper of the time, the fact remains that in the two colonies, Massachusetts and Virginia, where this temper found the most violent expression, the founda- tions of great commonwealths were laid much more cjuickly and much more securely than in the colonies where greater freedom in religious matters prevailed. Massachusetts drove Roger Williams and Ann Hutchinson across her borders, and even hanged several Quakers because of the dissension, turmoil and even danger to the state which the presence of these preachers of strange and unwelcome doc- trines involved. It was with the same motive that Vir- ginia expelled the Congregational ministers who came there from Boston, drove the non-conformist Puritans by the hundreds into Maryland and fined ship-masters who brought Quakers into the colony. After such a period of RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND INTOLERANCE 31 religious strife and turbulence as they had gone through in England, the people of both Massachusetts and Virginia desired nothing so much as peace. To those who by the preaching of strange doctrines became fomenters of discord they showed the door. The Hartford colony where the middle way was followed was no exception to this rule. The settlers were families from Cambridge, Dorchester and other near-by towns in the Massachusetts Bay colony who held rather more liberal views in religion and politics than their neighbors did, and who left their homes in 1636 in order to find a place in which they would be free to carry these views into effect. The New Haven colony, however, which was settled two years later, followed the stricter Massachusetts rule in making church membership a prerequisite to the right to vote. Both communities flourished for years in peace as inde- pendent commonwealths, and were free from much of the contention and strife which vexed their neighbors. The conditions, political, religious and commercial, were decidedly different when, toward the end of the cen- tury, in 1683, William Penn founded Philadelphia with his large colony of Quakers. His Quaker followers themselves differed greatly from the disorderly and violent fanatics whom the Massachusetts magistrates had hanged a quarter of a century earlier. With the death, moreover, of Arch- bishop Laud and the waning of the Stuart power, the dan- ger of the interference of the home government in religious affairs, which was ever present to the Puritans of Win- throp's day, had disappeared. The executive abihty, the untiring industry and the wise and benevolent spirit of their great leader were the chief elements, however, which, 32 COLONISTS in the early years of the colony, served to fuse the widely divergent races and creeds of the Pennsylvania emigrants into a comparatively peaceful community, to which agricult- ure, trade and commerce brought prosperity and in which religious doctrine was a matter of secondary importance. The two men who by dealing justly and keeping faith with the Indians exerted the greatest influence among them were Roger Williams and William Penn. More often, however, the relations of the settlers on the frontier with 'the Indians were marked by double dealing and bad faith, and the results were generally bloody massacres and pro- longed guerilla warfare. More than three hundred persons on the Virginia plantations were murdered in an Indian uprising in 1622, giving the colony a severe check in its development. Half a century later Bacon's rebellion grew out of the inabiHty of the Virginia colonists to secure from the royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, adequate protec- tion against the Indians whom ill-treatment had aroused to retaliation. The colonists had other grievances also to which Berkeley's aristocratic sympathies and his narrow- ness and obstinacy, united to a despotic temper, made him equally deaf. The death of Nathaniel Bacon brought the revolt to an end and gave the vindictive old governor an opportunity to revenge himself by the execution of no fewer than twenty-three of the leading spirits of the rebellion. The alHance which first the Dutch of New Netherland and later the English of New York, during the governorship of Sir Edmund Andros, made with the Five Nations, was an event of the highest importance. This powerful Indian confederation, made up of the Mohawks, Onondagas, Senecas, Oneidas and Cayugas, all of Iroquois stock, occu- PROVISIONS FOR POPULAR EDUCATION 33 pied a strategic position of great strength in central New- York between the Hudson and the Genesee rivers. Having been liberally supplied with guns in exchange for furs by the Dutch traders, these tribes of Indians were a compact and formidable power, and proved to be a mighty bulwark against the incursions of the French and their Algonq.uin allies from the north. Had it not been for the efficient help which they gave the English colonies in the wars that followed, the French might easily have swarmed down the valley of the Hudson, with what ultimate result to the colo- nies thus split in twain it is impossible to say. The value of education was early recognized in New England. Provision was made for pubHc schools in all the towns of Massachusetts, and in 1636 the colonial legislature emphasized its interest in the higher education of its citi- zens by founding a college in New Town, as Cambridge was then called. Two years later the name Harvard was given to the institution in memory of the young clergyman, John Harvard, who, dying, left his library and about four hundred pounds sterling to the college. In Virginia, where the people were scattered on the great plantations along the rivers and where only a few feeble towns existed, a public-school system was impossible. In those early years each planter gave his children such in- struction as he could. Governor Berkeley, writing in 1670, thanked God that there were no free schools or printing- presses in the colony, and thirteen years later the new governor, Lord Howard of Effingham, was directed to al- low no printing-press in Virginia. Education and printing- presses were looked upon in the mother country in those days as breeders of sects, heresies and treason. 34 COLONISTS ' During the first twenty-five years of the Dutch occu- pation of New Netherland there were only a few private schools in the chief towns, and these were not always con- ducted by men who were either competent or reputable. About the middle of the century, however, under Governor Peter Stuyvesant, a public school was established in New Amsterdam, and not long after a Latin school was founded also. IV NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA While the English were planting colonies along the coast of America, the French were establishing settlements, forts and trading-posts in the valley of the St. Lawrence and on the shores of the Great Lakes, exploring the very heart of the continent and drifting down the Mississippi to its mouth. A triple motive was the inspiration for this under- taking — religious zeal for the conversion of the Indians to the Roman Catholic faith, a desire to monopolize the rich fur trade of the Great Lakes, and the necessity of checking or neutralizing, in the interest of France, the rapid growth of the EngHsh power along the seaboard. The leader in this enterprise was Samuel de Champlain, a heroic and romantic figure in early American history and a man of remarkable character. With the temper of a Crusader of the Middle Ages, he looked upon France as the champion of Christianity in the New World, and this thought formed the very centre of the elaborate political scheme which he developed for the enlargement of French influence and authority. It was the policy of Champlain and his followers to win first the confidence and then the friendship of the Algonquin tribes of Indians along the St. Lawrence and around the Great Lakes, to share in their councils, to take part in their wars with their savage rivals — to exercise, in a word, a general supervision over all their afifairs, spiritual and temporal. The triple alliance of sol- 35 36 NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA dier, priest and trader was used effectively in the accom- plishment of this work. With French soldiers, in Park- man's trenchant phrase, to fight their battles, French priests to baptize them and French traders to supply their increas- ing wants, the dependence of the Indians upon their new allies would be complete. Champlain brought versatility as well as loftiness of purpose to this task. Combining energy with self-control, initiative with tact and address, he was at once a trained soldier, a skilled sailor, a keen observer of scientific tem- perament and an accurate and vivacious writer. One of his voyages carried him as early as 1605, before even James- town was settled, along the deeply indented coast of Maine and as far south as Cape Cod; and so painstaking and accurate were his descriptions of the peculiarities of the shore fine that his route can be closely followed at the present day. The founding of Quebec by Champlain in 1609, when the English colonists at Jamestown were struggling against famine, disease and death, and eleven years before the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth, gave the French a base of operations for their inland explorations. In the same year, on the shores of the lake that bears his name, the armor and arquebuses of Champlain and his few French followers were much more effective than the arrows of their Algon- quin allies in bringing about the defeat of a band of Mo- hawks. A petty affair in itself, this first clash on the wooded shores of Lake Champlain between the French and the Algonquins on the one hand and a band of warriors of the principal tribes of the great confederation of the Five Nations on the other, had far-reaching consequences. For [ ABfrATlOPf,DE ^^^^ pQ_vEBECajr4| ^ CHAMPLAIn's picture of QUEBEC IN 16OQ. Showing the quarters of himself and his men on the brink of the Saint Lawrence. From Chaniplain's Voyages (1613). 38 NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA the result was to intensify the hatred of the Five Nations for the French and their Algonquin allies and so to open the way for the alliance between them and the Dutch fur- traders of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Champlain pushed his way far into the interior. In 1615 he reached that great arm of Lake Huron, Georgian Bay, having travelled thither by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Nipissing, and finding in the village of Huron Indians, on its shores, a Recollet priest. The death of Champlain in 1635, at Quebec, after he had devoted twenty-seven of the best years of his life to the interests of the colony, caused no cessation in the work of exploring and occupying new fields. In 1639 Jean Nicollet succeeded in reaching the Wisconsin River, and in the following years the Jesuits founded settlements at Sault Sainte Marie and at other points in the wilderness on and near Lake Superior. It was not, however, until 1669 that a man of indomitable will and of exhaustless energy, Robert de la Salle, took up in earnest the work which Champlain had laid down. Rumors that there was a great river far to the westward had reached the French through the Indians and mis- sionaries, and La Salle's curiosity was aroused to learn if this waterway led to China or to the "Vermilion Sea," as the Gulf of California was called in those days. His first expedition to solve this problem carried him to the Ohio River only. Before he could make another start the priest Marquette and the fur-trader Joliet had reached this mysterious river, the Mississippi, and had floated south on its broad bosom as far as the mouth of the Ar- kansas. 40 NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA La Salle thereupon determined to follow the Mississippi to its mouth and thereby to establish the claim of Louis XIV to the extensive territory drained by this great stream and its tributaries, thus arresting the advance of the Span- iards from the south and of the English from the east. Accordingly in 1679, with the help of Count Erontenac and after many delays caused by the jealous}- and en\-y of both priest and trader, he set sail on the Niagara River. The journeys which he made back and forth between Lake Michigan and the French settlements, through a wilderness filled with wellnigh insurmountable obstacles, and the dis- appointments which he met but which seemed only to give a keener edge to his resolution, show the heroic stuff of which the man was made. Finally, in the spring of 1682, after herculean efforts extending over three years, he reached the Mississippi by way of the Chicago and Illinois rivers, and followed its course to its mouth, claiming all of the land drained by this mighty stream and naming it after his king Louisiana. Returning by way of the Mississippi to Canada and thence to France he laid this vast territory at the feet of his sovereign. If his scheme for colonizing Louisiana and for estabHshing a chain of French forts and trading-posts from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes had not mis- carried, the expansion of the English colonies to the west- ward might have been considerably retarded. Toward the end of Champlain's governorship, when the affairs of New France were at a low ebb, the French narrowly missed losing control of their new possessions for all time. From 1629 until 1632 Quebec was in the hands of the English, a squadron under the command of r« /-•■V» <^ '4 |; (^ l-< o Ph ^ < ?; :s Fi H o < T3 « O W aj ^ s hJ rn W t> ►J a j: 7, .iii < S 1^ 42 NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA David Kirk and liis two brothers having captured the town, the French garrison being weak in numbers and in a half- starved condition. But Charles I, in return for a large sum of money of which he was in need and which he could not extort from his Puritan ParHament, restored the town to the French ; and through this act of the Stuart king the English colonies in America were subjected later to the depredations of a border warfare with the French and Indians which lasted fully three-quarters of a century. This period was from the English revolution, in 1688, which placed William, Prince of Orange, and Mary on the throne, until the peace of Paris at the end of the Seven Years' War, in 1763. During this period England, with the aid of her continental allies, Dutch and Germanic, was engaged in the stupendous task of thwarting the ambition and breaking the power of the French under Louis XIV and Louis XV. The fear, while the Stuarts reigned, lest England might become a Roman Catholic dependency of France had been ever present in the Protestant mind. With the fresh courage, however, growing out of the pres- ence on the throne of a Protestant king, England under William became aggressive. The four wars that she waged against France in the next three-quarters of a century were virtually one conflict in their general aim, the inter- vals of peace merely enabhng the combatants to gather new strength and fresh supplies for a continuation of the struggle. In the American colonies the border warfare during this period between the English and the French, with such Indian allies as either side could control, was almost con- tinuous, not being governed by the official limits of the POWER OF THE FIVE NATIONS 43 corresponding European conflicts. The New York border suffered the most in the first war, King WilHam's. Mas- sachusetts was occupied in defending her own outlying settlements, and the other less-endangered colonies to the south were more or less deaf to the appeals of New York for assistance. During the entire war, which lasted from 1688 until the peace of Ryswick in 1697, Virginia, Mary- land, Connecticut and East Jersey contributed together only a little over three thousand pounds sterling to the common defense fund. The Five Nations bore the brunt of the fighting and suffered severely, losing about twelve hundred warriors, nearly half the number of their fighting men. By their fierceness and cunning in that war, however, they won the respect as well as the fear of the French. Thenceforth it was -a consistent and well-maintained feature of the poHcy of the governor of New France, Count Frontenac, and his successors to make friends with the Five Nations and to keep them as far as possible in a state of neutrality. It became an equally important part of the French pohcy, moreover, to keep the Abenakis and other New England and adjacent tribes in constant warfare with the whites, lest, by the alluring temptations which the New England traders were in a position to hold out to them, they might be won over to neutrahty, or possibly even to an alliance. While, therefore, during the early years of the eighteenth century, in Queen Anne's War, the New York border was comparatively quiet, the remote settlements of Massachu- setts, including those in what are now Maine and New Hampshire, suffered terribly from marauding bands of Indians who were instigated to these attacks by the French. 44 NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA The horrors of this savage warfare reached a cHmax at Deerfield, in the valley of the Connecticut, in 1704, with the killing of sixty persons and the carrying into a captivity almost worse than death itself of a hundred others. P>om time to time the New England governors took the aggres- sive, sending expedition after expedition at heavy cost to attack Montreal or Quebec, or one of the fortified harbors in Nova Scotia or in Cape Breton Island. For one reason or another, however, all of these expeditions proved abor- tive, save that commanded by Sir William Peppercll, who, in 1745, with the aid of an English fleet, captured the important port of Louisburg on the southeast coast of Cape Breton Island. But this was a hollow victory, the town and fortress being restored to the French by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle three years later. The middle of the eighteenth centur}' had been passed before the full significance of the line of forts which the French had built from Quebec to the Ohio River made itself felt in the mind of an English statesman who possessed at once sufficient imagination to realize the danger they presented and suflicient wisdom and authority to meet it effectively — William Pitt, the elder, afterward the Earl of Chatham. The French barred the way to the natural expansion westward of the English colonies. The defeat at Fort Necessity, near the Monongahela River, in July, 1754, of the Virginia troops under the young colonel of militia, George Washington, who in this affair comes upon the historical stage for the first time, made clear the deter- mination of the French to claim as their own and to defend the valley of the Ohio and its tributaries as a part of the territory of New France. And the crushing defeat of END OF THE DREAM OF A FRENCH EMPIRE 45 General Braddock a year later when, with a large force of British regulars and colonial militia, he attempted to reduce Fort Duquesne, at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers, emphasized in a manner not to be disre- garded the necessity of a larger and more comprehensive plan of attack upon the entire French line of fortifications, if the power of this formidable rival in America was to be broken once for all. The Earl of Loudon and General Abercrombie, who suc- ceeded Braddock in command of the regular and colonial forces, shared Braddock's inefficiency and were equally unsuccessful. It was not until, in 1757, Pitt became the real ruler of England that he was in a position to send sol- diers of first-rate ability to America in order to carry out his far-reaching plan of operations against the French, who under the aggressive Montcalm had captured the British post of Oswego and Fort William Henry. These he found in Amherst, Wolfe, Howe and Forbes, soldiers of ability and of tenacity of purpose. With the ample resources supplied by Parliament and by the colonies themselves, these men were able in a few years, despite one or two severe reverses like the repulse of Abercrombie at Ticonderoga, to break the French fine of communications in the West by the capture of Fort Niagara and Fort Duquesne, and then to complete the work for all time by the capture of Quebec and Montreal. When, in 1759, Quebec, after having been heroically defended by Montcalm, who lost his fife on the Plains of Abraham, fell into the hands of the English forces under the immortal Wolfe, and, in the following year, Mon- treal was forced to surrender to Amherst, the end was reached of the dream of a great French empire in America. 46 NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA Thenceforth the English colonies were freed from the over- hanging threat of French aggression, with its inevitable accompaniment of Indian barbarity and cruelty. The con- spiracy of Pontiac, in 1763, represented the last organized resistance, desperate but short-lived, of the Indians west of the Alleghanies against the permanent occupation of that region by the Enghsh settlers. GROWTH OF THE COLONIES Domestic affairs in the colonies had adjusted them- selves meanwhile, after a period of more or less confusion, to the new conditions brought about by the revolution which, in 1688, had placed William, Prince of Orange, and Mary on the throne of England. In Massachusetts the episode of the Salem Village witchcraft delusion, local in its influence and of brief duration, occurred in 1692 while these changes were in progress. This lamentable affair, in the course of which no fewer than one hundred and twenty-six persons were imprisoned and nineteen hanged, was a curious expression of the belief in a personal influ- ence for evil which is one of the most tenacious supersti- tions that barbarism has handed down to civilization. This superstition the Puritans brought with them from Eng- land. The English Parliament had passed a witch act early in the reign of James I, but most of the trials and executions which took place under this act occurred in the reign of Charles I, during the years when the great Puritan migration from England to Massachusetts Bay was in progress. The first execution for witchcraft in America was in 1648, under Governor Winthrop. The hysterical violence of the Salem Village manifestations grew out of the veritable panic of suspicion and fear into which the whole community was thrown by the accusations. As soon as a few of the cooler heads escaped from this influence and 47 48 GROWTH OF THE COLONIES applied the test of ordinary common-sense to the mani- festations, the superstition received its death blow. Twenty years later, however, in England, and even thirty years later in Scotland, there were executions for witchcraft, so slowly did the ancient belief in a malignant personal in- fluence give way to the modern conception of the operation of natural law. The royal governors appointed by King William took up their tasks in a somewhat more conciliatory spirit than their predecessors under the arbitrary Stuarts had shown. The three centres of royal authority in the colonies were Massachusetts Bay, New York and Virginia, although for a period New York came under the control of the governor of Massachusetts. New Hampshire was made a separate colony for the purpose of weakening the influence of Massa- chusetts. Connecticut, in which the New Haven colony had been reluctantly merged, and Rhode Island were fortu- nate in being allowed to retain their old charters under which they were self-governing. They had some difficul- ties to settle over boundary questions, and occasionally there was friction with the royal governor of an adjacent province over the control of the militia. But they escaped the irritation and friction caused by the quarrels of the royal governors with the legislative bodies over fixed salaries, taxes, expenditures and supplies. By refusing to grant fixed yearly salaries the legislatures prevented the royal governors from acquiring the indei)endence for which they were constantly plotting. For the colonists reahzed that they would be tied hand and foot if the royal gov- ernors, while remaining dependent on the king, should be- come independent of the colonial legislatures. They had 50 GROWTH OF THE COLONIES indeed learned well the lesson of the long struggle between Parliament and royalty, that only by maintaining firm control of the matter of taxes and expenditures could any check be kept upon the King's governors and their desire to enlarge their personal authority and the royal prerog- ative. The navigation laws which the English authorities imposed from time to time on the colonies were another sjurce of more or less annoyance. Their purpose was to secure for Enghsh merchants a monopoly in the handling of the various products of the colonies, despite the desire of the colonists to sell their tobacco, rice, fish, lumber and skins in the most profitable market. These laws failed of their purpose because in most instances they were evaded or ignored, and because for years no attempt was made to enforce them rigidly. Bitter disputes occurred over these and kindred matters in Massachusetts. In New York, where the legislature was somewhat less tenacious of its rights and less stubborn in maintaining them, the ciuarrelling was less frecjuent as well as less violent. \'irginia was comparatively free from vexation from this cause. Certain fixed revenues which the King enjoyed in Virginia were sufficient to meet the ordinary expenses of the colonial government. The royal governor was therefore not obliged to ask for grants except in extraordinary cases. Two instances in which friction arose were when Spotswood, soon after he became governor in 1710, quarrelled with the House of Burgesses because that body would not appropriate a sum of money sufficient to enable him to carry out his plan for a mili- tary organization, and when, forty years later, Dinwiddle IN PENNSYLVANIA AND MARYLAND 51 attempted to require a fee to be paid for the seal that was affixed to a grant of land. The comparative quiet of the early years of Penn's proprietary government in Pennsylvania did not continue after the English revolution. Although Penn gave the colony a new charter under which many concessions were made, the people through the assembly were continually quarrelling with the proprietary governor over political and financial matters, Penn himself remaining in London. It was not until the Revolutionary War that the colony got rid finally of the last shred of the proprietary form of government under which Penn and his descendants had ruled the province for nearly a hundred years. Maryland emerged from the turmoil following the revolution in England with a royal governor. The province continued to be so ruled until, in 1715, the fifth Lord Baltimore renounced the Roman Catholic faith and thereby recov- ered control of the colony as proprietor, the government remaining proprietary until the Revolutionary War. The feeling in the middle colonies against the Roman Catho- lics was for a time bitter, and laws of much severity were passed concerning them. The growth of population in the colonies in the eigh- teenth century was prodigious. At the time of the revo- lution in England, 1688, there were about two hundred thousand persons of European birth or descent in the twelve colonies. In the succeeding sixty years this num- ber had increased sixfold — to twelve hundred thousand; and some estimates place the figures even higher. At the same time there were no fewer than two hundred and fifty thousand negro slaves scattered through the colonies, 52 GROWTH OF THE COLONIES the large majority being in the southern and middle provinces. The pursuits of the people were diversified. Shipbuild- ing, the lumber trade and the fishing industry flourished in New England. Albany remained the centre of the traffic in furs, and the town of New York early became an impor- tant commercial centre and grew rapidly in influence. To- bacco continued to be the great staple product of Virginia and Maryland, while in the Carolinas and Georgia, which had been colonized under a charter which Oglethorpe, from motives of the highest philanthropy, had secured in 1732, there developed a valuable export trade with Europe and the West Indies in Indian corn, rice and indigo. In addi- tion to the Enghsh, the farming class in the northern col- onies was composed of the Dutch in New York, scattered along the valleys and on the broad estates of the patroons; the Scotch-Irish and the Germans in central and eastern Pennsylvania and in Delaware; and the Swedes and Dutch, comparatively few in number, in the Jerseys. With the population of the colonies increasing so rapidly, through natural causes and by fresh immigration, it was inevitable that there should be corresponding changes from decade to decade in the social and religious, as well as in the political, fife of the people. Thus the new charter for the province of Massachusetts Bay which Sir William Phips brought to Boston as royal governor in 1692 abol- ished the religious test for voters and substituted for it a property qualification. This change of itself went far to undermine the elaborate ecclesiastical structure which Win- throp and his Puritan followers in the Massachusetts Bay colony had raised for the protection and advancement of THE REACTION FROM PURITANISM 53 the interests, secular as well as religious, of the colony. The decline in influence and authority of the New England ministry began from that time. Thenceforth the town- meeting became a broader and more accurate register ot the people's will, freely expressed. A further sign of the reaction from the rigid sway of Puritanism appeared in the adoption in 1 708 by the Saybrook Synod of an ecclesiasti- cal system, approved later by the Connecticut legislature, midway between simple Congregationalism and Presbyte- rianism. With the substantial lessening of the authority of the ministry there naturally followed a decrease in religious earnestness and a corresponding laxity in conduct. The "Great Revival," between 1734 and 1740, of which Jona- than Edwards, minister of the Northampton Church, was the leader, and which was continued by the Oxford scholar and orator, George Whitefield, was in the nature of a pro- test against the reaction from the severity of Puritan rule, and sought to bring men back to the old moral standards. Despite the excesses which accompanied it, the revival made a deep impression, especially in New England and in those parts of Virginia and New Jersey where Presby- terian churches had been established. The revival in Eng- land of which Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was the leader and in which Whitefield also took part, was a corre- sponding reaction from the corruption and laxity which followed the dechne of the Puritan influence. In Virginia pohtical power as well as social prestige came to be more and more concentrated in the hands of the leading county families which had come to Virginia during the Cavalier migration. The Church of England retained 54 GROWTH OF THE COLONIES its preponderating influence, although the character of the clergy was not of the highest. The Scotch-Irish immigrants who settled in the Valley of Virginia brought with them their Presbyterian faith, and by the middle of the eigh- teenth century they had established their right to worship, thus breaking down the barrier which the Church of Eng- land had kei)t standing against non-conformists since the days of the Jamestown colony. Popular education had made some advances, meanwhile, outside of Massachusetts and Connecticut, where the Puri- tans early established their public schools. There was a school at Newport, but there was no public provision for education in the Providence Plantations. After the English occupation of New Netherland, interest in pubHc schools languished, and many of those which the Dutch had or- ganized and maintained were given up. In the Jerseys, however, schools followed the Presbyterians and Congre- gationalists who came thither from New England. In Pennsylvania the Scotch-Irish maintained schools. The planters of the tobacco and rice-growing provinces to the south continued, however, to teach their children themselves, or to provide them with private tutors. This method of instruction must have had merit, if one may estimate its value in developing the minds of the youth of the colony by the important parts which the gentlemen of Virginia played in public life later in the century. Politics in the large and better sense, however, and law formed the chief school in which the young men of famih- in the prov- ince were trained, while the control and management of the great estates from which they drew their incomes gave them both assurance and self-command, and developed I ^ \ CO o 4= Si Si V^ ^ r-- " ►;. 1 N t >v ■ ^ « ■ •(^ 3 I **^ C > *««, ** 1 o 4>> »>; ' rc «M« O ^ C ' ^ O 1 o 9^3£>l^ IX. 1.2 w> ■cJi'^ ,- w u a J. « ij o J5 C c <- c<*!"« I.S '-<-^ Ht . .'■■"■5 tac'^ " 2 « ^"c " C u o-v c = « S - - ■ c 2 « ^ :«.?: ..-^.S«i 1 ^ S.>iJ^ ?«K *i;.S5* 2-cr ;s-S"= p3?o " " ; '3 a- ■- j: ■ 5 aS£g ss-^ sla'^S^' J o «, " o B. t; c^ 2 '.s " -s 'c ™'q r^ ?* ■X ^'■ U C5 o C4 -5 i! E erf ^ Ort o O rj J5 o w ^a C 00-^ i -p u:5 -^ ,T- 'T -^ ^ W '• 3 "« '-^ 'S j- '•'' ?, O k. W^ 4/ 00. c 5 -V LU 56 GROWTH OF THE COLONIES in them an uncommon talent for leadership. Not a few of the planters, however, sent their sons to the mother country to be educated. As the population in the various centres increased, news- papers began to make their appearance. The Boston News- Letter began publication in 1704; The American Mercury, in Philadelphia in 1719; The Weekly Journal, in New York in 1733, and The Virginia Gazette, in Williamsburg in 1736. Philadelphia early became an intellectual centre, largely through the influence of Benjamin Franklin, whose Poor Richard's Almanac, first issued in 1732 and published annually for about twenty-five years, reached a wide popu- lar audience. If he was deficient in ideals, Franklin had what is perhaps even more indispensable in a new and grow- ing community — an abundance of common-sense; and the scraps of worldly wisdom which he scattered through his Almanac were good seed sown in fruitful soil at an oppor- tune time. In various places, too, and at long intervals foundations of institutions of the higher learning were being laid. Fifty- seven years passed after Harvard began its career before the College of William and Mary was chartered, in 1693, in WiUiamsburg, Va. Seven years later, in 1701, Yale was chartered as a collegiate school, not finding its permanent home in New Haven or its name, however, until 17 18. Princeton's charter as the College of New Jersey was ac- quired in 1746, and was one of the fruits of the "Great Revival" of Jonathan Edwards. The University of Penn- sylvania developed from an academy founded Ijy Frank- lin in 1 75 1. A public library, also due to Franklin, and a hospital were further evidences of the intellectual ac- Poor Richard, 17 3^. A N c For the Year of Ghrift T\c'u'y the 'Firft after I EAP YPAR: .^ndrnakis fine, ih Creation Years "ccounr of fhe'--ii;nrrn Grf^v 7241 the Latin Ghurch^ .w-hen O cnr r 6012 ^ i-'y she Computation of, //^ //^ ,,^2 ' By the Rom^n Chronology ^^-gj 3v >he ^^Habbies.. ^.^^ yy herein t.( co>::uimd t nc i.unations, Edipfcs, Judgment of rf.e Weather, Sp-.ing Tiac. Pl/n.fs Morions & ; .utuaiAfpeas, Sun and Moon's RiHno .nd Sct- ;; S' >;^"gth of Days, Time of Hj>h Wj^r iMirs, Courts, and obfcrvable Day* "* " ^^ ' Fitted torheLarifudcol Forfv Dea^-ccs and a Meridian of Five Hours Weft Tron^wJ h^iMuy without rehfiKIc Error fc,ve airjhe'ad- g^'^"^^ P^^ces, even from ^ewfoundlayul \o Siutb^ Printed and fold by I FRJNKL/N, at the New ..,„., „_^K"iig Officp oea? the Market ^ ■ ■ ^1^ Tbhd Irojrcgioo. FAC-SIMILE, REDUCED, OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF "poor Richard's almanac." 58 GROWTH OF THE COLONIES tivity, especially in the sciences, that prevailed in Phila- delphia. Founded as King's College in New York City, in 1754, Columbia acquired its present name in 1784. In 1804 Nicholas Brown gave a hundred thousand dollars and his name to Rhode Island College, in Providence, which had been founded in 1764. Two years later, in 1766, a charter was granted to Queen's College, in New Brun- swick, N. J., which after many vicissitudes took the name in 1825 of Rutgers, from a benefactor of the institution, Henry Rutgers. Dartmouth College, which accjuired its charter and its home in Hanover, N. H., from George HI in 1769, and, at the same time, its name from its patron, the Earl of Dartmouth, had its origin in a school organ- ized about 1750, at Lebanon, Conn., by the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock. VI RESISTANCE TO BRITISH TYRANNY The curiosity of the world will probably never be alto- gether satisfied as to the reasons why George III and his ministers, in the decade from 1765 to 1775, treated the American colonies with an arrogance, short-sightedness and folly unparalleled in political history. A few things, how- ever, deserve to be borne in mind. There were, in the first place, no precedents to guide the King and his chief ministers, Townshend and Lord North, in the business of framing laws for tens of thousands of Englishmen in remote colonies. The situation was new, unique. The counsel and warnings of the men of keen insight into the large political principles involved — Chatham, Burke, Barre and others, men who, while believing in the supremacy of Parlia- ment, regarded the course of the King and his ministers as inexpedient and in some respects as unjust — were ignored. To the King and his successive ministries the policy of tax- ing the colonists and of exercising autocratic control over their internal affairs, legislative, judicial, financial and what not, seemed the only one consistent with the dignity and even the political integrity of the empire. They even justi- fied to themselves the use of British troops in the large towns for coercive purposes, their only answer to the "Boston massacre, " in which half a dozen townsmen were shot down by the soldiery, being a law providing that British soldiers indicted for murder should thereafter be tried in England. 59 6o RESISTANCE TO BRITISH TYRANNY George III, moreover, had weighty personal reasons for opposing stoutly the contention of the American colonists. The very principle of "no taxation without representation," upon which at the outset the colonists took their stand, was directly at variance with the system under which the members of the House of Commons were chosen. This system gave great power to the King through the repre- sentatives of the "rotten boroughs," containing few, or, in some instances, no, inhabitants, while at the same time it denied any representation to great and growing cities like Birmingham and Leeds. To admit the justice of the colonists' position would have been to invite reform in the election of members of Parliament, a contingency which George III could not contemplate without anxiety and even fear. For such a revolutionary change would have made Chatham the real ruler of England and would have reduced the King to a subordinate position, shorn of a large part of his power. Finally, neither the King nor any one of his ministers, save Chatham, seems ever to have comprehended the fact that the colonists were fighting for a great political principle, or to have imagined until the very last that they were pre- pared to sacrifice their lives and their property in defense of this principle. Even the plain truths which FrankHn uttered in the memorable examination to which he was subjected by the House of Commons with reference to the effects of the Stamp Act on the colonies, failed to convince the King or men like Townshend that principle and not expediency was the controlling motive of the Americans. It was in accordance with this belief, that from the American point of view the matter was one merely of shillings and ■ 'ibthlc&f — n and [us Tavagelianils. If fialAos lin^ f lunBasc fcm AnsujfflBupgJlui inorEmi £cimoni n thai tusfjl Go^' llfvowa the Cnni»«£ .arid o^ov'^hrDf^. Bd uwu i tiiwi »RancoUf fttetrh Iheg blliodtlfanda; I}ic pl«mU«eClfaoft< ofVlc1i»ijlutaia»aicfo. iSnau:nih»n!lcirtWj\tt«ifcaui«rH(i*iA IhtPatrioti coi»ou»Taar> for mdiurcihed. |lCceiiExraa»n»<»i ihu PUilr citrili'd THE BOSTON MASSACRE. Reduced from Paul Revere's engraving. 62 RESISTANCE TO BRITISH TYRANNY pence, and in order as well to help the British East India Company, that the King sought to beguile the colonists into purchasing tea from England, by making the price, even with the import duty added, lower than that of Dutch tea. On the other hand, the American colonists were con- tending from the first for the rights which England, in the political enlightenment of later times, granted unhesi- tatingly to Canada, to Australia and to South Africa, and the possession of which binds these British colonies to the mother country with loyalty and affection. The Stamp Act, which could not be enforced and was consequently repealed, was designed merely to produce revenue. The Townshend acts, however, laying duties on glass, paper, tea and other imports, were broader in scope and deeper in design. The purpose of these measures was to concen- trate in the hands of the King the absolute control of the internal affairs of the colonies through, first, the power of appointment and removal; secondly, the payment, from the revenue derived from the duties, of fixed salaries to governors, judges and other officials; and, thirdly, the maintenance of a civil and a pension list. Even the dull- est of the colonists realized that to accept these measures would have meant political enslavement. The aim of Lord North's bills, following the defiant destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, was frankly to bring the rebellious Massachusetts colony to its knees by the use of an armed force if necessary, and to compel it to acknowledge the supreme authority of Parliament in all its affairs. The momentous issue thus raised was met b}- the men of Massachusetts with unfaltering courage. The King and his ministers hoped that the middle colonies would 64 RESISTANCE TO BRITISH TYRANNY remain loyal, and there was some ground for this hope. For New York, where commercial interests, always timid even at the rumor of possible international danger, were predominant, and where the population was of mixed races, had broken away from the non-importation agree- ment among the colonies, and her legislature had refused tt) approve the action of the first Continental Congress or to appoint delegates to the second. But when the crisis became acute differences on minor points were forgotten and the colony, largely through the influence of Philip Schuyler and the Livingstons, was brought into line with her sister provinces. In all of these controversies, which became more serious and more ominous year by year, Virginia and Massachu- setts, the two colonies which had been settled exclusively by people of the English race and the original stock of which had remained the purest, stood side by side. Vir- ginia, through the famous Resolves which Patrick Henry by his overwhelming eloquence forced through the House of Burgesses, took the lead in the resistance to the Stamp Act. And when, in retaliation for the destruction of the tea in 1773, the port of Boston was closed to commerce, Virginia and nearly all the other colonies, even South Caro- lina, made the cause of the unfortunate town their own, sending not only sympathy and encouragement but sup- plies of food and other commodities to the inhabitants thus cut off by sea, and therefore in those days entirely isolated, from the rest of the world. The spirit of co-operation which was so large a factor in bringing and holding the colonies together in this su- premely critical juncture had been created and fostered IDEA OF SEPARATION AT FIRST UNWELCOME 65 through the genius for political management of Samuel Adams, whose local committees of correspondence welded the towns of the Massachusetts colony together and who applied successfully the same system to the inter-relations of the several colonies themselves. Thus the machinery was conveniently at hand for the calling of a provincial congress in Concord or Cambridge, when the legislature, in pursuance of the arbitrary and high-handed British policy, was forbidden to meet, as well as for the assem- bling at Philadelphia, in the autumn of 1774, of the first Continental Congress. The memorials, however, which that Congress adopted fell upon deaf ears. The King and his ministers had only one thought — to force the people of the colony of Massachusetts to accept the political yoke which Parliament sought to hang on their necks; and in order to accomplish this end the force of British troops at Boston was increased to ten thousand men under Gen- eral Howe. Up to this time resistance to British oppression had not been generally associated in the colonies with any idea of separation from the mother country. To most minds the notion of independence was unwelcome; to many, incon- ceivable. As a whole the American colonists had no desire for independence. They and their ancestors for perhaps four generations had lived in peace and content- ment, as a rule, under the English flag. They were proud of this relationship and the depth and sincerity of their affection found spontaneous expression on the arrival of the news of the repeal by Parliament of the Stamp Act. The leaders among the colonists reflected accurately this sentiment. Franklin, impressed doubtless by the evi- 66 RESISTANCE TO BRITISH TYRANNY dence on every hand of the power and resources of Eng- land, looked upon independence as an impossible alterna- tive. Jefferson, as late as July, 1775, when the Virginia colonel of militia, George Washington, in obedience to the call of Congress, was taking command of the American forces at Cambridge, expressly denied that the object of the war was separation and the establishment of an inde- pendent government. "Necessity has not yet driven us to that desperate measure," he added. Little did he then think that in less than a year's time he would be writing the Declaration of Independence! Washington himself came to the idea of independence reluctantly. When he took command of the army neither he nor the rest of the country, with the exception of a few individuals, had reached the point of considering inde- pendence as the object of the war. It soon became ap- parent to him, however, as it did to other patriots, that the alternatives between which a choice must be made were complete subjugation, political as well as military, to Great Britain, or independence. To a man of Washing- ton's character, in which great strength of will was united to a passionate love of freedom, there could be only one way out of such a dilemma — through independence. There was one man in the colonies, however, who was remarkably equipped for the task which he set himself, and who began as early as 1768 to work toward the ulti- mate end of independence — Samuel Adams. Prolonged reflection upon the broad political principles involved had convinced Adams, far in advance of his contemporaries, that separation from England was the only possible solu- tion of the difficult problem. From that time he worked. CARPENTERS HALL, PHILADELPHIA. Meeting-place of the First Continental Congress. 68 RESISTANCE TO BRITISH TYRANNY quietly when necessary, but unceasingly, in a great vari- ety of devious but effective ways, to influence and shape public opinion. Whenever, as occasionally happened, in the years following, the fires of resistance to British oppres- sion burned low and threatened, through indifference or self-interest, to die out altogether, this far-seeing, deep- plotting Boston patriot heaped fresh fuel upon the flames and carefully tended them, until such time as some new display of despotic power and stupidity on the part of the King and his advisers served to relieve him of his self- appointed task. VII INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION The military situation in the spring of 1776 was serious. The British regulars having in the previous year tested the temper and the marksmanship of the Americans at Bunker Hill, on the slopes of which more than a thousand of their number had been killed or wounded, were in no mood to face the breastworks which Washington threw up on Dorchester Heights, and were consequently forced, in March, to evacuate the town of Boston, sailing away to Halifax. The military operations around New York, which fol- lowed the transfer soon after of the American army to that point, were decidedly in favor of the British. Washington showed his resourcefulness as a commander in defeat by the skill with which he extricated his force of eight thou- sand men from the dangerous predicament in which they were left by the disastrous battle of Long Island. He was materially aided in this operation by the dilatoriness of his opponent. General Howe, who, as General Francis V. Greene observes in his Revolutionary War, never re- covered from the mental paralysis which he received at Bunker Hill; and he was favored also by adverse winds which prevented the British fleet from proceeding up the East River and cutting off his retreat. Other misfortunes followed — the battle of Kip's Bay and the capture by the British of Fort Washington, with 69 70 INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION more than two thousand men, so that December found the American commander-in-chief with the remnants of his army, about three thousand in number, retreating rapidly through New Jersey and across the Delaware, Lord Corn- wallis pursuing him with vigor. The withdrawal in fancied security of most of the British forces to New York gave Washington his opportunity, a little later, for his brill- iant dash to Trenton, where he captured a thousand men, mostly Hessians. By mihtary strategy of the highest order he held at the Assanpink River the main British force, hastily dispatched from New York under CornwaUis in order to retrieve the disaster of Trenton, while by a forced night march over a roundabout route he fell upon the three regiments which had been left at Princeton and routed them completely, the killed, wounded and captured of the enemy numbering fully five hundred. These two exploits, at Trenton and Princeton, which in their conception and execution have always aroused the admiration of military experts, came at a time when the outlook for the colonists was blackest. They served imme- diately to bring Washington into high distinction, not only as a soldier but as a statesman who was ready to assume every risk in order to turn the tide of war in favor of the American cause and who realized that an immediate victory of positive value was necessary for its effect upon public sentiment throughout the colonies and upon the spirits of his little army. The popular movement for indepen- dence had been greatly accelerated by the publication, early in 1776, of Paine's Common Sense. Much of the enthusiasm, however, with which the adoption at Phila- delphia in July of the Declaration of Independence had 72 INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION been received had died out; what was imperatively needed was a substantial military victory. It is not too much to say, therefore, that Trenton and- Princeton, coming when they did, saved the Revolution. The next critical period of the war was the series of engagements culminating at Saratoga in October, 1777, when the British general, Burgoyne, hemmed in and at- tacked on all sides by the hastily summoned militia of New York and New England, with the few Continental troops that Washington could spare, all under General Gates, surrendered more than five thousand men. The battle was critical for two reasons: first, because it made impossible any further attempt on the part of the British to split the colonies in twain by an expedition from Canada that should form a junction with Howe or Clinton in New York City and thus secure control of the Hudson Valley; and, secondly, because it offered convincing proof to Europe of the ability of the Americans to win their independence, and so led directly to the treaty with France acknowledging that independence and securing for the colonies through this alliance substantial aid in men, ships, supplies and even money. Washington's part in this campaign was to keep Howe occupied so as to prevent him from sending reinforce- ments to Burgoyne. Thus the battle of the Brandywine in the middle of September and the battle of German- town early in October, both of which Washington lost to Howe, contributed indirectly to the American victory at Saratoga, because this expedition of the British by water for the capture of Philadelphia diverted to this pur- pose fully eighteen thousand men, a portion at least of i 74 INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION whom Howe might and should have sent north to the aid of Burgoync. PoHtical reasons, moreover, made it imper- ative that Washington should not allow Howe to march into Philadelphia unopposed, just as in the previous year similar reasons had made it necessary for him to oppose Howe's attempt to occupy New York, although the suc- cessful defense of the city against a greatly superior force supported by a fleet of warships must have seemed, as it turned out to be, hopeless. The winter of 1 777-1 778 passed with Howe and his British army in Philadelphia and with Washington and his half-starved Continentals at Valley Forge. The ratification by Congress early in May, 1778, of the treaties of commerce and alhance with France, which Franklin, Deane and Lee had negotiated, and the news that a French fleet under D'Estaing was on the way to America, made it imperative for Sir Henry Clinton, who had relieved Howe in command of the British troops in Philadelphia, to evacuate that city and to concentrate his forces in New York. Emerging from Valley Forge, with a force which had Ijeen increased during the spring to about ten thousand men, Washington overtook Clinton and engaged him at Monmouth. But for the treachery of the English soldier of fortune, Charles Lee, to whom Washington gave the command of the advance column, a decisive victory for the Americans would without doubt have been won. As it was, Washingtt)n himself came up in season to turn a disgraceful retreat into a drawn battle. Clinton made his way to New York, with the loss in casu- alties and desertions of between fifteen hundred and two thousand men since leaving Philadelphia. Washington WASHINGTON'S STRATEGIC PRINCIPLES 75 established himself with his army near by, observing and waiting. Up to this point Washington had been guided in his conduct of the war by two strategic principles of the highest importance. His first aim was to keep his army, whether it was small or large, in the field and to avoid fighting except under conditions of his own choosing. Ex- perience, moreover, had taught him that the possession of no city or town, neither New York nor Philadelphia even, was essential to the cause of independence; but the con- tinued existence of the main army of the colonies, he rea- soned, was all-essential to the final attainment of this end. Consequently he never tried to recapture New York, and refuse'd to fight Clinton before Philadelphia, except on his own terms. His second strategic principle recognized the valley of the Hudson as the key to the military control of the colonies as a whole. He resolutely refused, there- fore, until the time came for the final stroke that was to end the war at York town, to be lured away from this pivotal point. He declined to go north to oppose Bur- goyne or south to save his own province and the CaroHnas from being devastated. He was never, even when at Valley Forge, more than a few days' march from the Hudson. By this policy Washington held a large British force inactive in New York or in Philadelphia, his fine of com- munication with the New England colonies was always open by way of West Point and he prevented the division of the colonies into halves, each of which unsupported by the other or by the main army might have been overrun and conquered. It was through the treason of Benedict 76 INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION Arnold that the British plotted to secure, without a blow, the fortress of West Point and thus to wrest from Wash- ington the control of the river and the valley. Finally, in the successful execution of the broad military plan here outlined, Washington was materially assisted by the temperamental sluggishness and general inefficiency of the commanders-in-chief of the British forces successively op- posed to him, Sir William Howe and Sir Henry Chnton. Monmouth was the last battle to be fought in the North; thereafter the South was the scene of the final military operations. Two events of the year 1780 were distinctly favorable to the British, the capture of Lincoln and his army in the town of Charleston, and the defeat of Gates at Camden. Lincoln, by following his commander-in-chief's first strategic principle, might have saved his army by retreating into the country and by allowing the British to enjoy the empty advantage of occupying the town unop- posed. The failure of Gates, to whom after Saratoga a general command had been given by Congress, carried with it a fortunate result. For Congress tardily but wisely entrusted to Washington the selection of his successor, and the appointment of General Nathanael Greene to this position marked the turning-point in the campaign in the South. Greene had the energy and military abihty which his predecessor lacked, and amply justified Washington's judg- ment as to his character and capacity. Having, early in 1 781, formed a junction of his army with Morgan's forces, after the defeat by the latter of Tarlcton at Cowpens, he was strong enough later in the year to contribute largely to the final victory at Yorktown by forcing Cornwallis 78 INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION into Virginia within reach of Washington and by occupy- ing the attention of Lord Rawdon so constantly in the Carolinas that he was prevented from detaching any of his force to go to Cornwallis's aid, even when the latter found himself hemmed in on all sides at Yorktown. Throughout the war, up to this time, the control of the sea had been of the greatest advantage to the British because of the faciHty with which they could move troops from New York to any point along the coast. When, in the spring of 1781, the information reached Washington that a French fleet under De Grasse was on its way to America, he knew that this advantage was about to be neutralized and that the day was near at hand when, if he could control the movements of De Grasse, the final blow would have to be struck with all the force that could be assembled. When later he learned that the objective point of De Grasse was the Chesapeake, he rapidly made his dispositions to overwhelm Cornwallis, who had been laying waste Virginia, in the hope of ending the war with a single stroke. The British ministry, pleased with the work of devastation which had been accomplished, came, at this juncture, to the aid of the plan which Washington was for- mulating by ordering Cornwalhs to remain on the Ches- apeake. In obedience to these instructions he fortified Yorktown as best he could, relying on the co-operation of the British fleet from New York for his defense. When, however, the French fleet under De Grasse entered the Chesapeake and Washington himself, having made a forced march from New York, attacked his front, he was in a vice from which there was no escape. All the mili- tary authorities are agreed that from a strategic point of AMERICAN PRIVATEERS IN THE WAR 79 view the Yorktown campaign was boldly and brilliantly conceived, and that the execution of the plan was masterly. The surrender took place on October 17, 1781, more than seven thousand British and Hessians laying down their arms. There was no alternative, the investing force being greatly superior in numbers — about nine thousand Ameri- cans and seven thousand French, together with the fleet of De Barras which had joined that of De Grasse. But for the substantial help which France contributed at this crisis to the cause of freedom in America, making the decisive victory at Yorktown possible, the war might have dragged on for years. As it was, more than two years were to pass before the last EngHsh soldiers remaining in America sailed from New York, the treaty of peace negotiated with England by Adams, Jay and Franklin being formally signed in the autumn of the same year, 1783. Following the British soldiers went the loyalists, to the number of fully twenty thousand. They sailed to Canada, Nova Scotia, Bermuda or the British West Indies and made their homes there. The part which the American privateers played in the Revolutionary War was not unimportant. Between 1776 and 1783 more than fifteen hundred armed vessels, all but a small proportion of which were of private ownership, were fitted out in American ports to prey on British com- merce. Of this number New England contributed more than one-half. Up to the time of the French alliance these American cruisers, public and private, had captured more than six hundred English vessels, many of them rich prizes. Meanwhile, however, British cruisers had captured half as many again American vessels, practically ruining the coast- 8o INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION wise and fishing trade of New England. The odds, there- fore, were decidedly in favor of England, notwithstanding the loss which her merchant marine suffered. The one great naval exploit of the Revolution, which has a unique distinction never likely to be duplicated, was the capture, off the north coast of England, of the British frigate Serapis by Paul Jones in the BonJwmme Richard, the Americans being forced to abandon their own ship as she sank under them, vitally wounded, and to take refuge on the frigate which they had captured. Finally, the conduct of the Revolutionary War empha- sized in a dramatic manner the remarkable combination of qualities, moral and intellectual, personal and profes- sional, which Washington, fortunately for his country, brought to the herculean task which had been laid upon him. The obstacles with which he had to contend from the outset were wellnigh endless in num]:)er and appar- ently insurmountable in character — a Congress without power or authority and therefore without credit, the fee- bleness of which increased as the really able men in its thin ranks departed on diplomatic missions or returned to take charge of affairs in their respective colonies; the supineness and indifference of the colonial governments to his repeated appeals for men and supplies when these could not be obtained from Congress; a system of short- term enlistments which was almost fatal to the efficiency of his army and left him ignorant of what his force was to consist of almost from month to month; dissension, suffer- ing and even mutiny in the ranks of his unpaid, ill-clothed, half-starved army; envy, jealousy and even conspiracy among his officers; injustice and demorahzation caused WASHINGTON AS A LEADER 8i by the officious interference of Congress in appointing for- eign soldiers, many of them, unhke Lafayette and Steuben, mere soldiers of fortune, to positions of rank. This is only a partial list. Yet through all these and a thousand other trials, great or petty, which would have broken a less resolute spirit, Washington pursued his even way, with his mind fixed on the main purpose of the war, constantly writing to Con- gress or to the colonial governments and pointing out the nature and urgency of his needs; pledging his private fortune in order to secure food and clothes for his soldiers; devising plans at one and the same time for raising funds and for defending some point threatened by the enemy; advising Congress against a projected French attack upon Canada; overwhelming with his cold scorn the Irish ad- venturer Conway, the leader in the abortive conspiracy to force the commander-in-chief into retirement in order that Gates might succeed him; driving the traitor Lee to the rear because of his behavior at the battle of Monmouth; showing the greatest tact and delicacy in his dealings with the French allies; and, in a word, rising equal to any and every emergency which he was called upon to meet, in a manner, it is safe to say, that could have been matched by no other man in a generation of great men. VIII THIRTEEN JEALOUS STATES At the end of the Revolutionary War the American people found themselves burdened with a public debt due foreign creditors, France, Holland and Spain, of between nine and ten million dollars. This sum represented only a small fraction of the total cost of the war, the remainder having been borne by the people of the states. It was large enough, however, to embarrass greatly a Congress which had no power to lay and collect taxes, but was dependent upon the states to contribute their share to meet the interest payments as they came due. Although the population of the country had increased by half a mill- ion during the war, the people were poor. Commerce, which had flourished in the New England states especially, had been practically destroyed. Of the one hundred and fifty whalers, for example, hailing from the port of Nan- tucket at the beginning of the war, no fewer than one hundred and thirty-four were captured by British cruisers and fifteen were wrecked, leaving only one of the entire fleet to escape. The cod and mackerel fisheries and the West Indian trade had been similarly ruined. The great body of the people, however, supported themselves by agriculture, and to this they turned with renewed energy. Meanwhile the conditions under which they were living had changed in important respects. It had become neces- sary, when independence was declared, for all of the states 8? FREEDOM UNDER INDEPENDENCE 83 except the two, Connecticut and Rhode Island, which had been allowed to continue under their original char- ters, to adopt new constitutions adapting the machinery of the state governments to the changed conditions grow- ing out of the severance of relations with the mother coun- try. All of these changes were in the direction of greater freedom. Even the governors of the states were shorn of most of their powers, authority being concentrated in the representatives of the people. The state governments, consisting of a chief executive and an upper and a lower house, followed the old colonial model, the upper house growing out of the governor's council. A varying prop- erty qualification was necessary for membership in either house, but the right to vote was extended so that it included all freemen except those who through shiftlessness or im- providence had no motive in keeping taxes low. In all but one of the states judicial officers were appointed by the governors or the legislatures for a definite term, for life, or during good behavior. In all of the states except Georgia and South Carolina where slave labor was becom- ing more and more necessary for the cultivation of rice and indigo, decided steps were taken toward the pro- hibition of the slave trade and the gradual emancipation of the slaves. Under the new constitution which Massa- chusetts had adopted slaves were even declared to be free. Progress was also made toward greater freedom in religious worship. In several of the states, in Virginia, South Carolina and elsewhere, the Church of England was disestabhshed, and parish, rates and religious tests were abolished, thus severing the connection between church and state. This separation was not wholly effected in 84 THIRTEEN JEALOUS STATES Massachusetts and in one or two other New England states, where CongregationaHsm remained a powerful po- litical factor, until the beginning of the following century. The Presbyterians, meanwhile, who had developed strength in the middle states and in northern Virginia, laid the foundation for a national church by organizing their first general assembly. The Methodists also chose their first bishop at a conference in Baltimore in 1784. The chief interest, however, of the thoughtful men in all of the states during these years following the close of the Revolutionary War was centred in the apparently insoluble problem presented by a Congress without power on the one hand and thirteen independent, self-centred, jealous states on the other. The federal idea had been of slow growth. It began with the New England Con- federation under which, in 1643, the colonies of Massa- chusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven made an offensive and defensive league for the regulation of affairs of mutual concern, ecclesiastical and commercial as well as military. More than a hundred years later, in 1754, Franklin submitted to the congress of colonial delegates at Albany, assembled to secure the aid of the Five, then become the Six, Nations in the impending war with the French, a project for a federal union of all the colonies for defensive and other general purposes. This plan in which the idea of an American nation was fore- shadowed for the first time was prophetic of the potential power and greatness which to the keen vision of Franklin lay in the rapidly expanding population and in the rich- ness and extent of the land west of the Alleghanies. Ac- cepted by the congress, Franklin's project was rejected by 86 THIRTEEN JEALOUS STATES the colonial legislatures and by the people. He was in advance of his time. A cjuarter of a century was to pass before England by her treatment of her colonies was to force them into a successful war for independence and bring them face to face with the necessity of forming a federal union. The Continental Congress, first assembled in Philadel- phia in October, 1774, an emergency body called into be- ing, as we have seen, by the critical situation in Boston, sat until 1781 before its powers were defined by the Arti- cles of Confederation, exercising by general consent many of the functions of a regularly constituted federal gov- ernment, but lacking the most essential of all attributes of sovereignty, the authority to raise money by taxation. The Articles of Confederation themselves did not remedy this fatal defect in the scheme, but left the control of all taxes, import duties as well as internal taxes, in the hands of the states and made no provision by which the federal government could enforce its will upon a state that refused to contribute its share toward the general expenses of the government. Moreover, no bill could be made a law without the vote of two-thirds of the states in its favor. Any five states, therefore, of the thirteen could block a measure and prevent it from passing. Finally, the Articles of Confederation left the government in a state of utter and shameful helplessness in its dealings with foreign nations. When, at the end of the Revolutionary War, England made peace, the treaty specified the thirteen states by name; the American government was not recognized as com- petent to make a treaty or to carry out the terms of one. The weakness of the general government under the THE IDEA OF NATIONALITY 87 Articles of Confederation was chiefly due to the jealous watchfulness with which the states, from force of long habit, guarded their hard-won rights, and to the natural reluctance with which they resigned any of these rights to an abstraction like the federal government. The con- sequence was that the Articles of Confederation, however imposing an appearance they may have presented, were only the shadow and not the substance of government. They did not even possess the germ of the national idea. That idea was of very slow growth in the minds of men who by years of usage and by generations of tradition had become adjusted in thought and practice to the work- ings under their eyes and within reach, so to speak, of their hands of the system of state government. The cardinal principles which were to form the founda- tion of the national system were first outlined by Washing- ton in the circular letter which he sent to the governors of the states when, in 1783, the American army disbanded — the results, one must believe, of careful observation of the inefficiency of the government during the war and of long reflection upon possible remedies for that inefificiency. These fundamental requisites were, first, an indissoluble union of the states under one federal head; second, provision, necessarily involving the right of tax- ation, for the full payment of the public debt; third, the organization of a militia system on a uniform basis which would make the force available for federal purposes; and, fourth, fraternity and co-operation in place of local preju- dices and parochial policies, a spirit of mutual concession and a willingness to sacrifice individual advantage in the interest of the general prosperity. 88 THIRTEEN JEALOUS STATES This high political ideal was reached in the Constitution adopted by the convention of 1787, but the pathway to it was long and rough and thorny. Few persons, it is safe to say, imagined that Maryland was turning her face toward that goal when she refused to accept the Arti- cles of Confederation until the four states, Virginia, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, which under their original charters or by military occupation laid claim to the territory lying between the Ohio River and the Lakes, should relinquish those claims to the control of Congress. Maryland had proposed earlier that there be included in the Articles of Confederation one providing for a division of this territory north of the Ohio into states under the authority and direction of Congress. The delegates, how- ever, were not ready then to take so long a step toward a centralized government. The refusal of Maryland to recede from its position gave rise to wide discussion, with the ultimate result that one by one the four states concerned relinquished their claims to the territory in dispute. New York taking the lead. Connecticut was permitted, as a compromise measure, to reserve for edu- cational purposes a strip of land on the southern shore of Lake Erie. It only remained, therefore, for Congress to provide a series of laws suitable for the government of this new territory and a body of general principles to which it would be necessary for the states to conform as they were carved, one by one, out of this territory. These laws and principles were embodied in the Ordinance of 1787, the influence of which upon subsequent events was of the greatest importance. They provided, in brief, that this ' THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 89 territory north of the Ohio should ultimately be divided into not more than five states, in which slavery should for- ever be prohibited ; that the appointment of officers to gov- ern this territory should rest with Congress; that freedom of religious worship should prevail and that no religious tests should be required of public officials; that the right to vote should be restricted to the possessors of freeholds of fifty acres or more; and that no law should be passed impairing the obligations of contracts. "I doubt," said Daniel Webster, "whether one single law of any law-giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787." This ordinance carried out in successful detail the proj- ect which Jefiferson had brought forward in the Ordinance of 1784, but which was too radical a measure for Congress to accept at that time. Its importance and significance lay in the fact that its passage was the exercise by Congress for the first time of national sovereignty in its highest form, and was so in harmony with changed public opinion in favor of a strong central government that the absence of any authority in the Articles of Confederation for the enact- ment of so sweeping a measure and the neglect of Congress to refer the matter to the states for their approval, were both acquiesced in by the people. What were the causes of the change in public sentiment which made possible this Ordinance of 1787, under which the great commonwealths of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi- gan and Wisconsin were one by one formed into indepen- dent states? The chief cause was the fear, which by the winter of 1787 had become acute, lest the country should drift into anarchy or even civil war, if something were 90 THIRTEEN JEALOUS STATES not done immediately to a\ert the danger. The reality and the magnitude of this danger were apparent to the more thoughtful men throughout the older states. Com- munication between the principal cities was slow and infre- quent. The Boston merchant who had occasion to go to New York took more time for the journey, in one of the two stages that sufficed for the passenger traflfic in those days, than he would require now to go to Seattle — a week or even ten days, over rough roads and across rivers by ford. The antagonisms and jealousies of the states thus had time to take root and flourish in the long intervals that elapsed when disputes were pending. The craze for paper money had threatened to bankrupt several of the states and had impoverished the people. Riotous outbreaks in New Hampshire and Vermont were followed by armed rebellion under the leadership of Shays in western Massa- chusetts, directed mainly against the courts as the instru- ments of the state for the collection of debts which the farmers, in their distress, could not pay. Sex'eral of the northern and southern states, including Kentucky and Tennessee, were in a bitter quarrel over the proposed com- mercial treaty with Spain, in the interest of the northern merchants and ship-owners, the price for which was to be a renunciation of the claim of the United States to the con- trol of the Mississippi below the Yazoo. So intense was the feeling over the matter that threats of secession from the confederation were freely made on both sides, ceasing only when the treaty was withdrawn. And the climax was reached when early in 1787 New York, alone of the thirteen states, refused her assent to the proposed amend- ment to the Articles of Confederation giving Congress the FEDERATION A NECESSITY 91 power to lay and collect import duties sufficient to meet the interest on the public debt. New York would not give up the revenue from or the control of her customs, and the unanimous consent of the states being necessary for such an amendment, the measure failed and the wheels of the federal government were completely blocked. Under these chaotic conditions pubhc sentiment under- went a rapid change in favor of a convention that should find a way out of the strife, turmoil and danger, through the formation of a stronger government with greater pow- ers. It was in response to this sentiment that Congress called a convention to meet in Philadelphia, on May 14, 1787, the place and the date coinciding with those of the adjourned Annapolis convention, in which Washington had showed a deep interest, and which had been assem- bled to discuss and, if possible, to regulate the discordant commercial relations of the different states. IX UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION The Constitutional Convention was as representative not only of the political wisdom but of the general intelli- gence of the states as any assembly that could have been convened. Of its fifty-five members a large percentage, thirty-two, consisted of men of college training, not a few of whom had made themselves, by special study, masters of the science of government. These included nine gradu- ates of Princeton, the chief of whom was James Madison, five of William and Mary, four of Yale, three of Harvard, two of Columbia, one of whom was the brilliant young lawyer, Alexander Hamilton, and one each of Pennsylvania and of several English and Scotch universities. The four men who in breadth of knowledge and variety of expe- rience excelled all their colleagues in this distinguished assembly were Washington, Franklin, eighty-one years of age, Madison and Hamilton. After deliberating more than four months in secret ses- sion the convention made public the text of a constitution which from that day to this has aroused the admiration of the profoundest of political philosophers and the closest students of the science of government. That these men with their necessarily limited vision could have drafted an instrument of such flexibility as to adapt itself equally well to a nation of less than four millions of people and to a nation, with its outlying dependencies, of over a hundred 92 HARMONY THROUGH COMPROMISES 93 millions, while allowing for the corresponding develop- ment of conflicting interests which would necessarily arise from this enormous increase in population, has been justly looked upon as little short of marvellous. "Yet, after all deductions," says James Bryce, "it ranks above every other written constitution for the intrinsic excellence of its scheme, its adaptation to the circumstances of the people, the simplicity, brevity and precision of its lan- guage, its judicious mixture of deiiniteness in principle with elasticity in details." These results were not attained, however, without a prolonged controversy over every essential point. The states from force of long habit were tenacious of their rights and suspicious of each other, and when at last an agreement was reached on some controverted question, this result was attained only by concessions on both sides. The form which the two houses of Congress finally took was the result of a compromise, suggested by the delegates from Connecticut, between the conflicting ambitions of the large states and the small states, a compromise that was designed to equalize the representation, as far as it was possible to do so. Other important provisions were based on compromises. The northern states agreed to allow three-fifths of the slave population in the South to be in- cluded in the enumeration that was to serve as a basis for representation in the lower house of Congress, and to post- pone for twenty years the suppression of the African slave trade. At this period cotton was cultivated to only a slight extent in the South, and slave labor was chiefly serviceable for rice and indigo culture in Georgia and South Carolina; slavery, it was therefore generally thought, would die out 94 UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION gradually. A provision for the restoration of fugitive slaves to their owners was also accepted. In return for these concessions the consent of Georgia and South Caro- lina was secured to the provision allowing the federal government to have complete control of commerce. The foundations of the new government were, in fact, laid in compromise. The debates in the state conventions to which the Con- stitution was referred for ratification, and in the innumer- able newspapers and pamphlets of the day, immediately divided the public into two parties, the Federalists who favored the adoption of the Constitution as it stood, and the anti-Federalists who opposed its adoption, at all events unless it was modified in one particular or another. The Federalists had by far the better of these arguments, the ablest champion among them being Hamilton. The Fed- eralist essays, which Hamilton, with assistance from Mad- ison and Jay, wrote and published while the Constitution was before the New York legislature for ratification, con- stitute, according to John Fiske, "the most profound trea- tise on government that has ever been written." They were of unique value as an exposition and an interpretation of the Constitution in that they were written by the men who were most instrumental in giving that document its distinctive form and who were presumably best acquainted with the intentions of those who framed it. One by one the states ratified the Constitution, although the opinion was general that the new government would be experimental merely and might turn out to be as unwork- able as the old one had been under the Articles of Confed- eration. The absolute and immediate need, however, of TASK OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY 95 some sort of a centralized government was so universally conceded that a large majority of the states were quite willing to give the new Federalist Constitution a trial. It was significant, however, of the absence of unanimity of sentiment that the great states of Virginia and New York should still be wrangling over its provisions when the requisite number of states, nine, ratified it. In time all fell into line, several, however, by a close vote and one or two under coercion. The first ten amendments to the Con- stitution were adopted in the first session of Congress and were immediately ratified by the states, so that they may be regarded as a part of the original instrument. In the nature of a bill of rights, they were designed to guarantee freedom of speech, religion and person and the protection of property. The Federalist party which came into power at the first election under the Constitution of 1789, when Washington was chosen President and John Adams Vice-President, remained in control of the government for twelve years — during the two terms of Washington and the one term of Adams, Jefferson having been elected Vice-President under Adams. It was a task of appaUing proportions and of unparalleled difficulties which the Federahsts in this period set themselves to perform. For they were not only re- quired to devise, to set up and to start in operation, with- out precedents to guide them, the highly-complicated ma- chinery required by the various government departments, including the United States courts, but they were also expected to create, adopt and carry into effect a financial and economic policy which should give cohesion and power to the new government and prosperity to the country. 96 UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION This task, the enormous responsibihties of which would have crushed an ordinary man, was undertaken by Hamil- ton, whom Washington had made Secretary of the Treas- ury in his first cabinet. No wiser choice could have been made. For Hamilton, although he was only thirty-two, brought to this tremen- dous undertaking technical knowledge of wide range, prac- tical skill of the highest order in the application of this knowledge to existing conditions, rare judgment and un- wearying industry. What was of even greater importance than his intellectual equipment was the fact that his execu- tion of this task was based upon a statesmanship so national in its scope that it included men of all parties throughout the country and so sound and so far-reaching that its effect upon the form of the government and upon the public policy which was developed in those early years can never be effaced. In rapid succession Hamilton submitted reports and bills providing for the creation of a national bank, a mint and a currency system; a funding plan for turning the $75,000,000 or so of pubHc debts, foreign, domestic and state, into government bonds; and revenue measures laying duties on imports and taxing the manu- facture of spirits. At the beginning of its career Con- gress had passed a tariff bill, the real purpose of which was to produce revenue for the expenses of the government, although the preamble described it as "for the encourage- ment and protection of manufactures." Hamilton, how- ever, brought forward a plan designed to encourage the establishment and to foster the growth of manufactures by a system of bounties and protective duties which had in it the germ of the protectionist idea on which, many HAMILTON AND THE FEDERALISTS 97 years later, parties were to divide and a great economic policy was to be founded. Hamilton hoped, and with good reason, that the general effect of his financial and economic policy would be to sup- ply the stimulus and the means for the development of the vast resources, industrial and commercial, as well as agricultural, which his prophetic vision saw were latent in the country. At the same time his policy was designed, in the words of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, "to create a strong and if possible a permanent class all over the coun- try, without regard to existing political affiliations, but bound to the government by the strongest of all ties, immediate and personal pecuniary interest." If this end could be accomplished, the political effect, he reasoned, would be of enormous advantage in strengthening the power and increasing the prestige of the central govern- ment. Out of the immediate discussion which these bold meas- ures precipitated in Congress grew the Federalist party headed by Hamilton and the Republican party under the leadership of Jefferson who was also a member of Wash- ington's cabinet. The Federalists favored a broad con- struction of the Constitution and advocated the theory of impHed powers under the "general welfare" phrase. In their view of the Constitution the rights of the states and of individuals were subordinate to the supreme authority of the national government. Jefferson and Madison, who soon joined the Republican ranks, were advocates, on the other hand, of a strict construction of the Constitution. To them and their followers Hamilton's policy seemed to be devised for the purpose of creating and protecting 98 UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION privileged classes. Democratic by instinct and training and influenced by the French Revolution and its flaming jjrocla- mation to the world of liberty, equality and the rights of man, Jefferson saw in the rapid development of a highly- centralized government with wellnigh unlimited authority the ominous threat of a monarchy, and the Federalists were openly accused of plotting to this end. There was some justification, moreover, for these accusations. Hamilton was by no means alone in his party in his lack of sympathy with the ideas of the French Revolution or in his distrust of American democracy. The epithet "democrats" which the Federalists apphed to Jefferson and his followers was intended to express their contempt in much the same way. that one might use the word ''demagogue" to-day. The first significant indication that the Federalist party was losing its hold upon the people followed the ratification of the treaty which Jay had negotiated in 1794 with Eng- land. In the previous year the French republic had de- clared war against Great Britain, whereupon the United States had issued a proclamation of neutrality, the first declaration of the American j)()licy of non-intervention in the wars and politics of Europe. The right, however, of American merchant-vessels as neutrals to carry provisions to French or British ports was not recognized by either belligerent. Such vessels became liable, therefore, to seiz- ure, if bound for any British or French port, and were captured and harassed without redress. The impressment of American seamen for service on British men-of-war, a practice which began at this {period, also added to the bit- terness of feeling toward England, and little further provo- cation was needed to induce the United States to declare DOWNFALL OF THE FEDERALISTS 99 war against that nation. Jay was sent to England to avert this calamity, and the treaty which he negotiated served this purpose. To the Federalists such a treaty, although it did not promise on its face to bring much relief to American com- merce, seemed preferable to war with England; and the result more than justified this expectation. For it had the effect of at least postponing a conflict for nearly twenty years, and it did stimulate American commerce. The total exports from the United States, not including foreign products re-exported, more than doubled in value from 1795 to 1801, rising from $22,855,000 to $47,020,000. The total imports into the United States increased in the same period from $69,756,000 to $111,363,000. To the Repub- licans, however, this treaty of Jay's was a base betrayal of the national interests and honor by a party which thus openly and shamelessly avowed its subserviency to Eng- land and its sympathy with monarchical ideas. A shower of personal abuse and vilification was hurled upon Wash- ington himself, whose popularity even in Virginia, where Republicanism was strongly entrenched, seemed to be in danger of being undermined. It was in the passage, however, in 1798 of the Alien and Sedition laws that the Federalists in Congress committed their crowning blunder. Under these laws, by which Republican editors and local political leaders were liable to be arrested and thrown into jail or expelled from the country, the Constitution was stretched dangerously near the breaking-point. The apparent purpose of these laws was to suppress free speech and to enable the FederaHsts, by getting rid of their most troublesome opponents, to loo UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION establish themselves so firmly in power that they could not be dislodged. The real purpose of the Federahsts was to exert a restraining influence, through the convenient means of the federal courts, over the masses of the people who, according to the advanced theory of the party, were not altogether to be trusted. The Republicans were quick to take advantage of the political opportunity which this extreme extension of the national authority over the individual gave them. The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, drawn by Jefferson and Madison respectively, and passed by the legislatures of those states in 1798, were intended both as a protest against the harshness and illegality of these measures and as a reminder that there were limits beyond which the federal government could not go in its dealings with the state and with the individual. This early enunciation of the state rights, later known as the nullification doctrine, was to serve for years as the only documentary basis on which the party of Jefferson and Madison rested. The one thing that was wanting to make this theory of state sovereignty plausible, if not sound, was brought into the clear light by the Civil War sixty years later, that sovereignty is only an empty name if it has not the means and the power to enforce its will. A war with France, as foolish in its origin and aim as it was brief in duration, could not be made to help the fortunes of the Federalists. Dissension and treachery in Adams's cabinet and a quarrel between Adams and Hamil- ton who, although he had become a private citizen, was still the real leader of the party, completed the demorahza- tion of the Federahsts, who lost the election of 1800 after WHITNEY S COTTON-GIN. From a photograph of the model in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. I02 UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION a career which began in honcjr and high achievement and ended in folly and disaster. The life of the American people did not concern itself exclusively with political matters, momentous and impor- tant as these were, in this decade. The invention by Eli Whitney, a Connecticut school-master living in Georgia, of the cotton-gin in 1793 had a greater effect in later years upon political, industrial and social conditions in the South than most of the measures passed by the Federalist Con- gresses. For Whitney's invention enabled a negro slave to clean a thousand pounds of cotton a day, while with a roller gin he could clean no more than six pounds in the same time. In other words Whitney's invention increased the value of slave labor, as applied to this branch of the cotton industry, more than one hundred and sixty fold. It was this sudden and enormous increase in the value of slave labor which changed the attitude of Virginia and her neighbors and made them defenders of slavery and sharers in the immensely profitable industry of raising slaves for sale to the cotton planters. Under the stimulus of this invention and of the per- fection in England of machinery for manufacturing cotton cloth the exports of this great staple, as it was soon to become, leaped, in the decade from 1791 to 1801, from 189,000 to 21,000,000 pounds. The same year of Whit- ney's invention saw the erection in Pawtucket of the first successful cotton factory in America, the machinery being copied from that just coming into use in English mills. Other industries also began to make their appearance. The increase in the number of newspapers and the popu- larity of the pamphlet as a pohtical weapon had caused so RAPID GROWTH OF POPULATION 103 large a demand for rag paper that by 1797 there were sixteen paper mills in Connecticut alone. Early in Wash- ington's first administration anthracite coal had been dis- covered near what is now Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, but, wood being plenty and cheap and transportation to tide-water being prohibitively expensive, these coal-fields were allowed to lie untouched. Years were to pass before this coal would be needed to generate steam-power and before steam-power as applied either to boats or to loco- motive engines would be available to move the coal from the mines. Experiments, however, with various types of steam-power as applied to boats were taking place in Eng- land and in America, and John Fitch, Hke Whitney, a Connecticut inventor, in 1790 had constructed a steam-boat which, propelled by paddles arranged on the sides, reached a speed of seven knots an hour and was afterward used to carry passengers on the Delaware River. Meanwhile the population of the United States as shown by the census had increased from nearly four million in 1790 to five million three hundred thousand in 1800, about thirty-five per cent. The most populous state at the end of the century was Virginia, with not far from nine hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom, however, about one-third were negro slaves. The next in order was Pennsylvania, with about six hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom fewer than four thousand were slaves. New York was third, with over half a million inhabitants, of whom about twenty-one thousand were slaves. Fourth in the list came North Carolina, with nearly half a million inhabitants, of whom about one-fifth were slaves. Massachusetts followed with a population of somewhat over four hundred thousand, I04 UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION slavery having been abolished, as we have seen, by the new state constitution. In the decade three new states had been admitted to the federal union, Vermont in 1791, the census of lygchaving shown the state to contain more than eighty-five thousand inhabitants; Kentucky in 1792 and Tennessee in 1796. The volume of the stream of migration which, in the ten years from 1790 to 1800, poured over the Alleghanies and down the Ohio Valley into this fertile territory may be inferred from the fact that Kentucky increased its pop- ulation in that time by three hundred per cent — from 73,677 to 220,955 — while the number of settlers in Tennes- see grew, in the same interval, in practically the same ratio, from 35,691 to 105,602. In 1800 Ohio territory contained 45,365 inhabitants, and Indiana territory 5,641 only. The centre of population moved directly westward in the decade, from a point on the eastern shore of INIaryland a little south of east from Baltimore, to a point in central Maryland almost exactly north of Washington. Under an agreement made in the first Congress, as a result of one of the numerous compromises between the northern and southern claimants, the seat of government was to remain in Philadelphia for ten years and was then to be trans- ferred to the District of Columbia. It is a curious coin- cidence that when this transfer was made, at the end of Adams's term of office, the centre of population for the United States was within twenty-five miles of the new capital of the nation. X AN ERA OF EXPANSION The ten years following the inauguration on March 4, 1801, of Thomas Jefferson as President and Aaron Burr as Vice-President of the United States were remarkable for the expansive energy shown by the American people. Jefferson came into power as the leader of the Republican party, the cardinal principle of whose poHcy had been a strict construction of the Constitution. Yet the purchase from Napoleon for fifteen million dollars of Louisiana, the whole vast, unknown, ill-defined territory lying to the west of the Mississippi River, was directly at variance with this principle. Such, however, are the exigencies of state- craft that the Republican administration found itself at the beginning of its career forced by circumstances to adopt the very course for which it had condemned the Federalists and to give a broad instead of a strict construction to the Constitution. Happily for his country Jefferson was too big a man to be frightened from the path on which he had set out by the bugbear of political consistency. Louisiana at different times and by different treaties had passed from the hands of the French into the control of Spain and then back to France again. Napoleon's leading motive in selling it was to cripple his mighty adversary, England, although in exactly what way he expected this result to be accomplished is not clear. If his expedition to Santo Domingo had not met with disaster, Louisiana 105 io6 AN ERA OF EXPANSION might have become a powerful French colony. Such a colony, however, the head-quarters of which would neces- sarily have been New Orleans, would have been open to attack and probable capture by England's fleet, and no one knew this better than the First Consul. Jefferson let it be known, moreover, that the military occupation of New Orleans by the French might, and very probably would, have the efl'ect of forcing the United States into an alliance with England, and such a result was far from what Napoleon desired. The urgent need of money was undoubtedly an influential factor also in inducing Napoleon to make to Livingston and Monroe, the latter of whom had been sent especially to France to bargain for the port of New Orleans and for west Florida, his sudden offer of Louisiana as a whole; fifteen millions, one may believe, being welcome in exchange for so distant, so vague and so exposed a posses- sion. Jefferson's ruling passion was for peace, and whenever his conduct of affairs showed signs of weakness or vacil- lation, this passion supplies the key to its meaning. If Napoleon had landed an army in New Orleans his troops would have met no opposition, unless the hardy frontiers- men of Tennessee and Kentucky had undertaken on their own responsibility to drive the French out of the country. Jefferson's plan, in case New Orleans was occupied by the French, was to postpone any attempt to oust the unwel- come invader until the national debt had been substantially reduced and until the Mississippi Valley was filled with fighting men. Fortunately he w^as not obliged to resort to this Fabian policy, but could contemplate with satisfaction the out- PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA 107 come of his first venture in international statecraft. The emergency through which he had passed had been a some- what rude awakening from the optimistic dream under the soothing influence of which he had entered upon the task of governing. Refined in his tastes, delighting in an intellectual life of science and art, sanguine by tempera- ment, he was a theorist who aspired to be the leader in a new era of peace and happiness which, his imagination told him, was about to dawn upon the world. "Political philanthropists" is the felicitous phrase by which Henry Adams characterizes Jefferson and his two associates, Madison and Gallatin, an "aristocratic triumvirate" v/ho, incongruously enough, found themselves at the head of the American democracy. Under the influence of this democracy just come into power, class privileges gradually disappeared, the right to vote was made by the states to rest upon a basis of man- hood alone, and the courts with increasing frequency upheld the rights of the individual as against the authority of the federal government. At the head of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed to that exalted post by President Adams just before his term of office expired, was John Marshall, the great Virginia jurist, whose dislike and distrust of Jefferson were as profoundly felt as they were frankly expressed, and it was upon this great Federalist Chief Justice that a large part of the task was to fall of reconcihng democracy and nationality. The purchase in 1803 of Louisiana from Napoleon, con- trary though it was to the policy and traditions of his party, was by far the most noteworthy act of Jefferson's two ad- ministrations. At a stroke it more than doubled the area io8 AN ERA OF EXPANSION of the United States and gave the mid-continent a free water route for all time to the sea, enriching the nation with untold stores of mineral and agricultural wealth. For years Jefferson had been keenly alive to the prospective value of this enormous but unknown territory beyond the Mississippi. When he was a member of Washington's first cabinet his interest in scientific pursuits had led him to attempt the organization of an expedition to explore this vast land of mystery in the expectation that informa- tion of the highest value would thereby be obtained about the native races, the animals, plants and topography of the country. He even went so far as to select as the leader of the expedition Meriwether Lewis, a young Virginian of an adventurous turn of mind who possessed resolution and judgment as well as courage. A more favorable opportunity, however, for this bold enterprise had to be awaited, and this opportunity came on the heels of the purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon, when the whole country was eager with curiosity as to the distant wilderness for which the government had paid fifteen million dollars and when Jefferson himself was anx- ious to justify to his fellow-countrymen the expenditure of so large a sum of money for such a purpose. The President again turned to Lewis, then his private secretary, as the leader for this expedition, having secured the approval of Congress for the venture. Lewis thereupon associated with himself WiUiam Clark, to both of whom commissions respectively as captain and lieutenant in the army were given in order to impart an official character to the expedi- tion and to place it under military discipline. As a tale of danger, hardship and adventure, the story of this expe- SECTION or Clark's map of his route. no AN ERA OF EXPANSION dition is without a parallel in the annals of American exploration. In May, 1804, Lewis and Clark left the neighborhood of St. Louis, then a struggling village which a few weeks earlier had been transferred to the United States authorities, and, with forty-five men in three boats, travelled up the Missouri River, over the Rocky Mountains, and down to the mouth of the Columbia River. Returning b\- nearly the same route they arrived at St. Louis in Sep- tember, 1806, with the loss of only three men, one by de- sertion, one b}- disease, and one, an Indian, by being killed. The first white men to cross the continent, they brought back journals which for a hundred years have been a store- house of information for 'ethnologists, naturalists and other scientific investigators. In ]\Iay, 1791, thirteen years before Lewis and Clark set out on their adventurous journey. Captain Robert Gray in command of the Columbia, a Boston ship of only two hundred and thirteen tons, engaged in the sea-otter trade between the northwest coast and China, had been the first to enter the mouth of the great river separating the present states of Washington and Oregon. Sailing up this broad stream a distance of twenty-five miles Captain Gray gave it the name, from that of his ship, which it has borne since then. In 1787 the same vessel had made the pioneer voy- age among American merchantmen to this distant coast, the inspiration for the venture coming from the narrative of a young American seaman, John Ledyard, who had accompanied Captain Cook to this ''Oregon country," as it came to be called, and who had noted in the posses- sion of the natives an abundance of sea-otter skins which could be got in exchange for knick-knacks and sold at a EXPLORING THE CONTINENT m high profit in China. Captain Gray on this earher voyage brought the Columbia back to Boston by way of China, where he sold his furs and purchased a cargo of tea, thus being the first American master-mariner to carry the United States flag around the world and to open the way for the valuable fur trade which John Jacob Astor developed several years later. His discovery of the Columbia River was largely the basis on which the United States estab- lished its claim to the rich Oregon country drained by its waters. While Lewis and Clark were absent on their memorable journey, another expedition, also organized for the purpose of gathering information with reference to the new terri- tory embraced in the Louisiana purchase, — twenty men under the command of an ambitious soldier who had fought in the Revolutionary War, Captain Zebulon Montgomery Pike, — was sent out by boat from the military head- quarters, at St. Louis, of General James Wilkinson to ex- plore the head-waters of the Mississippi. Returning after having reached Cass Lake as his furthest point, Pike at the head of another party penetrated the unknown country to the southwest, including the head-waters of the Arkansas River and the mountains of Colorado, carrying the Amer- ican flag even into the disputed territory on the borders of New Spain, where he and his men were arrested and re- turned to the United States authorities. His official nar- rative of his discoveries, experiences and adventures is a fitting complement to the journals of Lewis and Clark. Navigation on the waterways which were brought under the control of the United States by the purchase of Loui- siana was made easy and commercially profitable by the 112 AN ERA OF EXPANSION successful application, which Robert Fulton, who had financial and other support which Fitch had lacked, made in 1807 of steam-power to boats propelled by paddle- wheels. Fulton's ingenuity had been shown by his ex- periments with torpedoes and submarine boats in France, where he met Robert R. Livingston, the American minis- ter. The two became warm friends, and Livingston, whose influence and purse were always at the service of genius, was of much assistance to him poHtically and financially. Fulton developed the paddle-wheel idea which had long lain in his mind, and, applying it to the Clermont, the name of which was taken from Chancellor Livingston's seat on the Hudson, drove that pioneer vessel to Albany, about one hundred and fifty miles, in thirty-two hours, making the return journey in thirty. This invention worked an imme- diate revolution in inland water transportation. "It will give a cheap and quick conveyance," wrote Fulton to his friend Joel Barlow, after describing the trip of the Clermont, "to the merchandise on the Mississippi, Missouri and other great rivers which are now laying open their treasures to the enterprise of our countrymen. " Within a few years steam-boats were plying on all of these western rivers as well as on the inland waterways along the Atlantic sea- board. ■ Meanwhile the American merchant marine had been suffering to such an extent from the depredations of the Barbary pirates of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli that, despite his passion for peace, Jefferson had finally been obliged to send fleet after fleet to the Mediterranean in order to check their ravages on American commerce. Through the energy and activity in 1803 of Captain Preble these licensed pirates 114 AN ERA OF EXPANSION were finally subdued, and were forced to sue for peace and to forego further exactions of tribute. The story of the exploits of American sailors in this curious conflict forms a brilliant page in the early history of the American navy. A hundred and more years ago the Americaii merchant- vessels were a large factor in the wealth of the young nation and were well worthy of government protection. The great adaptability of the New Englanders for the sea was well illustrated by the fact that at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War there were more than three hundred vessels haihng from Massachusetts ports alone engaged in whale-fishing in the north and south Atlantic. After the war this initiative and energy found new and wider chan- nels in which to expend themselves." All the capital that was available was turned into ships and outfits, for the richest prizes to be had in those days were to be won in the ocean carrying trade. The results were that in the year when Jefferson was elected President, 1800, the ship-owners of the United States had vessels to the amount of nearly seven hundred thousand tons engaged in the foreign trade. In the previous decade there had been a significant decrease from one hundred and fifteen thousand to forty thousand in the tonnage of the British shipping entering and clearing from American ports; vessels owned in the United States were carrying freights heretofore taken by British ships. By 1807 the tonnage of American ships had increased to eight hundred and forty thousand, and, ignoring the temporarily depressing effect of the embargo, which will be discussed among the causes of the War of 1812, the United States in 1810 had a total of nine hundred and eighty-four thousand tons of shipping A GREAT MERCHANT MARINE 115 registered for the foreign trade. In the same year, more- over, there were new ships of a total of one hundred and twenty-seven thousand tons built in the United States, and ninety-one and a half per cent of all American exports and imports were carried in American vessels. Allowing an average of one hundred and seventy-five tons to a vessel — the average, according to the records of the Department of Commerce and Labor, was one hundred and eighty-three tons in 1813 and one hundred and ninety-seven tons in 1823 — it appears that the United States had as available for the foreign carrying trade in 181 1 a fleet of not far from six thousand vessels. The merchandise which formed the cargoes of this fleet increased in value from seventy-one million dollars in 1800 to over one hundred and eight millions in 1807, dropping to less than sixty-seven millions in 18 10 as a result of the embargo and non-intercourse policy adopted by Jefferson. What, do you ask, were the cargoes which these thousands of American vessels bore from the ports of the United States? From the North chiefly lumber and food products — flour, beef, pork and dried fish; from the South, cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo, tar, pitch, turpentine, sugar and mo- lasses, the last two articles from Louisiana. And on the return voyages they brought fabrics and hardware from England, wines and oils from the continent, tea from China, and pepper from Sumatra. The exports of cotton in- creased enormously under the stimulus of Whitney's in- vention and the high prices following the development of cotton manufacturing. In. 1799, when the price varied from twenty-eight to forty-four cents a pound, nearly eighteen million pounds of this staple were exported from ii6 AN ERA OF EXPANSION the United States. Ten years later, in 1809, the price had fallen to sixteen cents and a fraction, and the volume of exports had risen to over ninety-three million pounds. By 181 1 New England had eighty thousand spindles in opera- tion in her cotton mills. The annual value, moreover, of the tobacco exported from the United States in the first six years of the century varied from five and a half to six and a half million dollars. The population of the states had increased in the decade by nearly two millions of people, the total in 1810 being more than seven and a quarter millions. The growth was naturally largest in the border states, while the territory of Indiana contained nearly twenty-five thousand people — almost five times the number in 1800 — and Illinois had a population of over twelve thousand. XI THE WAR OF 1812 AND ITS CAUSES The honor which came to Jefferson in his first adminis- tration through the purchase of Louisiana was forgotten in the dishonor which his policy of "peaceable coercion" brought upon the American flag in his second administra- tion. The reduction of the national debt occupied a far larger place in the mind of the President than the protec- tion of the American sailor against impressment or the defense of American shipping against seizure. Indeed, Jefferson, reflecting the view of the agricultural interests which formed the mass of his party, looked with disapproval on the growth and activity of the American merchant marine. The rapid increase in the size and wealth of the cities on the seaboard also gave him concern. Unless this development were arrested there was danger, he thought, that the balance that should subsist in an ideal republic between agriculture, manufactures and commerce would be disturbed. Madison, who succeeded him, largely shared these views, and, as a consequence of this attitude on the part of the Republican administrations, the sailors and vessels of the United States were subjected to greater indig- nities during the decade preceding the War of 1812 than the shipping of any nation had ever suffered. These indignities were due to two causes, first, the desire on the part of England to cripple the commerce, already grown to large proportions, of this new and upstart 117 ii8 THE WAR OF 1S12 AND ITS CAUSES nation, which threatened to drive EngUsh merchant-ships from the seven seas; and, second!)', to the necessity Eng- land felt herself to be under, in the face of Napoleon's growing power and ambition, of maintaining the efficiency of her war-vessels by keeping the complement of their crews full. In accordance with the theory which Great Britain had always held, "once a subject, always a sub- ject," American vessels were overhauled wherever they were found, even at the entrance to the port of New York, and seamen alleged to be of British birth were forcibly taken from the crews and compelled to serve in English men-of-war. There was no redress either for the act or for the arrogance, insolence and brutality which more often than not accompanied the act. And so active were Eng- lish naval officers in carrying impressment into practice that by 1807 there were no fewer than six thousand Ameri- can seamen who were serving against their will in the British fleet and whose cases had been reported to the State Department at Washington. How many similar in- stances were unreported to a government which gave its impressed sailors no help will never be known. On the other hand. Great Britain's contention was that, if the federal or local authorities in the United States lacked the power or the disposition to assist the naval officers or the merchant captains of her vessels in recovering the sailors who deserted by the score whenever a British vessel touched at an American port, she was justified in searching American merchantmen, and even American war-\'essels, in order to recover these deserters. Owing to the alluring opportunities held out by the American merchant service, these desertions had become so numerous as reall}- to alarm IMPRESSMENT OF AMERICAN SEAMEN iig the English government lest the efficiency of England's fighting force in the navy should be impaired. In the perspective of a hundred years, moreover, it is possible to understand the unwillingness of England, independent of her theory of allegiance, to recognize as valid American citizenship papers which, according to Henry Adams, "were issued in any required quantity and were transferred for a few dollars from hand to hand." An English naval officer, having the power to enforce his will, was thus at hberty to treat as fraudulent the citizenship papers of as many sailors on an American merchantman as he needed in order to fill the complement of his crew, and out of the gross abuse of this power, often exercised in a needlessly irri- tating and humihating manner, grew a condition of affairs that became more and more difficult to bear every year. American shipping meanwhile was suffering severely from seizures and confiscations for which there was no redress, being ground ruthlessly between the upper and the nether millstones of British commercial avarice and Napo- leon's greed for war funds. Without warning, the British courts suddenly reversed their ruling by which breaking bulk and reshipping in an American port had made a neu- tral cargo safe from capture, and the result was that more than a hundred vessels flying the United States flag were taken as prizes by English cruisers into the home or colonial ports of Great Britain. The embargo, putting an end to foreign commerce, which went into operation late in 1807 and by which Jefferson hoped to starve England into a cessation of this persecution, left American ships idle at their wharves, while their owners and sailing masters were revihng the "southern ohgarchy" controlling the adminis- I20 THE WAR OF 1812 AND ITS CAUSES tration for its incompetence. The effect of the embargo was seen in the decrease in the value of exports from the United States from $49,000,000 in 1807 to $9,000,000 in 1808. Some relief came to the harassed shipping interests in 1809, when Madison succeeded Jefferson as President, through the substitution of the Non-intercourse law, forbid- ding trade with Great Britain and France, for the embargo which had utterly failed of its purpose and had bitterly- incensed the commercial states against the administration. This relief was short-lived, however, for of the entire fleet of American merchant-vessels which in the first year of Madison's administration were induced to set sail, in the mistaken belief that continental ports were at last open to their cargoes, very few returned. From the ports of Italy to those of Norway American vessels to the number of fully two hundred, and worth, with their cargoes, many millions of dollars, were confiscated and sold by the orders of Napoleon, ostensibly in retaliation for the Non-inter- course act, but really in order to supply him with much- needed funds. British aggressions continued, despite the ominous note of a deeper and wider feeling of j:)opular resentment which appeared in several measures adopted by Congress. The vacillation and fear heretofore inspired by the overwhelm- ing size and power of the British fleet and the British armies were giving way to a wrath which made war in- evitable, let the consequences be what they might. The presence of several new men, young and ardent, in Congress, conspicuous among whom were Clay and Calhoun, and Madison's desire for a re-election, were also factors which made for war. Finally, in June, 181 2, war was declared, H "2 122 THE WAR OF 1S12 AND ITS CAUSES the large majority of the votes in Congress in favor of hostilities coming from south of the Delaware River. De- spite impressments and seizures the New England states were violently opposed to any war and especially to a war with their best customer, England, so slight had been the growth, in the feverish and all-absorbing commercial ac- tivity of the past decade, of the idea of nationality. The administration placed its chief reliance upon the state militia, with which it was proposed to invade Canada, and upon the distress in England and in the British colonies which would follow the cutting off of the food supply from America. Little was expected from the half-dozen or so frigates, with eight or ten smaller warships, of the American navy, in view of the force of a hundred war-vessels which Great Britain kept on the American station, out of her available fleet of more than a thousand sail. When, however, on a day in midsummer the United States frigate Constitution, Captain Isaac Hull, arrived at Boston with two huntlred and sixty-seven prisoners from the British frigate Gucrricrc which she had dismasted, captured and blown up, there was great rejoicing, even in Federalist New England, where the conflict was even then contemptuously referred to as "Mr. Madison's war." Something, it was felt, had at last been done to avenge the insult involved in the attack, five years earlier, of the Leop- ard upon the Chesapeake and to restore a little of the na- tional self-respect. Before the end of the year two other British frigates, the Macedonian and the Java, had been captured or destroyed, the former by the United States and the latter by the Constitution, while two fights between smaller vessels had resulted in American victories. In AMERICAN VICTORIES ON THE SEA 123 1813 the contests resulted more evenly, each side losing three vessels in single ship fights, the capture of the Chesa- peake by the British frigate Shannon being a severe blow to American pride in its newly-discovered sea-power, as was also the loss in Valparaiso harbor in 18 14 of the American ship Essex to the British frigate PJicehe. The greatly su- perior number of the British vessels resulted, after the first year or so of the war, in the capture or blockading of all the American frigates. Colonel Roosevelt in his Naval War of iSi 2 says that the two things which contributed to the American victories were, first, the excellent make and armament of the ships, and, second, the skilful seamanship, excellent discipline and superb gunnery of the men who were in them. A not inconsiderable factor also in bringing about the American victories was the careless over-confidence with which these seasoned British sailors of many hard-fought European campaigns entered upon what seemed like the holiday task of teaching the despised Yankees a few fundamental prin- ciples of naval warfare. In several engagements the British vessels were somewhat overmatched in men and in arma- ment, but not to such an extent as to explain the great disparity in losses due to the marked superiority of the American gunners. In the fight in which the conditions were most nearly equal, between the American eighteen-gun ship-sloop Wasp and the British eighteen-gun brig-sloop Frolic, the latter lost both of her masts and ninety killed and wounded out of a crew of one hundred and ten, her hull being riddled. The American loss was only ten men killed and wounded in a crew of one hundred and thirty-five. The battle was fought in a heavy sea, and while most of the 124 THE WAR OF 1812 AND ITS CAUSES British shots, fired when the ship was on the crests of the waves, went wide or did httle damage to the rigging, the Americans fired as they had been taught, on the downward roll of their vessel, their shots doing frightful execution. Meanwhile, the "invasion of Canada" had turned out a fiasco. Hull's disgraceful surrender to Brock gave Detroit and Michigan to the British who threatened even Ohio. They were forced back into Canada, however, by the brill- iant naval victory of Perry's improvised squadron on Lake Erie, while Macdonough's signal victory in a somewhat similar battle on Lake Champlain compelled an army of British veterans, released for service in America by the fall of Napoleon, to turn back. Another British force, landing from Chesapeake Bay, marched to Washington and burned several of the public buildings. The scene of the final land battle of the war, which was fought in January, 1 815, several weeks after the treaty of peace had been signed, but before the news had arrived in America, was south of New Orleans where Andrew Jackson, with his Tennessee and Mississippi riflemen, protected by breast- works, shot down the British regulars by the hundreds as they advanced in close formation time and again over open ground, showing thereby that they had learned nothing from the experience of their predecessors at Bunker Hill. The British loss in killed and wounded was over three thousand in an attacking force of about eight thousand veterans; the American loss was insignificant. Peace had been brought about by a variety of influences — the downfall of Napoleon and the weariness of the English people after their long series of fierce wars; the high prices of food, flour selHng for fifty-eight dollars a barrel in London RAVAGES OF AMERICAN PRIVATEERS 125 in 1813; and, finally, the ravages of American privateers on British commerce. A strong argument could be framed to show that it was chiefly economic distress which finally brought England to terms, and that this distress was mainly caused by American privateers. When war was declared there were fully forty thousand men in the Ameri- can merchant marine. Within sixty days no fewer than one hundred and fifty swift, heavily sparred vessels, manned and armed as privateers, left American ports to prey on British commerce in the north Atlantic. These were followed by others until there were more than five hundred American privateers, carrying nearly three thou- sand guns, taking part in the war. The value of the thir- teen hundred vessels, with their cargoes, which these priva- teers captured, is estimated at thirty-nine million dollars — about six times the value of the British ships and cargoes which the vessels of the American navy captured in the same period. These privateers were manned by as skilful, hardy and resourceful a race of sailors as ever lived — men in whom courage and self-reliance had been developed to a high degree by the fact that for years, with little or no protection from their government, they had been obliged to defend themselves in uncharted waters against Malay pirates, Spanish buccaneers, and Barbary corsairs, and to save themselves by flight from English and French cruisers. It was notorious that a crew of twenty of them on an Amer- ican ship, owing to the mechanical devices which their ingenuity and resourcefulness were constantly inventing, could do the work more easily than a crew of thirty English sailors on a British ship of the same size. The damage they inflicted on British commerce was enormous. 126 THE WAR OF 1S12 AND ITS CAUSES One of the incidental results, linally, of the war was the annihilation of the Federalists as a party, in consequence of the suspicion of treason and of a conspiracy to secede from the federal Union which the Republicans forever after attached to those who had taken part in the Hartford Convention of 1814. While there undt)ubtedly was senti- ment in the commercial centres of New England in favor of secession, with a disposition to seek the protection of England-, the proceedings of the convention merely voiced the Federalist irritation under continued Virginia domina- tion in the government, and the feeling that the commer- cial interests of New England were being sacrificed by this domination. XII INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT The period from 1820 to i860 was marked by four im- portant aspects of the life of the American people which will be treated in this and the three following chapters. These aspects reveal the development, in a remarkable manner, of the mechanical ingenuity and the industrial activity of the people, the expansion of American commerce until it reached its high-water mark, the full efflorescence in poetry, fiction, essays and history of American literature, and the divergence of the North and the South over the question of slavery, culminating in the Civil War. The tide of migration from the seaboard states, especially in the North, to the rich lands in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, which had been checked by the War of 181 2, be- gan to flow again as soon as peace was made. So inade- quate were the means of transportation and so formidable was the barrier presented by the Alleghany Mountains that the problem of connecting the East and the West, for pohti- cal as well as for economic reasons, engrossed the attention of the ablest minds of the day. Three solutions of the prob- lem were found — in the construction by the federal govern- ment of the national road from Cumberland, Md., to the Ohio; in the building by the states, with assistance from the federal government, of turnpikes over the mountain? and through the gaps, and finally in the Erie Canal which, completed in 1825, made a water route from the Hudson 127 128 INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT to the Lakes. As fast as these hues of communication were opened they were crowded. The stage rates over the Cumberland Road were five and six dollars a hundred- weight from Philadelphia or Baltimore to the Ohio, passen- gers as well as freight being charged by weight. In 1820 there were fully three thousand wagons engaged in the busi- ness of transporting merchandise between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh over the turnpikes which the state had built across the mountains. From the outset the Erie Canal brought prosperity to the state of New York, establishing the commercial supremacy of the city of New York, where the value of the real and personal property rose from about seventy million dollars in 1820 to one hundred and twenty- five millions in 1830, and doubling the value of lands and farm products in the western part of the state. With this great artificial waterway in such successful operation that the tolls in 1830 amounted to more than a million dollars, and in view of the earher demonstration of the commercial practicability as a coal-carrier between the Pennsylvania mines and New York City of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, it was inevitable that canals should multiply rapidly. From 1830 to 1840 nearly a hundred million dollars were spent by the states, with some aid from the federal government, on various canal systems, mainly in New York and Pennsylvania, including four lines across the Alleghany Mountains. Ohio also built a system of canals which became tributary to the Erie Canal, and many years later Lake Michigan and the Illinois River were con- nected by a canal. While the plans for these elaborate s}-stems of canals were being carried out no one imagined for a moment that I30 INDUSTRIAL DEXELOPMENT the locomotive engine and railroads were soon to revolu- tionize transportation. Yet the Erie Canal had ix'cn in operation only four years when the first locomotive engine, of which the Englishman, George Stephenson, had been the inventor, was brought to the United States and served as a rribdel for the early American engines. The first rail- road, built in 1830 and fifteen miles in length, connected Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills. The first railroad in New York state, built in 1831, connected Albany and Schenec- tady; the first in Massachusetts, built in 1835, connected Boston and Lowell, and the first in Kentucky, built in the same year, connected Lexington and Frankfort. By the end of the decade there were more than twenty-eight hun- dred miles of railroad in use. By 1850 this mileage had increased to nine thousand, and by i860 to nearly thirty- one thousand. Meanwhile works for the manufacture of locomotive engines and cars had been established in Phila- delphia and elsewhere by JVIathias Baldwin and others, and coal from the Pennsylvania mines had come into gen- eral use to generate motive power for locomotive engines and mills. As a result of the strong westward current of migration, at first over the turnpikes and by canals, and later by way of the railroads, the population of the great states of the West and Southwest grew with marvellous rapidity. Ohio, which contained somewhat more than half a million people in 1820, had nine hundred thousand in 1830, a million and a half in 1840 and two and a third millions by i860. Indi- ana leaped from 147,000 in 1820 to 686,000 in 1840 and to double these figures in i860. In the decade from 1820 to 1830 Illinois trebled her population of fifty-five thousand. PETER cooper's WORKING MODEL FOR A LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE, "TOM THUMB." First used between Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills, August 28, 1830. By courtesy of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company. 132 INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT By 1840 there were in the state not far from half a million people; by 1850 there were 851,000, and by i860 twice as many — 1,71 1,000. Chicago, which was surveyed as a town in 1830, when there were only twelve families in the place besides the garrison, had acquired a population of about forty-five hundred in 1840. By 1850 this number had grown to thirty thousand, and by i860, when the city had become the most important railroad centre in the West, to considerably over a hundred thousand. The Southwest too shared this remarkable growth. St. Louis, which con- tained about forty-six hundred people in 1820, had more than sixteen thousand in 1840 and one hundred and sixty thousand in i860. The centre of population meanwhile was moving westward at the rate of from forty to sixty miles in each decade, on or near the thirty-ninth parallel of latitude. In 1820 this centre was just west of the state line now separating Virginia and West Virginia. In the decade from 1850 to i860, however, it moved out of West Virginia and into southern Ohio, to a point almost due south of Columbus. In the early part of this period the migratory movement was made up almost wholly of Americans leaving the East for the more promising West, where land was cheap and the soil was rich. Later, however, in the 'forties and 'fif- ties, there was a large and important admixture of foreign immigrants who went to swell the human tide flowing across the AUeghanies. The quality of this immigration was of the best — English, Scotch, Irish, German and Scandina- vian. The volume became greatest when the famine in Ireland in 1846 and the revolution of 1848 in Germany drove hundreds of thousands of peasants and mechanics - c a 134 INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT across the ocean. In 1831 the arrivincj immigrants num- bered less than twenty-three thousand. Bv 1842, however, drawn by the alluring prospects which the newly-opened lands of the West held out, they numbered for the first time more than a hundred thousand. A few years later the stream became what was for those years a torrent, the number arriving in 1846 being 154,416; in 1847, 234,968; and in 1850, 310,004. In 1854 the high-water mark for this period was reached — 427,853, after which there was a recession which became more marked during the Civil War. In the decade from 1845 to 1855 more than a million and a quarter Irish immigrants came to America. The total number of immigrants arriving from 182 1 to 1850, inclusive, was considerably over five millions. Ninety-five i)er cent of these millions of foreigners made homes for themselves in the North and in the West, instinctively avoiding the states in which slave labor prevailed. Knowing nothing of state rights or sectional jealousies, but recognizing America only as the nation that offered them political and religious liberty and a living, they naturally gave their support to the Union in the conflict that arose soon after the large majority of them arrived in America. It remains only to add that the total population of the United States, which was somewhat more than nine and a half millions in 1820, had grown to nearly thirty-one and a half millions in i860. These great movements of population, with the increased demand which they created for commodities and facilities of all kinds, were an enormous stimulus to the inventive faculty and mechanical ingenuity of the people. Thus gas began to be manufactured and distributed in Baltimore in 182 1 and was in general use in the larger cities by the end EXTENSION OF THE NATIONAL DOMAIN 135 of the decade. The important newspapers began to be printed on cyhnder presses. Cyrus Hall McCormick, a Virginian who later made Chicago his home, constructed a reaping machine in 1831, the first of a series of inventions that made farming on a large scale possible. In 1820 the total output of anthracite coal in the Lehigh Valley mines was three hundred and sixty-five tons; ten years later the demand had increased to such an extent that one hundred and seventy-five thousand tons were mined. A decade and a half later two inventions were perfected which exerted a wide influence on the commercial and the domestic life of the people — the telegraph in 1844 by Professor S. F. B. Morse and the sewing-machine, a year later, by EHas Howe, both of these men being natives of Massachusetts. Additions, wide in extent and of incalculable value, were made to the area of the national domain in this memorable epoch, and many new states were admitted to the federal Union. As a result of General Jackson's successful cam- paign against the Seminole Indians in 18 18, the Floridas were purchased from Spain for five million dollars. The revolution in 1835, by which the Texans won their inde- pendence from Mexico, was followed ten years later, under the Polk administration, by war between the United States and Mexico, whose territorial possessions to the north, extensive in area, but ill-defined and poorly defended, lay across the natural pathway westward of the restless, push- ing people of the southwestern states, and formed a prize upon which the slave power was especially eager to lay its hands. The American troops under General Zachary Tay- lor and General Winfield Scott being successful at every point in this war of territorial aggrandizement, Mexico, in 136 INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT making peace in 1848, was forced to cede to the United States, for a consideration of eighteen million dollars, the vast territory, half a million square miles in extent, con- sisting of Nevada, Utah, the greater part of Arizona and the western portions of Colorado and New Mexico. Cali- fornia was also included in the ceded territory, although a year or two earlier the American pioneers in that region, under the leadership of Lieutenant John C. Fremont, who was in charge of a government exploring expedition, and with the co-operation of one or two vessels of the United States navy, had proclaimed and had won the independence of California from the Mexican authorities. In the same year that peace was made, 1848, gold was discovered in California, and by the end of 1849 there were fully a hundred thousand gold-seekers in this new Eldorado • — men who had come overland by the Santa Fe and other transcontinental trails, across the Isthmus of Panama, or around Cape Horn in sailing-vessels. In the decade from 1850 to 1859 they and those who followed them mined gold to the value of more than fifty million dollars. The admit- tance of Texas alone to the federal Union added to the United States more than the equivalent of the combined areas of France, England, Scotland and Ireland, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland — three hundred and seventy thousand square miles. And at about the same time, 1846, the boundary of the Oregon country, which had been jointly occupied by the United States and England, was defined, so that by the end of this decade the limits of the United States proper were practically determined as they exist to-day. Meanwhile, in consequence of the expansion westward THE TARIFF AN EARLY ISSUE 137 of the population and of the large volume of foreign immi- gration, new states were rapidly received into the federal Union, the balance of political power being preserved by the admittance of an equal number of southern and northern states. Louisiana having become a state on the eve of the War of 181 2, half a dozen other states quahfied and were admitted in the stirring years immediately following the war — Indiana in 1816, Mississippi in 181 7, Ilhnois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820 and Missouri in 1821. Arkansas and Michigan came into the Union in 1836 and 1837 respectively. In the next decade a new group of states qualified, three of them in consequence of the exten- sion of the national boundary — Florida and Texas in 1845 and California in 1850, while Iowa, admitted in 1846, and Wisconsin, in 1848, testified to the rapidity with which the northwest was being peopled. With the remarkable increase of population in nearly all parts of the country, industries multiphed and the de- mand from the manufacturers of the North for higher duties became more and more insistent. The half-dozen or more tariff bills that became laws between 1816 and 1846 re- flected, first, the growth, in response to this demand, of the protectionist idea until it culminated in the act of 1832 in which the theory of protection was elaborated and system- atized in a practical form; and, second, the reaction, as a result of the discontent and financial distress in the South, toward lower duties, modified protection, and, finally, a tariff for revenue only, with all forms of protection elimi- nated. Andrew Jackson, whose two terms of office as Pres- ident extended from 1829 to 1837, was the representative of the new Democracy of the agricultural South, with its 138 INDUSTRIAL DEVFXOPMENT opposition to high tariffs and internal improvements at the expense of the nation, which formed the platform of the Clay-Adams wing of the party in the North. Out of this divergence grew the modern Democratic part}- and the Whigs and their successors, the Republicans. The old South, Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas, had not shared in the prosperity of the North and attributed its decline in wealth and in influence to the operation of the protective tariff. The real causes were to be found in the shifting of the centre of cotton culture from the outworn fields of the old South to the richer uplands of the Gulf states; in the loss of white population due to this south- westward movement, and in the system of plantation life and of slave labor which was the barrier that prevented immigrants from seeking homes in the South. When the Gulf states, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, began to raise cotton on their fertile uplands, the total i)roduction increased year by year to such an extent as to send the export price, sixteen and a half cents a pound in 182 1, down to nine cents in 1830. Meanwhile many additional mills were building in New England, the products of whose cot- ton factories rose in value from two and a half million dollars in 1820 to fifteen and a half millions in 1831, while the value of the woollen products increased in the same period from less than one to more than eleven million dollars. The financial depression in the South, which was thus due to special causes and which embarrassed, in their well- earned retirement, even those leaders of the old Republican party. Jefferson, Matlison and Monroe, was followed in 1837 by a panic of general scope caused by over-speculation ORIGIN OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE 139 in government lands, by extravagance, state and national, in canal and road building, and by the lack of any banking system adequate to care properly for the greatly increased business of the country. Jackson, unable to use its ofifices as rewards for party services, had driven the United States Bank out of business by withdrawing from it the govern- ment deposits; and in this emergency the imperfectly or- ganized state banks undertook to finance the public as well as the private enterprises of the day. When, however, the government decided that payment for government lands must be made in gold and silver, the unstable foundations on which these state banks rested crumbled and precipi- tated a crash. It was several years before the country worked its way out of the financial chaos that followed. By far the most important international incident of these years was the enunciation by President Monroe in 1823 of the broad general principle, to which later the name of the Monroe Doctrine was given, that the United States would regard as inimical to its interests any armed inter- ference of a foreign power in the political or territorial affairs of a state in North or South America. This dec- laration became necessary because of the fear lest the re- actionary Holy Alliance formed by Russia, Austria, and Prussia, might attempt to aid Spain in recovering the con- trol of her revolted American colonies. The adoption of this policy was a warning also against further colonization as well as against any attempt that might be contemplated to substitute, in this or that instance, a monarchical for a republican form of government. The re-enunciation of this doctrine of non-interference seventy years later by President Cleveland, in the Venezuela boundary case, went I40 INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT far to establish it as the cardinal principle of the foreign policy of the United States. Although the treaty ending the War of 1812 had left in the air the question of the impressment of American sea- men, there was no further friction from this cause. Im- pressment was a practice which became obsolete from the moment when the Constitution poured her first broadside into the Guerriere. XIII HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE The remarkable growth throughout the United States from 1820 to i860 of population, facihties for transporta- tion and industries of all varieties had its counterpart dur- ing the same period in the phenomenal development and world-wide activity of American shipping interests. Only temporarily held in check by the War of 181 2, the daring enterprise of American merchants and of American sea- men, which had been so conspicuously displayed from 1800 to 1 8 10, sprang into life with fresh vigor as soon as peace was made. z\gain the shipyards along the New England coast became centres of active industry. So abundant were the supplies of suitable timber that ships could be built in New England at a saving of fully one-fifth over the cost in old England. So tough and so well seasoned were the woods which these experienced shipbuilders used and so superior was their workmanship that many of these ves- sels were in active service twenty and even thirty years, although the normal life of a merchant-vessel engaged in the ocean carrying trade was supposed to be only fifteen. So able to carry sail were these carefully and stoutly built ships and barks and so efficient were their sailing masters and their smaller crews in getting the utmost speed 'out of them that they habitually made four voyages while British and Dutch merchantmen of practically like tonnage were making three between the same ports. So high, indeed, 141 142 HIGH TIDE OF AIMERICAN COMMERCE was the reputation of these vessels that in the twenty-five years following the War of 1812 no fewer than three hundred and forty thousand tons of American-built ship- ping were sold to foreigners — probably more than a thou- sand vessels. Only a brief reference can be made here to some of the more important aspects of the wonderfully varied maritime life, always dignified and impressive and often tinged with romance and picturesqueness, which grew out of these con- ditions. The first step in the evolutionary process was the establishment, in 1816 and in the years following, of several sailing packet lines for the carriage, between Ameri- can and European ports, of passengers and of high-class freights. These packets, all of which were of American build, thus met the need of a larger and somewhat faster type of vessel, with better accommodations for passengers than the merchantmen of that day could supply, and with regular days for sailing. They were built with hulls of unusual strength and with moderate spars and canvas, being thus especially adapted to meet the boisterous weather of the north Atlantic. The service drew to its ranks the best seamen of the American merchant marine, who were justly proud of their ships and of their records, the rivalry between the different lines being keen. Up to 1830 the packets were more celebrated for the comparative comfort which they offered to passengers than for their speed. After that date, however, the rivalry of the different lines produced a faster type of vessel, approaching the clippers of a later period. These Yankee packets were the precursors of the wooden side-wheel transatlantic steamships and were of the highest 144 HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE value in the development of American commerce. Their popularity and their prosperity were great. For years they formed the principal channel through which the enormous stream of immigration flowed to America. One vessel of the Black Ball packet line had a record, during her long life of twenty-nine years, of one hundred and sixteen round passages between New York and Liverpool. In that time, and without the loss of a seaman, a sail or a spar, she had brought thirty thousand immigrants to America, no fewer than fifteen hundred births and two hundred marriages having taken place among her passen- gers. In this memorable decade from 182 1 to 1830 the annual value of the total American exports and imports, excluding gold and silver, averaged about >$i42, 400,000, and over ninety per cent of all this merchandise was carried in American vessels, a record excelled only in the year 18 10, and then only shghtly, at the culmination of the almost equally prosperous epoch preceding the War of 181 2. It was not surprising, therefore, that the London Times, in May, 1827, sounded a note of alarm in these words: "We have closed the West Indies against America from feelings of commercial rivalry. Its active seamen have already engrossed an important branch of our carrying trade to the Eastern Indies. Her starred flag is now conspicuous on every sea and will soon defy our thunder. " Shut out by this policy from trade with British West Indian ports, American merchants had been forced more and more to seek other and more distant markets for their wares and for return cargoes. Vessels from the port of Salem were, as ever, the leaders in this trade with Africa, NEW ENGLAND WHALERS 145 South America, China, India, and the islands of the Far East. Not infrequently, it must be admitted, their out- going cargoes, especially those for the coast of Africa, were largely composed of New England rum, gunpowder, and tobacco. But they brought back freights that filled the air of the old Puritan town with the fragrance of far- distant lands and gave wealth and influence to their own- ers. And this rich and profitable commerce was developed and carried on for years in vessels of rarely more than three hundred tons. Among the hardiest and most venturesome of these sea- men who were carrying the "starred flag" into every sea were the New England whalemen. From small beginnings in 1816, when only four or five whaling vessels remained of the large fleet of earlier years, the industry increased steadily, the possibility of quick and big profits proving to be highly attractive to both capital and men. By 1845 the tonnage of American vessels engaged in whaling had grown to about 191,000, figures that were surpassed only in 1858 when the tonnage was 198,594. The centres of this important in- dustry were New Bedford and Nantucket, and the years in which the greatest profits were secured were from 1830 to 1840. Sperm-whales, the most valuable species, were sought in the temperate and tropic waters of the Atlantic and Pacific. Right or bowhead whales, from which whale- bone and an inferior quality of oil were procured, were found in the north and south polar seas. From voyages of from one to four years the more successful of these whalers brought back catches varying in value from forty to one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. The risks were so great, however, that in their most prosperous years fully 146 HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE one-third of the whalers made unprofitable voyages, while by 1858 only one out of every three of the sixty-eight whalers arriving at New Bedford and Fairhaven more than paid expenses, these two communities losing fully a million dollars in this disastrous season. The decline in the whaling industry had thus set in many years before 1859 when petroleum was discovered in Penn- sylvania and cannot be attributed to this cause or to the Civil War. The real causes were the growing scarcity of whales, the greatly increased cost of fitting out whaling vessels and of conducting the industry, the superior attrac- tions which manufactures offered to capital, and the dete- rioration in the character of the crews, ship-owners being obliged to accept Portuguese, negroes, and even Sandwich Islanders, in place of the farmers' sons from northern New England who for a quarter of a century had been a most valuable source of supply. By far the most important incident of this period, how- ever, was the successful application of steam-power to side-wheel, wooden-hull vessels in the transatlantic service. Two English-built steamships, one of which crossed the At- lantic in fourteen days, proved, in 1838, the practicability of this type of vessel for this service and prepared the way for the British ultimately to displace the Yankee packet. With the assurance of a generous mail subsidy from the British government, Samuel Cunard and his associates built four steamships of moderate size and power, with wooden hulls and side wheels, which, in 1840, began a regular ser- vice between Liverpool and Boston. From this small beginning developed the subsidized British steamship lines which gradually extended in all ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC STEAMSHIPS 147 directions. Five years passed before the Congress of the United States met this challenge by voting mail subsidies to American steamships. With this stimulus and with the further encouragement of another law to the same end enacted in 1847, Edward K. CoHins established a steamship line between New York and Liverpool which included four fine wooden, side-wheel vessels of nearly three thousand tons each, built from designs by George Steers, who also drew the plans from which the famous schooner-yacht America was built. The screw propeller, which Ericsson, a Swedish engineer of originality and ability, had invented, was slow in coming into use, marine engineers and ship- builders believing for years that paddle-wheels were more practicable and more powerful than propellers. Ericsson came to the United States from England in 1839, and two years later he had prepared for the government designs for the Princeton, the first warship to have a screw propeller below the water-line, out of reach of the enemy's shot. In 185 1 the tonnage of British and American steamships registered for the deep-sea trade was practically equal — 65,921 British and 62,391 American. A considerable por- tion of this tonnage lay in the steamships of the Pacific Mail Company. Beginning in 1848 this company built a splendid fleet of nearly thirty vessels for the Panama and Cahfornia branches of their business, which, after the dis- covery of gold on the Pacific coast, assumed huge propor- tions and became very profitable. These steamships also had the benefit of a substantial mail subsidy. By 1855 the tonnage of American steamships had grown from the small beginning of 16,068 in 1848 to its maximum point prior to the Civil War, 115,045. 148 HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE This memorable year, however, 1855, proved to be the turning-point in the history of the merchant marine of the United States. In that year Congress practically reversed the policy as to mail subsidies which it had adopted ten years earlier, and under which the American steamship lines for a decade had held their own very well in competi- tion with the British subsidized lines, notwithstanding the advantage of a five years' start which the latter had enjoyed. This radical change of policy, which had the effect of cut- ting down materially the mail subsidy heretofore granted to the Collins line and of reducing, though less seriously, that of the Pacific Mail Company, was mainly due to the jealousy which had developed in the South, partly owing to the agitation over the question of slavery, and in the agricult- ural West, toward the shipping interests of the northern seaboard. To add to its other embarrassments, the Collins line in the same fateful year, 1855, lost two of its steam- ships, the Arctic and the Pacific. These disasters not only crippled the line severely, but, taken with the partial with- drawal of government aid and the attacks in Congress on American shipping interests, discouraged the building of new vessels of this type. In three years the registered tonnage of American steamships fell to 78,027. In 1855 there were registered the enormous total of 2,348,358 tons of American deep-sea shipping, and so great was the demand for vessels that more than five hundred of different types, ships, barks and brigs, all designed for the ocean carrying trade, were launched from American yards. Only once later, in i860, were these tonnage figures surpassed and then only slightly. The tonnage had more than doubled since 1846 when it was 943,307. And in the YANKEE CLIPPERS AND THEIR RECORDS 149 five years from 1851 to 1855 inclusive one hundred and seventy thousand tons of American-built vessels were sold to English and other foreign buyers. This rapid growth was due less to the wooden-hull steam- ships that were built in the yards along the East River at New York than to the great fleet of clippers which American merchants and American ship-builders constructed in Bos- ton, New York and Baltimore in their endeavor to hold the ocean carrying trade and to increase it, even in competition with the subsidized lines of British steamships. These great vessels, one of which in the yards of the famous Boston builder, Donald McKay, was the inspiration for Longfellow's poem, "The Building of the Ship," varied in tonnage from a thousand to as high as twenty-four hundred. In power, beauty and speed they represented the highest point ever reached by the designers and builders of mer- chant vessels. The California trade, which reached huge proportions almost at a bound in 1849 and 1850, and which was restricted, under the coastwise law passed by Congress in 181 7, to vessels of American registry, gave a mighty impetus for a "few years to the building of this type of ship. The war in the Crimea in 1854 gave employment to many of these Yankee clippers as transports and supply ships. They became immediately also an influential fac- tor in the commerce between the United States and the Far East. Some of the record runs which these powerful and beau- tiful ships made in the hands of their bold and skilful Yan- kee crews seem incredible : fourteen days, for example, from New York to Portsmouth, England, where the clip- per Palestine landed her passengers ahead of the Cunard I50 HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE steamshi}) which had sailed on the same day; ninety days from New York to San Francisco, on one of which the cUpper Flying Cloud made three hundred and seventy- four miles; sixty-three days from Melbourne to Liverpool; eighty-four days from Canton to New York; and ninety- six days from Manila to Salem, were some of the most celebrated runs of these famous Yankee clippers. The chief sources of the export wealth of the United States in these years when its ships were on the crest of the wave of prosperity were agricultural. During the ten years from 1 85 1 to i860 the products of American farms and plantations — wheat, flour, rice, hops, apples, corn and cornmeal, tobacco, cotton, potatoes, sugar raw and refined, cheese, cattle and beef and pork products — constituted on the average about eighty-two per cent of all the exports from the United States. The value of these agricultural exports increased meanwhile from nearly $147,000,000 in 185 1 to more than $261,000,000 in i860. In the larger view of this commercial epoch the total American exports to Europe grew in value from about $36,000,000 in 182 1 to nearly $250,000,000 in i860, and, to all Other countries, from $19,000,000 to $84,000,000 in the same interval. These exports were, of course, paid for by the imports of hardware, silks, oils, wines, teas, cofTees, spices, etc., to the United States. At the outset, in 1821, the figures balanced almost evenly. In i860, however, the imports exceeded the exports in value by about $20,000,000. The prosperity which the American merchant marine en- joyed between 1820 and i860 followed the adoption by the government in 181 5 of the pohcy of reciprocity in shipping — a poKcy that has not been deviated from since that date. Z 5 H -a, O « a g o o PL, rf h-) cd 152 HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE In the early years of the nation's hfe and for a brief period after 1815, discriminating duties favoring American ves- sels were in force. These duties were laid, however, in re- taliation for similar duties exacted by other nations and were justifiable for this purpose. Discrimination, however, as a means of building up a merchant marine is an ac- knowledged failure and has everywhere been abandoned in favor of reciprocity. The percentage of American mer- chandise carried in the foreign trade of American ships fell off somewhat, it is true, in the years from 183 1 to 1S60. The evidence, however, of the benefits of the policy of reciprocity, and of the activity and energy of American shipping interests, was to be found in the constantly in- creasing tonnage of ocean-going vessels flying the United States flag, a large percentage of which were engaged in the carrying trade between foreign countries, and rarely entered or cleared from an American port. Thus in the forty years from 1820 to i860 the tonnage of United States shipping registered for the foreign trade increased fourfold, while that of the entire British Empire only doubled. The decline in American shipping was due to various causes: to the virtual abandonment by Congress in 1855 of the policy of subsidies; to the competition of cheaply- built foreign iron steamships, which after 1843 gradually displaced the wooden ships, barks and brigs, in the build- ing and sailing of which Americans had been supreme; to the effects of the Civil War; to the existence of the law passed in 1792 prohibiting the granting of American regis- try to foreign-built ships; and, finally, to broad economic causes operating to diminish the interest of the American people in the ocean carrying trade. With half a continent i OUTLOOK FOR THE MERCHANT MARINE 153 to conquer, with forests to fell and farms to clear and to cultivate, with cities to build and railways to construct, with exhaustless mineral riches awaiting the miner, and with manufactures to create in order to supply the needs of their own milhons, it was not unnatural that as the years passed a greater and a greater share of the energy and of the capital of the people of the United States should be di- verted from the high seas to these inland sources of wealth lying so invitingly before them. If the experience of the most enhghtened nations which have developed their shipping to a high point is to be ac- cepted as a guide, the American merchant marine can be revived only by a policy, under reciprocity, combining sub- sidies for the encouragement of shipbuilding, the importa- tion, free of duty, of all materials for the construction and unrestricted use of steamships, and free ships, for the pri- mary political advantage of displaying the American flag in foreign ports. The experts seem to be agreed that, so far as the foreign carrying trade is concerned, the advan- tages to be derived from free ships, under the repeal of the law of 1792, would be mainly political rather than economic, the increased expense of maintenance under the American flag more than neutralizing the saving in the initial cost of the foreign-built vessel. The first step toward free materials for shipbuilding was taken by Congress in 1872. The advance in the same direction since then has been constant, until at the present time, under the Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909, all materials for the construction of steamships or sailing-vessels are imported free of duty, with the single condition that ves- sels so constructed in whole or in part shall not engage in 154 HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE the coastwise trade of the United States for more than six months in the year. When this single restriction is re- moved, absolute free trade in all the materials for ship- building will have been established. XIV GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN LETTERS The years from 1820 to i860 proved to be the golden age of American letters, as well as a period of remarkable indus- trial energy and of extraordinary commercial activityo Al- though in two wars the American people had won first their poHtical and later their commercial independence from Great Britain, even their best educated men continued to show in intellectual matters a deference to English opinion and a sensitiveness to English criticism which were the unmistakable signs of national youth and inex- perience. That an American could write anything in prose or verse above the level of mediocrity was wellnigh unthinkable. It was entirely consistent with this provincial state of mind for the editors of The North American Review, newly estabhshed in Boston, to suspect at first that the lines called " Thanatopsis, " which young Bryant's father left with them one day, early in the summer of 18 17, were of English origin, for it was incredible to them that any American could have written such a poem. The same lack of self- confidence was illustrated in the case of Cooper's first novel, Precaution, which grew out of his determination to write a better story of English life than the English novel which he then chanced to be reading. For, in order to win for the book the widest possible audience and at the same time to disarm the reviewers. Cooper gave to the novel not 156 GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN LETTERS only an English subject but the pretense of Enghsh author- ship. Fifteen years later Poe was trying, in The Southern Literary Messenger, of which he was the editor, to check the tendency to go to the other extreme of patriotic and indis- criminate praise for every American Kterary production simply because it was American — a tendency which afforded even clearer proof of the national inexperience than was indicated by the inabihty to judge the value of a book until the English stamp of approval or disapproval had been placed upon it. The truth was that only time, with growth and ex- perience, could create a national self-confidence and an indifference to foreign opinion in literary affairs which should operate unconsciously. The Civil War carried the nation a long way toward this goal, but the war with Spain had to be fought before it was made plain to every one that at last the goal had been reached. Many stimulating influences were at work, especially in New England in these early years, urging men's minds toward literary expression. Scott and Byron were in the full exercise of their great powers, and new novels and poems by them were awaited with a curiosity and read with an avidity which would be incomprehensible to the present book-surfeited generation. Men of literary taste like Irving were deeply affected by European travel and by contact with scenes "rich," as he himself notes, "in storied and poetical association." Scholars like Ticknor, Everett and Bancroft, who had passed several years in Europe and especially in Germany, where Goethe was the commanding figure in the romantic movement of the time, on returning and beginning the teaching of Greek, French, IRVING AND COOPER 157 Spanish or Belles Lettres, set in motion powerful currents of new ideas or diverted old ideas into new channels. Under the inspiring leadership of Channing Unitarianism was dis- placing Calvinism over a considerable area, especially in New England, "substituting the doctrine of hope for the dogma of dread." The way was thus preparing for Tran- scendentalism, which was to make use of all the wisdom attainable by its disciples in the effort, ardent rather than well considered, to formulate a new philosophy of ideahsm. The fiction of this epoch, which may be said to have begun with the appearance, in 1819, of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in Irving's Skdch-Book, and to have reached its culmination in 1850 in Hawthorne's masterpiece. The Scarlet Letter, including in the interval the novels of Cooper and the tales of Poe, possessed great variety both of theme and of treatment. Irving had pub- lished in 1809 his Knickerbocker History of New York, the youthful vivacity and exuberant humor of which remain fresh to-day, after more than a century of life. It was, how- ever, the favor with which his Sketch-Book and Bracehridge Hall were received, in England as well as in his native land, that determined his career, he being thus the first American author to whom the highly-prized foreign recog- nition was accorded. The splendor and romance of old Spain had an even greater attraction for him than historic and rural England, and found expression in his Moorish Chronicles, his Alhamhra and in his biographies of Mahomet and Columbus, revealing to the hungry American imagina- tion a world of new and undreamed-of wonder and beauty. Cooper, after his first timid venture in Precaution, turned, under the inspiration of Scott's novels, to American his- 158 GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN LETTERS torical and romantic subjects with which he was familiar, producing rapidly first the Revolutionary story The Spy and then The Pioneers and The Pilot, his motive in the last named being frankly to write a story which should be truer to the real Hfe of the sea, on which he had had abundant experience both in the merchant service and in the navy, than was Scott's Pirate. With these and the other novels which he pubHshed in the following decade, and especially with the Leather-Stocking tales, he captured the reading public not only of his own country but of England and the continent of Europe as well. To foreign readers he opened the door to a new and fascinating world of men, manners, customs and scenery, and no American novehst, save per- haps Mrs. Stowe, has been so widely translated or so eagerly read. His industry, moreover, was prodigious, the list of his publications in the appendix to Professor Lounsbury's life including no fewer than seventy-one titles. Aside from his novels, of which there are more than thirty, Cooper's most important work was his History of the United States Navy. No little historical value, how- ever, attaches to the novels themselves. Colonel Roose- velt in his Naval War of 181 2 refers to Miles Wallin^ford, Home as Found and The Pilot as giving a far better idea of the American seamen of the period than that to be got from any history. Despite the defects of his style which were largely due to the speed with which he produced book after book, he succeeded in holding the interest of his readers, setting against the vivid background of the forests, lakes, and hills of his native land which he knew so well, and of the sea with the varying moods of which he was equally familiar, a group of original characters — Natty Bumppo, POE'S CHARACTERS AND TECHNIQUE 159 Long Tom Coffin, Uncas, Harvey Birch, etc. — so individual, so racy and of such universal human appeal through the manly virtues which their actions reveal, that their perma- nent place in American hterature seems to be assured. "He knew men," says Mr. Brownell in his American Prose Masters, "as Lincoln knew them — which is to say, very differently from Dumas and Stevenson." Patriotic, independent, courageous, a lover of truth, his weaknesses were those of temper, not of character. No sha;rper contrast could be imagined than that pre- sented by the sohd reahty, on the one hand, of Cooper's backgrounds and characters, even his somewhat idealized savages, and the essential unreality, on the other of the personages and scenes in the tales which Poe produced in the course of his brief and stormy career. These began with "A MS. Found in a Bottle," for which, in 1833, ^^ ^^~ ceived a prize of one hundred dollars from The Saturday Visitor, of Baltimore. From this time on his stories were published in various periodicals and newspapers, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which appeared in 1841, establishing on a firm basis his popularity, which has never waned, in Paris. These tales, some of them, like "The Fall of the House of Usher, " purely imaginative, and others, like the balloon hoax, the product of the author's excur- sions into popular science, possessed an individuality, a quahty, an atmosphere, a mood which were peculiar to their author and new to literature. They revealed Poe's mastery of technique, being polished to an exquisite finish. They gave to the short story, which had been introduced by Irving, a new and alluring form which had its effect upon European as well as upon native literature. By them their i6o GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN LETTERS author, proud, solitary, self-indulgent, won a unique place in American letters. Through them his constant effort was to mystify, to make the false appear to be the true, to produce theatrical effects and to create illusions which were sufficiently plausible to bhnd the reader, temporarily at least, to their improbability, even impossibility. And to this task he brought an eccentrically equipped mind, largely self-trained, and a veritable genius for liter-t' of rh.<^^&A<„c-'fCiA,,6JL^:^ yt>fl, ■y<>^ «/>*' Xt-^ ^*i.0^t>^JUL- 0< /nJv*\^ UfhUyC^ jt'Kir''-^^ 0-^:tut,yA^ Xo -^^^.o^Uyi^i^ AfO\^ ^ya-y^ -C^i- FAC-SIMILE OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S LETTER TO MRS. BIXBY, OF BOSTON. 198 CIVIL WAR The news of three Union victories, however, came op- portunely to make Lincoln's re-election certain by refuting emphatically the contention in the Democratic platform on which McClellan was nominated, in August, but which he repudiated, that the war was a failure. For it was early in the same month that Farragut destroyed the Con- federate forts and war- vessels in Mobile Bay. A few weeks later Sherman, having forced Johnston steadily back from Dalton, defeated Hood, whom President Davis had put in Johnston's place, in a fierce battle before Atlanta and capt- ured the city. And at about the same time Sheridan, in several spirited engagements, destroyed Early's force in the Shenandoah Valley, relieving Washington thenceforth from all danger of an attack from that quarter. Grant, mean- while, had forced Lee back, slowly but with the sureness of implacable fate, by constantly turning his right flank, to the defenses to the east and southeast of Richmond, where he held him in a vice-like grip. The bloody battle-fields of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor, on which tens of thousands of lives were lost, attested both the ag- gressive fierceness with which this onward movement was made by Grant and the stubborn valor with which every foot of the way was contested by the Confederates under Lee. At last victory for the Union forces was in the air, and the Republican campaign emphasized at once the deter- mination of the Republicans as a party to carry the war through to the end and the hopeful feeling that at last the end was in sight. The Republicans secured two hun- dred and twelve presidential electors, the Democrats, only twenty-one. The popular vote, however, of 2,330,552 COLLAPSE OF THE CONFEDERACY 199 Republicans to 1,835,985 Democrats, shows more clearly than the electoral vote the relative strength of the two parties. Handicapped though he was by the Democratic platform, with its peace plank and its declaration that the war was a failure, McClellan, running on his war record, polled not far from two million votes. By the adoption early in 1865 of the thirteenth amendment to the Consti- tution the Republicans in Congress made evident to the world their further determination, as one of the purposes of the war, to destroy slavery throughout the United States and to make its revival in any form or at any time impos- sible. The collapse of the Confederacy was due to exhaustion through starvation — starvation in men and in money, as well as in food, clothing and all the other supplies neces- sary to support a people and to carry on war. Beginning the battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864, with sixty-one thousand men, Lee surrendered fewer than twenty-seven thousand at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. By casualties, captures and desertions he had lost more than half of his army. In the ten days preceding the surrender no fewer than nineteen thousand Confederate soldiers had been captured by Grant's forces. It is no reflection on the loyalty of these men to surmise that not a few of them were willing captives, for it was not in human nature to expect that men would longer risk their lives for a cause which, it was perfectly evident, was irretrievably lost. The South, moreover, was bankrupt in money and sup- plies as well as in men. Only small returns were secured from Confederate bonds sold abroad, and the purchasing power of the paper currency issued from time to time by Mr. 200 CIVIL WAR Davis's government grew steadily less and less until, in the spring of 1864, a coat cost three hundred and fifty dollars in Richmond, a pair of shoes one hundred and twenty-five dollars, a bushel of potatoes twenty-five dollars, and a pound of butter fifteen dollars. Hundreds of thousands of bales of cotton were locked up and made worthless by the Union blockade ; English intervention, upon which the South so confidently relied, had proved to be a delusion; no material or effective help had come to the Confederates from their sympathizers among the copperheads of the North. An agricultural people, almost entirely without manufactures, eight million in numbers, owning nearly four million slaves, had exhausted their resources and them- selves fighting a manufacturing and agricultural people numbering nineteen millions, so rich that they could supply the federal government with more than two million dollars a day for four years with which to prosecute the war. Thus weakened, the Confederacy was crushed between Grant's tenacious aggressiveness in pursuing Lee, and Sher- man's energy in breaking the back, so to speak, of the South at Atlanta, and in sweeping thence, confident and buoyant, with his army of sixty thousand veterans through Georgia and the Carolinas, where he held Johnston, now restored to the command of a hastily-gathered force, at bay until Lee's surrender made further resistance useless. In the great conflict thus brought to an end the South developed six generals who distinguished themselves — Lee, ''Stonewall" Jackson, the two Johnstons, Albert Sidney and Joseph E., and the two cavalry leaders, Forrest and Stuart, and the North five who stood pre-eminent among their fellows- Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Meade, and Thomas; the de- 202 CIVIL WAR feat of Hood by Thomas before Nashville in December. 1864, having contributed vitally to the success of the cam- paign which Grant and Sherman were waging. It was the misfortune of the Confederacy to lose three of these great captains; Albert Sidney Johnston, early in the war at Shiloh, Jackson at Chancellorsville, and Stuart in an en- gagement near Richmond, in 1864. They had successors but no equals. The extent to which President Davis's traits of character and idiosyncrasies of temperament contributed to the down- fall of the Confederacy can only be conjectured. Auto- cratic in temper and tenacious of all of the rights which the Confederate constitution bestowed upon him, he kept a firm control of all military operations, and indulged his per- sonal likes and dislikes in appointments and removals with, no doubt, an honest belief that he was acting always in the best interest of the government of which he was the head. Although he was held mainly responsible by his own people for the disasters which, one by one, overwhelmed the Con- federacy toward the end of the war, history will probably confirm Lee's generous judgment that, on the whole, he did as well as any man could have done in the same place. If he had had the wisdom or the courage to stake all on a single mighty blow — to accept, that is, Lee's daring project for a concentration of all the Confederate forces for an over- whelming invasion of the North, the whole course of the war and the fate of the nation might possibly have been changed. To leave the Gulf states thus open to unopposed invasion and devastation was a greater responsibility, how- ever, than the Confederate President was willing to l)ear. He preferred to cherish the delusive hope that English RELATIVE NUMBERS AND LOSSES 203 intervention would come to the aid of the South in its her- culean struggle for independence. The total cost of the war to the North is wellnigh incal- culable. The sum total would include bonds issued from time to time by the government and bought by the people to the amount of nearly three bilhon dollars, and a large percentage also of the eight hundred million dollars re- ceived from duties — internal revenue and customs, to say nothing of the heavy war debts incurred by states, counties, cities and towns. The South was literally impoverished, the value of its slave population, estimated roughly at two billions of dollars in 1861, being wiped out at a stroke. At the end of the war the Union forces numbered not far from a million men; those of the Confederacy had dwindled to scarcely a fifth of that number. The whole number of individuals in service in the Union army and navy during the Civil War was estimated in 1905 by the Adjutant-Gen- eral's ofi&ce to have been 2,213,365. The estimates of the total number in the service of the Confederacy vary from 600,000 to 1,500,000. A fair consideration, however, of the facts given by Thomas L. Livermore in his Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America leads to the belief that the total number of enhstments in the Confederate army was not far from 1,200,000. From this estimate deduc- tions would have to be made for re-enhstments which might bring the total number of men who served in the Confed- erate army down to 950,000 or perhaps 900,000. Most southern writers contend that the actual number was be- tween 600,000 and 700,000. These, however, are obviously underestimates. For, as Charles Francis Adams in his Studies Military and Diplomatic has pointed out, the Con- 204 CIVIL WAR federacy, under any recognized method of computation, contained within itself, first and last, some 1,350,000 white men capable of doing military duty; and to maintain that only about one-half of this possible force was utilized proves too much — proves that the South was lacking in loyalty to its cause, which is the reverse of the truth. This preponderance of men on the side of the North was in large part neutralized by the necessity the Union gen- erals were under of detaching troops constantly to guard long lines of communications and to garrison strategic points as they advanced, in ever-contracting circles, into the heart of the South, and by the number of men on the Union side who were employed in Ijlockade service. Mr. Livermore's figures showing the number of men en- gaged on each side in the more important battles of the war go far to prove that, owing to the large require- ments of these allied services, the forces actually engaged were much more evenly matched than is generally sup- posed to have been the case. Thus in forty-eight of the more important battles of the war, beginning with Shiloh and ending with the Appomattox campaign, the aggre- gate numbers of men engaged were, on the Union side, 1,575,033, and on the Confederate side, 1,243,528, repre- senting approximately a ratio of ilfty-five to forty-five. This ratio is maintained also for the relative total numbers of men actually engaged in the half-dozen great battles in which the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia took part — the Seven Days' battle, Antictam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and the Wil- derness — the figures being 555,000 men on the Union side as against 413,200 on the Confederate side. Mr. Liv- SI trt J. < -^ 'Z a. 2 W ,-, o O _ 2o6 CIVIL WAR ermore estimates the total number of killed and wounded in the war among the Union men to have been 385,000, and among the Confederates 329,000. And what were the fruits of the war for which such an awful price in blood and treasure had been paid? The extinction of the institution of slavery and of the doctrine of state sovereignty as causes of anger and strife between the North and the South; the estabHshment for all time of the federal authority as supreme under the Constitution; the revelation of the power of democracy to preserve its empire intact; and, finally, the substitution in the South of industrial development under freedom for moral lethargy and agricultural stagnation under slavery. The assassination of President Lincoln, a few days only after the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, was a tragic cli- max to the colossal struggle which had been in progress for four years, and brought to an untimely end the career of a remarkable man, a genuine son of the soil and the ripest product of the moral forces of the democracy of the young nation. His mission, as he understood it, was to preserve the Union, and, with a singleness of purpose as rare among public men as a rule as it was natural to him as an indi- vidual, he subordinated all selfish and personal considera- tions to the attainment of this great end. To him men were nothing except as they could be used to advance the great cause which the people had placed in his keeping. Patient and self-contained yet resolute and even masterful, he was a silent but powerful force that made for righteousness, against which the envy and the malice of the ambitious and the selfish, as well as the hysteria of the weaklings and the panic-stricken, broke impotently. His character and his LINCOLN'S CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT 207 temperament, apparently so simple and yet so tantalizingly elusive, will remain for all time a subject of fascinating study. And among the imperishable records which he has left as a basis for such study none will be found of more abiding value as a reflection of his lofty spirit than the Gettysburg address, unmatched in American literature for nobility of thought and for simplicity and beauty of phrase. XVII RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION The demoralizing effects of a great civil war upon national character were strikingly illustrated during the decade following the restoration of peace. Old standards of right living and right thinking became l)lurrcd or entirely ob- scured in the smoke that was wafted from scores of fiercely contested battle-fields, and men's worst passions, long repressed by the conventions of an orderly civilization, swayed their minds and governed their actions. To ex- travagance and waste, which were the natural accompani- ments and consequences of war, were added bribery and corruption among federal, state and city officials so flagrant as to make honest men hang their heads in shame and almost in despair, when, in 1876, the nation gathered in Philadel- phia to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Decla- ration of Independence. This high tide of official knavery and corruption was reached during the two terms of General Grant as President. A poor reader of character and drawn to rather than repelled by men of uncultivated tastes. Grant, in his simplicity, honesty and credulity, became the dupe of more than one designing scamp who used his official position to further his own ends, bringing disgrace and Ininiiliation upon his unsuspecting chief. The conditions, it must be admitted, however, were peculiar. Corruption was a disease of the time, and a stronger man than Grant proved to be might 208 DEMORALIZING EFFECTS OF CIVIL WAR 209 have been powerless to counteract its subtle influence. The enormous requirements of the government during four years of war, together with the high tariff, had given an artificial stimulus to industries of all kinds, had made manufacturers and contractors rich beyond their wildest dreams, and had created a shoddy aristocracy based on wealth alone. The air, moreover, was feverish with speculative schemes, the possibilities of which threw men usually cool-headed off their mental and moral balance and made them both ava- ricious and unscrupulous. The extension of railroads into new grain-growing territory in the middle and far West and into the coal and iron fields, with the expansion and re- equipment of old roads to enable them to meet modern requirements, had the effect of creating powerful corpora- tions in need both of favorable legislation and of freedom from legislative interference in carrying out their far-reach- ing plans. Too often also loyalty to the cardinal doctrines of the Republican party, the enfranchisement of the negro and the suppression of the "rebel vote," was accepted as sufficient to excuse irregularity in official conduct, even when the obvious motive was personal gain. The facts, however, do not sustain the theory that hatred of the South and a desire for further revenge upon the prostrate people of that section were the principal motives which led the Republicans to give the ballot to the negro. To the Republicans then in Congress the peril to the nation involved in a possible union between the southern whites in control of their state governments and the copperheads of the North was very real. The ex-Confederates, we now know, were not deluding themselves with any such scheme to recover possession of the national government. Ex- 2IO RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION hausted and ruined by the war, they recognized that both slavery and secession were dead beyond any hope of res- urrection. They accepted frankly the thirteenth amend- ment to the Constitution abohshing slavery in the United States. The North was still suspicious, however, and their conduct in passing through their state legislatures, imme- diately after the close of the war, laws regulating negro labor, vagrancy, etc., in refusing to accept the fourteenth amendment conferring the rights of citizenship upon the negro and putting pressure upon the states to allow him to vote, while at the same time disfranchising certain ex- Confederate soldiers, and finally in the Ku Klux Klan out- rages designed to frighten negroes from voting under the rights bestowed upon them by the fifteenth amendment, was conclusive evidence to the Republicans in Congress that the ex- Confederates were still at heart enemies of the Union and of the negro. In the perspective of half a century the bestowal of the suffrage upon the negroes is generally regarded as having been a grave political mistake. The public men of any period, however, are entitled to be judged by the light of the times in which they were obliged to do their work and not by that of subsequent events. In the view, then, of .men like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, the enfranchise- ment of the negroes was the only way by which the political power of the South for possible evil could be broken, unless the military occupation provided by the Reconstruction act of March, 1867, and by the force bills, so-called, of a later date, was to continue indefinitely. This view was not radical at that time. It was shared by men of the highest patriotism who had no selfish interest, political or other- ^ reO^BOme SCENE IN THE CTTr OP O^Ks!' ^roT ^1r^. ,s6,. •' M«.n«. curs. •>'"'P,L 1 * • • » ml. Xn«e out repre«ont8 tha tate in store for those great pests of Southern society— The '""Y^ner and scalawag— if found in Dixie's land after the break of day on tho, the carpe*""T*^^_., EVIDENCE IN KU KLUX KLAN CASES BEFORE THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE. Above: Fac-simile of a "gratuity" voted to Governor Moses by the South Carolina Legislature, in 1871. Below: A newspaper clipping. 212 RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION wise, at stake. "The bare idea," wrote John Jay to Sal- mon P. Chase, "of the rebel states casting their votes for election in 1868 — the blacks being fexcluded — and giving us again a Democratic and rebel government, is altogether intolerable, and yet that is what the northern Democracy begin to hope for and expect." Many people in the North, moreover, for whom Sumner was the spokesman, were influenced in favor of negro suffrage by humanitarian motives and by a belief that the negro, under protection and encouragement, would develop into a fairly intelligent and useful voter. The narrow-minded dogmatism, too, of the President, Andrew Johnson, a southern states-rights man of the old type, raised to his high position by the assassination of Lincoln, contributed its share to create the conditions which seemed to make the enfranchisement of the negroes necessary in order to insure the continued safety of the repubhc. Under these conditions it was perhaps not unnatural that the North, relieved at last from the prolonged strain of the great conflict and turning its mind again to industrial affairs, should receive with mild incredulity and with more or less indifference the reports of the wholesale robbery to which many of the southern states were subjected during the humiliating period of negro rule following the enforcement of the Reconstruction act, when the "carpet-baggers" and "scalawags," as the white Repubhcans from the North and of the South were respectively termed, were in full control of the state governments. Ninety per cent of the plunder derived from this orgy of negro legislation went into the pockets of these greedy and unscrupulous white adventur- ers whom the ignorant hordes of negroes, intoxicated by RESTORATION OF WHITE LEADERSHIP 213 their sudden rise to their new estate as voters and office- holders, followed bhndly as representing the party which had delivered them from bondage. The turn of the tide of sentiment in the North came in 1872, and was reflected by the action of Congress in passing the General Amnesty bill restoring to the great majority of the ex-Confederates their full political rights. Much of the bitterness of feeling which the war had left had died out in the meantime, there was less distrust of the designs of the southern leaders, and business affairs had acquired all- engrossing importance. The feeling gained ground stead- ily that the southern states would be obliged to solve as best they could the difficult problem of negro suffrage. Hence the North regarded with concern, but with a help- lessness which the presence of federal troops in the South was powerless to avert, the successful efforts which the southern whites made in the next few years to wrest the control of their state governments from the negroes and their disreputable white leaders. This result was accom- plished by a frank resort to intimidation, bribery, and fraud, by which the negro vote was driven or beguiled away from the polls or neutralized. Meanwhile the demoralizing, influences already referred to were at work in the North, fostered by the preoccupation of business men in their urgent private affairs and by the tyranny of partisan politics. Tweed and his rascally Tam- many associates got control of the government first of the city and then of the state of New York by fraudulently creating subservient voters out of fresh immigrants and by legislative bribery. During the four years from 1868 to 187 1 the members of this corrupt ring stole from the city 214 RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION a sum variously estimated at from lift}- to two hundred millions of dollars, having the aid in this dastardly business of three compliant judges. In the summer of 1871 the thieves fell out and the facts showing the extent to which and the methods by which the city had been plundered for years were disclosed. The city once aroused was soon res- cued, and the robbers were driven into exile or thrown into jail. Tammany Hall under Tweed was Democratic, but the gas ring which flourished in Philadelphia and which, in the decade from 1870 to 1 881, added fifty millions to the debt of the city without any corresponding advantages to its citizens, was Republican throughout. Here again the management of the city departments, with limitless oppor- tunities for jobbery and plunder, was complacently left by the business men to the poHticians, who in turn provided at every election a large Republican vote and so safe- guarded the protective tariff upon which the Pennsylvania industries depended for a considerable percentage of their profits. Compared with New York the admixture of for- eign-born voters in Philadelphia was slight. In two great American cities, therefore, where the conditions at this period were entirely different the same pernicious influences were at work to the same end. It was not until 1881 that Philadelphia took effective steps to free itself from the mastery of this corrupt ring, with its state and federal alli- ances. National as well as city and state affairs afforded abun- dant evidence also of the serious moral malady from which the country was suffering. Grant's first term as President did not seem to enlarge his knowledge of human nature or 2i6 RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION to put him on his guard against avaricious conspirators who might be scheming to use him to their advantage. In the summer of 1869 he guilelessly allowed himself to be enter- tained, while on his way to the Peace Jubilee in Boston and later in New York City, by Jay Gould, and James Fisk, Jr., notorious even then for his profligacy and vulgarity, who together had possessed themselves of the Erie Railroad and who were intimate with Tweed, Sweeney and the Tammany ring judges, Barnard, Cardozo and McCunn. Gould's purpose in cultivating Grant's acquaintance was to guard against any interference by the government in his audacious plot to corner the market for gold, speculation in which at that time was very active. Grant's unsus- picious nature made him the easy prey of this wily schemer, who, with the help of Fisk, forced up the price of gold until, on the famous Black Friday, September 24, it reached 160, when the government began to sell gold from its surplus and thus broke the market. Gould, forewarned that at last his purpose was understood by the authorities at Washing- ton, saved himself by beginning to sell gold at the critical moment while Fisk remained a buyer and was o\'erwhelmed by contracts which he could not fulfil. The financial and mercantile community meanwhile suffered embarrassments and losses, and business interests throughout the country were disturbed and injured. Severer still was the blow which Grant's reputation re- ceived through the revelations of the pecuniary interest which his private secretary, Babcock, had in the frauds practised upon the government by the St. Louis whiskey ring, made up of distillers, internal revenue officers and officials in Washington. Through the powerful influence FRAUDS AMONG PUBLIC OFFICIALS 217 of his distinguished chief, whose habit it was to stand by his friends through evil as well as through good report, Babcock was acquitted of the charge of conspiracy to de- fraud the revenue. The evidence, however, left it reason- ably clear that he had received a share of the ill-gotten profits of the ring and he was forced to vacate his ofhce. The frauds began as early as 1870 or 187 1, and among the men who were perpetrating them the supposition was sedu- lously cultivated that the stolen money, or a considerable proportion of it, went into a campaign fund to secure the renomination of Grant for a second and, later, for even a third term as President. Some of it may have been de- voted to this purpose, but no evidence was ever forthcom- ing to show that Grant, if he knew of this fund, was aware of the illegitimate source whence at least a part of it was derived. The climax of the President's humiliation was reached when in March, 1876, only a few months before the Repub- lican national convention was to meet, facts were laid before him proving conclusively that General Belknap, who had been his Secretary of War since 1869, had been receiv- ing since November, 1870, a share, perhaps twenty thou- sand dollars in all, of the profits of the lucrative office of the post-trader at Fort Sill, Indian Territory. Belknap resigned his office in disgrace before proceedings could be begun against him, and was allowed to disappear from the pubhc view. Other revelations, meanwhile, of the prevalence of bri- bery and corruption among national legislators, heretofore supposed to be above suspicion, added to the embarrass- ment of the Republicans and deepened the sickening sense 2i8 RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION of despair which honest men throughout the nation felt. These revelations, showing how insidious and mischievous an influence had been exercised for years among certain senators and representatives at Washington by the great railroad corporations, came to light both before and after the financial panic of 1873, with which they were indirectly connected. This panic was due to various causes, among which were the exhausting efTect and the enormous waste of the war and the destruction by fire of a large part of Chicago, in October, 1871, and of Boston, in 1872, with a total esti- mated loss amounting to the huge sum of $273,000,000. The principal cause, however, was the speculative expan- sion of all lines of business, and more especially of railroad building, in the years following the Civil War, to a point where it was impossible for the country to finance the projects with which it had overloaded itself. The average increase in railroad building during the four years from 1865 to 1868, inclusive, was only a little over two thousand miles annually. In the next four years, however, more than twenty-four thousand miles were built or relaid, the steel rails produced by the new Bessemer process being used largely for the purpose.. Every branch of allied busi- ness, moreover, was pushed during this period to its utmost limit to keep pace with the demand. Prices, too, rose to abnormal heights — steel rails one hundred and twelve dol- lars a ton and pig-iron forty-nine dollars a ton. The com- mercial and industrial energy of the country had far outrun the volume of capital available for business purposes. Recourse in this emergency was had to foreign capital obtained through the sale of railroad bonds, but even this CREDIT-MOBILIER SCANDAL 219 fresh supply of funds was not enough to meet the urgent needs of the time. The conditions grew more and more feverish until on September 18 the panic began with the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., the financial agents of the Northern Pacific Railway. The disastrous effects of the commercial crisis which followed the crash in Wall Street were felt throughout the country, and fully five years passed before business recovered its normal tone. In the winter before this financial storm broke the coun- try had been astonished and dismayed by the disclosures of wholesale attempts to bribe members of Congress in the interest of one of the great railroad corporations, the Union Pacific, by the distribution through Oakes Ames, a repre- sentative from Massachusetts, of stock in the construction company of the road, called the Credit Mobilier. Several men were practically ruined by these disclosures, the chief among them being Schuyler Colfax, a member of the House of Representatives from Indiana since 1854, Speaker of the House from 1863 to 1869, and Vice-President during Grant's first term. What amazed and appalled the country was not so much the discovery that two or three represent- atives and a senator should have been found guilty by the investigating committee as it was the revelation that men like Garfield, Dawes and Henry Wilson were regarded as not beyond the reach of the tempter. Dawes and Wilson were guilty only of impropriety; Garfield proved his inno- cence to the satisfaction of his Ohio constituency, and his election later to the Presidency must be accepted as a clean bill of moral health from the nation. Blaine fared less well in defending himself, in May and June of 1876, from the charge of having sold to the Union 2 20 RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION Pacific and two other railroad companies, at a far higher price than their real value, several hundred thousand dol- lars' worth of bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Rail- road with which he had become burdened, the inference being that these corporations expected him as a conse- quence to be friendly to 'their interests as Speaker or as a member of the House of Representatives. The situation called for a clear, simple statement of receipts and disburse- ments, fortified by cancelled checks and other ordinary documentary evidence. Blaine met it with a passionate and theatrical outburst of fervid rhetoric, proclaiming to the world his entire innocence and denouncing the ''rebel brigadiers" who, he charged, were attempting to ruin his character. His defense of his conduct convinced his friends and admirers, of whom he had many, of his innocence of wrong-doing, but did not convince the country at large. As a consequence he lost the RepubHcan nomination for the Presidency in 1876 and the election to the Presidency in 1884. By reason, therefore, of these shocking revelations of bribery and corruption in ofiicial circles and because of the depressed state of business following the panic of 1873, the Republicans found themselves on the defensive in the Hayes-Tilden cy.mpaign of 1876, at the close of Grant's two terms. They could point, however, to two acts of Grant's administration which reflected great credit upon him and upon the party — first, the Treaty of Washington, which his Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, had carried to a suc- cessful conclusion and under which, as has already been noted, Great Britain, by the award of the Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration, was compelled to pay the United States INTIMIDATION IN THE SOUTH 221 fifteen and a half million dollars in compensation for the depredations of the Confederate cruisers, the Alabama, Florida and Shenandoah; and, sccondl}^ Grant's courageous veto of the Inflation bill, by which it was proposed to in- crease the volume of outstanding greenbacks from $382,- 000,000 to $400,000,000. The resumption of specie pay- ments did not take place until 1879, but this veto of the Inflation bill was most serviceable as a check upon the desire of the West and South to attempt to cure the financial ills of the time by the simple and easy expedient of printing more government money, and went far toward leading the country back to principles of sound national finance. In the attempt to divert attention from the scandals of the Grant administration and from the depressed state of business, the Republicans made the horrors of the "bloody shirt" — the assaults upon negroes being summarized in this lurid phrase — the danger of a "soHd South" and the dread of the "rebel brigadiers" in Congress the issues in the Hayes campaign, and on those issues won the election through the grace of the Electoral Commission in awarding the votes of South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana to Hayes. Early in 1877 the Florida Democrats recovered control of their state government; and soon after he was inaugurated President Hayes withdrew the federal troops from Florida and Louisiana, the only remaining states in which they were still quartered, thus acknowledging the utter failure of the policy of his party, adopted a decade earlier, of imposing negro rule upon the old slave states by force. Since then the southern whites, with the tacit acquies- cence of the North, save for an occasional outburst in Con- 222 RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION gress, have retained possession of their state governments and of all election machinery, local, state and federal, by a resort to intimidation, justifying their course on the ground of absolute necessity, if the intelligence, wealth and honesty, instead of the ignorance, poverty and dishonesty, of a community, were to rule. "We hear much," wrote the late Henry W. Grady, of the Atlanta Constitution, "of the intimidation of the colored vote of the South. There is intimidation, but it is the menace of the compact and solid wealth and intelligence of a great social system. Against this menace, peaceful and majestic, counter-organization cannot stand. That is why the negro fails to vote in the South. He will not vote except under persistent and sys- tematic and inspiring organization. This organization can- not be eiTected or maintained against a powerful and united social system that embraces the wealth and intelligence of the community. " In spite, therefore, of the amendments to the Constitu- tion that were passed in order to secure to him his rights as a citizen, the negro is in effect disfranchised throughout the old slave states. The North accepts the situation with only perfunctory protests, the peril which seemed so threatening to Stevens, Sumner and their associates no longer existing. XVIII POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS With the disappearance of slavery and the "solid South" as issues in national politics, a new era began in the history of the American people, an era in which problems in eco- nomics and finance pressed for solution; problems arising from the rapid increase in the material prosperity of the country and from the necessity of changes in the laws to meet these new conditions. One of the most important of these problems was the tariff. The Republican party committed itself to a pro- tective tariff almost at the very beginning of its history, in the platform on which Lincoln was elected President in i860; and with courage, consistency and signal ability has advocated a protective tariff from that day to this. The leaders of the party in i860 realized that the twenty-seven electoral votes of Pennsylvania, even then a state with large and valuable manufacturing interests, especially in iron and steel and their products, would be necessary in order to insure the election of Lincoln. A plank was there- fore inserted in the Republican platform declaring that a sound policy required the adjustment of import duties so as "to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country" — an announcement that was re- ceived with enthusiasm by the Pennsylvania delegates to the convention. This declaration of a protective tariff policy was the chief influence in securing the electoral 223 2 24 POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS votes of Pennsylvania and New Jersey for Lincoln in the memorable contest of i860, overshadowing in importance even slavery as an issue in those states. During the Civil War the rates of duty established by the Morrill tariff bill, which became a law in 1861, were raised from time to time in order to secure much-needed revenue to meet the expenses of the war rather than to pro- vide additional protection for American industries. Hav- ing accustomed themselves, however, to these high rates and having enjoyed the increased profits obtainable under them, the manufacturers in the middle Atlantic and New England states were unwilling to have them lowered when, in 1870, the demand for a downward revision of the tariff made itself felt among the Republicans of the middle West. So powerful, moreover, had these industrial interests be- come and so close was the alliance which they had estab- lished with the leaders of the Republican party, that they won a substantial victory by preventing any general or systematic reduction of the duties. Again, a decade later, the agitation against the high war duties, as they were still called, under the shelter of which, it was charged by the Democrats, monopolies were being fostered, the country's foreign exports were languishing, and the surplus in the national treasury was feeing augmented to dangerous pro- portions, made a further revision of the tariff necessary. The new tariff bill which was passed in 1883 in order to quiet this agitation, ])ut which made only a slight modifi- cation in the protective duties, was satisfactory to neither party. The vote by which this measure became a law revealed one fact, however, of no Uttle significance: thirty-one Dem- INFLUENCE OF HIGH-TARIFF DEMOCRATS 225 ocrats, twenty-one representatives and ten senators, voted with the RepubHcans in favor of maintaining high duties. From this time on the protectionist Democrats from the manufacturing states, at first of the North, but, of late years, of the South as well, where coal and iron mines have been developed and where many cotton and other mills have been built, have proved to be the most useful allies of the Republicans in maintaining the high rates of duty. Thus, while the Republican party has always been practically united on this question, save for the desertion in recent years of the Progressives, so-called, of the middle West, the Democracy has been hopelessly divided. Theoretically committed by their party platforms to a tariff for revenue only, with an occasional concession in the form of "inci- dental protection" to American industries, the Democrats of the most influence in Congress, men of the type of Randall of Pennsylvania, Gorman of Maryland, Brice of Ohio, and Hill of New York, placed the business inter- ests of their constituents above party loyalty and above party pledges, and more than once united with the Re- publicans in order to prevent any material downward revision of the leading tariff schedules. In 1884, when the Democrats were in control of the Hjuse, no fewer than forty-one Democratic representatives, under the leader- ship of Samuel J. Randall, voted with the Republicans and so secured the defeat of the Morrison bill providing for a horizontal reduction of twenty per cent from the rates established by the tariff act of the previous year. Cleveland embodied the desire of the rank and file of his party to have the tariff duties substantially reduced, and endeavored in each of his terms of office, and more 2 26 POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS especially in the second, to accomplish this end. In his first term a Repubhcan Senate blocked his efforts to secure the passage of the Mills bill; and in his second term, when for the first time since 1856 both houses of Congress and the President were Democratic, Gorman, Brice, Hill and other Democratic senators united with Senator Aldrich, the astute leader of the Republicans, to render the Wilson bill practically harmless, so far as the more important of the protected industries were concerned. Disheartened and discouraged by the party treachery of the Democratic leaders, Cleveland allowed the bill to become a law with- out his signature. In his first term a huge surplus in the national treasury, largely the product of the high tariff rates, threatened dan- ger to the business interests of the country and was the excuse for the Mills bill. When he came into power for a second term in 1893, ^^e McKinley tariff bill having been the main issue in the campaign, Cleveland found himself face to face not with a surplus but with a deficit in the treasury. During the intervening administration of Presi- dent Harrison the Republicans had disposed effectually of the surplus. New pension legislation and lavish appro- priations for river and harbor bills, for public buildings and for vessels for the navy, had the effect of, if they were not deliberately designed for the express purpose of, prevent- ing the Democrats, when next they came into power, from using the existence of a dangerously large surplus as an argument for reducing tariff rates. The pension legisla- tion of this period, which increased the annual charge against the treasury from sixty-live million dollars in the opening year of Cleveland's first term, 1885, to one hundred POWER OF BUSINESS INTERESTS 227 and thirty-nine million dollars in the final year of Har- rison's term, 1892, was effectively cited by the Democrats as an illustration of the government extravagance and wastefulness which a high protective tariff engendered. It was the depleted condition of the treasury when Cleve- land entered upon his second term in 1893 that enabled Gorman and Brice to base their public opposition to the Wilson bill on the ground that its operation would leave the treasury with a deficit of a hundred million dollars. The Wilson bill supplanted the high-tariff McKinley bill of 1890 which had been repudiated by the country in the fall elections of the same year and which was mainly instrumental in making both the legislative and executive branches of the government Democratic two years later. The Dingley tariff bill of 1897 and the Payne-Aldrich bill of 1909 afforded fresh evidence of the closeness of the alli- ance between the protected manufacturing interests and the RepubHcan leaders in Congress. The Wilson bill, partly owing to the depression in business following the panic of 1893, had not proved to be satisfactory, and the Republicans, again swept into power in 1896 by the popu- lar revulsion against Bryan and free silver, substituted for it the Dingley tariff bill. As in the Payne-Aldrich bill of a dozen years later some schedules were modified and a few raw materials were placed on the free list. But for the great bulk of manufactured articles the rates remained high. Various new ideas were embodied in these measures — provisions for reciprocity treaties and a system of maxi- mum and minimum rates of duty, both of which were designed to force tariff concessions from foreign countries. The Payne-Aldrich bill provided for a board of tariff ex- 2 28 POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS perts to make a scientific examination of the tariff rates, schedule by schedule, as a basis for more intelligent legis- lation than had heretofore been possible. It remains to be seen from the action of Congress on the reports of this board on the wool and other schedules whether the down- ward revision of the tariff is henceforth to proceed along scientific Hnes or is to be practically dictated, as heretofore, by the leading manufacturers concerned. However much truth, finally, there may be in the Democratic contention that the protective tariff has produced swollen fortunes at one end of the social scale and wide-spread povert}^ and dis- content at the other, and has begotten wellnigh criminal extravagance in the conduct of the government's business, few will be disposed to deny that, taken as a whole, the country has prospered marvellously under the tarilY policy of the Repubhcans. Of even greater importance than the tariff was the con- test for sound money which began with Grant's veto of the Inflation bill and continued for a full quarter of a cen- tury before the gold standard was finally adopted as the basis for the government's system of finance. For a decade after the close of the Civil War the popularity of the green- back was great. The notion had become widely prevalent toward the end of this period, especially in the middle West and South, that the needs of the country for a larger volume of currency could be satisfied if the government would print more greenbacks. What the West and the South needed was not a more generous distribution by the gov- ernment of paper currency but additional capital, and capital could be had only in exchange for labor or commodi- ties. But with all their available capital tied up in real ' LEGISLATION IN FAVOR OF SILVER 229 estate and in manufacturing and farming enterprises, and with their debts steadily increasing, the men of the West and the South looked to the government for relief, and mis- takenly thought that relief could he had through the issue of more "fiat" money. Grant's veto of the Inflation bill and the ample opportunities for discussion which the lean years following the panic of 1873 afforded, did much to dispel the illusions which had become popularly associated with the greenback. It was in this period of inactivity in business and in this manner that the attention of the West and of the South became diverted from greenbacks to silver as a promising remedy for the inadequacy of the circulating medium. In the preceding half-dozen years the production of silver in the Rocky Mountain states had been increasing enor- mously. The value of the silver output of these states, which in 1861 was only $2,000,000, reached $12,000,000 in 1868, $28,750,000 in 1872 and $37,000,000 in 1874. Four years later, when the production had reached $40,000,000, the demand, especially from the silver-producing states, that Congress provide some method by which this huge volume of the white metal might be absorbed into the coinage system of the country became incessant and insist- ent. Many of the arguments that prevailed during the greenback craze were readapted to meet the silver situa- tion and were repeated with new energy, the association of abundant money and business prosperity having fixed itself firmly in the minds of multitudes of men, not a few of whom were outspoken in their advocacy of even the free coinage of silver. So strongly and widely held were these views that in 230 POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS 1878 Congress was compelled to pass the Bland-Allison bill restoring the silver dollar to the standard coinage, from which it had been dropped five years earlier, providing for the coinage of from two to four million dollars in silver each month, and making silver dollars legal tender to any amount. In the same year the further retirement of green- backs was forbidden; what the people wanted was not less but more ''money." Under the stimulus of these govern- ment purchases the production of silver increased rapidly until in 1890 it reached $57,000,000. Efforts were making meanwhile to interest other nations in silver. Commis- sioners were sent abroad in the hope of persuading leading foreign governments of the advantages of international bimetallism. European financiers, however, turned an unsympathetic ear to the arguments of the American emissaries; the single gold standard, they said, satisfied all their needs. The demands of the advocates of silver kept pace with the constantly increasing production of the mines, however, and at last the pressure became too strong longer to be resisted. In response to these demands Congress in 1890 passed the Sherman Silver Purchase bill, in accordance with which the government engaged to buy, each month, four and a half million ounces of silver at the market rate, not to exceed $1.29 an ounce, paying therefor by issues of legal- tender treasury notes redeemable in gold or silver at the option of the government. In other words, the govern- ment pledged itself to buy from the states of the far West practically the entire output of their silver mines. The arrangement was a profitable one for the mine-owners, but proved to be costly for the country at large. CLEVELAND'S CHARACTERISTICS 231 Under these heavy monthly purchases by the government the price of silver naturally began to fall. In the three years that intervened between the passage of the Silver Purchase bill and the special session of Congress called by Cleveland in August, 1893. the price declined from $1.09 to 75 cents an ounce. Meanwhile, by the operation of a law well known to students of finance, the cheaper metal, silver, had been driving the dearer metal, gold, out of the country in exchange for American bonds and other securities which European holders did not care to carry longer for fear lest the American passion for silver might precipitate a catas- trophe involving them in heavy losses. The government's gold reserve had been drained in this operation to such an extent that the danger became great that the national finances would be forced upon a silver basis, with serious injury to credit and to industries of all classes. The repeal of the Silver Purchase act at this special ses- sion of Congress came too late. The mischief had already been done, and in the next few years Cleveland was obliged to purchase more than $150,000,000 in gold through the sale of bonds to New York bankers and to the public in order to keep the government's gold reserve above the danger mark and to preserve the relative values of gold and silver. The intelligence, moral courage and strength of will which enabled Cleveland, without help either from his own party in Congress, the leaders of which he had antagonized, or from the Republicans, to carry the national finances through this crisis, may in time be regarded by history as his highest title to the gratitude of his country- men. Other causes than the government's purchases of silver 232 POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS contributed largely to the panic of 1893 — agricultural de- pression, the excessive mortgaging of farms, reckless rail- way financiering and extravagance in public and private life. The panic served to bring freshly to light, however, the defects of a monetary system which for years had favored silver at the expense of gold. The lessons of the \rdnic were therefore an educational influence of the highest value. The advocates of sound money, moreover, had been far from idle during these years, and the effects of their teach- ings were revealed in the presidential campaign of 1896, when the business interests not only of the East but of the West united to defeat Bryan, the candidate representing free silver. The general revival of business in McKinley's first administration and the great increase in the production of gold in the far West and in Alaska, the advance being steady from $36,000,000 in 1893 to $79,000,000 in 1900, were also important influences ' affecting public opinion in favor of sound money. In 1900, therefore, in response to a demand directly opposite in character to that which had prevailed ten years earlier, an act of Congress placed the finances of the nation on a gold basis. The defeat of Bryan for a second time in the autumn of the same year stamped the national seal of approval upon this act, and put an end to the agitation in favor of free silver. The panic of 1907, following laxity and extravagance in insurance and trust company management, over-specu- lation in real estate projects and an undue extension of many branches of business, illustrated anew in its paralyzing effects the necessity for the reform of the coinage and cur- rency system of the country. What was needed has been admirably summarized by A. Barton Hepburn, a high PURCHASE OF ALASKA 233 authority in banking, in his Contest for Sound Money — a monetary system which would give stabihty to metallic money and security and flexibihty to paper currency, to the end that prices might remain steady and interest rates continue reasonably uniform and equitable throughout the country. Whether or not a system possessing these merits is to be found in the recommendations submitted to Con- gress in January, 191 2, of the National Monetary Commis- sion, of which ex-Senator Aldrich was the chairman, remains to be seen. The adoption of such a system is not expected to prevent panics so much as to deprive panics of some of their most disastrous accompaniments and consequences. Aside from those which have already been referred to or which will be considered in a later chapter, the two most important events in the foreign relations of the nation since the Civil War have been the purchase of Alaska in 1867 and the vigorous assertion by President Cleveland in 1895 of the Monroe Doctrine as a means of compelling Great Britain to submit its boundary dispute with Ven- ezuela to arbitration. The circumstances under which Secretary Seward obtained Alaska from Russia for the sum of $7,200,000 were all propitious. The people of the Pacific states and territories had for years been anxious to acquire fishing rights along the coast of Alaska, and Russia was very willing to sell a possession from which little or no revenue was derived and which was remote and difficult to defend, especially as the results of the Crimean War had made it necessary for the Russian government to husband its energies and to concentrate its resources. Not a few men in Congress and a considerable portion of the public were disposed to take a jocose view of the expenditure of 234 POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS so large a sum of money for the purchase of a country which was supposed to be covered for the greater part with snow and ice and which was facetiously termed Walrussia. Time, however, proved that the judgment of Secretary Seward, who had the imagination to foresee the strategic and commercial advantages likely to result from the acqui- sition of the territory, was sound. For the purchase proved to be one of the most fortunate and profitable that the United States ever made. It added an area of 590,884 square miles to the national domain — an area a third greater than that of the Atlantic states from Maine to Florida; and the value of the principal products of the land and the waters of the country, furs, fish and minerals, from 1867 down to 191 2, has exceeded the huge total of $420,- 000,000. It is worthy of remark that the negotiations with reference to this purchase were greatly facilitated by the use of the Atlantic cable, the successful laying of which, due to the boundless faith and indomitable energy of Cyrus W. Field, had been completed in the previous year. The Monroe Doctrine, which had lain dormant since 1866, when, with the veteran troops of Grant and Sherman behind it, it had only to be referred to in order to force the French army of occupation, sent thither by Napoleon III, out of Mexico, was revived in 1895 by President Cleveland and his Secretary of State, Richard Olney, and was made to apply to the boundary dispute, which had been in exist- ence for half a century, between Venezuela and British Guiana. The position of Cleveland and Olney seemed to be that as Great Britain had repeatedly refused to submit the dispute to arbitration, and was apparently determined to impose its will and its notion of the proper boundary line VENEZUELA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE 235 upon a weak and helpless nation, the Monroe Doctrine was clearly applicable to the case. Cleveland also appears to have thought that if he adopted a firm tone and made per- fectly clear the intention of the United States to fight rather than tamely to allow Venezuela to be despoiled of territory that might rightfully belong to her, England would back down. He may have been convinced, moreover, that war would be less likely to result from his message to Congress, with its provision for a commission of inquiry, involving consequent delay, than from the agitation of the subject in Congress and in the sensational newspapers, with possibly irritating effects upon both Englishmen and Americans, while further futile negotiations were dragging along. He certainly assured his intimates at the time that the message would result not in war but in arbitration, and this pre- diction turned out to be correct. The risk, however, which Cleveland took in this affair was great, and the verdict of history will probably be that it was rather through good fortune than good judgment that serious trouble was avoided. For the timely inter- vention of Jameson's raid into the Transvaal occurred at this moment, and the congratulatory dispatch of the Ger- man Emperor to President Kriiger so incensed and in- flamed all England that Venezuela and Cleveland's belli- cose message were forgotten. Lord Salisbury, who had maintained from the first that the Monroe Doctrine was not applicable to the controversy — a position since shared by not a few historians and publicists, American as well as foreign — finally consented to arbitration, and the grave danger that undoubtedly lay in the situation was happily averted. 236 POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS Cleveland's second term of office was noteworthy not only for his courageous stand in favor of sound money and for his controversy with England over Venezuela, but for the substantial assistance which he gave to the cause of civil service reform. The greatest advances which have been made under the Pendleton Civil Service law, passed in 1883, in taking the appointment of government officials out of the control of the politicians, are to be credited to President Cleveland and President Roosevelt. At the end of 191 1 about 230,000 government positions were in the classified service. Nearly all of these offices, however, as was pointed out by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, the president of the National Civil Service Reform League, in the address which was read in Philadelphia, in December, 191 1, are subordinate places with low salaries. On the other hand, nearly all the superior offices, having good or high salaries worth assessing for political purposes, more than one hun- dred thousand in number, are still filled by the patronage method. "It is their grip," Dr. Eliot added, "on the vast total of the salaries paid to pubhc officers appointed by the patronage method, and on the personal services of such officers, which maintains the bosses, rings and machines," and which prolongs "the power of the senators, congress- men, governors, mayors and state, county or city elected representatives and officials who control all the appoint- ments not made on the merit system." President Taft recommended that the entire executive civil service of the national government, excluding officers responsible for the policy of administration and their im- mediate personal assistants or deputies, be placed on the merit system of api)ointm('nt . I'or the reasons, however. THOMAS A. EDISON AT WORK IN HIS LABORATORY IN ORANGE, NEW JERSEY. From a photograph copyright by W. K. I. Dickson. 238 POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS so tersely stated by Dr. Eliot, the politicians in Congress have not thus far shown any disposition to resign their pat- ronage prerogatives. Further education of public opinion and further pressure upon Congress will be necessary before this final and decisive step in the reform can be taken. The inventive ingenuity of the American people has kept pace in its development since the Civil War with the progress of the nation in other fields of endeavor. Indeed, a book might easily be written about the wonderful dis- coveries, especially in electricity, of the last thirty or forty years — discoveries the practical applicati'on of which to every-day uses has brought about great changes in the social and industrial life of every community. Several of these inventions, notably the Bell telephone and the Edison incandescent light, with the application of electricity as power to street cars and to other purposes, have proved to be scarcely less serviceable to humanity than the discovery, half a century earher, that steam-power could be used to propel railway trains and vessels. Alexander Graham Bell received his patent for his re- markable invention in 1876. So universal since then has become the use of the telephone that in 191 1 the daily average number of messages passing over the nearly thir- teen milHon miles of Bell wires in the United States was more than twenty-four million, representing a total for the year of considerably more than seven and a half billion messages. The Edison electric light which has displaced gas as effectually as the automobile in its various forms has displaced the horse, dates only from 1880, when it was first publicly exhibited. Electricity has become a means also of generating heat as well as of Hght and power, and AMERICAN INVENTIVE INGENUITY 239 fuel oil, as a source of power for driving vessels and loco- motive as well as stationary engines, is coming into more and more general use every year. It would be a mistake, moreover, to regard the Edison phonograph and the graphophone in their perfected forms and the various self-playing pianos, especially those with electrical attachments, merely as toys of marvellous inge- nuity. For these inventions have undoubtedly done more in portions of the country remote from the larger cities to develop among the people a taste for good music than could have been accomplished in generations without their aid. Finally, those two wonderful playthings of the air, aeroplanes, in the successful construction and manipula- tion of which Wilbur Wright and his brother, of Dayton, Ohio, were the pioneers, and dirigible balloons, have yet to prove their practical value. He would be rash indeed, however, who, in the light of the marvellous achievements of the last quarter of a century, should venture to predict that they are to remain toys of extraordinary ingenuity or that man's mastery of the land and the sea is not at some time in the future to extend to the air in such a way as to be of practical service to humanity. XIX BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM No economic question of wider public interest ever arose in the United States than that precipitated in 191 1 by the disintegration, under the decisions of the Supreme Court, of the Standard Oil and the American Tobacco companies. In its simplest form this question concerned itself with the relative merits of the opposing principles of industrial com- bination on the one hand and of industrial competition and individualism on the other. In order to make clear the nature of this controversy it will be necessary to recall briefly the causes which led to the passage by Congress, first of the Interstate Commerce bill, in 1887, and, more espe- cially, of the Sherman Anti-trust bill, so-called, in 1890. The Interstate Commerce law was enacted, first, for the purpose of checking the growing tendency on the part of railway corporations to form agreements regarding freight rates and to make pooling arrangements regarding earnings, thus eliminating competition with each other; and, secondly, in order to prevent discriminations in freight rates in favor of this or that individual or corporation, this or that com- munity, or this or that commodity. The law forbade these practices, made the publicity of rates compulsory, and created a commission to investigate complaints and to impose fines for violations of the law. A federal law was necessary in order to accomplish this end because the 240 RAILWAY CORPORATIONS AND TRUSTS 241 Supreme Court had just decided that the power of a state to regulate railway matters was restricted to the traffic within its own borders; and a federal law was fortunately made possible by the clause in the Constitution giving Con- gress authority "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the states. " Such was the rapidity with which new railways had been and were later constructed that the total mileage for the United States reached not far from two hundred and fifty thousand in 191 2. In the middle 'eighties the railway corporations, with their agreements, pools, discriminations and rebates, were the chief objects of complaints on the part of shippers. As the years passed, however, the attention of the pubHc and of Congress was attracted more and more to the combina- tions or trusts, as they came to be called, in various indus- tries, particularly in those dealing in iron, steel, woollen goods and oil products, and to the effects upon prices of these trusts. It was soon realized that an important eco- nomic change was foreshadowed by this tendency toward concentration. Individual initiative and enterprise and domestic freedom in competition, which had supplied the motive power for American industrial progress for a cen- tury, seemed to be threatened by the new business prin- ciple of combination and community of interests, the effects, if not the purposes, of which might be restraint of trade, monopoly and high prices. Such were the conditions when, in 1890, the Sherman Anti-trust bill was passed. The purpose of the measure, in a word, was to make illegal any combination of corpora- tions or individual manufacturers, ordinarily competitive, in restraint of trade and thus resulting in or tending 242 BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM toward monopoly. Prices were so high in 1890 as to be subjects for newspaper comment; and Senator Sherman, in introducing the Anti-trust bill, said, referring to the indus- trial combinations against which it was aimed, "Congress alone can deal with them, and if we are unwilling or unable, there will soon be a trust for every production and a master to fix the price of every necessary of life." The bill as it was finally passed was in the main the work of Senator Edmunds and of other members of the Judiciary Committee, to which on its introduction it was referred. The expecta- tion of the framers of the measure was that it would have the effect of re-establishing on a firm and lasting basis the economic principle of free competition and individual enter- prise in American industrial affairs. No such immediate result, however, followed. Save for the suits brought under President Harrison's administra- tion against the Whiskey trust and the Sugar trust, both of which were unsuccessful because of inefficient manage- ment, the law became and remained a dead letter, ignored or forgotten apparently by everybody for more than a decade. The reasons for this neglect are not far to seek. In those days, the railroads, as has already been explained, were the chief offenders, and it was to the railroad com- panies that the government gave the most attention. Moreover, industrial trusts were not then numerous, and, with few exceptions, were not formidable. Indeed, several of them, notably the Cordage trust, became involved in financial difficulties in consequence of the panic of 1893 ^^^ were virtually forced out of business. They were regarded with more or less suspicion by both bankers and public, and most of them seemed likely to hang themselves without WORLD-WIDE VIEWS OF TRADE 243 help from the government, if the traditional length of cor- dage were vouchsafed them. The conditions, in truth, calling for the enforcement of the Anti-trust law did not exist until after the war with Spain. That war and its results, however, set in motion, in 1898, a powerful current of new ideas, which seemed to have an immediate and an extraordinary effect upon the imaginations and upon the temperaments, usually more or less conservative if not phlegmatic, of business men through- out the country, resulting in a condition of affairs of deep interest to the student of what may perhaps be called mercantile psychology. The force of circumstances had at last made the American nation a world power, with out- lying dependencies and with corresponding obligations and responsibihties. Isolation, detachment from the affairs of the outside world, which Washington in his Farewell Address had advised, was no longer possible either in poli- tics or in business. The barriers were down, and oppor- tunity beckoned to men of self-confidence, daring and large ideas. It was under the influence of these ambitious and far- reaching dreams that the great movement began in 1899 to bring whole industries under the control of boards of directors of single corporations. The technical conditions at the moment were all of a character, moreover, to en- courage those eager to organize and finance big projects. Money was plentiful; general business was good; sentiment was optimistic; the tariff was settled by the Dingley law for a long time, it was thought, to come; no further danger was apprehended from Bryan and free silver; the gold standard was about to be adopted as a permanent basis for 244 BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM the nation's linances; prosperity had come even to the farmers of the middle West; the crops were more varied in character and had increased greatly in value, wheat, for example, from $213,000,000 in 1893 to $392,000,000 in 1898; finally, as if in anticipation of this very situation, the New Jersey Holding Company law, which had recently been passed, offered, by its comprehensiveness and elasticity, a convenient means by which whole industries could be com- bined under a compact central management, with promises of large profits to the promoters of these enterprises. Such was the feverish energy with which, under these favorable conditions, new combinations were organized, that in the single year of 1899 the capitalization of the various industrial corporations formed amounted, accord- ing to careful estimates, to the huge total of three and a half billion dollars, a not inconsiderable part of which represented such intangible assets as patents, good-will and even expectations. Railway systems, moreover, as well as manufacturing industries, were subjected, in the years immediately following, to the same process of com- bination under the management of individuals or small groups of men. Mr. Harriman brought the Union, Cen- tral and Southern Pacific systems, one-third of the total railway mileage of the United States, under his personal authority, and the Northern Securities Company, formed by Mr. Hill, exercised virtual ownership and control over the three systems of the Northern Pacific, Great Northern and Chicago, Burlington and Quincy. Similar influences were at work, meanwhile, among the large financial insti- tutions of the country, the national banks, trust companies, insurance companies and great banking houses, the appar- DANGER OF INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS 245 ent purpose of which was gradually to concentrate, in the hands of a comparatively small group of men, the control, for good or evil, of enormous financial resources. The extreme lengths to which even men of character and repute and of influence in the world of finance seemed ready to go in those days, if unchecked by publicity and the result- ing public opinion, were clearly indicated by the revelations of the legislative inquiry, conducted by Mr. Hughes, into the management of the great insurance companies of New York City. The gravest danger, however, lay in the industrial com- binations, which multiplied so rapidly that by the end of 1903 practically every important industry in the country had been subjected to the process of consolidation into one or more big units. The danger was that these huge indus- trial organizations representing vast amounts of capital might come to regard themselves as superior to the law and as free to exercise their will, with reference to smaller competitors or to prices, without let or hindrance from the government or from any other source. The apparent aims and the business methods, moreover, of not a few of these combinations indicated either ignorance of the scope and purpose of the Anti-trust law or a belief that the law was to be allowed to lie in abeyance. The conjecture was even hazarded that these corporations supposed themselves to be too rich and too powerful ever to be successfully at- tacked by the government for a violation of its provisions. The duty of combating and of effectively checking this tendency in the economic development of the nation fell to the lot of President Roosevelt, who succeeded President McKinley when the latter was assassinated at Buffalo in 246 BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM 1 90 1, the conditions then prevailing being exactly those which the Sherman Anti-trust law was designed to cor- rect. In his very lirst message President Roosevelt indi- cated the lines along which he thought the government should proceed with reference to the trusts, holding that "industrial combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled, " the first prerequisite to which was full publicity as to the affairs of corporations doing an interstate business as a basis for proper government regulation. The disso- lution, in 1904, of the Northern Securities Company as a combination in restraint of trade, and so monopolistic, was the result of the first aggressive step in the crusade which he carried on, with determination and fearlessness, to com- pel rich malefactors to bring their business affairs into ac- cord with the letter and the spirit of the Anti-trust law; and the disintegration of the Standard Oil Company and of the American Tobacco Company under similar decisions in 191 1 was the final fruit of further action which he took to the same end. President Roosevelt held resolutely at the same time to the position that modern industrial con- ditions were, such that big combinations of capital were as inevitable as corresponding combinations of labor, and that it was idle to attempt or to desire to put an end to either. It was not the size but the purposes and business methods of the corporation which might make it a violator of the Anti-trust law. The remedy was to be found in govern- ment supervision and control, as in the case of the railways and national banks. In 1906, in line with these recom- mendations, the scope of the Interstate Commerce law was enlarged by further legislation so that those other "com- 248 BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM mon carriers," express companies, sleeping-car companies and oil-pipe lines, were also brought under the supervision and control of the commission. Many suits were begun by the government in the admin- istrations of President Roosevelt and President Taft for violations of the Anti-trust law, and for a time, following the panic of 1907, the former was denounced on all sides for "interfering with business." By the end of 1911, how- ever, it became evident that a decided change of opinion, as regards the Sherman law in its relation to trusts, had taken place among the business men directly or indirectly affected by the measure, as well as among the people at large. Although new corporations with a capitalization of not far from two billion dollars were formed in 191 1, the absence of any fresh projects for industrial consolida- tions, the public announcement of the abandonment of various plans for uniting similar industries, and the results, satisfactory on the whole, attending the disintegration of the Standard Oil and American Tobacco holding compa- nies were unmistakable signs of this change of sentiment. Whether, finally, the consumer is or is not to be benefited through lower prices by the disintegration of these big in- dustrial combinations remains to be seen. Business men are pretty well agreed that destructive competition such as existed twenty-five years ago cannot be restored under present-day conditions, and that to attempt to restore it would be as undesirable from the point of view of the consumer as from that of the manufacturer. The war between the United States and Spain, in 1898, which seemed to open the way for these epoch-making economic changes, was brought about by a variety of CAUSES OF THE WAR WITH SPAIN 249 causes. The patience of the American people had been severely tried for many years by the inability of Spain to suppress the constantly recurring insurrections in Cuba. Their sense of justice, moreover, had been outraged by the cruel, not to say inhuman, methods to which the Spanish military authorities had resorted in order to recover and maintain their control of the island. It was natural also that the sympathy of Americans should be with the Cuban revolutionists who were trying to throw off the yoke of Spanish tyranny. Contemporary evidence is not wanting, however, to show that further diplomacy and a little more patience would have been sufhcient to induce Spain to yield to all of the essential demands which the United States government could reasonably have made, had it not been for the effect upon public opinion, first, of the blowing up, at Havana, of the battle-ship Maine, in Feb- ruary, with the consequent loss of two hundred and sixty lives, and, secondly, of the report of the naval board of inquiry to the effect that the originating cause of the dis- aster was an external mine. Since the wreck of the Maine was raised another board has reached a similar conclusion from somewhat different premises, and yet it seems as if the truth as to the ultimate cause of this catastrophe might always remain a subject of dispute among experts. President McKinley was not the type of man to throw cold water, in an emergency of this sort, upon the smoul- dering anger of his countrymen. He was a follower, not a leader, of public opinion, and it was easy for him to per- suade himself that the clamor for war with which the sensation-loving newspapers soon filled the air was the voice of the people and must be obeyed. The progress of 250 BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM the war revealed the hopeless inferiority of the Spaniards to the Americans in sea power, the destruction of the Spanish fleet at Manila by Admiral Dewey and of the Spanish cruisers at Santiago by Admiral Sampson's vessels leaving the Spanish government no alternative but to make peace. Throughout the war the sympathies of the Latin races of Europe were, not unnaturally, with Spain. From first to last, however, the United States enjoyed the novel sensation of having the moral support of England. For- getting the Venezuela affair, Englishmen, for the first time in history, seemed to take a certain sort of pride in the achievements, naval and military, of their American cous- ins. Two important military lessons were impressed upon the nation by the war. One was that typhoid fever was a much more deadly enemy to the American troops in the field than the Spanish regiments were. The other, growing out of the remarkable voyage of the battle-ship Oregon around South America, was the necessity of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama which would bring the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific coast within easier and quicker communication. Recent advances in the science of pre- ventive medicine resulting in the discovery of an anti- typhoid serum are expected to go far toward solving one of these problems, while, as will appear later, the Panama Canal will solve the other. Influential opposition to the imperialistic policy embodied in the acquisition by the United States of distant depend- encies inhabited by alien races, under the terms of the treaty of Paris, developed immediately, especially in the East, so contrary was this result of the war to the theory 252 BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM of American destiny which had prevailed for more than a century. This opposition, moreover, increased in volume and in emphasis when American troops were used to sup- press the insurrection in Luzon of Aguinaldo and his Fil- ipino followers. If the problems presented by Porto Rico were comparatively simple, those growing out of the owner- ship and military control of the Philippine archipelago on the other side of the world, with its sixteen hundred islands, its area of land more than equal to that of New England, New York and New Jersey combined, and its population, savage, half-savage and civilized, of more than seven mill- ions, were regarded by many as anything but simple, and seemed likely to bring upon the United States heavy re- sponsibilities and to foreshadow serious complications with foreign powers for which there would be no compensating advantages. On the other hand, while it is undoubtedly true that the transfer of the Philippines, as Admiral ]\Iahan has pointed out, "not only was not an object of the war, but was ac- cepted with reluctance, under an unwilling sense of duty, as one of its unfortunate results," there existed throughout the country a feehng of pride, not unmixed with exhilara- tion, that the national boundaries had been thus broadened, and that henceforth the United States would of necessity take a place among the nations of the world and bear a share of the wider and larger responsibilities involved in its new position. China, in particular, as a field for com- mercial enterprise in which the United States would now not be without influence, gave to the possession of the Philippines a new significance which was emphasized when American troops were dispatched thither, first on the GENESIS OF THE PANAMA CANAL 253 occasion of the Boxer uprising in 1900, and again in 191 2, when the revolution against the Manchu dynasty was in progress. Both of these expeditions were coincident with the enunciation of the poHcy of the United States, first by Secretary Hay in the McKinley administration and later by Secretary Knox in the Taft administration, in favor of the territorial integrity of China and the maintenance in China of the "open door" to the commerce of the world. An earlier step in this imperialistic policy had already been taken when in August, 1898, only a few weeks after the naval battle of Santiago, the Hawaiian Islands had been formally annexed to the United States by an act of Con- gress. This result had been preceded by a revolution in the islands through which the native monarchy had been overthrown and a repubhc established, the foreign element, in which Americans predominated, and the educated na- tives joining forces to this end. The ownership of these islands, to which a territorial form of government was given by Congress in 1900, and of the Philippines was a constant reminder of the strategic and commercial necessity for a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, the need of which had been so severely felt when the Oregon made its long journey to join the American fleet at Santiago, and President Roosevelt took up this well- nigh herculean labor with characteristic energy and self- confidence. The selection of the Panama in preference to the Nicaragua route was due chiefly to the discovery that the bankrupt French company founded by DeLesseps would sell its rights, its constructed work and its property, portable and otherwise, for what was regarded by the board of American engineers as a fair price, forty million dollars. 254 BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM Other advantages were: better harbors at either end of the canal, a shorter route for vesselS;, less liability to earth- quakes and lower cost of operation. Excavating was begun in 1907, and so rapid has been the progress of the work under the engineer-in-chief, Colonel Goethals, that the canal promises to be completed some time before the formal open- ing in 1915. Its cost, including the fortifications necessary for its defense, will exceed four hundred million dollars. Scarcely second in importance to this work as a feat of engineering under wellnigh ideal administrative conditions, has been the scientific application of modern sanitary meas- ures to tropical conditions of notorious unhcalthfulness, with results little short of marvellous as regards the free- dom from sickness and the general well-being of the hosts of laborers and officials engaged in the construction of the canal. What effects the canal will have upon the com- merce of the United States and of the world at large, only time can tell. True to its pledge to give independence to Cuba, the United States, in May, 1902, withdrew its troops from the island after they, in conjunction with the civil authorities, had restored order and had made the principal cities and towns safe as regards sanitary conditions — an illustration of good faith thought to be unique in the history of the dealings of powerful with weak nations in an age of terri- torial aggrandizement for commercial exploitation and for political prestige. Four years later an insurrection left the island without a government, and the United States was obliged, under the treaty provisions for intervention, to send troops to Cuba to restore order, to establish a pro- visional government and to organize and set in motion the 256 BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM machinery through which the Cubans themselves might form a new government that would be permanent. This done the American troops were again withdrawn. It was made clear, however, by President Roosevelt that if insur- rection became a habit with the Cubans the island would lose its independence. Twice President Taf t felt obliged to send notes of warning to the Cuban government, once, in the summer of 191 1, calling attention to the danger of extravagance in the management of the fmances of the republic, and again, early in 191 2, with reference to the activity of political agitators among the veterans of the war against Spain. Thus the fate of the new republic is still in the balance. Roosevelt the President proved himself to be as efKicient as a peacemaker as Roosevelt the soldier was energetic and aggressive in the war with Spain. For it was through his good offices that Russia and Japan were induced, in 1905, to make peace at Portsmouth, an instance of the increasing influence which the nation was acquiring in the affairs of the Far East; and three years earlier he had persuaded the railway operators and mine workers in Pennsylvania to settle their differences regarding wages and hours of labor by arbitration, thus bringing to an end the most serious strike that had ever occurred in the anthracite coal region. His restless energy, moreover, expended itself along many economic lines other than those already referred to, the main purpose of all of these efforts being to prevent the natural resources of the lands and waters of the country from falling into the hands of unscrupulous individuals and of greedy corporations, and to reclaim for the agricultural use of actual settlers the arid lands of the Far West by elab- ROOSEVELT'S TASK IN THIS PERIOD 257 orate irrigation projects, the expense of which was met from the proceeds of the sale of pubHc lands. So varied and com- plex indeed were the problems which the economic and social changes of this period brought to the fore that it became necessary in 1903 to establish a new department of the government deahng with commerce and labor, to the secretary of which was given a seat in the cabinet. The commanding figure in this period of economic and social turmoil was that of Theodore Roosevelt, whose ser- vices to the nation promise to place him, in the perspective of time, high among the Presidents whose names are most honored by their countrymen. The emergency was one to call for a strong man, with sufficiently keen intelligence and a sufficiently high moral sense to understand the real issues which the trusts had raised and the dangers involved therein, and with sufficient courage, determination and strength of will to apply relentlessly the remedies neces- sary to bring the nation, in the fulness of time, back to sanity, moderation and fair deahng in business and public affairs and to a recognition and acceptance of the principle that in a democracy special privileges, outside the letter as well as the spirit of the law, are not for the rich and power- ful. That President Roosevelt was such a man and that he accompHshed this colossal task in the face of hostility and criticism which would have overwhelmed a man of less stern fibre, seems likely to be the verdict of history. XX LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION The inference might be drawn from the foregoing chap- ters that since the Civil War material interests had absorbed the entire energies of the American people. Such an in- ference, however, would be incorrect. There is no doubt that purely intellectual and aesthetic pursuits suffered by- reason of the superior attractiveness of the rich prizes which business and professional careers offered to the ambitious youth of the nation, in a period when the vast natural resources of the country were inviting development and when the material demands of a rapidly increasing popu- lation were creating numberless opportunities for the ac- quirement of wealth. Yet these pursuits were not wholly neglected. In the last forty years America has produced a few books, a number of paintings, some pieces of sculpture and many buildings which, it is not unreasonable to think, may give pleasure, intellectual or aesthetic or both, to generations to come. Of the books that have appeared in this period Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi River and his Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have taken a high rank because of the vividness, truth, human sympathy and humor with which they portray life and character in the Mississippi Valley in the decades preceding the Civil War. The fame of Walt Whitman is greater abroad, especially in France, than it is among his own countrymen, who have thus far -^58 HISTORY, SCHOLARSHIP AND CRITICISM 259 failed to recognize in his verse the voice of a prophet of American democracy or the evidence of creative genius. He has an original force, however, that is still to be reck- oned with, and the final place, if any, which he is to occupy in American literature may remain in doubt a long time. The realization of the fact that the Civil War was the last act in the tragedy of slavery and ended an epoch of momentous dramatic interest in the life of the nation seemed to have the effect of turning the minds of many men to historical research. Mr. Rhodes, in his history of the United States from the compromise of 1850, and Henry Adams, in his brilliant narrative of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, made enviable names for themselves, while the works of McMaster, H. H. Bancroft and Schouler contain much that will be of service to the historian of the future. Few if any writers on American history from the earliest times to the adoption of the Constitution have reached so wide a popular audience as has John Fiske, , whose philosophical cast of mind and whose clearness and simplicity of style in the exposition of abstruse subjects had already been revealed in his earlier Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy and in other books on different aspects of the theory of evolution, to which he made substantial original contributions. Professor Sloane, meanwhile, found conge- nial themes for noteworthy historical works in the Revo- lutionary and Napoleonic periods in France. Scholarship and criticism too have been enriched by the painstaking labors of a few men — Professor Child, through his edition of the Enghsh and Scottish ballads; Professor Lounsbury, through his illuminating works on Chaucer and about Shakespeare; Dr. Furness, through his Variorum 2()o LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION Shakes l)carc; Professor James, through his contributions to psychology, remarkable at once for their imaginative originality and their extreme felicity of phrase. Admiral Mahan, by his exposition of the important part which sea power has played in the relations of nations, has made an important contribution to the philosophy of history, winning thereby for himself an international reputation. President Lowell's work on The Government of England has taken rank with Bryce's American Commonwealth for the thoroughness and soundness of its scholarship. Charac- terized by extraordinary subtlety of understanding and by a catholic and yet a discriminating taste, the four books which Mr. Brownell has published, French Traits, French Art, Victorian Prose Masters and American Prose Masters, have given him a commanding place in the small group of American critics of art and literature. Mr. Woodberry's books also, especially his Appreciation of Literature and his lectures on race power in literature called The Torch, reveal unusual breadth of view and rare penetration, and are of stimulating suggestiveness. It is significant, moreover, that Henry James felt obliged to expatriate himself in order to find a congenial atmos- phere in which to wTite his novels and stories. The con- clusion might fairly be drawn from this circumstance that imaginative literature requires other conditions for its development than those which have prevailed for the last thirty or forty years in the United States, and Mark Twain's books seem to make him the sole and distinguished excep- tion which proves the rule. A higher point has been reached in the short stories than in all but a very few of the novels of this period — by Bret Harte, for example, in three SHORT STORIES AND NOVELS 261 or four of his sketches of life and character among the Argonauts of '49, who ought to have included just such types as he pictures, even if, as is charged, they did not; by Mr. Page in Marse Chan and Mch Lady; by Mr. Cable in Old Creole Days; and perhaps by Miss Jewett and Miss Wilkins in their sketches of New England village characters. Mr. Howells is at his best in The Rise of Silas Lapham and in A Hazard of Neiv Fortunes, possibly because in these two novels he seemed to be less conscious than elsewhere of the obhgations of his theory of realism. It was prob- ably inevitable that the application of this theory to the portrayal in fiction of the New England life and character of the 'seventies and 'eighties of the last century should produce somewhat disappointing results; and yet the high and serious purpose which has controlled Mr. Howells's long, varied and honorable literary career, as well as his consistently excellent craftsmanship throughout that ca- reer, entitle him to a foremost place among the novelists of this period. In sharp contrast to Mr. Howells's New England were the warmth and brilliancy of color, the spark- ling gayety and the romantic glamour of the picture of Creole Louisiana in the early years of the century which Mr. Cable drew in The Grandissimes. Mrs. Wharton's brilliant intellectual qualities and her extraordinary ver- satility, with her technical proficiency, make her by far the most interesting figure in American fiction at the pres- ent time, despite the lack of ideals and of human sym- pathy in the characters which she portrays. Other forms of imaginative literature have fared, under these conditions, even worse, poetry having languished notwithstanding the brave but only partially successful 262 LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION attemps of Lanier, Stoddard, Stedman, Aldrich and others to give it vitality and charm. Time indeed may prove that the Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, has sung the simple joys and sorrows of his people in verse more enduring than that of any one of his contemporaries. Under the stimulus of the material prosperity of the country and despite the commercial atmosphere in which men like Sargent and Whistler found it impossible to work, the cultivation and practice of the line arts went on assid- uously in this period. The Philadelphia Exposition of 1876 was a potent influence in arousing a popular interest in art matters. It was in this year that George Fuller exhibited the first collection of his pictures in Boston, and it was at about this time also that a group of young Ameri- can painters, returning with high ideals from Paris and Munich, organized the Society of American Artists and exerted a decided influence upon the technique of the art. It was in 1876 too that John La Farge began the task of providing a decorative scheme for the interior of Trinity Church in Boston — the virtual beginning of mural paint- ing in the United States. In the years that followed George Inness and Homer Martin produced some notable landscapes, while the work in different fields of men like Sargent, Whistler, La Farge, Vedder, Wyant and Winslow Homer was of a character to win for them a wide reputa- tion. The names of the men who have attained rank in sculpture are few. Ward, the pioneer in this art, was followed by Saint-Gaudens, probably the most distinguished of the small group; Warner, French, MacMon'.xes and Bartlett, several of whom are still alive and may win fur- ther honors. DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 263 Two important results affecting the development of the fine arts in the United States followed from the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The dormant aesthetic sense of the people of the middle West was quickened into life and activity, and the lesson of the intimate relation of sculpture and of mural painting to architecture was im- pressed upon all sensitive observers. Since that time art museums have, been founded in all the large and in not a few of the smaller cities of the middle West, and art socie- ties with various aims have been organized without num- ber. Early in 191 2 an art museum costing half a milhon dollars was opened in Toledo, and Detroit and Minneapohs had similar projects well in hand. Nor is interest in art confined to the middle West ; it extends as far south as New Orleans and as far west as Los Angeles. In both of these cities plans are maturing for the founding of art museums. With the rapid growth of the population and with a corresponding increase in the needs, as well as in the wealth, of states, municipalities, corporations and public and pri- vate societies, it was inevitable that architecture should flourish in this era of activity and expansion. And this art owes not a little to Daniel H. Burnham, the chief archi- tect and director of works of the exposition at Chicago, who was responsible for the general scheme of the buildings, courts, lagoons, etc., the stately and beautiful effect of which left a deep and abiding impression upon all visitors, and the educational value of which was of the highest. The buildings, public and private, which have been erected in the principal cities of the country in the twenty years since the Chicago Exposition was held are monuments to the skill and taste of a remarkable group of men — 264 LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION McKim, Gilbert, White, Hastings, Post, Flagg, Cook, Sul- livan and Cram, to mention only a few of the many that might also be named, all of whom have shown themselves to be worthy successors to those leaders in the latter-day development of architecture in America, Richardson and Hunt. The growth of interest in mural painting naturally followed this activity in architecture; and in the last twenty-five years public buildings in nearly every part of the country have been enriched with paintings by the best-known artists of the period — La Farge, Blashfield, Sargent, Abbey, Simmons, Alexander, Cox, Turner, and Millet, to mention no others. The future, moreover, seems to be full of promise. For it is doubtful if in any other country or in any other age has there been so vast an expenditure of time, energy and money as in the United States during the last quarter of a century, having for its objects the cultivation of taste and of an appreciation of beauty and the training of the intelligence. The lavish generosity of American merchant princes in founding and endowing institutions devoted to education, philanthropy or art, has gone hand in hand with an equally lavish expenditure of millions of dollars for the enrichment of museums and collections, public and private, with treasures of all branches of art gathered from the four quarters of the globe. So general has this custom become that one can scarcely take up a morning newspaper without finding in it the record of some munifi- cent gift or bequest of this nature. The possession of wealth and of taste cultivated by foreign travel has made art collectors of not a few Ameri- can millionaires, who in the last twenty years, and more 266 LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION particularly in the opening decade of the present century, despoiled the private galleries of Europe of many of their choicest possessions. Such private collections as those of Mr. Morgan, Mr. Frick, Mr. Altman, Mrs. Havemeyer, and Mr. Huntington in New York; Mr. Johnson and Mr. Widener, of Philadelphia; Mr. Freer, of Detroit, and Mrs. Gardner, of Boston, to name only a few of those that might be included in such a list, are destined ultimately to find their way into public galleries and to exert an in- fluence upon the taste of the people that can scarcely be over-estimated. The extent of this influence may be in- ferred from the fact that in the year igii the attendance at the Art Institute of Chicago was more than 700,000. All schools of painting, to say nothing of other classes of art objects, are represented in these collections. They are especially rich in works by the Dutch masters, more than eighty examples of Rembrandt now being owned by American collectors and American art museums. Since the opening of the MetropoHtan Opera House in New York in 1883 interest in music has broadened greatly. As a result of this increased interest Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as New York and Brooklyn, have had regular opera seasons, while the Chicago company, in 1911-1912, went to St. Paul and St. Louis for brief seasons, and also gave a few performances in Baltimore, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. New Orleans meanwhile has enjoyed its annual season of French opera, which can almost be called indigenous. Not many years ago Boston, New York and Chicago were the only cities in the country maintaining perma- nent orchestras. Gradually similar organizations were MUSIC AND THE DRAMA 267 established in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and several of the larger cities of the central states, notably Cincinnati, St. Paul, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City, while orchestras have been maintained for longer or shorter periods in various cities in the Pacific coast states, Port- land, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Few, if any, of these organizations have been self-supporting, but the public-spirited generosity of Mr. Higginson, of Boston, and of the men who meet the annual deficit of the opera in New York, has aroused a spirit of emulation in other cities, with the result that more good music, orchestral and operatic, is to be heard annually in the larger cities of the United States than can be heard anywhere save in two or three cities in Germany and perhaps in Paris. The drama, on the other hand, has lagged far behind music in this period. The substitution of the "star" system for the stock companies as they existed in the 'eighties and 'nineties of the last century has brought about a decided deterioration in the character of the plays pro- duced as well as in the art of acting. Almost alone among native dramatists Augustus Thomas has pictured Ameri- can character and conditions with intelligence, insight, and humor, and with rare constructive skill. Some persons, moreover, of sanguine temperament find encouragement for the future in the work of several young playwrights with Harvard affiliations who have come to the fore in recent years. If much has been done since the Civil War to encourage the practice and the appreciation of the fine arts, more yet has been done to multiply in all directions the fa- cilities for popular and advanced education. The multi- 268 LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION millionaires of the country, largely self-educated men them- selves, have been foremost in this work. The pioneer among American philanthropists of this type was George Peabody, who left several millions to be devoted to the cause of education in the South. John D. Rockefeller is Mr. Peabody's legitimate successor, for one of the chief objects of the General Education Board, the various funds of which contributed by Mr. Rockefeller amount to more than $50,000,000, is the promotion of practical farm- ing and of high-school education in the southern states. The advancement of higher education throughout the country is also one of the purposes to which the General Education Board devotes its income, Mr. Rockefeller's interest in this work having l^een already abundantly shown by the millions which he has given, since it was founded in 1892, to the University of Chicago. It seems scarcely necessary to refer to Mr. Carnegie's benefactions to the cause of both popular and higher edu- cation, so well known are they. He has given nearly $60,- 000,000 to build libraries, $22,000,000 to advance scientific research through the Carnegie Institution of Washington, $20,000,000 to build and equip the technical schools at Pittsburgh known as the Carnegie Institute, $15,000,000 to provide retiring allowances for college professors, $10,- 000,000 to further the cause of peace among nations, and a like sum to reward acts of heroism. This list, at the head of which stand the names of Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Carnegie, might be extended at length by reference to Mr. IMorgan's gifts to the Harvard Medical School, to Isaac C. Wyman's bequest to Princeton Uni- versity, to the Ranken gift of $3,000,000 to the Ranken 2 70 LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION Trade School of St. Louis, to Mr. Pulitzer's bequests to Columbia University for a school of journalism and for other objects, and to many ec[ually princely benefactions. The foregoing, however, will indicate in a general way the scale of really royal munificence upon which the facilities in this country for popular, technical and higher education have been and are still being enlarged and extended. At the foundation of these multifarious intellectual and aesthetic activities lie the public-school system of the nation and the institutions, public and private, for higher education. Few people have any adequate conception of the extent and the value of the educational machinery of the country, or of the cost of keeping this vast and com- plicated machinery in operation. The expense to the people of the single state of New York for educating its pupils in the year 191 1 was nearly $77,000,000. In the interval of thirty-nine years between i86g 1870 and 1908- 1909 the average annual expenditure for educating a pupil in the public schools of the entire country increased from $12.71 to $31.65, representing an advance in the annual cost charge per capita of population from $1.64 to $4.45, the number of pupils enrolled increasing in this interval from 6,871,522 to 17,506,175. Meanwhile the value of the property devoted to the uses of the public schools grew from somewhat over $130,000,000 to nearly $968,000,000. In the field of higher education one finds that the num- ber of universities, colleges and technological schools from which the government received reports for the year ended June 30, 1910, was six hundred and two. Of these insti- tutions, states or municipalities controlled eighty-nine, while five hundred and thirteen were under the manage- INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 271 ment of private corporations. Colleges for women, which forty years ago could be counted on the fingers of one hand, have multiplied until now they number more than a hundred in the United States. The aggregate enrolment in the six hundred and two institutions for higher educa- tion reporting in 1910 to the government, all departments — preparatory, collegiate, graduate and professional, being included, was 301,818. The value of the grounds and buildings owned by these institutions was estimated at about $280,000,000; their productive funds amounted to nearly $260,000,000, yielding an annual income of over $11,500,000; and their total annual receipts from all sources were over $80,000,000. The most noticeable tendency of recent years in the field of education has been in the direction of industrial and trade schools similar to those existing throughout Germany, the usual distinction being that industrial schools deal with the uses and products of machinery and trade schools with the use of tools. This tendency has revealed itself not only in the pubHc schools in cities and towns throughout the country, but in the institutions of higher learning in the middle West where there has been a decided drift away from the humanities and toward studies of a practical character, especially scientific agriculture. At the end of 191 1 in the single state of Minnesota there were no fewer than thirty agricultural high-schools receiving state aid to the extent of $2,500 each yearly, while there were twenty other high-schools maintaining courses in agriculture without state aid. Other neighboring states are following the example of Minnesota in establishing agricultural schools, the movement having the powerful 272 LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION support of the various bankers' associations. Boston has had in successful operation for a number of years a com- mercial high-school modelled on those to be found in every large German city, the purposes of which are to instruct young men in modern languages, in international business finance and business usage, and in the economical and eflficient management of large industrial plants. High- schools of this type are sure to multiply when their service- ableness becomes more widely known. The causes of this eagerness on the part of the people to acquire instruction in practical pursuits are to be found, of course, in the higher prizes which expanding industries and trades offer to trained minds and skilled hands, and in the increasing difficulty of securing such prizes, under modern competition, without this special training and this exceptional skill. In time the effects of this movement may be to modify materially the aims and methods of the public-school system throughout the country. Among the institutions of higher learning in the East the old ideals have been fairly well maintained. Athletic sports in the colleges, however, have everywhere assumed more and more importance each year. Foot-ball has almost ceased, in the judgment of many observers, to be a sport, there being few more serious pursuits, outside, perhaps, the Church and the Bench. The spirit of devotion to Alma Mater and of loyalty to college traditions, which these young barbarians carry to a foot-ball contest, is as lofty and almost as awe-inspiring as was the spirit of patriotism which Leonidas and his Spartans bore to Thermopylae. The American temperament, which accomplishes wonder- ful results when working in other channels, — as witness CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION 273 Commander Peary's success in reaching the North Pole in the spring of 1909, after repeated faikires in former years, — seems to be the chief obstacle in the way at present of a more moderate and a saner treatment of this particular sport. With the increase in population and wealth throughout the country, the size of the classes in the larger universi- ties has doubled and even trebled in thirty years, involving marked changes in the relations of students with each other and with the officers of instruction. That these changes have been altogether beneficial in their effects is by no means certain. The friends of the smaller colleges claim for them advantages which cannot easily be dis- proved. Thus it appears, finally, that the really important con- tributions which the people of the United States have made to civilization have been not so much of an intellectual as of a political, economic or religious nature. They were summarized by President Eliot of Harvard, in 1896, as "peace-keeping, religious toleration, the development of manhood suffrage, the welcoming of new-comers and the diffusion of well-being." Perhaps in the course of another hundred years there may be evolved an American race- mind, to use Mr. Woodberry's phrase, formed from the fusion of the native stock with the ItaUan, Slavic, Jew- ish, Scandinavian and German immigrants to whom this country has accorded a welcome, which will express itself in literature of an enduring character. If one would seek an expression of the American race-mind of the last quar- ter of a century, he must look for it in the irregular sky- line of the towering buildings in lower New York; in the 274 LITERATURE, FINE ARTS AND EDUCATION colossal works of the Panama Canal; in the boldly pro- jected railway that spans the coral islands from the main- land of Florida to Key West; in the great Roosevelt dam in Arizona which confines the waters of the Salt River in a reservoir of enormous capacity for irrigation purposes and for the generation of power; and in monumental public buildings like the Pennsylvania Railway Station in New York, in which architectural and engineering problems are solved in combination. XXI SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH With all the advantages, therefore, of youth and of the activity, energy and industry that are characteristic of youth, of vast natural resources and of a quickening intelli- gence, the people of the United States face the future with confidence and hopefulness. During the last forty years the growth of the population of the country, due partly to natural causes and partly to the foreigner's zeal for poHti- cal and religious freedom and for industrial opportunity, has been remarkable: from thirty-eight and a half mill- ion in 1870 to fifty million in 1880; to sixty-two and a half million in 1890; to seventy-six million in 1900; and to ninety-two milHon in 1910. These people are distributed over forty-eight states having a total area of more than three million square miles, the centre of population being in the city of Bloomington, Ind. If the inhabitants of the outlying dependencies of the nation, the Philippines, Hawaii, Porto Rico, Alaska and Guam, be included in the enumeration, it will be found that in 19 10 more than a hundred million people were living under the flag of the United States. The total wealth of the nation in 1910, as estimated, with the usual reservations, by the chief statistician of the Bureau of the Census, Joseph A. Hill, was $142,000,000,000, figures that are too big to be com- prehensible, except, perhaps, in comparison with the total wealth of Great Britain, which was estimated by the Lon- 27s 276 SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH don Economist to have been approximate!}' $68,000,000,000 in 1909, less than hah" that of the United States in the fohowing year. Of the people in the United States more than one-third were found by the census of 1910 to be either of foreign Ijirth or of foreign parentage. In New England and in the middle Atlantic states this foreign element constituted considerably more than a half of the entire population. The foreign-born whites in the middle Atlantic states in- creased in the years from 1900 to 19 10 more than twice as fast as did the native whites. The total number of immi- grants who arrived in the country during the decade was heavy, nearly nine million; and yet, owing to the return migration, especially following the panic of 1907, and to deaths, the net increase in the foreign-born population was only a little over three million, and the percentage of foreign-born whites in the population was found to be no greater in 1910 than it was in 1870. These immigrants came for the most part from central and southeastern Europe and from southern Italy. The south Itahans, whom the immigration authorities differ- entiate racially from those who come from north of Rome, the Hebrews and the Poles made up the most numerous groups. Then came, in order of numbers, the Germans, Scandinavians, Irish and English; and, after them, the Slovaks, north Italians, Magyars, the Croats and Serbs and the Greeks. The races that sent the largest percen- tages of their populations to the United States were the Hebrew, from western Russia, Poland and Austria-Hun- gary; the Slovaks, driven from northern Hungary by the persecution of the Magyars who regard them and treat FOREIGN AND NATIVE ELEMENTS 277 them as an inferior race; and the Croats and Serbs, from the region bordering on the northern Adriatic. The majority of the more than nine million immigrants who came to America between 1880 and 1900 settled in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and in other states of the middle and far West, attracted by the farming opportunities which the virgin soil of this region presented. Since 1900, however, the tide has set toward the indus- trial centres of the New England and the middle Atlantic states, the children of earlier immigrants showing a dis- position, however, to migrate to the north central states. As a result of this tendency toward the manufacturing towns, practically a third of the white population in Rhode Island in 1910 was foreign-born. Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, North Dakota and Minnesota were not far behind Rhode Island, with percentages of foreign- born whites varying from nearl}- a third to slightly more than a quarter of the population. When, however, the number of those born in the United States of foreign parent- age was added to the number of foreign-born whites, it was found that in no fewer than thirteen states this foreign element was in the majority. In fact, this foreign element constituted nearly three-quarters of the entire population of Minnesota and of North Dakota, nearly or quite two- thirds of the population of Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Massa- chusetts, Connecticut and New York, and more than half the population of New Jersey, Michigan, South Dakota, Montana, Utah and Illinois. In twenty-nine states, how- ever, more than half the population consisted of native- born whites of native parentage; and in twelve states this native element represented more than two-thirds of the 2 78 SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH population. West Virginia, in which no less than eighty- five and three-tenths per cent of the white population was of native stock, had the distinction of standing at the head of this list, the other states being Kentucky, Oklahoma, Indiana, New Mexico, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Ar- kansas, Maine, North Carolina and Texas. The magnet that attracted these millions of immigrants in the present century was the American factory, iron, steel, and similar mills being, of course, included in this generic term. Under the stimulus as well as the shelter of the protective tariff the growth of these manufacturing interests in the United States has been remarkable. Half a century ago the value for a single year of the finished products of all the factories of the country was consid- erably less than two billion dollars; for the year 1909 this value had increased to more than twenty and a half bilUon dollars. Fifty years ago the annual wages paid to work- men in American factories amounted to a total of less than four hundred million dollars; for the year 1909 they came to nearly three and a half billion dollars. At the head of the fist of manufacturing states stands New York. Ar- ranged in the order of the relative value of their man- ufactured products for the year 1909, the twelve states following New York were Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massa- chusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, California, Connecticut and Minnesota. These thirteen states produced about three-quarters in value of all the manufactures of the entire country, increasing their products in five years in quantities varying from nearly a third in the case of Missouri to not far from two- thirds in the case of Michigan. The feature of this array MANUFACTURES AND FARMING INTERESTS 279 which possesses the greatest significance is to be found in the development of manufactures in the central states which, twenty-five years ago, were devoted almost exclu- sively to agriculture. And a further illustration of this tendency is revealed in the fact that in five years the capital invested in manufactures was more than doubled in North Dakota and Oklahoma and nearly doubled in Kansas. Those economists who maintain that the manufactur- ing industries of the country have been built up in the last fifty years at the expense of other interests, and especially of farming, are able to cite not a few facts in support of their contention. Superficially considered the farming interests of the country seem to be in the highest degree prosperous. The figures of the government relating to farming are, in truth, so big as to be beyond the power of the imagination to grasp. The total value, for example, of farm lands and buildings more than doubled in the ten years from 1900 to 1910, having reached at the latter date the stupendous total of more than $34,500,000,000. The value of the farm lands even in the arid and semi-arid regions of the far West increased more than threefold in this interval, the result partly of irrigation and partly of natural development. The values, too, placed upon the various crops seem to those unacquainted with the facts almost beyond behef . The value of the corn harvested in 191 1, corn having dethroned cotton and having become king in America of all the products of the soil, was over $1,500,000,000; of the cotton, more than $750,000,000; of the hay, nearly $700,000,000; of the wheat, about $543,- 000,000; of the oats, nearly $415,000,000, and so on. Ac- 28o SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH cording to the estimates of the Department of Agriculture the value of all the farm products of the year 191 1, in- cluding cattle, meats and dairy products, reached the incomprehensible total of not far from $8,500,000,000. These figures, impressive as they are, do not, however, tell the whole story. In the first place, while improve- ments and additional acreage brought under cultivation will account for a certain portion of the enormous ad- vance in the values attached to farm lands and buildings in the decade, one of the leading causes of this advance was the general appreciation of land values which, of course, added nothing to the real economic wealth of the country. Then, again, farming as an industry failed to hold its own with the growth of the population of the country during this period. From 1900 to 19 10 the population increased twenty-one per cent, while the percentage of the popula- tion engaged in farming decreased from thirty-five to thirty- two. Moreover, the percentage of improved farm lands, instead of increasing proportionally in the decade, as it should have done, actually declined from five and a half to five and two-tenths per capita of population. In the same period the number of wage-earners in American fac- tories increased about forty per cent. In other words, while the growth of manufactures was about twice as rapid as the increase in population, agriculture failed signally to keep pace with that increase. The same tendencies, from the field to the factor}-, from agriculture to manufactures, are observable in Europe and especially in Germany, and are due to the mighty struggle, silent but constant, which is going on among the most progressive nations for industrial and commercial suprem- 1 ^ =M*-^ r— ^^ =^==^:^r ' J£^ffWK!M!^P! 1^^^:.. TWO VIEWS OF A GIANT HARVESTER, AS USED IN CALIFORNIA. Cuts, threshes and sacks grain at the rate of from 1,500 to 1,800 sacks a day. 282 SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH acy. The effects of the unprecedented industrial expan- sion and of the comparative neglect of agriculture in the United States have shown themselves in greatly decreased exports and in materially increased imports of foodstuffs, changes so pronounced in character as to be accepted by economists as in themselves a sufficient explanation of the high prices that prevail for these commodities. In the twelve years, for example, from 1900 to 191 1, inclusive, exports from the United States of breadstuffs declined from $251,000,000 to $136,000,000, and of meats and dairy prod- ucts from $187,000,000 to $136,000,000. In the same period the imports into the country of these foodstuffs increased respectively from $2,000,000 to $15,000,000 and from $3,000,000 to $14,000,000 in value. Interpreted, these facts mean that the consumers of foodstuffs in the United States have multiphed so much more rapidly in recent years than the producers of these commodities, that each season there is a smaller surplus for export and a greater demand for foreign supplies. The only remedies for this condition of affairs arc in- creased farm acreage or improved farming methods. Appar- ently there is ample room for both remedies to be applied. For the single state of Minnesota, which one is apt to think of as a huge granary, had, in 191 1, no fewer than forty-five million acres of good farming land awaiting cultivation, — more than twice as much as was under the plough. Gov- ernment experts, moreover, assert that American farmers should produce two, and might produce three, bushels of corn where they now produce one, the average for the 191 1 crop having been less than thirty bushels to the acre. The same defective methods also are in use in the cultivation of COAL, IRON AND OTHER MINERALS 283 potatoes, the average yield of which per acre has declined steadily in recent years — from one hundred and six bush- els in 1909 to about eighty-one bushels in 191 1. Next in importance to the agricultural are the mineral resources of the country, from which vast stores of wealth are derived each year. Arranged in the order of their value for the year 19 10, the principal mineral products were coal, iron, clay, copper, petroleum, gold, stone, natu- ral gas, cement and lead. In the last few years the quan- tity of coal mined in the United States has been in the neighborhood of half a billion tons annually, the proportion of bituminous to anthracite being approximately five and a half to one. The value of this coal at the mines would be considerably over $600,000,000. As the production of iron is sometimes cited as an index of the industrial posi- tion of a country, it is perhaps worthy of note that in 191 1 the quantity produced in the United States was more than 23,500,000,000 tons as against less than 15,500,000,000 tons for Germany and about 10,000,000 tons for Great Britain. The United States doubled its output of iron in the eight years from 1882 to 1890, and, in the thirteen years fol- lowing, the output was again doubled. After 1903, owing to the increased demand from industrial plants, the pro- duction of iron advanced with great rapidity and with occasional marked recessions. The growth of production in Germany proceeded meanwhile more slowly but more regularly, while in Great Britain it remained practically stationary. In 191 1 the United States produced two-thirds of the world's supply of petroleum, about 200,000,000 barrels, of which perhaps 73,000,000 barrels came from California wells. Of the gold mined in the world in 1910, 284 SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH estimated by the director of the United States ]\Iint to have been about $455,000,000 — less in vakic, In- the way, than the corn or the cotton or the hay or the wheat crop of the United States alone in the single year 191 1 — • American mines, including those in Alaska, yielded not far from $100,000,000. The coal and iron mines of northern Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, with the estabhshment of textile, cotton- seed oil and other industries, and with the adoption of a more diversified range of farming, have brought to the South, in the last thirty years, a degree of prosperity nearly if not fully proportionate to that enjoyed by other parts of the country. Great tracts of rich land in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas have been reclaimed by drain- age and made available for agricultural uses. Throughout this region corn is replacing cotton as the staple crop. In all parts of the South, moreover, the people, through varied manufactures and diversified farm products, have become independent of the North, and have at the same time acquired a financial and economic position of far solider strength than any they ever occupied. Important results, political and social as well as economic, seem likely to follow from these changes. As one result, for instance, of the development of manufacturing industries, sentiment in many parts of the South has at last become friendly to the principle underlying a protective tariff. The great need of the South is immigration. Northern capital in large amounts has gone into the South in the last twenty years. Foreign immigrants, however, continue to show the same unwillingness to compete as laborers with negroes that they showed before slavery was abolished, and how 286 SOURCES OF THE NATIONS WE.\LTH to overcome this prejudice is one of the problems that slavery has bequeathed to the South. One of the important American industries not hereto- fore included in this general summary, in which the South is the leader, is the fishing business. The centre of the fisheries of the Atlantic coast in 1908, according to a special census taken for that year, was in Chesapeake Bay, fully forty per cent of the total of ninety-four thousand fisher- men hailing from Maryland and Virginia. If North Caro- lina and Florida were to be included, it would be found that these four southern states possessed not far from two- thirds of the men engaged in this industry, Massachusetts and Maine contributing only about one-tenth. The value of the fisheries of the country in that year was more than fifty million dollars, a single variety of shell-fish, oysters, representing nearly a third of this total. In comparison with the foregoing aspects of the enor- mously valuable domestic trade in the United States, among the ninty-two million people who, in 19 10, consti- tuted the "home market," the foreign trade of the coun- try seems almost insignificant. The great bulk of the ex- ports from the United States, consisting, of course, of the surplus products which the people of the country cannot consume, is composed of breadstuff s, meats and dairy products, manufactures and raw materials for manufact- ures, like cotton and copper, and various forms of petro- leum. The total exports for the year 191 1 amounted to somewhat over $2,000,000,000 in value; the imports, to about s$ 1, 500,000,000. If, however, these figures be placed alongside the total values of the farm products, the mines and the manufactures for the year, the relative unimpor- EXPORTS OF MANUFACTURED PRODUCTS 287 tance of the foreign trade of the country becomes at once apparent. The value, for example, of the manufactures ready for use which were exported from the United States in 191 1 was probably less than four per cent of the total value of the manufactures of the country for that year. The most important of these manufactures were the products of the iron and steel mills; and yet in 19 10, the latest year for which comparative figures are available, the United States was far behind its two chief competitors in this profitable branch of trade. The values of the exports of manu- factured iron and steel in that year for the three leading nations were, approximately, $377,000,000 for the United Kingdom, $348,000,000 for Germany, and $232,000,000 for the United States. Higher general cost of production in the United States, due to wages and to other factors, prevented American iron and steel mills from meeting German and British competition in many lines of this valuable international trade. The greatest encouragement for the future, however, is to be found in the steady, if slow, increase, despite the relative high cost of production, in the exports of American iron and steel, these exports hav- ing more than doubled in value in the decade from 1901 to 1 91 1. Less than one- tenth of all of these exports and imports for the fiscal year 191 1 were carried in vessels fly- ing the American flag, the profits of more than nine-tenths of this carrying trade going to foreign shipping. In conclusion, the problems which confront the people of the United States are neither few nor easy of solution. They are, broadly speaking, of three classes: First, eco- nomic questions of national concern relating to the en- 288 SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH couragement of agriculture and the education of farmers; to the government supervision and regulation, especially as regards the issue of capital and the enforcement of pub- licity, of corporations engaged in interstate commerce; to the readjustment of the tariff schedules, and perhaps of the wage rate, so as to permit American manufacturers to sell their surplus products in foreign markets at a profit; and to the revival of the American merchant marine in order that a larger share of the international carrying trade may be secured for United States vesesls. In the second class are the new political ideas toward which the people of the middle West and of the far west- ern states have shown themselves to be rather more hos- pitable than the more conservative people of the East. These new ideas include not only those devices for remed}"- ing some of the defects, real or imagined, of representative government, the initiative, the referendum and the recall, but also direct nominations and preferential primaries for Presidential nominees. The main purpose of all of these novel expedients is to restore the rule of the people; to enable the people to express and to carry out their will regarding candidates, legislation, and tenure of office di- rectly instead of through delegated authority. Less radi- cal in character than these political innovations have been the experiments in many parts of the country with the commission form of government for cities, along the line of the plan first put into successful oj^eration in Gal- veston, no fewer than two hundred cities, in thirty-four of the forty-eight states of the Union, having adopted this form of government by the spring of 191 2. And mean- while the movement in favor of giving votes to women has PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE 289 made such progress in the far West as to encourage its sup- ^ porters to believe that only time will be necessary to con- vince the people of the central and eastern states of its justice and wisdom. Not the least important, moreover, of the questions that press for solution are those affecting, in the third place, the relations of capital, labor and society in general. Fore- most among these questions is the suppression of crimes of violence on the part of organized labor. Others relate to such matters as employer's liabihty, the prohibition of child labor in factories, the safeguarding of hfe in extra- hazardous employments like mining and the operation of railroads, and the maintenance of hygienic conditions for laborers of both sexes. Difficult of solution as some of these problems may seem, they are no more formidable in size and are far less dis- couraging in character than those with which the men of forty years ago found themselves confronted when scan- dalous dishonesty prevailed in pubhc hfe, when municipal extravagance and corruption were wide-spread and brazen, and when the delusion of fiat money was running riot throughout a large part of the country. And, to go back stih further, how insignificant they seem, even when taken together, compared with the mighty problem of saving the very life of the nation which the immortal Lincoln, with patience, courage and infinite faith in the American people whom he knew so well, faced in the spring of 'sixty- one! INDEX Abbey, Edwin A., 264. Abercrombie, General Sir Robert, 45- Adams, Charles Francis, United States minister to England, 194, IQ5; his Studies Military and Dip- lomatic, 203. Adams, Henry, quoted, 107, 119; 259- Adams, President John, 79, 95, 100, 107. Adams, Samuel, his effective work for the colonies, 65, 66, 68. Agricultural resources of the United States, 150, 279, 280-283. Aguinaldo, General Emilio, 252. Aix la Chapelle, treaty of, 44. Alabama, the, Confederate cruiser, 221. Alaska, purchase of, 233; area and products of, 234. Aldrich, Nelson W., 226, 233. Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 262. Alexander, John W., 264. Alien and Sedition laws, 99, 100. Altman, Benjamin, 266. America, first appearance in print of the name, 11. American Tobacco Company case, the, 240, 246, 248. Ames, Oakes, 219. Amherst, General Jeffery, 45. Andros, Sir Edmund, 32. Anti-Federalists, the, 94. Appomattox Court House, Lee's sur- render at, 199. Architecture, development of, in America, 263, 264. Armada, the Spanish, destruction of, 20, 21. Arnold, Benedict, treason of, 75, 76. ;\rt, museums, 263; collectors, 264, 266. Astor, John Jacob, and the develop- ment of the fur trade, iii. Athletic sports in the colleges, 272. Aviles, Pedro Menendez de, massa- cre of Huguenots in Florida by, 16; founder of St. Augustine, 18. Babcock, Orville E., charge against, 216, 217. Bacon, Nathaniel, causes of rebellion of, 32. Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, discovery of Pacific Ocean by, 12. Baldwin, Mathias, 130. Baltimore, the Lords, government of Maryland by, 28, 51. Bancroft, George, 156; his History of the United Slates, 165. Bancroft, H. H., 259. Banks, General N. P., 192. Banks and banking, 139, 192. Barbary pirates, the, 112, 114. Barlow, Joel, 112. Barnard, Judge, 216. Barras, Count de, French fleet under, joins that of De Grasse, 79. Barre, Colonel, 59. Bartlett, Paul W., 262. Belknap, William W., forced to re- sign, 217. Bell, Alexander Graham, and the telephone, 238. Benjamin, Judah P., 183. Berkeley, Sir William, governor of Virginia, 32, i^^. Blaine, James G., and railway cor- porations, 219, 220. 291 2Q2 INDEX Bland-Allison hill, the, 230. Blashfield, Edwin H., 264. Bonhomme Rir/iard, the, 80, 195. Boston massacre, the, 59. Braddock, General Edward, defeated at Fort T)uf|ucsnc, 45. Bradford, William, governor of Plym- outh colony, 2O. Brandywine, battle of the, 72. Brice, Calvin S., 225, 226, 227. Brock, General Sir Isaac, 124. Brooks, Preston, assault of, ui)on Sumner, 180, iSi. Brown, John, his raid upon Harper's Ferry, 180, 181. Brown, Nicholas, Rift to Rhode Isl- and College, 58. Brown University founded, 58. Brownell, William C, quoted, 159, 165; the works of, 260. Bryan, William J., 227, 232, 243. Bryant, William Cullen, his Thana- topsis, 155, i()i; [)(K't and jour- nalist, 161, 162. Bryce, James, quotcfl, 03 ; his .1 Dicr- ican Commomc'call/i. 2O0. Buchanan, President James, 176, 185, 187, 1S8. Buell, General Don Carlos, 190. Bunker Hill, battle of, 69. Bunyan, John, 30. Burgoyne, General John, 72, 74, 75. Burke, Edmund, 59. Burnham, Daniel II., Director of Works of the Chicago Ex|)ositi()n, 263. Burnside, General A. E., 188, 180. Burr, Aaron, 105. Byron, Lord, his influence on Ameri- can letters, 156. Cable, George W., 261. Cabot, John and Sebastian, voyages of, 10. Calhoun, John Caldwell, 120; and the slave question, 175, 183, 184. California, its independence won from Mexico, 136; discovery of gold in, 136. Canals, 127, 128, 130, 253. Cardozo, Judge, 216. Carnegie, Andrew, gifts of, 268. Carolina colonies, the, 29, 52. Cartier, Jacques, voyages of, 13, 16. Cavalier migration to X'irginia, 26. -7) 53- Census, of iSoo, 103, 104; of 1810. 116; of 1910, 276. Channing, William Ellcry, 157. Champlain, Samuel de, 16; char- acter of, 35, 36; Quebec founded bj', 36; e.\[ilorations of, 38; death of, 38; 40. Charles I, king of England, 26, 20. 42, 47- Charles Y, I'lmperor, 12, 14, 18. Chase, Salmon P., 178, 212. Chatham, I^arl of, see Pitt. Chesapeake, the, 122, 123. Child, Francis J., 259. China, influence of the United States in, 252, 253. City government, the Gaheston ]jlan of, 288. Civil service, reforms in, 236. Civil War, the, 127, 156, 170, 187 el seg.; cost of, 203; numbers and losses in, 203-206; results of, 206; conditions after, 208 et seq.; 259. Clark, William, ex[)e(lilion of, loq, no. III. Cla}', Henry, 120, 138, 169. Clay's Comjiromise of 1850, 175. Clermonl, the, 112. Cleveland, President Grover, 139, 225, 226, 227, 231; and the Mon- roe Doctrine, 233, 234, 235; sec- ond administration of, 236. Clinton, General Sir Henry, 72, 74, . 75, 7'>- Coal, 103; outjjut of, in Lehigh \'al- ley, 135; anthracite coal strike, 256; production of, 283. Colfax, Schuyler, 219. Collins, Edward K., 147, 148. Columbia, the, Captain Gray's ship, I 10, 1 I T. Columbia University founded, 58. INDEX 293 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 263. Columbus, Christopher, voyages of, 5-8, 12; death of, 8, 12. Confederation, Articles of, the de- fects of, 86, 87; Maryland's re- fusal to accept, 88; 89, 90, 94. Confederation, the New England, 84. Connecticut colon_v, the, 48, 84. Conservation of public resources, 256, 257. Constitution, the. United States frig- ate, 122, 140, 195. Constitution, the federal, 88; the framers of, 92; a remarkable doc- ument, 92, 93; debates on, in state conventions, 94; ratified by all the states 94, 95. Constitutional Convention, the, called, 91; its members, 92, con- troversies in, 93; important ques- tions settled by compromise, 93, 94- Continental Congress, first, 64, 65, 86. Conway, Thomas, leader in conspir- acy against Washington, 81. Cook, Captain, no. Cook, Walter, 264. Cooke, Jay, & Company, 219. Cooper, James Fenimore, his Pre- caution, 155; other novels of, 157, 158; his characteristics as a writer, 158, 162. Cornwallis, Lord Charles, 70; de- feated at Yorktown, 76, 78. Coronado, Francisco Vazquez, ex- pedition of, 13. Cortes, Hernando, conquest of Mex- ico by, 13. Cotton, mills established, 102; ex- ports of, 115, 116; production of, ij8; 193. Cox, Kenyon, 264. Cram, Ralph A., 264. Credit Mobilier, the, 219. Cromwell, Oliver, 30. Cuba, independence of, 254, 256. Cunard, Samuel, and the British transatlantic service, 146. Dana, Richard Henry, his Two Years before the Mast, 161. Dartmouth College founded, 58. Davis, Jefferson, 180; elected Presi- dent of the Confederate States of America, 184; 19S, 200; character and temperament of, 202. Dawes, Henry L., 219. Deane, Silas, 74. Declaration of Independence adopt- ed, 70. Deerfield, Mass., the massacre at, 44. Delaware and Hudson Canal, the, 128. Delaware colony, the, 52. Democratic party, the, 137, 138, 182, 198, 199, 212, 214, 221; and the tariff, 224 et seq. De Soto, Hernando, expedition of, 13, 14- De Vaca, Cabeza, wanderings of, 13, 14. Dewey, Admiral George, 250. Dinwiddle, Robert, governor of Vir- ginia, 50, SI. Douglas, Stephen A., author of the Kansas-Nebraska act, 176, 177; debates with Lincoln, 180, 182. Drake, Sir Francis, voyages of, 13, 18. Drama, the, stagnation in, 267. Dred Scott case, the, 180, 181, 182. Dutch, the, occupation of New Neth- erland, 27, 28, 34. Duquesne, Fort, Braddock defeated at, 45; taken b}' the English, 45. Early, General Jubal A., 198. Economist, London, cited, 276. Edison, Thomas A., 238. Edmunds, Senator George F., 242. Education, in the colonies, 33, 34, 54, 56, 58; gifts for the advancement of, 268; the public-school system, 270; colleges and universities, 270, 271; industrial and trade schools, 271, 272. 294 INDEX Education Board, the Cieneral, 2(18. Edwards, Jonathan, leader of the "Great Revival," 53, 56. Electricity, uses of, 238, 23Q. Eliot, Dr. Charles VV., quoted, 2^6, 238, 273. Elizabeth, (,)uccn, of Ent;Iand, 10, 18, ig, 20, 22. Embargo act, the, 119, 120. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, his poems, 165; his essays, 168. Endicott, John, 2q. Eric th," Red, voyage of, 4. Ericsson, John, inventor of the screw propeller, 147. Erie Canal, the, 127, 128, 130. Essex, the, American ship, 123. Estaing, Count d', 74. Everett, Edward, 156. Exports from the United States, 115, 116, 120, 144; agricultural, 150; of foodstuffs, 282; valucof,in iqi r, 286; value of iron and steel ex- ports, 287. Farms in the United States, \-alue of, 279; value of products of, 150, 279, 280; 2S2. Farragut, Admiral David G., 192, 196, 198. Federalists, the, 94; win first elec- tion, 9s; birth of the Federalist party, 97, 98; its decline, 98-102; annihilation of, 126. Ferdinand and Isabella, of Spain, 12. Field, Cyrus W., and the Atlantic cable, 234. Fish, Hamilton, 220. Fisheries of the Atlantic coast, 286. Fisk, James, Jr., 216. Fiske, John, quoted, 94, 259 Fitch, John, his steam-boat, 103, 112. Flagg, Ernest, 264. Florida purchased from Spain, 135. Florida, the. Confederate cruiser, 221. Forbes, General John, 45. Forrest, General N. B., 200. Francis I, king of France, 14, 16. Franklin, Benjamin, his Poor Rich- ard's Almanac, 56; 60; his views on independence, 65, 66; 74, 79; his project for a federal union, 84; 92. Frauds, political, 213, 214; among public officials, 216, 217. Freer, Charles L., 266. Fremont, John C., 136, 178. French and Indirn War, 36, 42-46. French, Daniel C, 262. Frick, Henry C, 266. Frolic, the, in sea fight, 123. Frontenac, Count, governor of New France, 43. Fugitive Slave law passed, 175, 178. Fuller, George, 262. Fulton, Robeit, and the Clermont, 112. Furness, Horace Howard, his Vari- orum Shakespeare, 259. Gallatin, .\lberl, 107. Gardner, Mrs. John L., 266. Garfield, President James .A., 219. Garrison, ^^"illiam Llo3'd, 165, 173, 174. ■ Gates, General Horatio, 72; defeat- ed at Camden, 76; 81. George HI, king of Fnj,land, 58; attitude of, toward the lolonies. 59, 60, 62, 68. (jeorgia colon\', the, 52. General Amnesty bill, 213. Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration, award of, IQ4, 220. Germantown, battle of, 72. Gibbon, Edward, 165. Gilbert, Cass, 264. Goethals, Colonel George W., his work on the Panama Canal, 254. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, influence of, on American literature, 156. Gold, discovery of, in California, 136; speculation in, 216; intrease in production of, 232; mined in the world in 1910, 283, 284. Gorman, Arthur P., 225, 226, 227. INDEX 295 Gould, Jay, and gold speculation, 216. Grady, Henry W., quoted, 222. Grant, General Ulysses S., at Fort Donclson and Shiloh, igo; at Vicksburg, 190, 195; his Chatta- nooga campaign, 192; iq6; in the Wilderness campaign, 198; at Appomattox Court House, iqq; 200, 202; the prey of unscrupu- lous schemers, 208, 214-217; 219, 220, 221; his veto of the Inflation bill, 228, 229; 234. Grasse, Count dc, P'rcnch fleet under, sent to aid the colonists, 78, 79- Gray, Captain Robert, discovery of the Columbia River by, no, in. "Great Revival," the, 53, 56. Greeley, Horace, 185, 196. Greene, General Francis V., cited, 69. Greene, General Nathanael, suc- ceeds General Gates, 76. Gtierriere, the British frigate, 122, 140. Hakluyt, Richard, the influence of the collected narratives of, 20. Hale, John P., 178. Half Moon, the, 27. Hamilton, Alexander, 92, 94; secre- tary of the treasury under Wash- ington, 96; his plans and financial policy, 96, 97; leader of the Fed- eralist party, 97, 98, 100. Hampden, John, 26. Harold Fairhair, king of Norway, 3. Harriman, Edward H., 244. Harrison, President Benjamin, 226, 242. Harte, Bret, his short stories, 260, 261. Hartford colony, the, 31. Hartford Convention, the, 126. Harvard College founded, t,^)^ S^- Harvard, John, 29, 33. Hastings, Thomas, 264. Havemeyer, Mrs. Wm. T., 266. Hawaiian Islands, annexation of, 253- Hawkins, Sir John, iS. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, his The Scar- let Letter, 157, 160; other works of, 160. Hay, John, 253. Hayes, President Rutherford B., 221. Henry, Patrick, 64. Henry, Prince, of Portugal, his school of navigators, 6, 7. Henry VH, king of England, 10. Henry VHI, king of England, iS. Hepburn, A. Barton, 232. Higginson, Henry L., 267. Hifl, David B., 225, 226. Hill, James J., 244. Hill, Joseph A., 275. Holmes, 01i\XT Wendell, 161; es- says of, 166. Homer, Winslow, 262. Hood, General John B., 198, 200. Hooker, General Joseph, 1S8, 1S9, 192. Howard, Lord, of Elfingham, gov- ernor of \'irginia, ^,1. Howe, Elias, invents the sewing- machine, 135. Howe, General George Augustus, 45. Howe, General Sir William, 65, 69, 12, 74, 76; _ Howells, William D., literary career of, 261. Hudson, Flenry, expedition of, 27. Hughes, Justice Charles E., 245. Huguenots, massacre of, in Florida, 16, 18. Hull, Captain Isaac, 122. Hull, General William, his surrender to Brock, 124. Hunt, Richard AI., 264. Huntington, Collis P., 266. Hutchinson, Ann, 30. Immigration to the United States, its causes and the quality of, 132; increase in, 134, 276; destination of, 134, 277; nationalities repre- 296 INDEX sentcd, 276; percentage of foreign element in dififerent states, 277. Imports of the United States, 115, 144,150; of foodstuffs, 282; vakie of. in 1911, 286. Indians, origin of tlie name, 8; Dutch and English alliance with the Five Nations of, 32, ,5,3, ,36, 3S; French alliance with the Algon- quin, ss, 35. 36, 38; in King William's War, 43; in Queen Anne's War, 43, 44; campaign against the Seminole, 135. Inflation bill, the. Grant's veto of, 221, 228, 22Q. Inness, George, 262. Institutions, gifts to, 264, 268, 270. Interstate Commerce law, the, 240, 246. Inventions, the cotton-gin, 102; 130, 134, 13s, 147, 238, 239. Iron, production of, 283, 287. Irving, Washington, his Knicker- bocker History of AVw York, 27, 157; quoted, 156; his Sketch-Book, and other works of, 157, 159; 162. Jackson, President Andrew, in the battle of New Orleans, 124; in Seminole War, 135; and the new Democracy, 137; 139. Jackson, General T. J. ("Stone- wall "), 188, 200, 202. James, Henry, his novels and stories, 260. James, William, his contributions to psychology, 260. James I, king of England, 47. Jameson, Leander Starr, 235. Jamestown, Va., settlement of, 22, 24, 36- Java, the, British frigate, 122. Jay, John, 94, 98; quoted, 212. Jay Treaty, the, 98, 99. Jefferson, Thomas, quoted on the object of the war, 66; elected Vice-President, 95; leader of the Republican party, 97, 98, 100; inauguration of, as President, 105; his purchase of Louisiana, 105, 106, 107, 108; his love of peace, 106, 107; organizes Lewis and Clark expedition, 109; his action against the Barbary pirates, 112; 114; attitude of, toward the merchant marine, 117; 119, 120, 138, 169. Jewett. Sarah Orne, 261. Johnson, President Andrew, 212. Johnson, John G., 266. Johnston, General A. S., 190, 200, 202. Johnston, General Joseph E., 188, 192, 198, 200. Joliet, Louis, reaches the Mississipni, 38. Jones, Paul, his capture of the Sera- pis, 80. Kansas-Nebraska act, the, 176, 177, 182. Kentucky resolutions of 1798, the, 100. King William's War, 43. Kingslev, Charles, his Westward Ho.', iS. Kip's Bay, battle of, 6g. Kirk, David, 42. Knox, Philander C, 253. Ku Klux Klan, the, 210. Labor problems, 28g. La Farge, John, 262, 2O4. Lafayette, Marquis de, 81. Lake Chami)lain, Macdonough's vic- tory on, 124. Lake Erie, Perry's v'ictory on, 124. Lanier, Sidney, 262. La Salle, Robert de, explorations of, 38, 40; establishes French claim to the water-shed of the Missis- sippi, 40. Laud, Archbishop, 26, 31. Laudonniere, Rene de. Huguenot leader, 16. Ledyard, John, i 10. Lee, Arthur, 74. Lee, Charles, treachery of, 74, 81. INDEX 297 Lee, Richard Henry, 27. Lee, General Robert E., 188, 192; surrender of, to General Grant, iqq; 200, 202, 206. Leif Ericsson, discovery of Vinland by, 4. 5- Leopard, the, 122. Lesseps, Ferdinand de, founder of French Panama Company, 253. Lewis, Meriwether, expedition of, 108, no, III. Lincoln, President Abraham, 159; debates of, 180, 182; elected President, 182, 183; his appeal for preservation of the Union, 185, 186; dominating figure in Civil War, 187; 192, 193; influence of his Emancipation Proclamation, 194; re-elected, 196, 198; assas- sination of, 206; character of, 206, 207; 212, 223, 289. Lincoln, General Benjamin, defeated at Charleston, 76. Literature in the United States, 155 el seq., 258 et seq. Livermore, Thomas L., his Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 203, 204, 206. Livingston, Robert R., 64, 106, 112. Lodge, Senator Henry Cabot, quoted, 97. London Times, the, quoted, 144. Long Island, battle of, 69. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, the poetry of, 164; 168. Louis XIV, king of France, 40, 42. Louis XV, king of France, 42. Louisburg, capture of, 44. Louisiana purchase, the, 105, 106, 107, 108. Lounsbury, Thomas R., 158, 259. Lowell, A. Lawrence, his The Govern- ment of England, 260. Lowell, James Russell, the poetry of, 162, 164; his essays, 168, 177. McClellan, General George B., 188, as a commander, 189; 198, 199. McCormick, Cyrus Hall, inventor of reaping machine, 135. McCunn, Judge, 216. Macdonough, Commander Thomas, victory of, in the battle of Lake Champlain, 124. McKay, Donald, Boston ship- builder, 149. McKim, Charles F., 264. McKinley, President William, 232, 24s; and the war with Spain, 249; 2 53- McMaster, John B., 259. MacMonnies, Frederick, 262. Macedonian, the, British frigate, 122. Madison, President James, 27, 92, 94; joins the Republican party, 97, 100, 107; attitude toward the merchant marine, 117; 120, 122, 138, 169. Magellan, Ferdinand, voyage of, 12, 13- Mahan, Admiral A. T., quoted, 252; 260. Maine, the, destruction of, 249. Manufacturing industries, 138; re- markable growth of, 278, 279. Marquette, James, reaches the Mis- sissippi, 38. Marshall, John, Virginia jurist, 27, 107. Martin, Homer, 262. Maryland colony, the, settlement of, 28; royal authority in, 51; 52. Mason, James M., in the Trent af- fair, 193. Massachusetts Bay colony, the, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, ii, 47, 48, 5°. 52, 62, 64, 84. Mayflower, the, 24, 26. Meade, General George G., 192, 200. Mercator, Gerard, his map of 1541, II, 13- Merchant marine, the American, 98, 114, 117-120, 144, 148, 150, 152, IS3- Merrimac, the, results of fight of, with the Monitor, 195. 298 INDEX Mc.xiian Wat, 1^5, 136. Millet, Frank D., 264. Milton, John, 30. Mineral resources of the United States, 283, 284. Missouri Compromise, 173, 176, 181. Mobile Bay, battle of, iq6. JMonetary Commission, the National, 233- Monitor, ths, results of fight of, with the Mcrrimac, 195. Monmouth, battle of, 74, 76. Monroe Doctrine, 139, 140, 1^,^, 234, 235- Monroe, President James, 27, 106, 138, 139- Montcalm, General Marc(uis dc, 45. Montezuma II, 14. Montreal, fall of, 45. Morgan, Daniel, 76. Morgan, J. Picrpont, gifts of, 26.'), 268. Morse, Professor S. F. B., and the telegraph, 135. Motley, John Lothrop, 165; his Rise of the Diilcli Rcpiihlir and History of the United Xetherla>ids, 166. Music, increased interest in, 26O, 267. Napoleon Bonaparte, 105, 106, 107, 108, 124. Napoleon III, 194. Navigation laws, 50. Necessity, Fort, Washington defeat- ed at, 44. Negro slave labor, introduced, 24; 83, 93, 103, 138; attitude of South toward, 169; African slave trade, 170; the domestic trade, 171; 172; anti-slavery crusade, 173-175; turning-iioinl 'n history of slavery, 176, 177; 178; Dred Scott case, 180, 181, 1S2; Emancipation Proclamation, 194; negro suf- frage, 200-213, 222. New Hampshire colony, the, 48. New Haven, colony, the, 31, 48, 84. New Jersey colony, the, ^2. New Netherland, Dutch occupation of, 27, 28, 34; royal governors in New York, 48. New Orleans, battle of, 124; ca])t- ure of, 192, 195. Newspai)ers, in the colonies, 56; printed on cylinder presses, 135. Niagara, Fori, 45. Nicollet, Jean, 38. IVina, the, Columbus's ship, 8. Non-intercourse law, the, 120. North, Lord Frederick, 59; his bills, 62. Oglethorpe, Governor James, of Georgia, 52. Olaf, king of Norway, 4. Clney, Richard, secretary of stale, 234- Ordinance of 1787, the, 88-90. Oregon, the, its voyage around Scnilh America, 250, 253. Pacilic Mail Company, the, 147, 148. Pacific Ocean, discovery of, 12, 13. Page, Thomas Nelson, 261. Paine, Thomas, his Common Sense, 70. Painters and sculptors, 262. Panama Canal, the, 250, 253, 254. Panic of 1837, 138, 139; of 1873, 218, 219; of 1893, 231, 232; of 1907, 232. Paris, Comte d; , (|Uoted, 192. Parkman, I'Van, is, 165; his Cali- fornia and Orei^on Trail and Con- spiracy of Pontiae, 166. Peabody, George, bequests of, 268. Peary, Commander, arctic explora- tions of, 273. Pemberton, General John C., 100. Pendleton Civil Service law, the, 23(>. Pendleton, Fdmund, 27. Penn, William. 28, 31, 7,2, 51. Pennsylvania Railway Station, the. 274. INDEX 299 Pennsylvania colony, the, settle- ment of, 28, 29; proprietary gov- ernment in, 51; 52. Pennsylvania, University of, found- ed, 56. Pension legislation, 226, 227. Pepperell, Sir William, captures Louisburg, 44. Perry, Oliver Hazard, his victory on Lake Erie, 124. Petroleum, production of, 283. Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, 262. Philip II, king of Spain, 12, 16, 18. Philippine Islands, United States ownership of, 252, 2^3. Phillips, Wendell, 185/" Phips, Sir William, royal governor of Massachusetts, 52. Pha'be, the, British frigate, 123. Pierce, President Franklin, 176, iSo. Pike, Captain Zebulon Montgomery, expeditions of, iii. Pilgrims, the, 24, 26. Piiita, the, Columbus's ship, 8. Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, suc- cess of his plan of operations against the French, 44, 45; 59, 60. Pittsburg Landing, battle of, igo. Pizarro, Francisco, his conquest of Peru, 13.. Plymouth colony founded by the Pilgrims, 24, 26, 84. Poe, Edgar Allan, 156, 157; the tales of, 159, 160, 162. Political reforms, 28S. Polo, Marco, effect of his tales of travel, 6, 8. Pontiac, conspiracy of, 46. Pope, General John, 188, 189. Population, growth of, in the col- onies, 51; increase in, 103, 116, 130, 132, 137, 275; westward movement of centre of, 104, 127, 130, 132, 136, 137- Porter, Commander Da^id D., 192. Post, George B., 264. Preble, Captain George Henry, and the Barbary pirates, 112. Prescott, William H., historical writ- ings of, 165, 166. Princeton, battle of, 70, 72. Princeton, the, warship, 147. Princeton University founded, 56. Privateers, American, 79, 80; rav- ages of, 125. Pulitzer, Joseph, bequests of, 270. Puritans, the, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 52, 53. 54- Pym, John, 26. Quakers, the, 28, 30, 31. Quebec, founded by Champlain, 36; under English rule, 40, 42; fall of, 45- Queen Anne's War, 43, 44. Railroads in the United States, 130, 209; increase in building of, 218, 241; great railway corporations, 219, 220, 241, 242, 244. Randall, Samuel J., 225. Randolph, John, 27. « Ranken, David, Jr., gift of, 268. Rawdon, Lord, 78. Reconstruction act, the, 210, 212. Religious worship in America, 29 et scq.; progress toward greater freedom in, 52, 53, 54, 83, 84, 89. Republican party, the, 97-100; ori- gin of, 178; 180, 183, 196, 198, 199, 209, 212, 214, 220, 221, 223; and the tariff, 224 el seq. Revolutionary War, 6g-8i; condi- tions at the close of, 82 el seq. Rhode Island colony, the, 48. Rhodes, James Ford, his history of the United States, 250. Ribaut, Jean, Huguenot leader, 16. Richardson, H. H., 264. Riley, James Whitcomb, 262. Ringmann, Matthias, 11. Roads, 127; the Cumberland Road constructed, 127, 128. Rockefeller, John D., gifts of, 268. Rolfe, John, 22. 300 INDEX Roosevelt, President Theodore, his Naval War oj 1812, 123; civil ser- vice reforms of, 236; his action regarding trusts, 245-248; and the Panama Canal, 253; his services to the nation, 256, 257. Roosevelt dam, the, 274. Royal governors, the colonies under, 48, 50. 51- Rutgers College founded, 58. Rutgers, Henry, his name given to Queen's College, 58. Ryswick, the peace of, 43. St. Augustine, founded, 1565, 18. Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 262. Salisbury, Lord, 235. Sampson, Admiral William T., 250. Santa Maria, the, Columbus's ship, 8. Saratoga, battle of, 72. Sargent, John S., 262, 264. Saybrook Synod, the, ecclesiastical system adopted by, 53. Schouler, James, 259. Schuyler, Philip, 64. Scott, Sir Walter, influence of, on American literature, 156, 157, 158. Scott, General Winfield, 135. Seamen, American, British impress- ment of, 117 et seq., 140; enter- prise of, 141. Serapis, the, captured bv Paul Jones, 80. Seven Years' War, the, 42. Seward, William H., 178; and the Trent affair, 193; his purchase of Alaska, 233, 234. Shannon, the, British frigate, 123. Shays, Daniel, rebellion of, 90. Shenandoah, the, Confederate cruiser, 221. Sheridan, General Philip H., 192, 198, 200. Sherman Anti-trust bill, 240, 241, 242, 243, 248. Sherman Silver Purchase bill, the, 230. 231, 234. Sherman, General William T., 192, 196, 198, 200, 202. Ship-building, 141 et seq.; the Yan- kee packet ship, 142, 144; the American clipper ships, 149, 150; free materials for, 153, 154. Shipping, American, in foreign trade, 114, 115; indignities suffered by, 1 17-122; activity in, 141 et seq.; tonnage figures of, 148, 149; causes of decline in, 152, 153; 195. Silver, production and coinage of, 229, 230; legislation in favor of, 230, 231; end of free silver agita- tion, 232. Silver Purchase bill, the, see Sher- man. Simmons, Edward, 264. Slidell, John, in the Trent atTair, 193- Sloane, William M., 259. South, the, economic changes in, 138; slavery in, 169 et seq.; secession in, 182 (■/ seq.; conditions in, after the war, 199, 200; prosperity in, 284, 286. Spanish- American War, 156; effects of, 243; causes of, 248, 249; two military lessons of, 250. Spotswood, Alexander, 50. Stamp Act, the, 60. 62, 64, 65. Standard Oil case, the, 240, 246, 248. St.eani-boats, 103, 112, 146, 147. Stedman, Edmund C, 161. Steers, (Jeorge, 147. Stephens, Alexander H., 183, 184. Stephenson, CJeorge, inventor of the locomoti\'e, 130. Steuben, Baron, 81. Stoddard, Richard H., 262. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 158; her Uncle Tom's Cabin, 161, 178. Stuart, General J. E. B., 188, 200, 202. Stuyvesant, Peter, governor of New Nctherland, 34. Sullivan, Louis H., 264. Sumner, Senator Charles, 178; as- sault of Brooks upon, 180, 181; 212. Sumter, Fort, attack upon, 186, 187. INDEX 301 Supreme Court decisions, the Dred Scott case, 180, 181, 182; Stand- ard Oil Company case and Amer- ican Tobacco Company case, 240, 246, 248. Swinburne, Algernon C, quoted, 161. Taft, President William H., and civil service reform, 236; 248, 253. Tammany Hall under Tweed, 213, 214, 216. Tariff, legislation, 137, 138; Payne- Aldrich bill, 153, 227, 228; re- forms in^ 223 et scq.; Morrill bill, 224; Morrison bill, 225; Mills bill, 226; Wilson bill, 226, 227; McKinley bill, 226, 227; Dingley bill, 227, 243. Tarleton, Colonel Banastre, 76. Taylor, General Zachary, 135. Texas, independence of, 135; ad- mitted to Union, 136. Thomas, Augustus, 267. Thomas, General George H., 192, 200, 202. Ticknor, George, 156. Ticonderoga, Fort, 45. Tobacco culture, development of, 22; exports of, 116. Toombs, Robert, 183. Toscanelli, Paolo del Pozzo dei, Ve- netian astronomer and geogra- pher, 7, 8. Townshend acts, the, 62. Townshend, Charles, 59. Treaty, of commerce and alliance with France, 74; of 1783 with England, 79; of 1794 with Eng- land, 98, 99; of Washington, 220. Trent, the, affair, 193. Trenton, battle of, 70, 72. Trusts, 240 et seq.; dangers of, 245, 257- Turner, C. Y., 264. Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), his Life on the Mississippi River, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, 258, 260. Tweed, William M., 213, 214, 216. United States, the, United States frigate, 122. Valley Forge, Washington at, 74. Vasco da Gama, Portuguese naviga- tor, voyage of, 8. Vedder, Elihu, 262. Venezuela boundary dispute, 139, 234-236, 250. Verrazzano, Giovanni da, voyage of, 14- _ Vespucci, Amerigo, expeditions of, II. Vicksburg, capture of, 190, 192, 195. Victory, the, 195. Vikings, origin of the name, 3; voy- ages of, 4, 5. Virginia colony, the, 22, 24, 26, 27, 29 et seq.; royal governors in, 48, 50, 52; S3, 64. Virginia resolutions of 1798, the, 100. Waldseemiiller, Martin, 11. War of 1812, the, 11 7-1 26, 127, 140, 141, 193. Ward, J. Q. A., 262. Warner, Olin L., 262. Washington, Fort, British capture of, 69. Washington, George, 27; defeated at Fort Necessity, 44; his views on independence, 66; at Dor- chester Heights and the battle of Long Island, 69; his victory at Trenton and Princeton, 70, 72; defeated in battles of the Brandy- wine and Germantown, 72; un- successful defense of New York, 74; at Valley Forge, 74; at battle of Monmouth, 74; two strategic principles of , 75, 76- at Yorktown, 78; character of, 80; his greatness in overcoming obstacles, 80, 81; his plan for a national system, 87; 91, 92; chosen President, 95; 96, 103, 108, 243. Wasp, the, in sea fight, 123. Webster, Daniel, quoted, 89; 175, 302 INDEX Wesley, Joliii, 5 :;. Whale-fisheries in New iMij^laiid, 114, 145, 146. Wharton, Edith, 261. Wheelock, Rev. Eleazer, 58. Whi^s, the, origin of, 1 38. Whistler, J. A. MeN., 262. While, Stanford, 264. Whitcfield, George, ami the "Great Rexival," 53. Whitman, Walt, 2s8, 25c;. W'hitney, Eli, and the cotton-gin, 102, 10,5, 115. Whittier, John Grcenleaf, the jjoetry of, 164, 16^. Widener, P. A. B., 266. Wilkins (Ereeman), I\Iar\' E., 261. Wilkinson, General James, iii. William and Mar}', College of, founded, 56. William and Mary, sovereigns of ICngland, 42, 47, 48, 50. William Henrj', Eort, 45. Williams, Roger, 30, 32. \\ ilson, Henry, his Ri.sc and Fall of the Slave Poivcr in America, 171; 178, 219. Winthrop, John, governor of Mas- saihiisetls. 31, 47, 52. Witehcrafl in Salem Village, 47. Wolfe, General James, 45. Woodberr\-, George I*;., his Appre- ciation of Literature and The Torch, 260; 273. Wright, Wilbur and Orvillc, and the aeroplane, 230. \\'yant, Alexander H., 262. Wyman, Isaac C., bequest of, 268. Vale Univcrsitj' founded, 56. Vorktown, victory at, 76, 78, 79. SEP 17 1912 > <% « ' •..^.•.; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 010 740 525 2 'V'f •■ ■ ' , "^ I '*,M y:«* '■ \»''i:'^'